Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Where have I said I'm awesome? Where have I said anyone else is ****? I've suggested that local and intel be separated and that the latter be something that a sov holding alliance has to work for. That it should be tested for balance and exploits before being added to the game. That if necessary change null sec rewards to things like ratting and mining to help preserve the risk/reward ratio. The effects on fleet combat I have responded to at length and not with some story of how great I was several years ago, but pointing out that there are ways for players to use d-scan that make local look pathetic right now in game.

Would it change how things work right now? Yes. Would it "ruin fleet fights"? Maybe, but so far I've found the responses to be rather flaccid.

As for your story, sitting at a POS is no issue if local is no longer relaying intel. First, if this was your suspected staging system, I'd get in system and hit d-scan. I'd even warp around a bit or look at the system map, to ensure I've covered the entire system. Of course this would entail *work*, but so what. Then I'd use d-scan to find out approximately where your POS is. I'd warp to a nearby celestial and use d-scan again shortening ranges and checking directions. And I'd finally find that POS, like I have in the past, and I'd warp in (force recon, stealth bomber, covert ops, etc.) and look at you guys. I'd hit d-scan with a really short range and look at the results. I'd then copy them into a website our coalition has put together and hit the submit button. A few seconds latter I'd have the results in a new webpage which I'd share with the FC. He'd have a total ship count. Ship types. And I'd tell him exactly what planet/moon, and if there were titans, etc. there.

In this case removing local as a source of intel is not a major issue. Yes it would entail a bit more work to check if indeed this is the staging system.

The only time is when an entire fleet is docked up. But that brings its own disadvantages.

Now, as for this,



WTFAYTA? I don't believe I have said anywhere that people who refuse to defend their space should be allowed to keep it. If you could please point to a quote/post of mine that says something like that I'll gladly re-read it and either explain what I meant or change it if it is due to a typo or some other error.

Bump

The Titan may be at a pos that is out of dscan range of the gates. Scouts moving through the systems may easily miss it. Every scout the attacker uses is a player that is not in a combat ship.
PVE alts cannot afford to be moved from home territory through hostile territory because they have to be moved back again through hostile territory to generate revenue. If only one guy is asked to do this, it will take some time. If stations hide presence, his efforts will be futile if they are hiding in and dispersed throughout surrounding systems' stations.

"limitations to local benefits those who initiate engagements against players" (quote corrected) is not the same as "local aids hostiles." Any player is a hostile to some other player, so your statement says that "local aids players" which seems quite obvious.

Why CCP Should add AFK Tags and Auto Log off timer

- Afk players add to Ti-Di
- Afk players eat bandwidth & Processing by the server clusters
- Afk players prevent other players from functioning in null sec
- Afk players are contributing nothing to game play

And this is because the current system effectively tells pilots they are either too dumb or too lazy, to be trusted to learn intel without it being handed out for free.

Because this side is being handed out for free, it is not balanced to permit cloaked vessels to be hunted.
In exchange for always knowing you are there, you can never know exactly where they can be found.

CCP has established these points as balancing each other, by virtue of the game including these two absolute aspects.

If the major alliance has enough spies to report back comprehensive intel on every system continuously without local, then it is not unreasonable to expect that the "foreign player" has comprehensive (not limited) intel regardless of local. If the player engaged in ops can be seen without knowing that he is being seen, and engaged without any warning or ability to escape, then the advantage goes to the side which selectively engages the players committed to an on-going op in open space. Removing the ability to see the enemy coming while you are engaged in open space dramatically increases the advantage to the side which counters player ops. This has the effect of greatly discouraging player ops.

Even if local is made available to sov holders with the exception of reports on cloaked ships, the ability of cloaked ships to deny escape has the effect of greatly increasing the use of cloaks while greatly reducing player ops. When massive effort is required to conduct normal personal ops, it has the effect of alliances to organize incursions-like fleets while shutting down normal ops game play when the resources do not exist to run such ops effectively. Shutting down normal game play pushes people away from Eve by redirecting them to less desired activities. The preferred solutions are those which increase game play AND increase player ownership in Eve activities AND encourage consensual pvp with reasons to fight for more resources secured by poses and for benefits to sov secured by various structures, etc.

