Player Features and Ideas Discussion

First and foremost these are not my ideas, and have potentially been suggested before, this is my take on it.

Anti Cloak Cruiser

Suggested use - Location and destruction of cloaked ships
Suggested Ship Class - Cruiser/Battlecruiser

With the ability to fit a probe launcher, and a new type of probe designed for the purpose (probe restricted to ship class) This ship would be able to probe out cloaked ships, and lock them while they remain cloaked (the locking forces them to lose their cloak) The ability to locate the ship would be dependent upon their size, skill level and ship Class. With it being easy to locate any ship using a t1 normal cloak, slightly harder with a t2 cloak. Covert ops cloaked ships with level 5 covops (or recon skill) would be unprobable, those with level 4, would require the hunting pilot to have high astrometrics/ship class skills in order to locate them.

This would, in my opinion reduce the number of afk cloaked alts just sat in system.

Anti-Drone/Fighter ship

Suggested use - Fleet PVP
Suggested Ship class - Destroyer

With bonus to smartbomb damage, radius and cap usage, or very high boosts to small gun tracking speed these ships could have the sole role in the fleet of engaging and destroying hostile fighters, bombers and drones. Careful positioning within the fleet would be required to ensure that they didnt take out friendly drones, or even small ships. I would see these as guarding the large heavily tanked ships

Feel free to tear this ideas apart, or add your own suggestions

Problem with this, however much it might fix issues elsewhere in the game, it completely breaks perfectly legit wormhole space dynamics.

Where the bit where you suggest T2 ship rebalances?

You do have a point... Make cloak scanning probes have 4-8 au radius at max ? Wont solve the problem completely, but will make full system scan much harder. Even harder if you stay aligned and warp out to new safe spot as soon as you detect those probes on d-scan.

@ People who keep posting ideas about anti-cloaking mechanisms:

Cloaking has been cried over and is arguably one of the most debated subjects in this channel. Most of the hate seems to come from 0.0 PvErs, who would like to rat semi-afk in a carrier in the illusion of perfect safety.

My recommendation: Adapt your playstyle. The mindset of "I want to be able to rat in absolute safety" is the real source of the issue, since 0.0 is not meant to be safe. If you want to use a capital ship to make your isk in, well - don't expect CCP to make it extra safe just so you don't have to pay attention to your game.

If you insist on not having to worry about d-scan, I recommend level 4 missions and hisec exploration. There it's perfectly safe, if you ignore the possibility of a nado camp waiting on the other side of the gate that you just landed, them landing into your site that you just started with NPCs scramming you, can flippers, duelers, scammers, war deccers and many more.

Do you see a pattern here in terms of "how safe it is to play EVE"?

We WH dwellers demonstrate every day that playing EVE without knowing who is about and trying to gank you works just fine. You should be grateful that you have a local chat that shows you who is in local in the first place and know there's somebody out and about that might be trying to gank you. We don't even have that luxury in W-space, and I dare you to find people complaining about that.

Also, as the person I quoted from indicated, let me rephrase what he means:
The ability to hide fleet using deep safes and cloak is just an invaluable property to the current metagame in WH pvp, where we actually get awarded for our efforts in intel gathering, counter intel, fleet positioning etc. By providing us with such a ship you will effectively kill the reason why PvP oriented people live in WH space. Giving people a tool that presents them with all relevant information on a silver platter is just... silly. We people live in WH space for a reason.


Furthermore, just for the sake of argument: If we were to get a ship, it should be able to probe everything or nothing down. Increasing the gap between newer and older players, by making it perfectly safe for those who have invested 2 weeks into a skill that is very situational and only for PvP, and unsafe for everybody else. That would be a bad idea™.


@ Kirimeena D'Zbrkesbris:
Won't help in smaller systems, as wormholes always spawn within 4AU of any celestial. You could simply drop probes on every celestial, notch them down to 4AU, and you would at all times have coverage of all wormholes, current and future incoming K162s.

I wasnt clear, sorry, i was thinking more that these ships would be included during the t2 ship rebalancing!

* If he is afk then he will pose no threat.
* If he is not afk, well all proposed solution emphasize about the problems of afk cloaking - so no problem there either.
* If he is waiting for a good moment to gank you, he might as well do that waiting at a station (if there is one in your system).
* If you argue you should be safe because there is no station, it brings us all the way back to "It's the ratters that want to feel completely safe".

No matter how many excuses you bring up, you won't make me believe it's the AFK cloakers that is the problem.

A cloaked ship can do nothing but look at things. He cant blow up your ship, point you or anything.

And if he uncloaks, well all cloaky ships have massive drawbacks in combat that severely impact their performance, giving you the distinct advantage if you're in a real combat ship. You might argue that your ratting carrier doesn't have a point or the capabilities of burning a cloaky T3 - but then again, it's your own safety you really care about and refuse to even deal with PvP in your PvE ship in 0.0 in a ruthless combat oriented spaceship game.


And regarding your safe spots - so basically you want to advocate perfectly safe traveling, without even the slightest possibility of getting ganked, and making it virtually impossible to gather intelligence on wormholes or even gates, since the only locations where cloakies could hide is nowhere in space.

I would suggest then that you change the title of the thread, as this has nothing to do with T2 rebalancing.

You miss the point. A cloaked ship is no threat until it uncloaks - that is if it uncloaks. Since you emphasized AFK being a particular problem then you bring a lot of moot points, since cloaked ships don't decloak, point and shoot you on their own.

The threat comes from the fact that they can do it, which however requires being non-AFK. That you blatantly ignore the ability to shoot back (having a PvE fit is no excuse, especially if you live in a completely lawless and PvP driven region) and that cloaked ships tend to be squishier and have lower DPS just confirms that you are just trying to avoid PvP.

As I mentioned: In WHs we live without even knowing who is in system, let alone whether a wormhole with an entire PvP fleet behind it just rolled into us - at any given moment. And we can manage it just fine by paying attention. You could argue that this is by choice since we live in that particular region in space - but I could say the same thing to you - you decided to go into nullsec. Except you fail to adapt to the mechanics and demand that mechanics get changed instead.

And no, I don't mind losing cloakies. I mind not being able to gather intel on targets worthwhile shooting.

how about make this the role of a covert ops cap ship if they ever make one. becaause it would keep it in line with the current philosphy of covert ops (smaller = offensive while bigger = support)