Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Try reading my post Andy, this question is clearly answered. Very, very clearly.

Hunt them how? Even if you can scan them out, unless they are sitting completely still, you won't be able to catch them. So you want to make it so they are invisible and it takes specialised equipment to find them. So ships have to lose a module to hunt down a ship that will no long be there when they arrive.
The way I see it, the only change is that PVE/Miners would have 1 less module slot to use and would have to be hammering a d-scan button every few seconds just to get the level of intel they already have, while cloakers would have a high chance of running into someone not clicking fast enough, and killing them with their scout ship. Meanwhile regular combat ships will remain unchanged, leaving them less combat viable than a covops. I don't understand how anyone can think that even remotely constitutes balance.

The covops is giving up nothing. It's a token gesture that in reality gives up nothing, but is clearly designed to give the appearance of balance. See above. No amount of probes will give you any realistic chance of finding the cloaker. Since the covops is a scout vessel making it more viable than a regular combat ship for combat makes no sense whatsoever. You will kill off the use of regular combat ships and kill off null industry, and in return, if you sit perfectly still cloaked, there's a small chance somebody will have a probe launcher and bother to probe you out.

For starters, bombers don't get a delay. Secondly, any competent covops pilot will deactivate cloak while in warp so they can target when they've landed, giving the target the minimal time to react.

Probes WILL NOT find a covops ship. Unless the probe causes the covops ship to explode, or the covops ships sits perfectly still, no amount of probing will help you find a cloaker, since you'll simply land near where he was, not on him.

Nuking local only benefits a covops playstyle. You can put it however you want and "but look, probes!" but it means nothing. They are token gestures giving up things you don't care about as a covops pilot. Your tradeoff is not a tradeoff, it's something that doesn't matter to you at all. It's like if I said I want more valuable ice, and I'll give up gas harvesting for it. I never harvest gas, so it's a tradeoff I couldn't care less about.
I'm al lfor balance, but the short of it is, nerfing local will make a covops more viable than any other combat ship, and would make null industry inefficient in comparison with high sec industry. I do not agree that that is balance.

Perhaps reading through the posts would help you? It's great to come jumping in at the end but you really should understand the subject.

Essentially, an AFK player adds the appearance of risk, causing miners and PVE players to move, thus denying resources from a particular system. Since people know this, they abuse this by running AFK players 24/7 in systems to damage the income of their target. Since they can do this without even being at their PC, some of us are of the opinion that to affect the game they should have to play the game, not simply go AFK. Much in the same way I'm against AFK mining, I'm against AFK cloaking. I am of the strong opinion that to have any effect you should have to put the graft in.

On the other side of it, some people refuse to accept that changing local is too big a task to undertake to solve this issue, and while it would partially resolve the issue (you could still AFK cloak, you'd just need to set yourself moving to do it) it would also introduce several other issues an imbalances, not least of which being that covops ships would become even more the ship of choice than they currently are.

So to summarise, the simplest part of the the issues is that AFK players should not be able to affect the game 24/7. Some people refuse to separate this from "nerf local" so waht we end up with is an 80+ page thread full of people screaming "local bad!" when what we should have is plain and simple a discussion over AFK cloaking, NOT cloaking in general.

EDIT: Oh and as for "So basically what you're saying is that the local dudes want more risk free income", null income is not as risk free as high sec income, and high sec income is already higher. Further penalising null sec players by adding more risk will simply move more people out of null. What in fact keeps being thrown on the table is that players in a covert ops ship, a scout ship, should be given free miner kills, as miners will need to put multiple alts and have scanning modules and upgrades to the system yet still have a chance to be killed by a covops.

it's not that simple.

Giving people a way to find cloaked ship is not penalizing it's creating active gamaplay. If the cloaker is moving it's nerly impossible to find thim.

But on the other notes why should the industrialist be punished cause of one person / alt. Why is that ok? What makes claoking tactics something that is so much more precious than other gameplay. Many cloakers have said that they cannot get targets killed without cloaked ships cause PvErs and industrialists go for great lenghts to avoid pvp. Well there is an simple solution to that also... go fight people who want to fight back but back to cloaking and risk vs. reward what seems to be the topic here and fear tactics whats one of the main reasons this is happening. It's effective and cloakers have said that them selfs.

The thing about fear tactics is that the cloaker is gaining so much more than the other side and in my opinion it's badly unbalanced because of that. We can argue all day long about the technical balances but it wont effect the things that are happening in space. Claked ships are getting what they want with minimal effort, if it's industrialists staying inside station and loosing potential income, gathering valuable intel or getting a multi billion kill with a few million cynoship.

So as I see things this way... tell me this, how is this balanced in any way?

Why cannot I find the cloaked ship even if I wanted to?

Well if that's how it sounds, then you clearly aren't listening. More likely though, you know damn well what's going on, you just feel like trolling.
null SHOULD be better isk efficiency than high sec. It takes billions of isk to own, takes a lot more logi to turn your materials into isk. Some people won't be happy with null unless they can leap in and kill any miner or ratter they want at will though. I'll happily engage combat ships that attack me, but what is the point in trying to chase around a covops? He's only going to decloak if he's fighting something that has no chance.
Perhaps since the covops pilots want to shoot stuff with 0 risk of retaliation, they should go back to high sec and wardec nooby industry corps.

Or how about, if you want to **** with null sec income you should be at your PC. I don't think that's much to ask.

Now, either understand that opinions other than your own are valid, and that people aren't automatically crying just because they disagree with you, or go back under your bridge.

LOL. so the covops ship refusing to engage without certainty of success is not a carebear? A guy who's not even willing to put his name on the line, instead making an alt to sit in a system all day to disrupt operations, he's not a carebear? Don't talk ****. The cloakers are some heroic elite combatants, they are just as bad as anyone else. The only difference being they want MORE ability to hide and MORE ability to surprise ratting and mining ships, while all we want is for cloakers to be at their PC to disrupt us. I don't think that's much to ask.

It's all the "kill local" guys that are talking about cloak finding probes and all that. I'm happy with the idea of an AFK cloaker getting warped (still cloaked) to deaspace and getting an icon in local to indicate this, then auto warping back (still cloaked) to where they were upon return. This would resolve the issue, and only affect AFK cloakers, while making nobody have to lose anything.

It shouldn't, and it isn't. Buy why should a guy whos at work, or off fapping be able to add as much appearance of threat as an actively playing cloaker?

Firstly, a cloaker can drop an indy char pretty quick. Secondly, why should I have to have an alt, while the cloaker doesn't? THIRDLY AND MOST IMPORTANTLY - How does removing AFK cloakers affect that IN THE SLIGHTEST? I'm not asking for ANY changes to active cloakers, so they can continue as normal.

We do go into other systems. I have 4 different systems with ships set up, and only 1 of them has ever been camped. But when it happens it makes null just a little more empty. I like my null to be a bit less empty, and I'm sure combat ships want the same. Some idiot sitting in system to reduce the industry index is not generating content, they are taking it away.

It's been getting more and more common. As people are realising it's a good way of resource denial, they are using it more. Now with gravs not requiring probes, miners are even more at risk, so they are quicker to leave a system. With ice mining buffed, high sec mining now generates a lot more isk, with no worry about freighting it about to sell. With the anom changes and the ai changes, L4s offer considerably less risk for the income. Overall the changes are heading in a direction that makes null less favorable. I'd like to see changes that encourage more mining, more ratting and more PvP in null. Buffing cloakers is not a way to do that, since cloakers don't PvP, they gank. Give combat cruisers more ability to roam null by all means, but don't buff covops, that's just silly.