Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok, lets move forward one agreement at a time then.

It has been established, that outside of extraordinary circumstances, the current automatic listing by local normally results in a PvE pilot having the opportunity to get safe before a hostile can act.

Nothing implied beyond this, a simple question: Do you agree with that statement?
Not always gets safe as an absolute, but with planning and being alert to changes in local, that they can do this under normal circumstances.

Not entirely no. That depends on ship, build and player skill. Under any circumstances even without local a player could be safe from an attacker. If I was aligned to a pos, with warp stabs in a low sig ship, I'd be safe even if a ship landed on grid.
I'm not really sure what constitutes "extraordinary" circumstances. If I warp my orca to a belt to grab some cans, that's hardly extraordinary, yet if a ship jumped in as i was entering warp I've got about 60 seconds before I'm going to be in a position of being aligned back out.
If I'm in a PVE anom, being pointed by an NPC is not extraordinary, but that easily gives enough time for a warp in.

EDIT: What I can add though is that I take steps to ensure my safety. I hit pointing ships first, and keep a small ship on an alt in case I need to jump in and blitz them to save me. I scout surrounding systems when I deploy my orca to ensure I have a healthy amount of time.
This is not effortless. Even keeping an eye on local is no more effortless than when I'm camping inside a wormhole in my cloaked ship staring at my overview for any appearing ships.

Ahh, now the truth finally rears it's head. You want to nerf cloaks in general. That is how I read that Lucas. Scan probes are no good because, why an "active cloaker could avoid them". Yeah...that was the point so that it would kill off AFK cloaking permanently. And if the probes are good enough so that they can get you close enough, you can decloak even a moving AFK cloaker.

And if scan probes alone aren't sufficient than possible look at another mechanic.

By the way Lucas, are you recanting this post now? And this one?



Yes, I want to "remove local"--i.e. turn it into a chat channel.

Yes, I want a new intel system, one that for the effort and certain trade offs is pretty good. But is destructable (even by small gangs--i.e. not alot of HP) and possibly hackable.

And for this make sure AFK cloaking is dead, dead, dead. If scan probes are not sufficient, then add on another mechanic. But ideally it would have minimal impact on active cloakers. And of course, with no sov in WHs, they'd be left as is.

Would I want this put in place without extensive testing? **** no! Test it to death first. If a player can come up with a way to break it, throw them a BIG bone for their efforts and creativity (e.g. 5 billion isk would cost CCP very little, but for a creative player would be a nice incentive).

OFGS...

Lucas, it is simply true. The current mechanic for local is such that you have an opportunity to try and get safe before the new pilot is system has a chance to do anything. Of course, that opportunity might be insufficient.

I have two Orcas. Quite familiar with them.
In defense of my point, they fit entirely under the heading of bad choice, if you are wrong about hostiles being an imminent threat.

And taking precautions, quite reasonably, deserves recognition.

This game rewards the better player with success, and if your precautions are better than the preparations of a hostile pilot, you deserve to evade them.

Now, for perhaps a surprising admission: I find AFK Cloaking to be very frustrating, and diminishing to my gameplay options.
We are in a position where this frequently generates a stalemate, with both sides staring at the listed names in chat as a rather boring substitute for gameplay.
As a miner, I want to resolve this issue, and move on.

As a player in general, I must also respect that the situation, maddening as it is, also has balance that CCP put in place.
I don't have to like it. My opinion about it has no meaning outside of ranting here.

But it does mean that in order to respect and maintain the balance CCP established, for everything we take from cloaking, we must replace or balance from the other game aspects.

I don't think I wrote anything controversial here, but I would appreciate it if you would confirm this.

Lol just because you call everything a straw man argument doesn't make it the case. That seems to be the latest go-to insult on the forums.
What are nona hacs?

Well any other intel mechanic in the game surely is the same. The guest window in a station for example. The overview takes no effort yet tells you alliance tag, standing shiptype, all automatically without any effort.
At the end of the day it's all beside the point. It was not added by accident, it was designed to show you who is in system with you. the fact that you don't like it doesn't make it automatically wrong and everything you say automatically right. Stop being so arrogant.
Present me an unbiased solution that doesn't turn covops ships into the best ships in the game while simultaneously shitting on all other ships, and I'll take it on board. But keep thrusting the same used up idea at me and you can expect the same response.

One step at a time please.
Drawing a conclusion at this point skips a few steps, and I think we may reach an accord if we work together.

I would start with what we need from our intel, dividing meaningless and free, from valued and worthy of effort to acquire.

Step one: Defining what intel should require effort, and what can be safely exposed as already obvious for social purposes.
You want to protect local, in that it provides you with information.
I find this quite reasonable, with a few limited exceptions.

I want to respect pilots desires for privacy, socially and tactically.

Version 1: When I am docked in an outpost, being able to see local, and be seen in local, does not entirely make sense.
I would like to have the option to opt out of this, so that I could not see the list of pilots or be seen in that list, while I was docked. An argument could be made that I should not be able to see the pilot listing at all, but leaving this optional seems reasonable at this point.

I would enact the same logic to being behind the shields of a POS, or being cloaked.

I specify that I would agree this meets conditions to have a functioning method to hunt cloaked vessels in exchange.

I welcome comments, and point out this is not a complete resolution, just the side dealing with local intel itself.
The price to cloaked ships, ease of effort based intel gathering, and cyno usage, are all remaining.

I further acknowledge that acceptance at this point is contingent upon approval of those aspects, as they will be the balance points. You are not expected to grant blanket approval of these unseen.

In short, could you accept a version of local where only ships in open space were reliably displayed?

Except the possibility that they might not be known as active.

While some claim that no pilot ever falls for that trick, they cannot help but make the claim supporting the idea that they are then being blocked by the same pilot as a result.
Only by risking activity does a PvE pilot overcome this block, but by so doing, exposes them to the cloaked pilot.
Are they AFK or not?

This is not a resolved issue, as many cloak using pilots claim this tactic works.
If both are to be believed, the pilots who they engaged are not posting here.

Adding a timer would resolve the issue, undeniably, but in the favor of the PvE pilots. Any solution that favors one side is not balanced.

Stand back, I am about to fix the AFK Cloaking issue, botting, sitting docked all day, reduce strain on server, and a ton of other things in one go-- introduce timing out after input has not been broadcast every hour or so with a window pop up so an actual mouse-over would be required. Ahhh, who am I kidding? That would drive me nuts, and God forbid, a Captcha be introduced..

yeah it was just a thought... I only mentioned carriers as it would restrict it to low / null, I initially thought of recon ships... as its... well recon...

I was just trying to come up with a way... albeit risky, to put a seed of doubt into an AFK players mind... you may be right, carriers would be excessive... I'm just thinking out loud I guess