Assembly Hall

People are not complaining about seeing an enemy in local, they are complaining about not being able to interact with them, of course that depends on the intentions of the camper, I have an area denial and a smack talker at the moment, smack being more important to him because he was in a T1 frigate with only a cloak fitted, so when we ignored him and operated in the system to make a point he put up mobile depots with his smack on, this enabled me to interact with him, so I started reinforcing his mobile depots and he would pick them up and put them down again, I was out there watching him with two toons cloaked up, I timed his movements as well and he had a pattern, so it was a simple matter to exploit that, one dead T1 frigate.

Now imagine that being a toon linked to PL, there would be no chance of interaction until they dropped on something and their level of escalation is way above anything that I could apply against them, I cannot interact with that person until he drops a large BLOPS fleet on me. You say planning, those PL players may have multiple accounts and have blanketed an area with their cyno toons, so in reality its not planning or skill or anything like that, its just waiting until someone wants to play the game then bang, one dead player.

A stealth bomber is as you say, gank and no tank, in the past I have exploited that, those excellent Test SB's that were in B-7 in late 2010, they were killing ratters, there was three of them, so I got a corp mate to go out in a Apoc and had 3 covert ops cloaked up around him, we got two of them, the fun part is that they escalated by bringing in a cloaked Vagabond to stop us doing that so we killed the Vaga, it was fun, they were playing the game and they had my respect.

Where I am now, we have a large number of Russian players who just leave a Arazu or a Legion in a system hoping that someone would think them AFK and then drop a load of BLOPS on them, so people like me move systems, it does not work on me and the people that listen to our advice, having local means I can see them come in system to afk cloak camp me so I wait a bit then go to another system, after about an hour or two they come in system and its rinse and repeat.

Don't fall down to the level of the gank bears in terms of flippant comments, I have the same contempt for whining idiots that put all their ratting eggs in one basket just as much as I have contempt for those doing blanket area denial AFK cloaky camping in the hope that someone thinks them afk. With the current level of force projection removal of local would be a disaster for Eve.

In the majority of cases Eve PvP is simply getting the drop on the enemy, to be blunt the cloaky afk camping is the most lazy way of doing it.

One of my corp mates was operating in bombers bar fleets, sadly he has now left Eve for good, but I noticed one thing about most of the kills he was on, they were in Providence, doesn't that say something about where Bombers Bar had to operate to get people who were operating in such a way that they were actually in space doing stuff, a lot of people slag off Providence residents, but they were playing the game and they were being camped to hell because of it.

Fact is that the only thing that CCP should do is have a automatic log off for people being inactive for more than say 4 hours, to be honest just recently I seem to get a lot more d/c's then I used to and I have been wondering if this is deliberate policy by CCP, if so I welcome it.

You manage to get this far, only by refusing to acknowledge that this line perfectly describes BOTH sides involved.

You don't balance a game, by selecting only one side for non consensual interaction.
That shifts the balance, and preselects the winner for encounters being involved.

You either choose both, or none. Right now, we have none selected for this.

At the moment I am interacting with the tard who is camping my base system, i manipulated him into giving himself a vulnerability which I exploited to get a kill and now I am ignoring both him and his mobile depots, I know when he is active and when he is not, now he is losing the will to log in his camping toon, aaaah the shame of it. This guy is easy, but not Southern Federation who are now back in the area, they however are fail because they use known to me campers, but part of their game is really area denial, I can move and set traps for them on gates and will do that, I make them have to be active to impact me. But what do I do if swamped in all 12 systems I can use by multiple cloaky campers, that I cannot work out their active times and I know are backed up by an escalation capacity beyond what I can do, simple, I head back to hisec or go to another NPC region.

Renting to me is a fools game, and the most foolish thing you can do is rent a system which is very good truesec and not have alternatives, so at that point they are in trouble. While I have some sympathy that such lame tactics are used against them, they are the creators of their own downfall by their strategic failure. At this point it seems that every man and his dog can do BLOPS. So while in B-7 in 2010/11 we were camped it was not all the time, now the best systems get camped nearly if not all the time...

Now the people who I had discussions on this subject before went on about having to do it because they could not catch anything, well if they cannot catch anything with the interceptors how lame are they now as players, its not about catching anything its about doing something that has no effort.

For a long time now I have thought that the only answer has to be d/c'ing toons that have no activity for a certain period of time, at least that will make people have to be active, I think 4 hours is a good number personally, but other will disagree.

