Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You mean working for intel, and generally just being prepared while in what is ostensibly the most dangerous area of the game universe?

That's unthinkable!

AFK cloaking gives an unfair advantage in PvP for 2 reasons:

- Allows the cloaker to be safe while being able to pick up fights (you can sit at the correct spot waiting for the correct victim).
- Makes a player invulnerable outside the station.

To counter:

-A cloaked ship is so fragile that any sort of attack from a keen pilot would devastate it
- See above add that no cloaked ship can fire cloaked + paperthin tank

Kind of negates your argument don't you think?

EDIT: Now if you are talking about other Cloaking Devices and not Cov-Ops II's then you have:

Paperthin Tank
Speed penalty
Not-able-to-warp-while-cloak-is-active penalty
Cloak "Cooldown timer" for reactivation penalty
Wait after de-cloaking to be able to lock stuff up.

Did not see it.

To answer. What I want in relevance to the topic is if that pilot is AFK he fails to do the minigame thus eventually the cloak fails. Afterwards I would probe them down. Defeat the ship then as the pilot is not there to warp the pod off. I would then proceed to pod the pilot thus removing the pilot from the system.

I am not going to show mercy to a pilot trying to have an effect on the enemy without being at the client. It's the pod express and maybe then that pilot will decide to go on roams or other PVP activities.

How can someone being afk pick a fight or wait for a victim?



And that is a problem because.... ?

My old corpmates said the same thing until the AFK pilot went active without warning several hours later and hotdropped them. If I can probe down an AFK pilot that has been cloaked for very long. I can deny that pilot's ability to attack on his sweet time. If he can't be bothered to check his client every so often then I want the ability to attack.

The idea presented in the start of the topic is a fair way to make that happen without doing a change that would greatly affect active cloaking play (Such as cloak fuel) What it would do is remove the incentive to stay in a system cloaked while AFK. And would stop this proliferation of alts designed for that one task with the aid of dual training with PLEX.

Thinking about it. The idea presented is superior to mine which was presented a while back. Mine was a bit too complicated and would require more art assets.

So, the afk pilot was, in fact, not afk when he tackled/dropped on your friend. I'd ask your corpmate: Why didn't you watch for probes on scan? Or: Why were you not aligned? Or: Why didn't you call your corp/alliance members to help you?

The issue is not that there was someone afk in your system, the issue was that there was someone at his client, tackling and calling friends when your corpmates neglected their safety.



I still don't see the problem with a pilot being afk. You said yourself that the pilot wasn't afk at the time of the attack.

That is right he went active just before the attack. I want to deny that pilot the use of the overpowered ability to go AFK while cloaked to pick the moment of his attack on his own sweet perfect time. If that pilots wants to be able to attack as such. They need to be balanced in having to remain at the client while cloaked in an enemy system.

If he goes AFK for a long period of time and figures he is too good to do the minigame. The cloak fails and I probe him down. Defeat him and next time he does not decide to AFK.

1. The reasons to use the so called tactic "AFK Cloaking", involves part deterrent, part trap. The uncertainty over which is present specifically makes both possible.
Think rock / paper / scissors... If you knew which they were using, you would know how to counter it, and win every time.
If you KNEW they were actually AFK, then you could utterly ignore them.
If you KNEW they were active, you could design any number of counters for them, the same as you would any elusive target.

2. You are only unsafe if you cannot dock back up. In the case of current PvE defense tactics, a bizarre version of station games is played, where the PvE pilot docks up or enters a POS shield.
This happens during the period where the hostile is still loading system, and cannot intervene.

Such perfect safety is an absolute, with the only exception existing as a result of pilot error.

1. Actually, that is not entirely true.

It is not mentioned that often, but AFK docking / POS sitting is an equally effective tactic.
The hostile cloaked vessel often relies on local chat to tell them when prey is present, assuming they are the active variety.
Local favors hostiles shamelessly, more than making up the difference for missing intel channels.

Hunter enters system. 3 minutes later, notices 5 out of 8 ships leave local. Can't spot them online, so he knows they have logged out. He could follow them to other systems if he saw they were still online.
Now, he uses local against the natives. Checking around, he sees one of the remaining 3 ships is sitting at a POS, not moving.
It's a boost capable ship, so he knows PvE activity was happening in system.
Scanning and checking around, he sees that noone is in the belts or other ratting areas, so the last two pilots are probably docked up in the outpost.

He sits cloaked, and waits. Local will tell him when new prey comes in, he just needs to be patient.
What he cannot know, is if one of the now ignored pilots becomes active.
They were present consistently, and are not being reacted to as a result.

If the hunter is relying on local, as he has no intel channels of his own, then he is waiting or AFK. If he sees new names appear, he will likely do a patrol and see if they show up at a belt or ratting spot.

But if they just sit there, after 12 hours, he won't do patrols for them anymore. They could be mining, or ratting, or anything.

2. Stations being safe?
Depends on what you need to accomplish. Your intel is limited entirely to Local, since you have no grid or scanning ability while docked. You can do market trades, surf the web, all kinds of things. They even put a counter on ship spinning.

You cannot, however, shoot anyone, mine, or attack rats for loot.
In fact, all the things that make being in null sec more useful than being in high sec are pretty much outside your reach.