Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't know how many people here are bothered by the infamous cloaky afkers in their null-sec system, but we certainly are.
After having those guys hanging with us for a week, not knowing when to strike we began brainstorming a bit, cause we would love to find em.

We came with the idea that CCP could introduce anti cloak probes.

Now just being able to use that probes would be overpowered and it would suck, so it should require some skill and commitment.

1. The probes should have it;s own probe launcher, which would need level 4 Astrometric , because of course it's a very advanced piece of machinery, and level 5 usually is reserved for tech 2 modules.

2. A new skill. A new skill for using the special probes. We all know there's basically 3 different kinds of cloaking devices. Level 1 allows you to find the Prototype Cloaking Device, Level 3 the Advance Cloaking Device and Level 5 the Covert Ops Cloaking Device. This way it wont get overpowered, and once again needs some commitment.
This skill would also need Astrometric Range finding level 5. Why level 5? Because Range finding is all about the probe strength.. and lets be honest, you're going to need maximum strength to find those cloakers

3. The proves. Now what about the probes. Of course there's a matter of special probes. Normal probes would not have the strength of seeing past the cloak.

All in all, This idea brings us a new module, a new kind of probe and a new skill. And of course, a bit more to train for those who love scanning.
We didn't made an idea that way that it's easily done, and it actually requires some serious skill training.

Let me know what you guys think of it, and maybe some feedback on how the idea could be even improved more.

Well you cant really expect an idea with an impact as this to be written down in 10 words now.. can you

This has been discussed ad infinitem. You should be aware of the other threads that speak to this topic. Actually, I would be surprised if you were not. but I'll briefly lay out the debate in case you have not read them.

It comes down to the fact that most "solutions" suggested in this forum have been more about destroying the usefulness of cloaking altogether, causing places like wormhole space or hostile gate camps to become impossible to manage.

One of the main nerf-herder talking points has been that “AFK" cloaking is somehow hurting the game and or players... to which the majority of posters respond that no player was ever killed or harmed in anyway by someone who is truly AFK. The real complaint seems to be that cloakers are not afk…which is why I maintain that most suggestions short of a complete nerfing of cloaking are not going to satisfy the nerf-herders.

Your idea, probes that scan for cloaks, has great potential to be abused at choke points such as gate camps where it doesn't even matter if they can pin a cloaked pilot, just knowing they are there is enough to shut down traffic or escape. And in wormholes staying under the radar would be impossible with an army of cloak-scanners working nonstop... (have you never been trapped in a wormhole after it collapsed?) Being able to scan a cloaked vessel through all the subspace noise and radio interference in space should be as hard as scanning for an insect on a planet from orbit - nearly impossible. Other ideas on how to "fix" cloaking have been even more draconian such as the often suggested pos module that decloaks system wide... (just plain stupid)

Others have tried to suggest that there are no draw backs or counters to cloaking which is untrue. Despite the propaganda stating that cloaking is 100% safe; people do lose cloaked vessels (even I have lost some). There are many counters but the one that is most often overlooked is reciprocation. You can use cloaking against a cloaker... an intelligent player can set traps and trick cloakers if they are patient and careful.

Finally, most people will bring up the fact that you are receiving free intel from local that a player may be cloaked in system; this is an extremely sore spot. To make it fair and more accurate many will suggest they are not ready to even hear any ideas on how to change cloaking ‘til the cloaked are removed from local. This way at least the cloaked have some chance (all be it not a great one) that you may not have noticed them in system and might then avoid these hypothetical anti-cloaking changes.

I'm afraid I'm one of the later; I do not believe any changes to cloaking are necessary... and certainly none should be entertained 'til local is changed. I have made suggestions in other threads on how this may be accomplished which I will not discuss here. Short of removing the cloaked from the local free intel channel - cloaking is working as intended and should not be touched.

It's hilarious that people keep saying there is no problem when clearly a hefty portion of the playerbase sees this as a problem and keeps posting about it.

+1 to anything that removes AFK cloaking even if it means removing local also.

I think that removing cloakers from local would absolutely ruin 0.0 for one simple reason: risk to reward ratio

While you havent actually increased the risk to players too much, the perceived risk goes way up when there is no fool proof way of telling if there is a hostile in local.

If being cloaked removes you from local, i propose the following changes as well:
1. you cant see local either (no brainer)
2. you cant use your directional scanner
3. you cant use your ship scanner.

This way, if you decloak, its no different than jumping into a system except you're in a different spot; you have no info about where anyone is or what they may be doing

That being said, I believe this is the wrong way to go about changing cloaking . . . Ive said it before, games should seek to give players more options when dealing with a situation, not less options.