A stealth bomber is low cost, instant-lock after decloak, and easy to skill into. All it has to do is hold the target until the reinforcements arrive. If it does that, it is effective even if it dies shortly after that because the cost is low and the kill has been assured. Is there anything about that which does not seem effective? Obviously, it won't go after a destroyer which can lock and pop it in seconds, but most higher value ships are quite natural targets because they lock slower and deal damage better against much larger targets. Larger ships may be able to kill the stealth bomber but when it comes to escape from being ganked by large fleets, every second is critical.


The key element for the cloaky is not nearly as much the combat as much as it is the catch. The kill is best assured by composition of the rest of the fleet, whether it consists of non-cloaky ships through a cyno or a blue ball through a covert cyno, etc.
Targeting delay after decloak is a critical issue where the stealth bomber stands out (likely op on this point). While not ideal, even cloaked ships can skip the delay if they decloak shortly before they land on grid. If the sb targeting delay advantage was removed and it had to operate like the rest of the covert ops line-up, they would likely decloak mid-warp as well. This warning of a few seconds would likely change the afk cloaking discussion dramatically.


Constant local monitoring is not trivial and greatly distracts from the op. You could hunt them, if they decloaked, but at that point our discussion moves to afk de-cloaking, an entirely different different subject which is unrelated to the current thread. You could be aware of them, but that is a trivial issue since awareness alone cannot kill them while cloaked.


I disagree, here. 20 cloaked assets are more than enough to execute any gank, and that is not cost prohibitive at all. 5-8 are probably more than enough, tbph. But there are always more options than just cloaked assets, depending on the strategy and all of those options are more than happy with a quick and sure catch for at least 20s. Even if the target can fight back, if there are enough stealth bombers, then multiple small losses are usually easily justified by a large, expensive kill. Players conducting ops do control their ability to fight back, but they do NOT control the ability of the attacker to see their ability and escalate the fleet to the appropriate size required to take them out quickly and easily.

Last note: I get that you are bored with current local mechanics and want more of a thrill there. Personally, I am not bored with it. PVP is challenging enough for me. My guess is that the lack of interaction required with your strip miners is driving you to seek "mini-games" out of complications with local. To be honest, the interaction with pve does not compare with the boredom of strip miner cycling and so those who engage in pve do not share your boredom levels. I would suggest that you get a scanner alt and go hunt pvp or pve with it. Contribute to your intel channels with more specific information and warp-ins with that alt. My suggestion is that you don't try to increase the complexity of a mechanic which is already a fair distraction for those who are engaged in more complex activities, just because the simple activity of mining leaves you bored. Get another character and find more interesting things to do.

If....

I'm sensing an under tone of, "I'm entitled to escape."

Or pop out some god damn ******* scanner probes which have a vastly superior range and have the added bonus that once you get a good enough fix on them you can warp in on them and look at them.

Changing local and intel mechanics so they are no longer combined would remove the mechanic that makes AFK cloaking effective: local. AFK cloaking only works with local as an intel tool that reports everyone in system. Without the one could AFK cloak, but the point of doing it all day while at work vanishes. Nobody is going to know you are there so they'll undock and go about their business. And when you get back to your keyboard you have to do something like pop probes or start d-scanning. Which means you are no longer AFK which is what most people whine about in anti-AFK cloaking threads.

The usual refrain is, "They should be at their keyboards." Okay, they are now at their keyboards, but now the whine changes, "OP, OP!!" Which has some validity to it, so Nikk's suggestion is to add in a method to scan down cloaked ships. The page I've pointed too at least a half dozen times has a number of ways to make AFK cloaking no longer viable including scanning down said AFK cloaked ship.

And before it was "wrecks fleet combat" now it is nobody will fly anything other than cloaking ships. Sooo....fleet combat is going to take place in cloaked ships now? I thought this change would wreck fleet combat. Maybe you should go over your talking points again on this one, it seems rather muddled on where exactly you want to go. Right now it looks like throw **** at the wall, lets see if anything sticks.

And your list, its a joke. It clearly shows that you have absolutely no interest in game balance. Anything that could make active cloaked ships a threat to you and your PvE is Bad™.

And lastly, your approach to "wrecks fleet combat" is insufficient. Sure, some or even many current tactics and strategies might become obsolete. That does not mean that fleet combat cannot evolve to cope with the new intel environment. Here let me give an analogy:

Bob is working on a math problem. Bob can't solve the math problem. Bob concludes the problem has no solution--i.e. the problem is intractable. Bob, goes to class and discovers Roger, Mary, and Kevin all solved the problem. Oooops, Bob's inability to solve the problem was insufficient for his initial conclusion.