Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Lots of threads about cloaking, afk cloaking and local, rather than be 8 pages into the manure I figured lets take a look at the whole picture, with ways to make an upgrade to how this broken system work.

Local, we all agree its free intel, and as long as it is there you will know there is someone in system. I dont even want to talk about local, if a change comes to local it will be something CCP does after months of debate over impacts etc.

There is an already present counter for cloaky ships, it just isn't being used effectively for this yet, scan probes. Now if any cloaky could be scanned down with some level 1 skills it wouldn't be worth training, however we have tiers of cloaky as well as scanning skills.

For the sake of this discussion lets break up our cloaks into 2 categories, Generic and Specialized. Generic are the prototype cloaks etc that you can fit on any ship allowing you to safe up and disappear from scans (currently). Specialized are the ones that are limited to your stealth, Covops and a few other ship types.

Now the proposal,

All cloaks will prevent you from being able to be Dscanned.

Generic cloaks have an Desaturation multiplier of .5 and T2 being .75
Specialized cloaks have a Desaturation multiplier of 1

Cloaking skill is updated to provide a base Desaturation level of 1 per level.


Now for detecting Cloaked ships

Right now I am leaning toward Astrometric Range finding giving a bonus to offset Desaturation, probe strength could also be setup to reduce Desaturation, but the point here would be a skill of similar requirement like astrometric rangefinding would be required to offset the Desaturation effect of the cloak. Once the Desaturation is overcome the ship can be effectively scanned down with probes just like any other object in a system.


So what does this add? A reason to have characters trained up in advanced Astrometric skills, beyond scanning down anoms and stationary war targets. An increased difference between generic and specialized cloaks without making generics useless. A reason to train beyond Cloaking 1 even if you don't plan to go into stealth/Covops ships. And it does this without making cloaks useless. Most people don't fly around space with a probe launcher in their utility slots, they do a quick dscan and move through. However this means that if you really want to know if there is a cloaked ship in system, you can take the time to scan him down, and if your skills are better than their skills or they aren't using Specialized cloaks you will find them.

Obviously I haven't tested this, or these numbers, like anything else it would need a balance and play test to see how well the system would work. A fun option to consider would be possibly having a cloak create ghost objects in a scan, this can all be refined further.

If some or all of this has been posted in the past, I apologize, I dont frequent the forums, and certainly dont read through the pages of flame and manure found in alot of topics like this one

Not a bad idea, couple additions:

1. make the cloak detection probes be separate from other types of probes - if you want to find a cloaky, you need to be dedicated to finding a cloaky. Better option - make a special probe launcher too, and make it only fit on certain types of hunter ships (a new destroyer?) that have hull-specific bonuses to finding cloaked ships.

2. you never actually probe down a ship with a cloak (whatever flavor of cloak they are using) you just end up on the same grid. At that point, you get to play a game of minesweeper - you have to find them to actually uncloak them. Ideally, you'd need to bring a new type of ship (like a new destroyer!) that's also specifically scan bonused to find cloakies. This finder/hunter ship can "ping" a moderate area of around 30-50 km with an electromagnetic pulse that 1) does no damage, but 2) uncloaks anything it hits.

So if you think someone is cloaked in your system, and you want to find them, you need to 1) get into your specialized cloak-finding hull, 2) scan them down (easier for T1 cloaks, harder/much harder for T2), 3) appear on grid, and 4) ping the area until you find them.

AFK cloakers would eventually be found and killed by anyone with the skills, ship and desire to do so. Cloaked ships with ATK pilots could 1) see the specialized probes on D-scan and 2) see the hunter appear on grid. The cloaker then has the option to warp away (while cloaked or normally, depending on the type of cloak they have equipped) . . . or maybe just blast the paper-thin destroyer ship that found them before recloaking.

I don't know why CCP hasn't done this yet.

The downside is there is no longer a way to deal with local. Also you broke wormholes again.

I am not a WH pilot and havent spent much time researching the mechanics behind it, how does this break wormholes?

The general assumption is that a cloaker is always active no matter how long he/she has been in the system.
And since the standard operating procedure for most null-sec alliances is "safe up until all threats are gone" you will find that as soon as a "non friendly" appears in local chat the null-sec residents will just get into combat ships and use probes constantly until the person is found.
This becomes a problem for stealth ships in general as they are not designed for direct confrontation... they are designed to sneak in somewhere, cause damage, and slip away. But again... local chat denies them that ability by announcing their presence to everyone.

I know you said that you don't want to discuss local... unfortunately local is at the heart of the issue as AFK cloaking is done precisely to counter it. You can't nerf one without nerfing both because they both perfectly counter each other. "Absolute presence awareness countered by absolute location concealment."

Why do you think gaining more intel, on top of the free local intel, is a balanced approach?

Whilst cloaked and AFK, what game mechanic are they using to interact with you?

How does nerfing cloaks 'improve' them?

What problem are you trying to solve here?

Oh and why the hell can't you use search, before posting the same ideas others have?

Because there is no local to tell them there are threads like this that already exist.

The "AFK cloaker problem" is not easy to solve.

The best solutions I have heard include removing local altogether and replacing it with some other means of communicating with other pilots in space in the same star system, and introducing other means for sovereignty holders to determine (and perhaps advertise) what pilots and ships are present in that system. Another type of solution is introducing spool up times for cyno projectors and jump drives/bridges.

Trying to fix AFK cloaking by making cloaked ships discoverable is a classic scenario of "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

Yes, I believe that the total lockdown of a system by a cloaked ship that may or may not be wielding a cyno projector, is a problem. It is one that CCP is aware of. I believe the way to solve the problem is to develop novel ideas for CCP to consider, rather than rehashing the same ideas every couple of months.

I personally am a huge fan of replacing local with a system that allows imperfect way of tracking people in space, because this not only deals with afk cloaking, but also shifts null sec sovereignty holding from patrolling borders to making sure no inner system is infested by an unwelcome guest. Combined with changes to sov grinds, this would bring a way for small groups to get a foothold in null, add new tactics (defeating the enemy by attacking its soft rear or harassing his supply lines) and overall make null a far more dynamic place than it currently is.

Officially suggesting that all cloaks receive an additional effect of "5% chance of causing a forum post in F&I".