To that end, I would make a new ship; a new T2 destroyer with two new modules, one would be an advanced probe launcher. It would function like a normal probe launcher but it would only be able to launch probes that find cloaked ships, it would not be able to find regular ships, and it would only fit on the new destroyer.

These advanced probes would drop you on grid with a cloaked ship but no closer than 200 km, this is where the second module would come into play. The second module would act like a sonar ping that would briefly flash on the tactical overlay the relative position of the cloaked ship on grid. Of course this flash would only be visible to the destroyer, and it would get more accurate the closer you got.

Im thinking a cone, the tip starting at your ship, the base where the enemy ship is.

This would give any cloaker plenty of time to warp off, and would be very useful to keep with your fleet to see if someone is trying to get a warp in on you.

Thoughts?

The only glaring issue with the probe idea that I can see is that it makes things too easy for the side looking for the cloaker.

Upon hearing the idea of how the cloak detecting probe 'works' I have one way that makes detecting cloaked entities very simple. Drop a Combat probe, then drop a cloak finding probe, deactivate the cloak finder run a scan at full distance/system wide then switch the cloak probe on and run another scan. Done in less than 15 seconds you'll find out if anybody is cloaking inside the scan range, how many people there are cloaked and with a little more work where there approximate position is.
This would devastate Wormhole space, as operations sometimes takes weeks to build up, and cloaking is one of the only viable ways to maintain the element of surprise.

Other considerations to be thought of when addressing the issues of Cloaking and the removal local from 0.0 space.

- Nerfing or completely removing titan bridging.

- Adding a spool up time to capital and jump capable ships. Personally I like the idea of the spool time depending on distance and mass of the jumping ship, but a standard time would work too.

- Adding a more comprehensive and graphically interactive scanning tool to replace d-scan. This could also be somehow tied to the ability to flush out cloakers.

We all love Eve but in the end few of us are dev's of the game, we should stop coming up with ideas to solve problem x with solution y and that's the end of the story. Explain the problem, express a solution, let the dev's put it on their big list of scary stuff they need to work on, they might get around to it. I think that New Eden has bigger problems than a couple of alts hanging out in some back-end sov system with their cloaks running. At least they're getting subs from the afk cloaker alts, other issues like the POS revamp, fixing the corp management interface, completing the rebalance of ships, and the broken sov system are examples of where CCP would serve us better with their time.

Midna

Which is a problem in my opinion.

One should ALWAYS perceive risk no matter where they are. Especially in a supposedly "badlands" type area. The way it works right now, low-sec and high-sec seem to be "higher risk" areas given that people never know who might pose a risk to them just by looking at local.


One of the problems with this, as has been stated in many other threads, is that this directly nerfs "active cloakers"... more specifically "bomber fleets" which must get within 30km of the fleet they intend to bomb.

Given that bubbles (HICs, Dictors, mobile disruptors) are the common preemptive counter to this type of attack (so that bombers have limited escape options) and that the common tactic for dealing with cloaking ships is to assist a fast tackler with all the drones in the fleet... it isn't that much of a stretch to image every 0.0 fleet having one of these loaded with assisted drones, HICs to prevent escape, and "pinging" the bombers until they are found.

Another problem is that this still does nothing to prevent active intel gatherers as they will not come anywhere close to a hostile fleet and warp off if they feel threatened (and then warp back at a different angle that's far away from "pingers").
It will also buff 0.0 gatecamps by having a ship that can more or less know where a cloaker is if said cloaker is attempting to run a gatecamp.
In addition... it does nothing to prevent AFK cloakers as said cloakers will continue to auto-burn in a random direction 200k away from where the "super probes" warp you to... meaning that you have to "ping" about a 200 km CUBED area. Not sure how powerful you intend the "ping" to be... but covering an entire grid basically obsoletes cloaking ships beyond an "intel" capacity.

And it still doesn't address the reason WHY people AFK cloak in the first place. It is because there are few other viable ways to attack the industry or economy of a 0.0 alliance without bringing more massive firepower than the defenders can bear... which is not an option when a smaller alliance wants to take on a larger one (which should ALWAYS be an option).


Huh... I guess there is some resemblance. Not sure if I should be flattered by that.

If it was that simple, CCP would have done it long ago.

WH space was designed with that type of local from the start, so all that live there know the mechanics and accept them. Null sec has always had local and in fact in that time, local's intel has also had a boost. This means you cannot simply remove it or change it, without a package of changes to take it's place. No one with any sense of balance, would say otherwise.

I'm glad you see no problem with your idea. I'm also glad you're not in charge of balance, in regards to local.

More to the point, you must explain how just removing local without a package of changes to replace it, is balanced. After all it's your suggestion, not mine.