Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just a quick summary of this idea-

Idea: With a Sov level (3+? 4+? 5?) system, there should be an additional hub upgrade that does a system wide decloak once every 15/30/45/60 minutes. Getting hit by the decloak takes you out of cloak and prevents you from re cloaking for 5 minutes or until you zone into another system (NOT logout).

1) This would prevent people from leaving an alt cloaked in a system doing nothing and being invulnerable
2) This would give cloakers with talent to be able to quickly drop the cloak block
3) The system wide decloak would affect all players in the system, even blues
4) This would only apply to stable sov 0.0 space. WH, contested territory, recent swaps, etc, don't have access to this upgrade.

Thoughts? I will go into more details if there is interest.

It effectively removes bombing runs (which can take upwards of 30 minutes to set up) as a threat.


And copy pasting the usual arguments and counter arguments about AFK cloaking.

Cloaking ships have no counter.
Yes they do. It's the ships themselves. All of the cloaking capable ships are extremely weak in direct combat and, as a result, have a narrow band of targets they can engage and survive against.

PvE ships stand no chance against a PvP ship... even if it's a Stealth Bomber!
Soooooo... don't min/max your fit? Throw on some point defense like a Heavy Energy Neutralizer... a flight of Warrior IIs... maybe equip some buffer and more even-ish resistances so there is time for someone to come to your aid?
Ooooooo... here's a novel idea; you see that rookie in your alliance who doesn't know what he/she is doing? Tell him/her to get into a combat frigate and fly with you.
Even though he/she is a total newb and doesn't know what he/she is doing, the Stealth Bomber pilot doesn't know that and will ignore you in favor of less potentially "risky" prey.

It isn't fair that someone can sit in our system all day and we can't do anything about it.
It isn't fair that local will immediately tell you when a non-friendly enters system so you can warp away to safety. AFK cloaking is a symptom of Local's "free intel."
When local is nerfed I will agree than cloaking needs a nerf.

It isn't fair that someone can just point you and then open up a cyno to hotdrop you!
Okay...
1. Hotdropping is not something specific to cloaking ships. I can fit a nano'ed interceptor and rush into your system to do the same thing. Hell... I can even "AFK" in your system in THAT ship by flying into deep space with a perma running MWD.
2. It takes about 10 seconds for a recon to lock you up (because they have a targeting delay after decloaking). Only the Stealth Bomber can target right away... and its tank is fairly non-existent. Tell your frigate buddy (that is tagging along with you) to "take care of him."
Wait... you say you have no "frigate buddy?" Guess you shouldn't have been so greedy.

I will say this though... if you addressed cynos and hotdrops as a separate issue then you might be better received.

It isn't fair that I can't fly my billion ISK pimpmobile carrier/battleship because the risk of being engaged by someone who may or may not be on is too great.
Suck it up nancy.
You don't want to risk so much ISK? Fly something that's cheaper. Oh... you don't want to reduce your ISK per hour? Well... that's the trade-off. You risk less ISK but you won't make the "optimal" amounts you were before. At least you are still earning ISK, right?


edit: can't forget my ending lines.

An "AFK cloaker" is ONE person... in ONE ship... in a system where a resident has many places to run and hide in... where said resident's corpmates and alliancemates also live in... with all their ships... and all their equipment... which has the capability to deal serious damage to another thousand man alliance... and has yet been "shut down" by ONE person?

I don't even think I can begin to articulate how cowardly that sounds. A hauler in high-sec seems to have bigger gonads than the people who whine about "AFK cloakers." How is that possible you ask? Well... the hauler does his/her trade in systems where local is filled with an innumerable amount of strangers and any one of them can be a potential ganker.

Sure thing.

Cons:
- People will no longer be able to sit AFK cloaked in systems.

- This could inadvertently impact stealth ops going on in a system. That said, it would not be hard to find out the cycle by sending in a scout pre-emptively. At most, this means they'd have to scout a system for 2 cycles if the decloaks had variable time settings. Otherwise, on a fixed decloak, the scout would just have to wait for one decloak, write down the time, and voila, they know what window they have to work with.

Pros
- People will no longer be able to sit AFK cloaked in systems. If you're cloaked and playing, cool. If you're cloaked and your screen is minimized or you're just asleep with an AFK cloaked... zero skills involved there.
- The point of Sov 3/4/5 is to establish footholds for alliances in 0.0 space. What is the point of a foothold if AFK cloakers can sit in systems (IE Industrial systems... no secret that I mine in 0.0) or station systems to disrupt activities with zero risk. It gives 100% advantage to the cloaker with zero way to counter them, other than a costly trap.
- This breeds more combat opportunities. If someone wants to harass while cloaked, scout cloaked systems, etc- they would need to hop systems to drop the debuff. This gives combat opportunities at/around gates.

Those are just a few right now :)

Honestly, I don't see why this idea should even come to fruition. You already have local providing you plenty of intelligence. In w-space, we don't have local or this upgrade, and we seem to do alright.

See my point about 45/60 minute cycles. If those ruin your bombing run, you're SOL. Scout ahead of time to find the cycle timer and you can work around it.



Cloaked Tengu is weak in direct combat? Maybe to another full pvp ship, but then why would you engage that?



Bomber vs any industrial ship? Industrial loses. Assuming the bomber isn't an idiot.



I'm not saying that cloaking needs a nerf. I'm just saying that there needs to ONE answer to it. Even if a guy was AFK cloaked- we'd only have 5 minutes to scan him down and get to him before he recloaked. If your argument is that the cloaker can't move around and avoid detection for 5 minutes and that he should be able to remain cloaked while not looking at the game.... well... no.



So your argument is that it is cowardly to "whine" about AFK cloakers when we have the ships and resources to fight.

I would counter that argument by pointing out that the AFK cloaker is the one sitting in an undetectable ship with 100% advantage, wouldn't ever initiate a fair fight, and is able to directly impact or interrupt an entire system while not even playing the game... where is the skill in that? How is that not just the definition of coward? They can't fight, so they sit AFK cloaked in a system just to grief?

I'm all for pvp, lots of it. It drives up ore prices :). I'm all for more engagements and a solution to each problem. Right now, there isn't a solution to someone just sitting AFK in a system indefinitely and imposing a huge cost on all the inhabitants. Why can't we have one answer? That one answer would be easily avoidable if the person was actually at their PC... once cloak comes of, just jump around and dodge people for 5 minutes, pop back in cloak, done.

This wouldn't affect real pvp unless you either 1) didn't scout ahead or 2) resident sov was nifty and reset the timer.

Those risks are always there. I suggested this in light of a competent player could pretty easily avoid being detected for 5 minutes without a cloak....

So far, the arguments against it have just been "quit whining"... Basically, people using this method don't want to actually have to use skill to gain an advantage?



True. But the ability to sit AFK cloaked in a system gives the cloaked pilot a 100% advantage in any fight. They can come out of cloak when they choose to engage who they choose. Effectively you're asking not to nerf a crutch for wannabe pvpers?

Your answer informs me you are absolutely clueless about WH's.

Mining does exist in w-space, and there is a TON of gas mining in w-space. Those are what we call industrial activities. Plus we run logistics in a far more dangerous environment, but again, I don't expect you to understand.

I think I see something like 2-3 cloaking threads here a week, and I've seen everything from cloak fuel to POS mods that decloak people to some sort of detectable radiation that over time builds up making an AFK cloaker detectable after some time, but...

If AFK cloaking is a problem, and if there were to be a solution to it... 3600 second cycle, auto-repeat: no.

K.I.S.S.