Player Features and Ideas Discussion

the vast majority of the type of game play that i participate in involves cloaks and ambushes, and I've been doing it for over six years. In fact, it is the only reason I play and love this game. cloaks are not over-powered - we don't need uncloaking probes or any of those terrible things. Cloaks work PERFECTLY right now. that being said, I would like to propose a Tech 3 covert ops cloak (high-skill, high-cost, limited ship applications, etc) that has the following attributes:

while cloaked:
the module grants the player the (selective?) ability to invert his fof-status to be seen as friendly to enemy ships. besides the obvious, this has several interesting applications - like the ability to completely end bot ratting. this inverted fof-status is presented to every pilot, including "friendly" ships, which now see the cloaked ship's fof-status as hostile unless they are in the same gang as the cloaked player. as a balancing feature, the module has a skill-dependent cool-down period, where after the player decloaks, his fof-status will enter an altered state for several seconds and appear hostile on EVERYONE'S overviews (creating an opportunity for friendly-fire mistakes, as well as alerting the victim to his impending doom in his overview). the idea is that this module can be as dangerous to the pilot as it is to the enemy.

while uncloaked:
everything works the same as it is now, except for the cool-down period as described above.

to prohibit misuse and panic, these modules could be marked as "contraband" and rendered illegal in high-sec. note that the effect of this module is lost on anyone who sees the player cloak in local, as an observant pilot will notice the color of his tag change. from an engineering standpoint, the mechanics of the module and how it interacts with the server could be governed using the existing standings mechanics - even friendly pos and drones could be fooled into accidental attacks (as stated before, this very useful and powerful module should have big drawbacks besides the lame traditional things like sig radius and dps gimpage).

great, you just broke the standings system

why mark anyone as blue or red when its totally obsolete once someone can fly these things?

and why, except for makro-busting (which in reality it isnt) would this be necessary?

also, botters could just program their bots to warp out if anything other than fleet members are near, or even when anything except rats are near

just another "i use this every day so it should be more powerfull" thread

this does not break the standings system - i augments it to add new functionality to the game. these things would be too cost-prohibitive to build a whole fleet out of, and there wont be enough people flying them to "break" the standings system. it wont let you sneak into enemy poses and offline things. it wont let one person (or a group of people) completely turn the tide of a fight or a huge battle.

also, it isnt just for "makro-busting" - it's a very small buff to those of us who like to kill ratters. it also wont allow us to completely murder every ratter or ruin the game for anyone. it simply adds another dynamic element to a game that is composed of such things.

finally, how can a bot detect a cloaked ship warping on grid with it? this does break botting, because bots will no longer hide the ship as soon as a hostile enters system.

You indicate that those in local when you activate the device will not be deceived; as all modules turn off when you jump, wont anyone in local when you enter know your true standings, and safe up? For those entering local after you arrival, wont they just look at your pilot info before they start ratting and see that the corp/alliance is not in fact friendly?

yes this is true - and this is also why it doesn't break the game. if smart ratters start checking bios, then they will be just fine. the lazy/dumb ratters will die.

if you AFK cloak all day, then many people will have no idea you are hostile unless they check bios. because there wont be 10,000 people flying with these things on there ships, there will be many lazy people.

i like game mechanics that allow for player error, and reward those who are vigilant.

EDIT: Zombo Brian, i am ignoring you because you clearly don't get it, and are probably one of those "let's make a decloaking destroyer" idiots. this isnt the sort of buff that will effect most people. if you are "good" at this game, you will appreciate it. now please go away.

Mostly mining and some anomalies at the time, but i join fleets and try to pin down hostiles in our system, since im pretty busy most of the time and dont really have high SP yet

On weekends joining fleet ops with the corp/alliance also

For solo pvp i simply dont have the SPs nor the experience in solo pvp if everyone wanting to pvp solo flys a faction-fitted dramiel, also hot drops are pretty damn dirty bait tactics


however, back to the topic:

why, except for killing 0.0 carebears easier, would this add to the game? you still didnt answer that one OP

it's already severely limited by the fact that it's a covert ops cloak - it will only fit on a few ships. you could take it even further and make it so that it only fits on T3 ships.

This is hardly a severe limitation, again: anybody who want to use one will be able to get one and the appropriate platform to fly it on.

If it generated an interference field that prevented both the T3 Cloak and a Cyno generator of any type being equipped to the same ship, *that* would be a serious limitation.

The covops cloaks aren't as potent as this, and that's the best tactic I could come up with for it as described, so I figure that was the tactic you were aiming it for.

Off topic posts removed. Please stay on topic and polite, thank you.