Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't think it is "because of local" that AFK cloaking discussions go off the rails (although if it is...another reason to change local ).



To easy how? To sit around in local all day AFK at a safe cloaked up? Ok, but that is bad/boring game play. It should be removed.

To easy getting kills? Why do they have to spend hours AFK at a safe? Why not just log in get a few kills here and there and then log off to do other stuff?



Can you go into more detail on this please? Are you talking about removing local? Well, that isn't the plan, at least not without another mechanic to replace it (by the way as for fleet combat you've seen some of the stuff the CFC has that makes use of d-scan, right....don't see a major issue).

Yes you can. In the first post there's links to lots of methods. Just because you don;t agree with them, doesn't meant you CAN'T fix it without smashing local to pieces.

Because cloakers right now have intel channels telling them exactly where to fly to right? No, they know where to go to, because of things like industry and military indexes and star map stats. They don't currently fly around aimlessly, hoping to run into some people in local. With your change though, all they have to do is find an industry index 4 or 5 with pilots in system on the map, fly over to it and jump to a grav. Chances are, they'll find a target. Exactly as they currently do, except the targets won;t see them until it's too late.

They only eliminate the hostile by playing well. You want to make it so no matter how well you play, the cloaker can get you. That's ridiculous.

Local simply provides the intel. IT DOES NOT DOCK YOU. IT DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MAKE YOU SAFE. AGAIN, you treat it like it's a given that I just simply evade combat simply due to local. That's not the case. I HAVE TO ACT TO MAKE MYSELF SAFE. You're utterly incapable of seeing that there is an effort going into it, thus you will always argue the same thing OVER AND OVER AND OVER.
EVEN IF I had a structure doing this for me it would BE NO DIFFERENT. I would STILL dock up automatically. You would simply punish non sov holders and smaller groups.

No, I'm all for making hostiles more able, but I don;t think a single players should be able to do it alone, and I don;t think it should be restricted to a single class of ships. You want to make solo cloakers overpowered because you feel whole alliances should need to work as a unit to defend against ONE PLAYER. I say that ONE PLAYER should have to work cooperatively with others to be effective. It's got **** all to do with blobs, its about not wanting a single player in a covops ship to become overpowered against an entire group that pays billions of isk to hold a system.

Cloaks are both offensive and defensive, I think. Ideally they would be, anyway. I'm not asking for vast amounts of power, or even to keep the "100% defense", if other changes were made to local and the mechanics both hunters and residents used to gather intel and act upon it then that would certainly allow for a change to cloaks themselves.

As for your suggestion of interceptors, that wouldn't work in the current system. If a ship is aligned he can be in warp before the other person is even in system. It doesnt matter how fast the interceptors can align or warp if the other person is gone before the hunter has even loaded the system. That's why changes to how local work, and how intel gathering is done are required

sure, but I'm only 100% safe when docked or in a pos, and if I'm too close to an object, I'm going to bump, since align time is quite heavy on a miner. So it's as simple to cloak as it is for me to warp. And it is a defensive module, so that's the way it should be. It shouldn't be there to make you more able to attack me.

Sure, but I don't care so much about hunting down someone AFK nub alt that they don't care about. I'm not in if to the KB. All I suggest is that in order to add the level of uncertainty that a cloaker adds, you should have to actually play the game. It's not about killing or otherwise punishing the enemy, it's about removing their ability to add that threat 24/7 without being there to play. Even if an AFK cloaker after x amount of inactivity got warped to deadspace, retained cloak, and got an icon in local or something. If they come back, it's the equivalent of them jumping through the gate, then warping onto grid (except they keep cloak), as they warp back as if they'd just logged on.
EDIT: That satisfies the remove AFK cloak. It doesn't break cloaks. You don't need to change grid or move to stay active, just interact with the client.
And yes, it could be avoided by botting, but making it a EULA breach will make the majority of people think twice about it, which is good enough for me.

Well, its defensive, that's why it works in high sec.

