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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Limited Cloak Time
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Shelster
Pappa Sierra Industries
#1 - 2012-01-31 17:07:29 UTC
Not sure if this has been suggested or not....but here goes.

As a member of a corp that runs in null sec, we have our fair share of neuts popping in every now and then. This we can all deal with and accept as part of null sec life.

WHat is not acceptable and really grips is the AFK cloaky neut, who comes in just after up time and then sits there all happy and cloaked for days upon end (with re-logging after dt/ut)

My suggestion to get around this (expecting to be shot down and burned in flames at this one too....) is to put a time limit on a cloak run. Say after activation, it runs ona timer for an hour (possible 90 mins) and then it will automatically de-activate and cant be activated again until a 'cool down' period of 15 mins has passed.

That way, those whao are actually playing and doing sneaky cloaky stuff (i am one) have adecent amount of time to do what they are doing and get out before becoming visible again. Thos who are just being PITA's end up getting a killmail........
Mag's
Azn Empire
#2 - 2012-01-31 17:11:36 UTC
Working as intended.

It takes as much effort to AFK, as it does to gain intel from local. The only difference is local intel is a guarantee, whereas the psychological effects from AFKing are not.

If you want to get rid of AFKing, then you also need to address the reason for AFKing, which is local. If you don't want local changed, then you must deal with AFKing.

Destination SkillQueue:- It's like assuming the Lions will ignore you in the Savannah, if you're small, fat and look helpless.
Freya Chang
Flare And Neutron Equities
#3 - 2012-01-31 17:42:39 UTC
Shelster wrote:
Not sure if this has been suggested or not....but here goes.

-->8--


No sympathy, sorry. You have null sec and think you're l33t, we have cloaks. Annoying but, hey, life ain't fair.

Love and kisses,
F.C.
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#4 - 2012-01-31 18:00:08 UTC
Shelster wrote:
Not sure if this has been suggested or not

Notsureifserious.jpg

If you are serious, then you should probably take note that people will only accept the removal of AFK cloaking when there is a way to strike at ratters without being seen in local. Personally I think removing people from local would give too strong an advantage to the gankers, AFK cloaking for me seems to be a nice middle ground.

Some people will get caught by AFK cloakers, more sensible people will swap systems, use bait to kill them or simply rat in ships the cloakers can't kill. Depending on who it is that's cloaking there anyway, usually I just swap systems but there are always people you know you can safely ignore.

Anyway, it's a moot point. Pressing F1 once every 60 minutes would be trivial to script. So now we'd just see "ZOMG STOP AFK CLOAKY BOTTERS" on the forums constantly.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Dowla Daupor
Deltole Deltole Deltole
#5 - 2012-01-31 20:15:01 UTC
Shelster wrote:
Not sure if this has been suggested or not.....


It has.
mxzf
Shovel Bros
#6 - 2012-01-31 20:28:39 UTC
Dowla Daupor wrote:
Shelster wrote:
Not sure if this has been suggested or not.....


It has.


I think that is roughly equivalent to "I'm not sure if anyone has breathed today", lol.
Wolodymyr
Breaking Ambitions
#7 - 2012-01-31 21:32:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Wolodymyr
Simi Kusoni wrote:
more sensible people will swap systems, use bait to kill them or simply rat in ships the cloakers can't kill. Depending on who it is that's cloaking there anyway, usually I just swap systems but there are always people you know you can safely ignore.

So the one problem I have with all these counters to AFK cloaking is that they are only really viable to very large nullsec empires.

Swapping Systems - This requires you to have more ratting systems than they have cyno alts, which really isn't a 1 for 1 cost trade. I have been in (or blue to) power blocks that simply have way more station systems than the average hostile alliance has cyno alts. Imagine a small alliance with 1 or 2 station systems and a pocket of 5-7 ratting systems. A handful of neckbeards with cyno alts could lock that down easily and strangle the alliance's income.

Baiting - This is actually a pretty good tactic. But the timing is a bit annoying. The defenders have to get a home defense fleet up ready to get to their ratting bait ship, and then just sort of wait there watching the bait ship run havens all day hoping that the AFK guy is actually at his keyboard. Meanwhile all the cloaked person needs to do is poke their D-scan every once in a while and start yelling in their alliance channel to get a hot drop fleet up. They get to choose when the fight happens and time is on their side.

