Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree that all Local Chats should be like WH space...

Local chat in eve is free intel.

I say change all local chats and make them like WH local chat if u say something then you expose ur self.

Then again CCP has NO BALLS to do this... so I have just wasted my time typing this!

You would have to balance this against the natural cloak bestowed on jumping. You do not want to make it easy for a gate camp to kill people still loading into the system.

This is described specifically, and is not placing gate cloak players at risk.

The device does not detect this effect, in short.

against it i need every sec to survive but another question

if i understand your post right only cloaked vessels dont show up in local correct
if thats so then cloakys should apear in local while in gate cloak even for 10 sec until they aktivate the cloak module

the gate cloak is by all means no cloak its a tool because some players have a bad connection and need more time to load

The gate cloak is not countered by this hunting module, only the cloaks mounted on ships directly.

As to which ships show up in local, that depends on how this would be balanced. My suggested method may surprise you, and is listed in my sig below.

This thread has been restored for further discussion.

Please keep in mind, this thread does not advocate changes in local chat, but reflects a method to hunt cloaked ships.
It is an obvious detail to many, that this could be balanced for game play by modifying local chat in one of many ways, discussed in many other threads.
The key point is that I am not trying to trivialize cloaking, so I stress that this idea relies on whichever path is most practical for such balance.

Nikk

If you're cloaked, you should not show up in local.

Jump through gate or enter kspace from a wormhole, you shouldn't show in local till you uncloak, then once you cloak your ship you vanish from local.

"#1Posted: 2013.02.25 16:46 | Report | Edited by: Nikk Narrel
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This module would require a balance to be in place, in order to not shift the advantage against cloaked play entirely.

I would recommend that since this is a boost to intelligence gathering, in the form of allowing cloaked vessel detection and subsequent predation, a counter be placed to reduce the intel aspect, whose combined effect with this, would otherwise trivialize cloaking.

That being, Local Chat no longer displaying cloaked vessels, whether specific to them or as part of a larger set of changes."

So this topic, has nothing to do with changing local? Yet, its in the title, and in your OP as well?

I've talked about not showing up in local if cloaked and devices for uncloaking ships before. Nothing new.http://www.eve-search.com/thread/351239-1/page/2

Ugh, I smell repeated necromancy, but at least there's still life to this thread.

Firstly, I don't see the point of trying to discuss your specific implementation without your beaten cry to remove local. Without it, cloaky pilots are very visible in local (everywhere but WHs anyway) which makes deployment of 'hunters' far easier in response to a known presence. A change in local is an essential buff to cloakies if you're going to nerf them with a hard counter like this.

Secondly, the module is incredibly niche-
Covops cloaks are capable of being aligned, bouncing safes fairly rapidly, such a module is a mild inconvenience for normal operation. It does tilt gatecamps in the favour of the campers (no burning through a bubble hoping to sneak by an active camp with a hunter around). However, it doesn't prevent incursions past gatecamps, merely limits them to brute force, nullfied T3s/ceptors and bridged fleets, excluding only covops in particular. Do covops need that nerf, are they that unbalanced?

Regular cloaks are fairly rare modules... mainly limited to the odd interdictor and travel fits with room in the highs. These ships already suffer substantial penalties for using their cloaks- reduced velocity, inability to warp while cloaked, need to accelerate to warp when breaking cloak, lengthened lock times. Do they need further nerfing beyond the already serious penalties involved?

Thirdly, for WH players, this substantially effects the state of play- the ability for any number of cloaked ships to be in a system (logged in or otherwise) is part of the WH charm. With the hunter module, a system can be definitively cleared of logged in cloakies and vigilance maintained as to the presence of new ones- a radical change, one that I expect wouldn't be welcome.

It boils down to a fundamental problem- cloaking is a binary thing. As soon as you put the ultimate power in the hands of defenders, e.g. an anti-cloaking 'off button', even if there's severe penalties to the ship capable of doing so, you ultimately render cloaking pointless and instead of balancing things, push cloaking out of the metagame as a useful feature. Offence must always remain marginally more powerful than defence, otherwise stalemate is inevitable.

So, with that in mind, how do we balance cloaking devices to be offensive modules rather than defensive modules? There's some obvious suggestions that have already been made (my favourite being the module generating a small but steady amount of heat- excellent reuse of current game mechanics). This moves cloaking from being a binary perpetual switch to something that cannot be sustained indefinitely- use it or lose it.

With that specific implementation in mind, you get a far more subtle, balanced anti-cloaking module- an AoE module that increases the heat generation of cloaking modules within the vicinity (blah blah tachyon particles making it harder to cloak or something). It doesn't guarantee a decloak immediately, but with sufficient hunting and hounding you can force them to burn out and decloak. Flaws... it's an on-grid thing only, however perma-cloaking is gone so that's less of an issue- they'll appear on d-scan eventually.

This is not about cloaking in itself. It is about being able to hunt cloaked ships if & when that would become balanced.

Oh, and it was already stated this would not exist in WH space at all, so no worries.