And staying aligned constantly in a grav is not an easy task. You can use the circular bookmark system, but it's difficult to set up (which you'd need to redo at least every 3 days) and it's super easy to bump a rock and drop alignment. If interceptors had half the warp time, they'd catch the majority of miners.

It would still mean that unless you get stuck on rocks, you can - with slightly more effort - escape every time. That's not great design imo. It also assumes that the hunter knows in advance which site a miner is at. It also ignores things other than mining in a grav site locals may be doing - ratting in belts, running anoms, etc would all remain 100% safe. Again, bad design.

Lucas, please keep in mind I am not advocating for simply removing local. I know Nikk argues that that would not be as bad as everyone suggests, I don't share his position (at least to the same degree he does). I'd want to change local and make intel a separate mechanic. So the notion of a force recon, covert ops, etc. flying undetected to a destination would not be as easy as you are suggesting.

For example, the IFF Beacon idea (lets shorten it to IFFB just to make typing easier) would make that proposal difficult. I'd like to see the IFFBs being hackable, so that in theory a surprise attack could happen. But if failed hacking attempts alert the owners of the IFFB then the more IFFBs you have to hack the less chance of a surprise attack.

As for NPC sov, an IFFB system could be put in place by the NPCs (or at least that would be the back story). It might not be as good as Sov areas, or maybe really good in station systems and not so good in systems without stations and get worse the further you get from station systems. Low sec would have something similar, but not as good as high sec (high sec would have the best and it would provide intel much like local does now).

And the IFFBs might have delays in updating. With the very best upgrades (i.e. yet another cost to holding sov) the updates are fairly quick. The lower the upgrade the slower it takes to update creating the gaps that could be exploited by hostiles for quick hit and run attacks. Toss in the IFFBs being hacked or destroyed and you have a whole new dimension to the game and a new role for cloaked ships. Now they come in and position themselves off the IFFB and hack it, if successful it stops reporting intel and creates a "door" into hostile territory. Now most alliances might have several layers of IFFBs to make this kind of thing harder to do, but still possible.

As for local and keeping track of people, local is a very cumbersome tool to use. Hence the stuff the CFC came up with. A good scout with bookmarks around system could provide a very clear picture in minute...much better than scrolling through local.

They can also die at gate campes. Bubbles, cans, and decent inty pilots are a problem for the cloaked ship. About the only one that gets away almost all the time are cloaky and nullified strategic cruisers...of course they cost 2-3x as much.

And these covert ops cloaking ships are designed specifically to get past these obstacles and as such they sacrifice tank and often DPS. That is their primary job. They are like special ops today. Operate behind enemy lines doing sneaky stuff. They can be damaging and effective, but their job is not to go head-to-head with a group of combat ships.

Or to put it differently...if the cov-ops cloaking ships have it too easy, then so do you with your 100% escape chance. If you think cloaks need to be nerfed, then so does your 100% escape chance. You can't have it both ways here, I'm afraid.

I only point this out for two reasons:

1 Wormholes. Cynos aside, the examples citing them are frequently exxagerations. You can already have all the ships you need present to back you up, no need to bring in more on the spot, as it were.
The enemy fleet is already in the system to the strength they need to win, no cyno needed, so it's absence is pointless.

2 People keep giving hostiles super powers.
Yes, that blasted map DOES tell them too much, I agree. It should have 24 hour updates only, and people should have to WONDER and figure out when the activity was, not be spoon fed the intel.
That aside, they have NO source of live intel besides local. They don't know you jumped, logged, or switched alts automatically any other way.
As long as you are in the same system, they automatically know it.

That being said, I advocate for reduced intel from local. Any changes past that, in my opinion, will happen once people realize they want to own their efforts on intel, and not dumb down their options along with their efforts.

I don;t disagree. But that uncertainty should require players to play, not be allowed to be put in place by an AFK player

If you can't jump a gate camp in a covops, you probably shouldn't be flying one.

You are advocating the reduction of the ability for them to take precautions. And a cloaker chooses to engage. I have to work to not be engaged, I can't simply choose not to engage and be grated automatic immunity.