Staying out of hot drop range - So it's about 14 light years for a regular cyno and I think 4-5 light years for black ops. So to keep the black ops out you need a good 5 light year bubble of blues and Intel channels to get enough warning of a black ops fleet to get a home defense fleet up. That's possible for a small alliance. But it's only the large alliances with multiple regions who can lock down enough space to keep carriers and supers out. Or you could plop down some cyno jammers, that's not too much of an inconvenience for a large alliance with a staging system and separate ratting systems. But people who are all living out of one station it gets a bit more difficult.

Ratting in ships cloakers can't kill - Hahahaha No. Even if you are ratting in a super carrier. People will still wrangle up enough dreads and triage carriers to outnumber and blow up even the most overpowered ship in eve. I have been in on a couple of gank fleets that have done this.


So yeah I know "The best way to beat someone is to be bigger than them". That's just he way eve is. Larger entities will ALWAYS have one over on smaller groups. And that's fine. But I think that the current AFK cloaking (with hot dropping) mechanics are overly punitive to smaller alliances compared to larger ones.

Small alliances with hostiles close by are incredibly easy to afk camp and hot drop. But I'd bet that large power blocks with giant chunks of space never have to deal with AFK cloakers in their central ratting core systems nestled far away from the front lines.

Simi Kusoni wrote:

Anyway, it's a moot point. Pressing F1 once every 60 minutes would be trivial to script. So now we'd just see "ZOMG STOP AFK CLOAKY BOTTERS" on the forums constantly.


Yeah he's just going about the timer the wrong way. Give cloaking ships a fuel bay that lasts around 2-3 hours. Then the defenders would have the option of trying to catch them in a gate camp every few hours when they go home to gas up. Or they could try and probe out any anchored cans of fuel they have put in the system.


Actually under the current mechanics the best defense against AFK cloakers is to run deadspace complexes. You can't light a cyno inside a complex that you got to through acceleration gates. At best they'd need come in there and tackle you while their gang jumps into a different cyno or just comes through the gates to blow you up.

I honestly think PoCo based sov is a good idea https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1417544
Marie Hartinez
Aries Munitions and Defense
#8 - 2012-01-31 21:34:28 UTC
Is it that time of year again?

Surrender is still your slightly less painful option.
Serge Bastana
GWA Corp
#9 - 2012-01-31 21:59:34 UTC
Marie Hartinez wrote:
Is it that time of year again?


I'm not taking my birthday bath if that's what you mean!

WoW holds your hand until end game, and gives you a cookie whether you win or lose. EVE not only takes your cookie, but laughs at you for bringing one in the first place...

Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#10 - 2012-01-31 22:14:26 UTC
Wolodymyr wrote:
So yeah I know "The best way to beat someone is to be bigger than them". That's just he way eve is. Larger entities will ALWAYS have one over on smaller groups. And that's fine. But I think that the current AFK cloaking (with hot dropping) mechanics are overly punitive to smaller alliances compared to larger ones.

Moving this to the top because I really agree with it, and most of the rest of this post is just me waffling on.

BUT, I also think that AFK cloaking and hot drop mechanics are the only viable way to attack ratters/miners. Without it they are immune to any form of attack, and until an alternate method is addressed that makes them targets AFK cloaking is a necessity.

Wolodymyr wrote:
Staying out of hot drop range - So it's about 14 light years for a regular cyno and I think 4-5 light years for black ops. So to keep the black ops out you need a good 5 light year bubble of blues and Intel channels to get enough warning of a black ops fleet to get a home defense fleet up. That's possible for a small alliance. But it's only the large alliances with multiple regions who can lock down enough space to keep carriers and supers out. Or you could plop down some cyno jammers, that's not too much of an inconvenience for a large alliance with a staging system and separate ratting systems. But people who are all living out of one station it gets a bit more difficult.

Hmm, you could always have people on with the capability to turn the jammer off/on, and try and make sure all TZs are covered. But yeah, it does add a fair amount of work, and doesn't protect against black ops gangs.

Wolodymyr wrote:
Ratting in ships cloakers can't kill - Hahahaha No. Even if you are ratting in a super carrier. People will still wrangle up enough dreads and triage carriers to outnumber and blow up even the most overpowered ship in eve. I have been in on a couple of gank fleets that have done this.

Heh yeah, I mainly meant that for when you know who the AFK cloaker is. There are one or two pilots I will ignore when they are in system, because I know who they are and that a black ops gang couldn't kill me, and they don't have the resources to titan bridge/drop supers on me.

Wolodymyr wrote:
Yeah he's just going about the timer the wrong way. Give cloaking ships a fuel bay that lasts around 2-3 hours. Then the defenders would have the option of trying to catch them in a gate camp every few hours when they go home to gas up. Or they could try and probe out any anchored cans of fuel they have put in the system.

