Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Cloaking Mechanic is working as intended. The entire point of cloaking ships is to act as assassins that creep out of the shadows and prey on the weak. Unless working cohesively together many of these ships will struggle in a combat situation against and equal foe.

You are tired of being scared? Attach an armed escort to your mining / ratting operations. It is your space, defend it - if they are AFK then you don't have anything to worry about. If they are active, then who cares - you have protection. The point of Null is to work together, I do not see why a valid game tactic should suffer solely because you are unable to deal with your own paranoia.

It is YOUR space. They cant enter your stations or your POS's, but it is still SPACE a massive emptiness. The point of covert ops ships is to infiltrate space, to surprise. With local, implementing a mechanic that forces them to decloak (When they are supposed to operate in hostile space for extended periods of times) really screws with their utility and intended use.



So you are probably asking what I'm trying to say, well - The problem is that there isn't a problem. You want to feel safe, then make yourself feel safe by working with other people. Otherwise Nut Up.

I do not normally comment on these threads, as I have somewhat mixed feelings about AFK cloaking as a mechanic, but I'm tired and avoiding finishing a final paper, so I'm going to ramble a bit.

One very common element among the anti-AFK-cloaking-threads that crop up is the idea that being safe (to the extend afforded by infinite AFK cloaking) in hostile territory should be impossible or at least much more difficult (people tend to forget that MWDing interceptors can essentially do the same thing). At the root of this frustration is what I think of as the "Fortress Mentality" Essentially, it seems incongruous at a fundamental level to many players that territory owned by an alliance is so far out of that alliances's control, because it clashes so directly with the ideas of nations and borders that much of the playerbase of EVE has from the real world and from other video games.

The thing is: Territory in EVE is only this insecure because it is allowed to be. Corporations and Alliances in 0.0 are capable of responding to intrusions into their territory by AFK cloakers, but they often do not wish to devote the effort because of the very limited impact these players have.

For example: If an alliance wishes to secure an area of its space they can anchor bubbles, either at choke points, or along pipes leading in to that area. With the new corporation bookmark system, creating bookmarks so that your own players can avoid these bubbles is even easier than it was before. Why do people not do this? Because it requires effort. The bubbles must be monitored/protected to some extend, whether that be by actual patrols or just by players being present in system with them when a hostile/neut shows up.

Please, tell me what a scout, someone hiding or someone waiting on a perch to drop bombs or bubbles on an incoming hostile fleet will be doing in client to keep themselves active every minute they're playing? Or what a cloaky gatecamp waiting for prey to come though or a blockade runner sitting around waiting for the hostile gang to move on shuld be doing?

And as for intruder flags, What should a gang trying to plant a logoff trap for hostile fleets or caps do? They can't log off in hostile space anymore, as they're flagged intruders. Same with someone who crashes or has to log in a roam without aggression, now they're dead. trying to hunt ratters? Well, unless you're paying attention 100% of the time, not cloaking up in a safe somewhere and waiting for intel to die down while you watch a movie or something, you're found and you're dead.


Also, if turning your cloak off means you can't use it for a minute, then bombers literally cannot function. No more decloak, bomb, cloak, warp and hope they don't have instacanes, now it's decloak, bomb, try to warp out while the entire fleet locks you and you die. No more jump your blockade runner into a camp, cloak up instantly and warp out, since you're still on 1min cooldown from the other side of the gate, you're dead.

If we remove local, AFK cloak becomes almost the same thing as logging off in space - your ship disappears, and you an log in at any moment and attack the null-bears


Right now, that won't work, because the null bears dock up when you log on and show up in local.

Cloak is broken because you can still be deteted with a cloak on, with no special equipment - local detects you and alerts all residents to your presence. Only by AFK cloaking can you compromise local intel, and have any chance at pulling off an attack.

If you want to make your space safe.
Protect borders with bubbles+ gate camps
If somebody makes it through, go hunt them, if they are a cloaky, set up baits.
Have player escorts

Don't tell me your "safety" is justified because "you make it safe", you aren't doing any of the above.

There is no real world analog of "I always know where the enemy is because the enemy is within an area I've drawn on the map, and I have a super indestructible invulnerable place to hide indefinitely (ie dock up)"

That is what null-bears have now. They are just complaining that they don't always know if the enemy in their area is actually hunting...

You are hilarious.

The Mittani can post all he wants. If you seriously believe he is selflessly putting up items for the benefit of all pilots, you are far too naive. He has an agenda, as he always does.

His brilliance is getting shortsighted players to act against their own self interest in favor of his benefit. He really is quite the clever devil.

You can either get used to AFK Cloaking, and deal with it, or get behind a few select changes to how they currently are able to interact with you. This would be the chat roster created and maintained by Local Chat.

Try to keep one fact in mind. And yes, this is a fact which you cannot deny using logic, even if you are not happy with it being a fact.
AFK Cloaking is a player generated response to local intel flawlessly reporting pilot presence, with near zero effort to use.

Nikk, you continually keep on trolling this kind of topics with unrelated material..

OP wrote it very nicely, ships get registered when jumping trough stargates, and also when they leave, and its not free intel.. sov and technology costs you know. And in that case the only ones getting "free" intel, is the ones not belonging in that space.

WH dont apply to that for obvious reasons, and thats where you should be if you do not aprove of it.

If nullsec is too scary for you I head high sec can be safe.

I wish CCP would remove local. You think you're scared of nullsec with local, wait'll you lose your local. Cloaks will be the last of your concerns.

i like cloaks... but a cycletime could be okay... but 1 minute cooldown? you just warp between two points or dont do anything at all, cuz of slow probers... and cheaters gonna do that all by bot anyway...
only concord can turn off ship systems and they are not in 0.0...
HTFU and stop to mine with titans

OP seems to be confused. You nerf things when they are TOO much of a threat. Not when they present zero threat.

AFK/idle cloakers are not a threat. You can't blow up a ship if you're not at your keyboard. You can't do anything at all while you're AFK. Thus, it makes no sense to nerf them from a balance perspective.