Very simple, the extreme safe nature of nullsec space, with its stations and poses, require us to be able to "afk cloak" because any time we enter in local, most players dock up or hit a pos and then THEY go play candycrush. I don't afk cloak because I WANT to go afk. I do it because local gives too much intel for the defenders. Nobody gets a bomber and says "You know what would be fun? Going afk in space for 72 hours. Yeah I'd love to do that." It's something that we need to do in order to hit our target which has most of the advantages of the "home team."

The issue with you and Dracvlad likewise bring up is the issue of numbers. No you can't do anything about 15 deemers dropping on your hulk. But the way that cov ops ship scale vs t1 counter parts is a risk equation which balances the entire interaction.

a 1 mil t1 frig will wreck a bomber. Likewise a T1 battleship will destroy its blops counter part at a fraction of the cost. So here you have the cloaky ships which have freedom of mobility but at a high cost, and the defensive force that has the home field advantage and can fight, "lose the battle" but still "win the war."

Well an industrial ship shouldn't have pvp capabilities to any reasonable extent. If the presence of someone in local causes the defender to dock up prompting the attacker to "afk cloak" to try to get that interaction, it's pretty simple to see that local is an issue. You can't limit the afk cloaker's ability to remain in system either though. Killing in a bomber takes patience. Maybe i get in system on monday, I have to go on a trip tuesday, I get home wednesday and I'd like not to have to jump 30 jumps back and forth for that when the defender can simply dock up.

Really I think the defender has the issue that they somehow simply expect to be able to be out in space in mining ships and that should be enough effort to keep themselves safe. In essence the suggestion would be "defend yourself." Get pvp ships to protect you. However this isn't a "fun activity" for the defender. If we don't want afk cloakers to cause the defenders to log off we have to remove local. However defenders don't like this as they get no intel.


Well how about this. When you cloak up, you don't show up on local, but at the same time, YOU (the cloaky ship) doesn't see anyone else in local either. Just like a submarine descending, your knowledge is limited to particular instruments as well.

Seraph,

In terms of the BLOPS, I was working out a plan to go after what could be between 2 to 7 BLOPS, so I picked the brain of a ex-Burn Eden player who laid out to me just how tough well fitted BLOPS are, while not everyone is as fanatical or as skilled as Burn Eden, I would say that Stain Empire, one of my targets is not far off of them. The EHP he detailed to me was just to heavy for what I thought we could have on field at the notice required, of course these were extreme fits with specific implant sets, but you have to plan for that level. So I don't really agree with your point on a T1 BS killing a BLOPS easily, it depends on a number of factors, who is using them...

Home field advantage, every single BLOPS drop I have seen ended very quickly and all the attackers off field before anyone could muster a reaction, home field advantage is meaningless in terms of a well executed BLOPS drop.

When PL was dropping fleets of BLOPS into Goon areas the Goons really struggled to catch them, that they did in the end is testement to the organisation of the Goons, however the Goon FC who I spoke to was for an extended period very frustrated over the inability to catch even one, but your right here as once they caught them PL stopped doing it...

The Stain Empire group I was looking at actually drop a fair number of Widows and that really does cause issues in getting hold of them in terms of the reaction forces, its easy when you have a mass of interceptors, but one or two will get jammed out, simple as.

Well of course fittings matter. But line up 10 BLOPS battleships vs 10 T1 battleships with similar fittings, and the latter group should win. Even if they don't hold the field, exchanging 1 for 1 losses or even 2 for 1 will make it costly for the attacker. In the end, as you yourself stated, you need to make it costly for the attacker and they will stop.




So you have an equivalent to local that is that exact, up to date and convenient? I don't think so.

Well you are right, it won't be similar fittings. The T1 BS fits will be more DPS and tank oriented.

Using dotlan is no where similar to using local as an intel tool. They just don't compare. The point is moot.

I sat down with the ex-Burn Eden guy and went into details with the fittings and implants, and I cannot get anywhere near that tank, its no competition. But I am not going to detail the fits either.

So you don't think that a cloaked up ship not showing in local knowing someone is active in system while the ratter does not know he has a cloaker is balanced, now of course he could sit down and do head counts every so often on that map data, but that is really more of a hit and miss affair then what the cloaker has to deal with, Dotlan NPC kKlls Delta. We know how many in space, how many in system, so he would have to check the station(s) and ask people and in any case many of his own people may be cloaked, so its a really bad idea.

And you ignored the lag impact comment too.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=112964

Interesting ideas, I like it.