Assembly Hall

Really doesn't mean much coming from some nullbear in FA whose pvp experience is "orbit anchor, lock primary, F1."

So being AFK cloaked (which btw someone that's afk can't harm you) is bad because no one can get you but being afk in station and completely safe is ok.

Honestly let's just speak the truth here. You want to do your pve in peace. If you wanted to fight cloakers, you'd set bait and fight them. There is no way to "interact afk cloakers" without messing with cloaking to the point where it's crap. Why should all the advantages go to the big guys with the stations defending? Give the little guy a chance to pick his fights before you can blob him.

Where is the increased risk to the PvE player?

Your suggestion does nothing more than increase the chances a cloaked player could be shot at, by a more capable opponent.
Or they could leave, if they cannot maintain a level of defense requiring active play.

The consideration that they came to attack PvE assets is not only disregarded, but set back considerably as a potential.

When I jump into an exhumer, I do NOT want a science fiction version of a farming game.
I feel that the idea that the only defense is to have PvE players avoid, or be spared contact with cloaked play, diminishes both sides.

This is entirely disingenuous, the only question I have remaining is whether you are aware of it.

PvE players in sov null, where this has impact, are only relevant to being affected by AFK cloaking if they avoid all attempts at combat.
If they are interested in fighting, or simply not afraid to operate with a hostile for whatever reason, the cloaked player has zero negative impact on them.

They often want that hostile there, to spice up an otherwise dull asteroid or NPC grind.

Keep in mind the foundation of this game, interaction.
We make ISK, so that it can be spent on advancing our interaction, and as such is considered as a valid target for other players.
When you put in place something requiring preparation, that preparation becomes translated into leverage against your opponents.
You have the bigger ship, with the better weapons, and the more powerful ammunition. This gives you an advantage in the fight.

Your opponent is also seeking an advantage, so if they know you are saving up ISK to kill them more effectively, they are allowed and encouraged to stop you if they can.

Sov null space has player supported protections in place. Extremely effective ones at that, which has led many players to the wild assumption that they must own the space with their name on it.
All they own is the right to lock out the non-allied players from docking in certain outposts, or building a POS locally. That is it.
This leverage is very successful, because other players must rely on staging outside of this controlled area.
Then, to reach the controlled area they either need massive forces to overcome gate camps, or cleverness.

Massive force, or blobs, can't reach PvE targets. As is obvious, they simply leave before the massive force can reach them.

As EVE is not simply a blob vs blob game, but a very complex set of options for both sides, threatening your enemy and hurting their means to build ships and weapons is a needed tactic.

if we neuter cloaking tactics further than they already are, we will entrench even further the big blocks in sov, as only blob vs blob tactics will remain on the table.

I believe this to be bad for the game.

Giving AFK cloaking such a high importance and implying it to be "the final bastion" against the blue doughnut and blob warfare is extremely far-fetched and clearly not a serious meant argument. The frustration of the current state of sov-mechanisms shines through in that argument, and I can sympathize with it because we all feel the same - something should be done about it. And something is cooking at CCP, so lets see what happens! But keeping AFK cloaking without risk is not what is needed to fix EVE. If it was EVE would not be broken in the first place.

Seraph, you finally had an argument! Good! Timing, it's all about timing. I agree. And I think there should be a possibility to disrupt that timing, if you AFK cloak. If you want to achieve timing in your decloak-targeting-scram-covertcyno-BOB-kill chain, you can still do that but you have to work a bit more; check d-scan everyv30 minutes and warp to a new safespot if you see AFK-cloaky-detection-probes out. Safelog when you go to sleep, or fly home. Thats all. Not to hard, eh?!

AFK cloaking without risk has no place in EVE since there should always be a risk when playing EVE. Those who can not achieve what they are acheiving today without AFK cloakingdeserve to have their AFK cloaked ships killed.

I'm more convinced than ever that EVE Online needs a mechanism for players to impose a threat to AFK cloakers!