Aye, if AFK cloaking was going to be changed, this would be the way to do it.

Wolodymyr wrote:
Actually under the current mechanics the best defense against AFK cloakers is to run deadspace complexes. You can't light a cyno inside a complex that you got to through acceleration gates. At best they'd need come in there and tackle you while their gang jumps into a different cyno or just comes through the gates to blow you up.

The problem with running deadspace sites is that an entire alliance can't really do it, not in a limited number of systems anyway. You pretty quickly get to the point where competition for sites becomes incredibly annoying, even with a small number of people running them.

tl;dr: I pretty much agree with everything you have to say, but until an alternate method is found or created to attack alliance's ratters/miners then AFK cloaking must remain viable.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#11 - 2012-02-01 03:04:35 UTC
Go train CovOps.

Figure out where their space is.

Hang out there. you don't need a cyno, or ANYTHING. They will lose their minds imagining what horrible things you might be planning for them.

Don't for get to log back in after DTs!

Upgrading Local to Eliminate All AFK Influence What if Local Chat changed, Hunting the Cloaked...
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#12 - 2012-02-01 03:35:55 UTC
Stop ratting in your 2 billion isk tengu, and go in a drake or a harby instead.

That or set your bot up to run highsec missions instead.
Gerrick Palivorn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#13 - 2012-02-01 05:46:52 UTC
A cloaking timer or a fuel bay would be fine for 0.0 but it completely changes everything involved with WH's. Keep that in mind when making suggestions. Spend a week jumping wormholes, and then imagine doing that while constantly having to jump back to K-space to fuel up. Better yet, your running intel on TZ's and compesition, observing a tower for an extended period of time when your cloak drops and the victims are suddenly aware of whats going on, spoiling everything you have been doing for the last 3 hours.

Cloaking has legitimate uses and the balance of local and cloaking is a two edged sword. Right now the balance is acceptable for most parties, do not think that you know enough about all the uses of cloak to know whats best for it. Consider the consequences of WH, Null, Low, and High-sec before you say that it is the only answer that is acceptable.

One of the big things that people either choose to ignore, or don't care about is that if Local is modified so that it is delayed or broadcast only, the Null bots will have a much more difficult time maintaining there current status. The people that want to keep local just as it is don't know or don't care.

I'm expecting about 18 more threads on this in the next month, so bring it on.

MMOs come and go, but Eve remains.  -Garresh-
Wolodymyr
Breaking Ambitions
#14 - 2012-02-01 08:06:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Wolodymyr
Simi Kusoni wrote:
AFK cloaking and hot drop mechanics are the only viable way to attack ratters/miners.

Yeah if people stay aligned and immediately warp when neuts show up in local they'll probably survive.

Maybe if anomolies had more warp disrupting rats spawning per wave? Maybe, i am not really sure.

The most effective method of old school roaming to catch ratters is by "shotgunning"

Basically you get a roaming gang that is heavy on the interceptors (because they have a faster warp speed) and a dictor or two with webs to all sit on the gate into whatever ratting system you are jumping.

The FC counts down and everyone jumps in at once with no scouts so you don't spook the ratters. Everyone drops gate cloak and fires up their system scanner. Then the dictor warps to the station and bubbles up in the hopes of randomly catching dudes docking up.

Once everyone scans down all the havens and sanctums everyone warps off to a different anomaly and tries to tackle people on landing. Anyone who nabs something drops a W in fleet and we all warp to them

To catch miners you'd have to have a prober scout out the grav sites earlier in the day and pass around the book marks (thank you CCP for corp bookmarks!)

This is the best possible way we could think of to ambush ratters and we still see carriers on D-Scan in warp to a safe spot as we land on sanctums full of wrecks.

Danika Princip wrote:
Stop ratting in your 2 billion isk tengu, and go in a drake or a harby instead.

Yeah even a good battle-cruiser, or mediocre HAC can belt rat. And if you have a microwarp drive on it you have a moderate chance of being able to GTFO when a cyno goes up.

Danika Princip wrote:
That or set your bot up to run highsec missions instead.

Ugh I hate that the best counter to AFK nullsec campers is to move to highsec.

Gerrick Palivorn wrote:
A cloaking timer or a fuel bay would be fine for 0.0 but it completely changes everything involved with WH's.

OK I honestly hadn't thought of wormholes. The only possible workaround I can think of for the limited resources of a wormhole camp would be that if a cloaking fuel bay is dependent on the cargo hold size then you could bring in a cloaky hauler or two with several days of fuel in it to gas up your covops ships from time to time.

