Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If there were zero rewards, then your presence in the system would have zero effect. As it is, your AFK presence has great effect. In the first place, people don't bring out their bling ships (or even t1 battleships) when they see you in local. You can complain about local, but the fact is that enemy alliances like to have that effect on their opposition and therefore the AFK cloak rewards you and your alliance in accomplishing the goal of threatening that system and keeping people docked, whatever you may say about that reaction. And if there was no local, people would not undock bling ships so the mere possibility that you may be there and cloaked (online or not) has an effect and thus a reward. Regardless of local, the mere chance that you could cyno in more than they could fight (up to titans and supers as needed) or retreat from will have an effect and thus a reward. Killing the isk engine of an alliance is a great reward because that hurts their ability to fund the war and fight effectively.

Is it possible to generate revenue for the war by ratting or mining in fleets which cannot be destroyed by hotdrop? No. Because every fleet can be smashed by a bigger fleet. Is it possible to anticipate exactly what will be brought in to crush your ISK generation fleet and have a counter ready to defeat it at the exact moment that the hotdrop is made (an escalation)? With the best intel, you may be able to get the exact hot drop fleet composition AND the alert for the time of hotdrop within minutes or seconds of the hot drop, but that requires a pve division that is very well coordinated with a very effective pvp division for counter hot drops.

Of the four major alliances that I have been in, this kind of coordination has only been effective to a moderate degree on corp and alliance ops. It would have withstood a hotdrop of up to 20-40 cruisers. Given that major alliances can mobilize up to 20 titans, 30 supers, 50 dreads, 50 carriers, and hundreds of each sub-cap class given the presence of a continual opportunity against alliances which have activity in ever time zone, this means that in order to win, the defender would have to have at least as much force ready to jump at the moment of the hotdrop aggression. Since the actual numbers of large battles observed over the last several years have varied both greater than and less than the ones given above, it is reasonable to assume that such a force could be mustered against a continually large defensive target at the aggressor's time of choice. Since no alliance has been seen to be able to do this effectively yet, it is expected that the aggressor will always bring in more than enough to crush the target(s) and their backup, or simply delay the hot drop until they have enough numbers to be able to do it easily with confidence. Therefore people take their own chances, usually waiting until the threat (cloaky cyno) leaves the system. Zero threat means zero need for major alliance wide pve/pvp coordination. So it all hinges around the afk cloaky sitting in system escalating the threat to potentially infinity (that's what 150 caps and hundreds of subcaps look like to a solo carrier or BS) while taking upon himself (the cloaky cyno pilot) no threat until cyno time (in which case who cares about an SB loss in comparison to a ship loss of greater value than an SB (most of them) plus pod and implants?).

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, and since it doesn't follow Eve reward-risk philosophy to allow a single SB such great influence of shutting down an entire system (reward) by projecting a potentially imminent threat of potentially astronomic proportions with zero risk to itself until the cyno is actually lit, it only makes sense to look at either increasing the [1] risk to the cloaky cyno or decreasing the effect (reward) by decreasing the power of the projected force to [2] imminently bring a potentially [3] astronomic force into the system. The 60s delay directly addresses the "imminently" part. If that approach is not ideal, then pretend that you are the alliance defending your members revenue generation for your war and create a proposal which addresses the three points above effectively. Each part of my proposals aims to address one of those three preventative aspects underlined above.

No one ever said that. Now read above for the details on the rewards of cyno cloaking even while AFK.

Andy,

You are quite mistaken. Here is an abridged version of what happened.....

1. Mechanic/balance problems were pointed out with your proposals.
2. You change your proposals...and don't mention it in the later posts.
3. People still unaware of your changes continue to point to the mechanics balance problems.
4. You complain about trolling and lying.
5. You make an oblique reference to the proposals regarding point #1.
6. I go to the first post, notice you edited your post note you've changed your proposals dramatically.
7. You keep whining.

Here is a hint for you. If you update/change your very first post (or any post really) you should be explicit about it because when we are 10+ pages down people aren't always going to swing by the first post to see if it has changed.

So nobody was trolling or lying. You failed to inform us you were working off of a different premise than the rest of us.

As for your proposal of cloaking delay, you appear to be changing your proposal again.

So please, for the rest of us. Correct my scenario. Don't just tell us to learn to read because apparently you have something in mind you did not elucidate.

Or if you want, I can simply write, "Learn to write," and we can keep up the simple insults.



Okay, I went back and looked at my original post. The only underlined portion was written by your and is for the proposal "title". You specifically state that decloaking will cause a delay in module activation. All of them. You also specifically write that when a covert ops cloak is activated the ship with said module fitted to it can, and I quote:



In other words, there is nothing to invalidate my scenario. If my scenario is wrong, I suggest it is due to you not including something in your proposal.

Oh and regarding this...



Once a pilot is in system, there are very few risks to AFK cloaking...and very few rewards. The risk/rewards ratio is not out of whack. If a player is going to be AFK for awhile his opportunity cost is low for AFK cloaking...so he is quite willing to accept the low rewards. When he gets back to the keyboard then the opportunity cost changes and I wouldn't be surprised if many of these AFK cloaking alts are then logged off in favor of a character that has greater risk/rewards ratio.

Andy,



Stop changing the conditions of my scenario I put to you to figure out if your proposals are balanced/mechanically sound. It is my scenario and changing the initial conditions so as to avoid what I see as the problem is not really helpful.

Here is the scenario, using the speed nerf to cloaking ships with a regular cyno fitted (Proposal #5).

1. Group A wants to get into the target system and fight Group B over something (TCU, IHUB, station, POS).
2. Nobody in group A is in the target system.
3. Group A is going to send in an Arazu with a regular cyno gen.
4. The idea is that the Arazu will ave a good chance of getting past the light support camping the in gate with its cloak, and once in system can light a regular cyno for a titan several systems over to bring in the main sub-cap fleet.
5. But because of your proposal #4 is now no longer really an option.

I'll explain 5:

With a regular cyno the Arazu has its speed seroiusly nerfed and is now scannable. Knowing this Group B will have a light support fleet on the gate. That means smaller faster ships that are fast locking and with enough DPS to kill the Arazu pretty fast. Also knowing this Group B will have strategically placed T2 bubbles around the gate so the Arazu cannot simply cloak and warp off. Finally, knowing the mechanics change group B will also have probers out now. Good probers, some might even have a full set of virtue implants. So now we have a very slow ship, that can cloak, but can't warp (bubbles) can't go fast, and is about to be scanned down post haste to be killed.

My claim is that given this proposal and the above scenario, the case of cynoing a sub-cap fleet for a fight into a target system will, generally, be harder. Either the cyno pilot will have to be in system before hand or Group A will have to go through the gate which will put them at an extreme disadvantage. Your proposal might even make blobbing worse. If you have to go through the gate, bring a bigger blob so you can suffer larger losses and still hope to win.

I haven't yet changed that one, but the predicate of that sentence is "other cloaked ships on grid" meaning that numbers 2 and 3 only apply to "other cloaked ships on grid." [Edit] OP proposals clarified and separated. Other parts condensed for easier and faster review.