THIS.

It has been repeatedly proven that PvE players can avoid patrol styled hostiles, who simply sweep through constellations.
If the intel channels did not warn them, then seeing a hostile name in local served that need.
Are some PvE players caught, despite sincere efforts?
NO.
They were either AFK, and an unmonitored client was encountered, OR they screwed up by never made proper efforts to begin with.

In simplest terms, any PvE player can avoid a hostile entering their system if they do it right.

To imply the secondary tactic, camping the PvE player in their own system, requires some kind of limitation without a balancing aspect, that only makes PvE even safer than before.

By asking that cloaked player to leave, you are effectively telling them that the stalemate won't be broken, so can they please leave for no reason.

After all, if they could use this camping to successfully catch you, that WOULD validate it as a successful tactic.

So, a new game is created:
Are they really there?
Option 1: No, feel free to PvE in safety.
Option 2: Yes, and they might catch you.

You want to believe option 1, but you are so afraid of option 2, that you are posting here to get rid of it entirely.

I don't recall asking that AFK Cloaking should be kept in the game at all, particularly risk free.

Maybe you assumed I meant it should?

I did point out that it served a purpose, regardless of how mad it makes you.

I want genuine risk for both sides, while you seem to be arguing for one side exclusively.

You say: That cloaked ship has no risk, and this is wrong.
I am saying: That PvE player who can effectively avoid all hostile contact, they are also wrong.

We can both link kill mails showing how both sides have suffered losses.
I can provide links to lottery results showing how people beat those odds too.
None of these links would take you to a practical method of achieving a win, in either context.

I have played on both sides of this fence, and while noone can claim to read the minds of the devs, I have found both sides to be more than capable of avoiding risk.

They both have the ability to cherry pick encounters, one by staying cloaked, the other by remaining docked or behind POS shields.

Neither trusts the other not to hot drop, so a straight fight is often avoided as a result.

If a change is applied to only one side, then the other will be affected to the opposite degree.
(We know they are in that most frustratingly ultimate form of balance, called a stalemate, currently)

I think we need a solution that gives both sides more risk, in exchange for a path to resolving these stalemates in a realistic time frame.

Well, thats the point and this is actual contest between hunter and its pray. If pray stays vigilant and see a warning sign in time, than she will be ok. Thats still implies you will have to press dscan all the time, while cloacker still can safely stay in passive afk mode indefinetly. That means pressing dscan, like, for hours, in any system you will see someone in local, but not in dscan. This thing is tedious, I mean, sometimes you will be distracted, sometimes you will just forget. Thus cloaker will preserve his role of hunter waiting for careless enough victim. And you still can disrupt your enemy's activities, like, demonstratively going into active mode conveying to all who cares that the system is now under your and your friends' control. So they will either will have to look for cover, or will gather some meeting party and cloakers will get some content, which - as it's usually claimed - they are actually after.

You probably missed this piece - according to this idea, dscan never will tell you direction or distance to cloaking ship, there will only be some additional indicator which will light up when there is cloacking vessel in active mode in d-scan range. Usual techniques, like narrow-beaming, won't work in this case. It will be pretty hard to triangulate it without those in most cases.
But in case if you stay at one place in active mode - yes, you will be scanned down. But if you'll be switching spots on regular basis, you'll be mostly safe even while staying in active mode - thats actually what I intended to achive. If cloacker want to really threaten his victims and disrupt all operations in the system, he have to be atk, in active cloaking mode, switching spots to evade cloak-busting scanning equipment.

So both these main applications of AFK cloaking - disruption of operations and hunting - will still work quite well, but now they require active participation from cloacker to work as intended, and they allow those victims who are vigilant enough to evade being caught - which actually leads to more content for hunters as numbers of those who will just go out and try their best will increase. Because, as today, if you don't have big guys backing you up atm (or at all) with their jump drives fired up, and you see some familiar face in local whom you know as 100% cloaked hotdropper, you just safe up and wait, or jc somewhere else. So, no content for hunters, and distruption of operations of any entity smaller than you with no actual effort for other party.

