Player Features and Ideas Discussion

PREFACE - I just typed this out... and then the forums ate my post... goddamnit... so I'm retyping it as best as I can.

Okay, so, some people want a way to detect AFK/BOT cloaked ships, yet we need to make sure we don't disrupt legitimate players using cloaks.

So, lets set the guidelines we need to follow:

A system that can detect an AFK cloak, or a ship sitting unattended, cloaked, in space.
A system that will NOT disrupt spying, stalking, transport, or other active-use cloak functions.
A system that does no punish players for using a cloak.

So, to that end, here's my thoughts.

Covert Ops ships get a new "bonus/function" - High Energy Scans. Essentially, they utilize their system scanner to search for and give a rough estimate on the location of a cloaked ship. Now, this scan would run for ~30-60 seconds, depending on skills, requires at least 75% capacitor charge to initiate, and fully drains the ships capacitor. Oh, and because of the amount of raw power you are putting out, your ship shows up on everybody's overview as a high power energy source and can be locked onto by warp drives, giving any actively playing cloakers ample time to GTFO of dodge.

After the scan completes, you get a red circle that is 10AU in radius - within this circle is the cloaked ship. At this point you would warp into that circle and drop a series of high energy probes - at this point things work similar to normal probing, except that the tightest lockon you can get simply puts you on grid with the cloaked vessel (within 150km).

Once you warp to the on-grid point, you re-scan with the high energy scan (again, draining capacitor and all other effects), but on a much smaller scale. What this does is place a "blip" on the tactical overlay, showing where the ship is.

Now, I hear you screaming "BUT THIS WILL BREAK CLOAKS AT GATE CAMPS" - no, no it won't. And here's why:

It takes a minimum of 30 seconds to run the scan. Then you have to recharge your capacitor. Then it takes another 30 seconds to run the scan (and the blip only shows up at the end of the scan, but the blip shows where the ship was at the START of the scan).

Now, for a ship sitting dead in space, it's easy to pinpoint their location and go decloak them by bumping them.

For a ship in motion, you need to scan at LEAST twice in order to determine their direction and rough velocity, at which point you can simply swing in behind them and follow the vector to decloak them.

HOWEVER, if the person is actually at the controls, it will be virtually impossible to locate them... as long as they aren't stupid. Al they have to do is change direction now and then. They get a BIG, obvious visual clue when you start your scan, so all you have to do is change direction now and then. Battleship with T1 Prototype cloaks MIGHT have an issue getting far enough away, but that should be about it. Even so, you could align, decloak+warp and hide somewhere else, making them start the whole process over again.

Yes, it's time consuming - I'd wager no less than 10 minutes even with the best of condition and skills... and that's on an immobile AFK ship.

I figure you could also use this to help hunt down the deep SS + Cloak auto-farm/auto-mine bots as well... and it might add a LITTLE bit of tactical suspense into spying on a system, though it would be so incredibly easy to avoid getting caught.

DISCUSS!

Can someone please tell me what is wrong with afk cloaking besides making it hard for the wee little carebears to PvE without being careful?

AFK Cloaks are generally just a PITA. Especially since, if done right, they can be setup to do a hotdrop at any time, meaning you never know if that guy is actually AFK or is just waiting for the system to clear out to bring in a massive invasion force.

Likewise, Macro's that rely on cloaked SS's will get pwned by this... at least until they adapt.

Honestly, I don't see a reason why this system would affect legitimate players at all :)

And... you failed.

You are breaking cloaks by breaking the ability for someone to be in a system completely undetected and undetectable performing intel. We have dedicated people that will spend hours a day, days on end in a wormhole system cloaked up and just observing, taking notes, planning the attack.

Your scan gives away the knowledge that a cloaked ship is in system.

Therefore you failed to avoid breaking cloaks.

In addition, you have the same effect as everyone else of changing the wormhole meta... these would become required in wormhole systems. Wormholes don't need to be made safer or have their gameplay changed because you see someone scary in local in null space.

At least you gave it some thought. Ingvar has a point about W-space concerns, and I still vehemently disagree that AFK cloaking is any kind of problem at all, but I give you credit for coming up with something beyond the usual.

I like it since with this I could have caught an orca that intruded in the WH system I lived in. Stayed for about a week and never seemed to log of. Also contained all kind of sleeper loot and sometimes a T3 cruiser since the guy was running sites with his other account. Was getting really annoyed with having a huge loot piñata sitting afk in the system without me being able to do squat about it.

If you remove local, you remove the reason to be AFK in the first place.

If you want to 'cure' AFK Cloaking, this is the easiest and fastest way to do it. The simplist answer is usually the correct one...

Instead of implementing new anticloaking mechanics, put your brainpower to start thinking of improving d-scan so that it'll be more useful, or coming up with a new way to gather intel actively.

There is no problem with AFK Cloaking, Remove guaranteed intel and you remove the reason that people AFK Cloak in the first place, which is to defeat the idea of 100% security.

I like the concept but I'm not so sure about the execution. I like the idea of being able to kill cloaking macro ratters, or at least force them to log off completely once they have cloaked, but I do not like the fact that it creates certainty in systems with no local chat (which should be delayed anywhere that isn't highsec, and also delayed if in war in highsec.)

that having been said; here's a counter-proposal.

Step 1 - All ships for their duration in space, regardless of system travel and downtimes should be assigned a static signature ID (we'll say that the RP reason for this is related to the ship's own functions and that they are automatically changed for security when docked in any station or maintenance array hmmm?).

Step 2 - allow there to be an overview setting that shows this Id, and also show this ID on D-scans (passive buff to regular PVP probing).

Step 3 - include a new Dscan exclusive to covops, T3, and force recons which will allow you to force a search for a specific sig, cloaked or not. This scan should take about 5 seconds and yield sig-specific results that are otherwise exactly identical to normal dscan. This scan should not result in a warp to beacon showing up on overviews like a cyno, but should show a notification to cloaked ships, or send a graphic through the system indicating that a high energy scan is being run. (think active vs passive sonar)

Step 4 - Include a manual warp system that would allow us to warp towards the camera direction over a custom set distance in km. such that the range function on d-scan gains much more value, and allows us to warp to stationary objects and ships as long as they sit still long enough. in order not to render combat probes obsolete, or unnecessary - force this warp to be initiated and completed in a non-cloaked state. (cloaked warping requires a firm lock on destination blah blah?). this should encourage covops to use probes if they wish to not have their ship show up on grid when warping.

this should allow vigilant people to observe all incoming or uncloaked ships and keep systems relatively secure, while allowing truly sneaky people to get in unseen and still be able to AFK cloak.

I see no reason why cloaking can't be a module that consumes some sort of material to keep going. That way you can keep cloaking for a few hours, say, but you need to prepare by loading up on cloaking fuel, and you can't AFK cloak for days on end.

Whatever system would be designed to replace the current cloak mechanics would have to make sure things like recons and stealth bombers aren't nerfed in their primary role, it should only be something that makes camping systems through cloaks something that requires some effort on the camper's side.

If he has a fuel truck with plenty of fuel, then he can stay there quite a while still, I have no problem with that.

It's been explained many times why this fails and how you break wormhole intel gathering completely with such a poorly thought out idea. That doesn't even go into the issue of covops ships needing to carry extra fuels and such...