Assembly Hall

Pointing out that cyno jammers are not effective against blops, was never a point of debate.
If all you have to worry about are overpriced and inefficient ships trying to attack you, then your problems are manageable.

SOV Null is a unique play area, as you can deny unwanted pilots docking rights at much needed outposts.
Pointing out that you cannot cyno-jam NPC space is also pointless, as you cannot effectively use local there any more than you can in high sec, as non-allied ships are expected in this area.
NPC space, like low sec, is unsecured by nature. The moment a non allied ship can safely dock in that outpost, your control is reduced to moment by moment ability to use strength of force over all.
Solo or small groups operating here do so expressly at their own risk, for obvious reasons.

As to being unable to prepare a defense against hot droppers, this is a strange perspective.
The real fact is that you cannot predict when other players are going to show up and attack you, in this MMO.
As it is intended to be.

Being able to use local as an early warning system is an emergent form of play, that makes other groups of players extremely limited as to how they can threaten deliberately evasive targets.
Can these players jump gate by gate, and reasonably expect to find and attack ships that would want to avoid them?
NO.
Any alliance not totally offline would have at least enough players at key choke points to at least notice passing traffic, and report this into intel channels. The fact that they can do this while safely docked, and never need to worry about local reporting this presence faithfully, means that the intel is flawless up to the point where someone simply needs to see a new name, and paste it into another channel.
If they can't do this much, get out.

Suggesting that this demonstrated as incapable method should be the only means to threaten targets, is effectively expecting privacy in an MMO.

If you want to compete, and play a game to determine if you notice them before they can ambush you, that is different, but please be more reasonable than simply expecting hot dropping to be flat eliminated.

This.

The reason hot drops keep resurfacing, is that cloaking by itself is ineffectual as a means to engage PvP outside of a too limited set of circumstances.

This issue, in my opinion, resembles a rock paper scissors chart, up to a point.

Regular PvP ship beats cloaked vessel.
Cloaked vessel beats PvE ship.
PvE ship immune to regular PvP ship due to intel.

Nothing actually beats the regular PvP ship, but it is also the easiest to avoid for most.

In my opinion, PvP does need to be encouraged, in this context.
Regular PvP ships have each other, and are thus satisfied.
In my opinion, cloaking ships and PvE ships need to be balanced more closely, and given incentive to confront each other.
The cloaking ship is the seeming counter for the PvE pilot, as the friendly PvP ships block the unfriendly PvP ships.

I would really like to see cloaked and PvE more able to fight, with both sides positive about the encounter, and have this be the normal state of affairs.

Intel is a prickly issue, with so many sides and conflicting perspectives.

Some believe intel should be free of effort, it should be automatically be reported to you for your consideration.
The problem here is that you are giving everyone perfect intel all the time, and the ability to relay this is not challenging for most.
(No risk example of a person safely docked in an outpost, able to relay system entries into a channel for intel)
The downside, since no competition is possible to learn of presence, the ability to avoid contact need only concern itself with reacting to this provided data.
With perfect warnings comes perfect defense potential, and with everyone defended this well we have stalemates.

Others believe that intel has value in game, the more so if it requires effort to obtain.
An effort based system, reasonably, would include at least a toggle that would persist for a time period, or until warp was engaged. The need to ping each and every time would quickly be replaced by popular demand, in my opinion.
If you need to toggle on your sensors after coming out of warp, you compete by needing to remember this and repetitively perform this action reliably.
Those who forget, risk being caught unprepared.
It MIGHT seem trivial to some, but keep in mind that human nature is very adaptive. Players who have not seen recent hostile contact may eventually feel they can skip it if they are only going to be on grid briefly, and this expectation that protection is not needed can eventually be a defensive flaw.

I believe that players seeking to place limits and restrictions upon cloaks, but not upon the intel cloaks are the counter for, seem to be guilty of not considering the shift in balance they would inflict.

Yeah this is where the "if they're AFK they can't hurt you" thing falls on its ass. It is exactly this mechanic which hurts you. When I'm AFK'ing my bombers I'll usually be doing something on an alt, switching over every now and then to run a scan, for targets.

To answer the previous question in your quote regarding which mechanic they're using, its the mechanic which doesn't indicate whether someone is AFK or not and the ability to scan without any knowledge of the target after coming back from AFK.

If there was a mechanic which dimmed the icon in local after a certain period of inactivity or when docked that would be nice IMO.

There has to be a balance between the disruption you can cause and the ease of causing it. Consideration must also be given to the ability to cause constant disruption even when not actively playing the game.

Currently because you cannot tell if someone is afk or not all you have to do is put an alt in the system, even better if it has a history of hotdrops, and you logically bring that system to a standstill while your not at the computer. While this is fine, that's entirely what my corporation does, we afk cloak people, it is too powerful in its current form and needs a bit of a nerf, if not by nerfing cyno's then it'd have to be by nerfing cloaking.

I'd prefer the former.

What you are not considering is the aggressors intel.

I can put a cloakie in a system and leave it there indefinitely. During that time I can use the full availability of local to get my intel.

I can identify a ship I want to drop. I can warp to it. Use look at, determine what weapons, drones it's using. I can relay that information back to my BLOP's team as well as any pilot information in local. We can look those pilots up, determine what threat they are if any. Jump the gang in, kill the pilot and leave all the while denying anyone in local any details of the gang and cloakie ship.

You're trying to justify the aweful mechanics of cloaky cynos by using freedom of information but the cloakie cyno is the ultimate in hiding its own info.

Thats called an imbalance.

Except you're using the free warnings yourself. It's hypocritical and in no way balanced IMO. It's simply a way to get easy kills with no risk. Identical to using local to avoid the same risk.

I haven't read a single post in this thread but I bet I could guess every point and argument used.

Then please lets here your comments and suggestions on a balance that would increase interaction.

Yes that would be the ultimate fix. The issue is not that people don't want to fight in many cases, it's that they know if they do it's very likely to end in disaster.

Case in point - we had 5 Southern Fed guys come down to our area to kill us. Killed one, the other ran. Next day 10 came back so we prepare and I jump my alt into their hub, D-scan, Avatar and 20 guys at a moon. While not specifically an AFK problem the issue goes hand in hand.

If you are a smart player you have to assume worst case scenario. I assume all afks are cyno fit until killed and proven otherwise.