Edited: but it will be even more intresting contest if "hunter" could get some method of checking is his "pray" diligently scans her surrounding, or not. Like some kind of radar system which registers any dscan attempts in dscan range (dscan probably implies active radar system, so it should radiate some energy that can be registered by other party, lore-wise). So you can wait for some oblivious victim in passive mode, just checking this "d-scan meter", or you can study her "d-scan pressing patterns" and find some holes in them, in which you could switch to active mode and get her.
This new feature could be made available only to "inherently cloaking" vessels (and mb even only when they are actually cloacked), like covops, recons etc. So hunter can register each victim's dscan attempt, but victim - can't.

AFK Cloaking is a no-risk venture you say? Okay.. well, I guess until he has to uncloak to attack. That's the exact moment he becomes at risk. The person is also at risk every time he changes system.

Now you'll say "Not if he comes in via cover cyno" and I'll counter with "Someone has to light that beacon in the first place.".

The problem is that afk cloacker in most cases is an atacker, and other side plays the role of helpless victim, a harmless pray, in most of the cases - this actualy why most cloakers are here, and not in the, say, goon or nc. space - they need easy kills, devoid of risks. So there is no such thing as "afk cloaker risk" or "defense of victim". When victim sits at outpost/POS she isn't "has taken defensive position", she already lost battlefield for cloaker without him contributing any efforts.

Simply because of cloaker's presence any ratting activities start to not worth time spent on them. You could go do some missions, but you can be easly caught on gate as you don't have a slightest hint is cloaker active or not, and with current mechanics he can attack anytime, almost instantly. And even if you have reached mission site in one piece, you can't guarantee you will finish it untill combat probes will apear. And after you've seen them even once and managed to warp out, you have to drop this mission immidiately, it isn't safe anymore to return here - because if hunter managed to scan it down, you won't see any warning signs next time you will try to return here and continue, and will be caught. And that also means that you have to stop running missions for an hour, at least, to bore him off your tail. Or call it a day. Or jc to HS to run incursions (most probable outcome) - you have your operations effectively disrupted, even if cloaker went to bed soon after that, you either already far away from here, or you just don't want to bother and try anymore, as you feed up of this games and spending your times for nothing without any gain, while losing your standings with agents. So again, the problem of hunter having all the initiative on his side.

With combat sites it even worse - those can be easly scanned beforehand, so you just won't even try if local shows familiar face. In best case you will be allowed to spend some time to clear most of the rats and then they will overtake site from you.

This is so at least for smaller entities, which don't have developed logistics and SRP to ease their losses. Loss of ratting ships for them is a big deal and often means hours and days of waiting for another one, efforts spent on buying and assembling all the parts by players themselves etc. And they don't have any counter-hot drop defense parties ready to save them anytime and to create any risks for cloaked hot-droppers. Thats why my idea from before adds this new pre-atacking stage when cloaker must transfer from passive to active state, to at least issue some warning signs to its pray. If I knew that I can at least do something to protect myself after my mission complex was compromised, or while running [probably prescanned] combat site, I could actually try to accept the challenge and risk my ship - because in this case I at least have some chance of winning. Without that I won't even try and jc to empire to run incursions. Which takes us to current situation in nulls.

The problem is not that some people can't tolerate some risk - they can - the problem is that only a few want to participate in "fights" they have no chance to win at all (and by "fights" here I imply not actual fight between cloaker + his friends against ratting pray - which will end bad for pray almost always - but contest when pray tries to stay vigilant and aware and hunter tries to find a loophole in her awarness). They don't want to spend hours and hours on reassembling and delivering new ships and for additional ratting to cover their losses, just to deliver some easy "fast-food" "content" for other party.