Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So cloaked ships are having it hard to stay completely invisible before they decloak at there own leisure and attack?

Completely balanced game mechanic. No counters and no time constraints. Attacks are initiated when all risks and doubts have been assessed and completely eliminated.

I fail to understand why every pilot and there dog aren't flying a cloaked ship. Maybe cause there haven't been a proper DPS cloaked boat. But wait next patch they are giving us that. Perfect then we are set. Just have to somehow convince CCP to remove cloaked ships from local then we can roam undetected, cyno past camped gates, take lol screenshots camping miners before decloaking and popping them in 4 volleys.

I think we should put cov-ops cloaks on all ships in this game. Then we can all pvp like it was intended. Find a unsuspecting pray and gank them with no risks involved.

I wish CCP adds these changes. Brilliant ideas, cant wait till it happens.

*facepalm*

How exactly do you know somebody is cloaked in your ratting system?

I'm so sick of this. It is like you want to have perfect safety at all times.

"I don't dare undock because I don't know if somebody is out there!!!!!!"

Undock in a velator for God's sake. You have a brief period of immunity, use it to see if the undock is clear.

I do that now when there are non-blues in system. If the undock is clear, hit d-scan. If you see nohting align out to a safe (preferably a POS, and align only so you can redock if necessary, when you're aligned at a speed where you'll go into warp instantly, hit warp). Then once at the safe, deploy probes (if at a POS go to a safe away from the POS) and scan the system. You want to have perfect knowledge and get it with zero effort. That is lazy and bad game play.

As for the time from gate cloak to cloak module, you'd show up on any intel infrastructure that is currently being used. For example, the page I've linked includes constellation gate recorders, so you'd show up on those when you passed through a system that had that kind of infrastructure. Same with the IFF beacons.

As for NPC null, something similar would have to be put in place but players there could not change it. High sec could have the very best intel in every system. And in both cases anyone entering that space would have access to the intel, whereas in sov null, only the sov holder would have access. Although an invading force might have a smaller less strudy mobile intel structure they could deploy with limited intel, basically a listening post kind of thing.

Edit: Also, with an intel infrastructure you'd know what is outside the station so long as it isn't cloaked. Yes a cloaked fleet could be hiding out there, but then you wouldn't see that anyways even with a window and where local is turned into just a chat channel. The bottom line is, you are in null, you accept that there is going to be risk when you are not docked in station....and if we change intel mechanisms and make it so a cloaked ship can be hunted down, this would be true even for cloaking ships.

Clearly your corp mate had the chance to take out 2 of the opponents cause whoever attacked him didn't use proper tactics to EW him. That was a flaw in there attack. But if a proper attack was planned your corp mate would have had no chance to respond and would have gone down like a helpless victim.

Your clearly clueless about game balance. Cloaked attacks are lopsided and imbalanced. Simply because the attacker have the unlimited time frame to assess the situation and make a choice when to attack and that the defender cant see it coming. If you cant understand this simple fact your clearly not dropping the hint that this exact game feature is not a good game feature in by any standards other then inside your head.

Cloaking in EVE is a bad game feature that seriously needs a rebalance as it at this point is being abused to a point where people are desperately screaming for a fix on the forums. In by itself it is a very interesting game feature providing a new way of doing combat. But as there are no counters it is simply over powered.

A list of cloaking mechanics in other games and there counters listed:
Star Craft. Cloaking can be countered by using anti cloaking units.
DoTa. An item can be used to see cloaked heroes.
FPS games like Crysis, cloaked targets are only partly invisible and can still be spotted.
Homeworld. Anti cloaking ship can be used to see cloaked ships.
List goes on...

EvE online... no counter :/ oh ya you can see them in local, but who cares. Go complain about fixing it in a thread related to the topic.

Just because your using a ship with a cloak it doesn't make you special. It shouldn't be invulnerable in space. Get the hint. No ship should be invulnerable in open space. Not even ships that are designed to cloak. Let me repeat that for ya so you get it. All ships in space should be vulnerable, even cloaked ones. Even if the pope himself was piloting it.

There is no point arguing as it seams all your doing is to argue for the arguments sake. Your not looking for a balanced fix, your here to respond on everything anyone has to say. All this about local and whatever else is out there in eve is the reason we shouldn't fix this imbalanced cloaking is just pointless. Sooner or later it will have to be addressed, its just unfortunate that its not higher up on CCPs priority list. Maybe if we keep bumping this thread it might become clearer to them that this is a more series problem then they think of it. Hopefully we will see a fix sooner then 2020.

I have been killed and podded in a nanofiber'd velator in Amarr system. Couldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. A near instant undock warp bookmark did not allow enough time to enter warp after the warp click before I was locked and pointed. After the ship was killed, docking was not an option due to timers and delays, and warp out was still not fast enough. Imagine if I had been in null where bubbles are possible. Do you still believe your Velator strategy is a good counter for my question?

So now cloaking is to blame for e-war too?

If you are this timid, then you don't belong in null at all. Seriously, you do realize local would be replaced with a separate intel mechanic, right? Or are you being a deliberately obtuse bonehead and assuming I mean simply remove local?

good thing i know your idea's will never gain CCP support... so I won't have to think about leaving null.

In general this is true, but in this specific case local showing a hostile elicits a different form of player behavior than if local were clear. This is true in all cases. After determining the guy in local is not on d-scan from any part of the system most players will keep their PvE assets docked. You have said so yourself. So, in this specific case local is what drives AFK cloaking. It is via local that such players influence others (in null). So while this bromide is in general true, in this specific case we can conclude causation.



They may have been designed separately, but that does not mean AFK cloaking and local have not become inextricably linked. Much like trying to unscramble scrambled eggs. Removing AFK cloaking reduces risk and makes local an even better intel tool because then there is no way to dilute its usefulness, there is no counter. Which makes all the cries for counters for cloaks hilarious. I would also suggest that many of the players making these counters for cloaks arguments know this and are arguing out of their own personal self interest. Yes, logically that doesn't make them wrong, but their arguments should be viewed with greater skepticism.



Local and AFK cloaking are inextricably linked. Local as it is now will lead to AFK cloaking. AFK cloaking implies that there is some method of letting players know you are there while remaining undectable--i.e. local. The causation runs both ways. One implies the other. You keep saying they are not linked, but you then admit that it is because of local that you change our behavior.

Oh, and how exactly do you know, given current mechanics, you have an AFK cloaker in your system. Your semantic dance is mildly impressive, but you failed to answer the question. As did xcom, probably because he knows the answer is not going to help his argument one bit.

And lets think of it this way.

Lets suppose cloaked ships are removed from local. I show up in your preferred PvE system. You aren't there. Nobody is there. So I cloak and go to work.

How will you know I'm there?
If you don't know I'm there, that is, you think the system is empty, what will you do?

I'm guessing you'll argue something like this: I don't know who is there so I'll simply move back to high security space. Which proves my point. You currently rely on local for intel and by watering it down AFK cloaking without local is pointless as you'll go harvest resources where AFK cloaking makes no impact (high sec).

Another person may answer: Well, I wouldn't know your ship was in system so I'd undock and go about my business. Which again proves my point: AFK cloaking without local is pointless as this person would harvest resources blissfully unaware by ship was sitting at a safe cloaked.

I would argue that having cloaked ships removed from local would mean that every cloaked pilot in null would be at his keyboard. Which is completely ironic in that is what many of the anti-AFK cloak crowd claim they want, but something like this they reject out of hand. Which again strongly implies their position is based on self-interest and not game balance.