Back to the whole AFK thing I wonder if you could program a bot to jettison fuel from a cloaky hauler, pick it up in a covops, then warp them both off to safe spots and cloak up again.

Gerrick Palivorn wrote:
One of the big things that people either choose to ignore, or don't care about is that if Local is modified so that it is delayed or broadcast only, the Null bots will have a much more difficult time maintaining there current status. The people that want to keep local just as it is don't know or don't care.


Ironically enough I think this runs into the same problem you mentioned earlier. What works for W-Space doesn't necessarily work for K-Space. In a wormhole you don't have to worry about hot drops, there are mass limits to what can come in, and your exit holes change regularly. It takes a lot more effort and time to get 20 dudes into someone's wormhole that you are at war with than to get 20 dudes into hostile null sec space.

Also I have heard that in a wormhole if you probe down an exit hole it doesn't actually spawn the other end of the wormhole until you warp to it so you can actually lock down a wormhole by keeping track of who warps where. Also you can collapse a hostile wormhole by jumping a lot of mass through it. And you can always pod someone else back to empire space to get rid of them.

All of this makes wormholes far more easy to defend than nullsec from random roaming gangs. And this is why the broadcast only local is tolerable in wormholes but would make nullsec far to dangerous to get anything done.

I honestly think PoCo based sov is a good idea https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1417544
Dimitri Jackal
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#15 - 2012-02-01 08:10:09 UTC
"Not sure if this has been suggested..."

There are 100 FREAKING THREADS ABOUT AFK CLOAKING, ARE YOU BLOODY SERIOUS?!?!? Do you not know how to SEARCH? Can you READ?

Do a little HW before your next post, PLEASE, and don't post an identical thread of all the other people who though their idea was unique.

Also, to the idea itself:
No. Not unless local is removed. The counter to local is cloaking. Deal with it.
Gerrick Palivorn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#16 - 2012-02-01 08:20:12 UTC
There are quite extensive discussions and alot of support for Spool up timers on jump drives, which would help with the whole hotdrop issue that you pointed out. This is not the first time this has been discussed and I've seen your name on more than one of those threads. Jump Drives need spool up timers for several reasons. One of the main ones is that travel fit Supercarriers/Carriers can charge there Cap faster than the invulnerability timer after a jump essentially jump again before they can be targeted. This also brings up an awkward situation where if the cyno's are lit, a group of carriers can jump from one extreme edge of the map to the other in less than 10 minutes and engage the enemy on contact.

I have always supported spool up timers and it is a viable addition to a modified local.

Also the concept of the Broadcast local is a good one in my opinion. Basically there are a list of things that will get you added to local, followed by a cool off period of 5 min. Being seen by a member of the controlling alliance, aggressing, being aggressed, lighting a cyno, and talking in local. This will hide the locals as well as the hostiles, this makes hunting more of a skill rather than a glance at local, warp to the anoms. What if the hostile ship cannot see you are there, then that makes you that much safer.

MMOs come and go, but Eve remains.  -Garresh-
VIP Ares
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#17 - 2012-02-01 08:41:26 UTC
I was thinking that way many time. It would be better.

http://www.balex.info/index.php/pilot_detail/47623/
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#18 - 2012-02-01 14:55:57 UTC
Gerrick Palivorn wrote:

Also the concept of the Broadcast local is a good one in my opinion. Basically there are a list of things that will get you added to local, followed by a cool off period of 5 min. Being seen by a member of the controlling alliance, aggressing, being aggressed, lighting a cyno, and talking in local. This will hide the locals as well as the hostiles, this makes hunting more of a skill rather than a glance at local, warp to the anoms. What if the hostile ship cannot see you are there, then that makes you that much safer.


If this would be implemented the starmap statistics should be also removed from the EVE API. Otherwise it would be far too easy to "spot activity" on the starmap.

In reality - all it would do would be making people push the dir scanner button the same as it is done in WH's. It's just that you dont have to use probes for finding anoms so it would sort of extend the problems similar ot low sec to also null sec space. I.e., some extra risk without the corresponding rewards as it would be dumb easy to get people in anoms in cloaky ship that way unless they specifically have eyes on every gate and they see you coming thru.. I'm not particularly fond of that mechanics to be honest. It should be possible to "sneak up" on people, but just having to push a button every 30 sec is dumb way of implementing "situational awareness".

One of the obvious way to abuse this mechanics would be parking afk trial accounts in alliance at stargates for making any hostile instantly appear in a local if they pass the gate.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.