Assembly Hall

mmm clever use of the word 'peabrained' I like what you did there. And although such infallible logic has rocked me back to my heels, I will nevertheless attempt a rebuttal

The premise of your entire argument is thus : it will ruin WSpace, as this area of the game is designed around the concept of stealth and cloaking. Fine, so WSpace eminations alter/eliminate using a disruptor, which is btw mounted on your ship, not a probe you launch. Now WSpace is maintained as it is and working as intended. You can breathe a sigh of relieif.

I would ask you now then why A) Cloaks should show up in Local. Why the creation of a second type of cloak, specifically fit for combat cov ops ships (versus purely information gathering ones) wouldn't eleviate that problem. And how these two changes wouldn't in fact go hand in hand with a disruptor module, mounted on a specialized hull that could detect/disrupt the Ambusher Cloak (for combat ships)

Yes seiging a POS or a Station are hard. Finding a Cloaking and flying within 2000m of him in a solar system are a c%$t hair short of impossible.

If I was so inclined, I could create 1000 subscriptions, train them to fly a covops and flood nullsec with AFK cloakers.
Imagine the tears.

Is this a mechanic your willing to defend without comprimise?

I see your point and raise you 1 off grid boosting ship.

PS never stated Cloak disruptor had to have a system wide range, probably in the AUs though.

Again, allow me suggest another type of cloak (Ambusher) that can be fitted by combat ships that can be countered with disruptor. Cov-Ops (intelligence gathering) ships can retain the old (Spy) type cloak and remain utterly undetectable.

Yes, I am. I'll get to why in a moment.

First, I am glad you appreciate how destructive such a ship (or other similar suggestions) would be to wormhole mechanics, and of course disallowing the use of such a ship (or similar mechanic) in wormhole space would of course preserve the glorious, superior mechanics of wormhole space. It'd feel a bit clunky to say "ah! But ... strange system effect! Just so happens you can't use that ship now!", but it'd at least preserve the sanctity of wormholes.

However, I still entirely disagree with such a ship because there are, again, legitimate activities and playstyles in nullsec space which would be massively hindered. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but long term reconnaissance missions, whether it's observing an enemy fleet, or waiting in a strategic location to provide jump/warp in points, etc rely on the ability to sit cloaked in one location for extended periods of time. I feel that being able to locate these brave agents is detrimental to the game, as it helps entrench residents/defenders by making even simple acts of observing them or getting in position much more difficult. There are further arguments in favour of cloaking, such as countering the stupid, instant and infallible local tool by introducing doubt - are you there, or are you afk? Some kind of mechanic to detect stationary cloaked ships would remove this doubt, providing people with even more security and intel than they already have, and remove the one tiny thing players can do to help counter the overpowered local tool. No to that, I say.

And above all else, I don't understand why you feel you should have the right to find and kill afk players in your system anyway. You already have every advantage, yet you are so mad that they simply have the ability to sit in your system doing nothing? Pah.

As for you creating an army of afk alts, yes, I fully support that. I will defend that without question or compromise. As they're all afk and incapable of doing anything, there is no problem. It may scare some local bears to see "twonk1, twonk2, twonk3..." etc in local, and they may think theres a big fleet out to get them but the ability to employ such forms psychological warfare and meta-gaming are what elevate EVE Online above the wow-level dreck that MMO game space is dominated by.

Remove AFK | Cloaking

There are 2 distinct parts here:

1) AFK
- Mining
- Ratting
- Hauling
- Market trading

2) Cloaking
- Intel spy
- Cyno drop
- 'Safe' travel
- Bombing
- Terrorizing
- Bounty hunting

Please pick one and make arguments on it separately, then check to make sure your suggestion does not negatively impact any of the other listed areas. If it does, go back to the drawing board and start over. After finding your best answer please post it along with all your back research for peer review.

That is all.

Not to invalidate your perspective, I'd like to get into that shortly. However I have yet to receive a response to the proposal of diversifying cloaking modules based on task and effectiveness, versus one Uber cloak. Would really appreciate some feedback.
Also considering within that suggestion, is the allowance to maintain undiscoverable cloaking as it stands.

but perhaps that is for another thread. Either way. Lets look at the reasonhs for AFKing. I presume you have some ideas, as you brought it up.

My perspective that psychological warfare is a great addition, could indeed be argued either way.

As far as the different cloaks idea is concerned, I refer once more to my post. Let's sort out the reason for AFKing first, then let's look at cloaks. Even with this diversifying cloaks idea, you end up gaining more intel power on top of the already powerful local intel tool. That surely cannot be seen, as a balanced approach.

That being said, I actually like the status quo and don't wish for any changes. But if you want cloaks to change, then local should be changed to stop it's easy mode intel system.
The fact that you can AFK without a cloak and gain the same psychological effects, means your focus should be on local. If indeed AFKing is your target.

The problem is...

If you are attacking this particular "problem" because you have an issue with people being "AFK" then it is only fair to be consistent and work on getting rid of all mechanics that allow for AFKing. After all... it isn't fair that people can "gain an advantage when they are not on the computer."

If you are attacking this on the basis that cloaking itself isn't directly counterable... well... look at the ships themselves. They are actually quite gimped with regards to direct combat and won't stand up in a "fair fight."

If you are against AFK cloaking because you fear cyno drops... that's a different mechanic system separate from cloaking. You can alter it so that normal cynos need to spool up... but what about covert cynos? Taking the point above in account (that cloaking-capable ships are weak in direct combat) how is a person supposed to last long enough to pin down a target (remember, only Stealth Bombers have no targeting delay and they have minimal tanking ability) and live long enough for a cyno to spool up?

Beyond that... if you create mechanics that allow for system scans of cloaking ships you effectively negate any point to cloaks in general (because any anti-cloaking ship that can scan a system becomes standard for any serious 0.0 and wormhole dweller) and if you make it "localized" then you are doing nothing against "AFK cloakers" (who sit in safe spots well out of the way of any celestial object) and instead directly nerf "active cloakers" who are trying to do things in their tinfoil ships.


The most important issue though is how are people supposed to take their enemies by surprise if local tells everyone in the area that a "potential hostile" is in system (keep in mind, AFK cloaking was "born" because of this)?
Every time I have gone to null-sec in a ship, as soon as I appear in local everyone docks up. And they will never come out. Ever. Until I leave or am killed by the thousand man horde.
This makes for VERY few opportunities to engage anyone or do any real damage no matter how well I prepared.
The only counter I have is to devalue local by sitting in the system until they are used to my presence.

I think the quoted poster was providing a guideline for those making suggestions to counter afk cloaking.

He was saying, in order to come up with a counter method, you must check each activity listed to make sure you are not impacting them in a negative way.

This has so far been shown to not be possible.

Also... some posts have gone missing from this thread...

So everyone would agree that lets remove local?