Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Let me surprise you then :)
You will achieve nothing. Because player that are there to block you will still be there!

This is probably a variation of some dumb ideas that have been shot down before, but here's a rough proposal:

Cloaking device reduces capacitor regeneration rate to zero, drains cap at approximately 1% per minute. Covops ship will have approximately an hour and a half of loiter time, less if they warp around a lot.

Ways for an at-the-controls cloaker to mitigate: carry a cap booster. When cap gets low, decloak, run a couple of cap booster cycles, recloak. Other possibilities to improve loiter time: fit cap batteries to allow more warps before cap runs out, or warp efficiency rigs to reduce warp capacitor cost.

Result: a true AFK cloaker will eventually cap out and decloak. A cloaker with a pilot at the controls will be able to remain in system for hours, at the cost of uncloaking perhaps once an hour to top off cap. (This can be done while in a warp, as well, to minimize vulnerability.)

And that is 100% fine! As long as the PLAYER has to be there not just the CHARACTER, Then they can spend all day preventing me doing anything if they want. That's their choice.

I really gotta ask this.

Why are so many assuming that local is protecting and helping anyone except for lazy PvE players and the very hostiles they CLAIM to want removed?
BTW: I detest the map functions for reporting activity too, it should be looked at as well.

Without local, The HOSTILE:
1 Has no live intel in your space, and even the map provides only limited recent intel.
2 Has no intel channel in your space, so cannot learn of movements.
3 Has NO way of knowing where you are without scanning, except that local tells them this.
4 Has NO way of knowing who is docked, if anyone, unless they have docking rights.
5 Has NO way of knowing if ships at a POS are active without being on grid.
6 Has NO way of knowing if a resident pilot is stalking them outside of sensor range.
7 Has NO way of knowing if a PvE player is temporarily cloaked to avoid detection.

Local gives them the crucial intel they need to perform, making them able to overwhelm too many tactical options by simply KNOWING target presence, rather than being fooled.

All it gives local sov residents? Pilot X just entered your system. Of course, your intel channel already reported him three systems back. Seeing him is no more surprising than knowing tomorrows calendar date.
For the Hostile? He may have known rats were being killed in system, but now he sees pilots in local.
And they can't fool him.

Well, if intel is decoupled from local and the new mechanic is able to be hacked, you'd have a good shot at catching bots then. Now you have none.

And with some of the changes discussed here, making isk AFK in null could become harder. The idea is to reintroduce risk back into null at at the same time eliminate AFK cloaking.

Now before Lucas gets upset, the idea of risk means that the people who might come into his system to disrupt his PvE are at their keyboard. Also, they are not going to have a method to be, as he puts it, 100% safe. So now Lucas and his friends can try to drive them off or die trying...or dock up. Of course, if his intel system gets hacked while he and his alliance are docked up...well that could make for a problem later as well. So even simply running and hiding would have negative consequences, your entire intel system could become compromised, or parts of it and you'd have to go find it.

At the same time the intel system would work only for blues, so there would be a home field advantage.

And intel would not be perfect. For example, suppose the following scenario. A gang wants to make life rough for a given alliance. They set up a gang that hits some of their better systems and the alliance, say a renter alliance, fails to responde with force of arms--i.e. they run and hide. Now the invaders still want to mess with them, so they hack the intel infrastructure in these systems, then they have a guy pop a covert cyno and bridge in a couple of guys in covert ops cloaking device fit ships. These last two guys, wont show up on any intel systems, even if fixed (they skipped all the gates). So now they cloak in system and the initial gang buggers off...back to the BLOPs or whatever.

Now after a bit the residents start undocking and taking stock, but they don't know that there are hostiles in one of their prime ratting systems. If they don't jump on the intel infrastructure checking and repairs they could be leaving themselves open to getting ganked. Maybe they'd lose an entire mining fleet, maybe the guys in the initial gang have gone back to the pig and have now covert cynoed in, in bombers and recons and T3s and are waiting for somebody to not check various intel sources such as forums or chat channels warning people about what just happened. And people start dying. Now they realize their intel systems have been compromised, but to repair them they have to put ships in space--i.e. at risk. Now the gang can keep killing these ships until the alliance actually provides a response. And if these are renters it might even attract the attention of the land lord who might be more aggressive and actually send a more interesting and fun response.

I don't know, maybe that is all just pie in the sky bullcrap and it would never happen like that. I mean it is so much better to plop down SBUs and provoke a response that way, hauling around those big ass things and anchoring them and then watching them eventually get blown up. Or running through a couple dozen systems and finding everyone docked up, POSed up, and go home after feeling like you just wasted your time.

Congratz on 100 pages.

Regarding number 6, he can see them entering system after him repeatedly, where his sensors could not spot a cloaked scout, even if they were in range at points.
With Local - Until he arrives, he knows nothing.
Without Local - He knows nothing after he arrives either.

The point is, with local he knows too much about any system by simply being in it.
He never needs to use d-scan. He can pop between the listed belts merrily, and if anyone is active, he can find them.
The hidden belts were displayed for him when he entered, and can easily be popped back up for reference.

Here is the point.
Now, consider if he did NOT know if any targets were in the system.
Maybe he expects it to be an active system, reputation or recent map activity.
BUT, he can't tell if anyone is actually there.

He will probably scan, or make a patrol route of the expected activity areas. If PvE pilots are present, they could warp to deep safes outside of sensor range, or simply use a cloak. They could even have logged out, while a scout tracked the hostile until it left to look elsewhere.
The point being, the hostile would never know for certain where targets were.
They could scan, or visit hot spots, but they would never know with the certainty they have now.

Give the hostile uncertainty.
Our intel channels and entrenched Outposts and Stations give us a huge advantage over them.

But I disagree that the removal of lcoal would give the hostile any more than a tiny fraction of uncertainty. A Single d-scan is easily enough to tell you if there are ships in system. In the same way as now he can't tell who in local is actually active without a d-scan. The reason hostiles are so happy for this change is it provides them a LOT more benefits that it offers in disadvantages.

A simple D-Scan has distance limits, cannot locate cloaked vessels, cannot determine if vessels are hanging next to a POS tower inactive.

It would be a simple matter to drop low cost cruiser hulls in a POS, to act as sensor decoys to confuse a hostile D-Scan.
8 cruisers on scan? No idea how many pilots are in system? They MIGHT be active!
Warp to grid to check, Ah, it's a POS...
What? Only one cruiser was active? Whew... oh noes.. it was scanning for cloaked ships, and popped my cloak...
AAAA, the POS was a deathstar.... I am friieeed... (static noises)

If you have an outpost in system, suddenly being docked means you are off the grid. They can't find you, and for all they know you clone jumped to the other side of EVE.

The defensive tactics possible limit the options a hostile can rely on. More tactics become available with less intel given to the hostile.

Fun times.

Nope, not supported. It needs to decouple intel from local too. Once local is no longer reporting everyone in system perfectly and infallibly, AFK cloaking is not longer a very useful strategy. To ensure this also add in some mechanic for finding a cloaked ship...a mechanism that wont be too harsh on the hactive cloaker--e.g. if they warp between safe's they can avoid detection. A scout could still watch a gate by warping between two perches, for example.

Also intel is upgradable as well. The very best upgrades provides very good intel. But it comes with trade offs and costs. Trade offs are that some intel modules can't be anchored with other moduels (e.g. a cyno jammer). Costs, lots of isk so you can't just plop one in every single system.

So now both sides in this debate have to "work". Nobody gets anything for "free/low cost". And there is more risk...for both sides.

And since there are WHs this stuff may not work in WHs allowing the current mechanics to continue which seem to be just fine there.