Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Nikk, your own posts through most of this thread have constantly tried to imply that a covops ship is weaker than your normal ship. Though this statement is true, you have tried to use it as a leverage point in regards to blocking any attempt at suggesting changes to cloak. This is where I find misrepresentation of the facts. IF CCP were to remove cloak, then yes the ship and that class of ship would be useless. However no one in this thread has suggested anything of that nature. You also seem to imply that any attempt at hunting a cloak would destroy this class of ship. I also find this disingenuous to the topic at hand.

IF you are an active pilot, almost all of the suggestions made in this thread would have very little impact on your functions. Amazingly enough the only person that would be truly effected would be the AFK camper. Imagine that.

Though on the ad hominem statement. I do believe you are using that term wrong. I am not attacking you when I question things like if you are a miner, or point out that misrepresentations of information. They might be harsh, and directed at you but there is validity in every one of the statements. Ad hominem would be if I called you a jerk in response to one of your comments. That I have not done. Though, I just have one question. Are you a null sec miner?

And what difference does it make if you kill a PVE ship cause of pilot error or not? I dont understand this. Isnt a kill just another kill? Are you going to refund the pilot his money if he made a mistake when you killed him?

As for AFK camping not existing in low and high. Well that has less to do with being expected and having everything to do with the fact that there is consequences for actions up there. In high sec if you gank someone, Concord pays you a visit. Low sec does fall into that area or expected violence however the fact that an AFK camper cant target a specific group is more likely why its not an issue up there. Like I said. I feel that the campers are trying to be trolls to specific groups and they know they can cause there is nothing those people can do about it.

Though overall 90% of what we have been bantering over has no bearing on the AFK camping issue.

Or someone attempting to appear AFK. Thats what you're not getting.

If i cant appear to be inactive at the same time as being undetectable, my targets can quickly discover whether im either active, easily disposed of or how long i can stick around. The only uncertainty is how much time the cloaker can remain in system before being destroyed or forced to leave. All the while ratters stay safe indefinitely. The ratters are even told the moment i leave and that its safe to rat. They are also told the moment i return and that they should dock again.

Im all for removing the complete safety of cloaks, but at the same time something needs to be done about local. Or just leave it all as it is.



No,there would be nothing stopping me targeting a specific group in low sec. Many low sec groups are not nomadic. AFK camping does not happen in low and high because of the expectations of neutrals in local chat.

- In high, you have the protection of CONCORD and on top of that neutrals are so common players dont even pay them any attention. You can afk cloak during a war dec however....because you are highlighted as a threat in local.

- In low, the neutral cloaker can dock up anywhere, cloak up anywhere, cant be bubbled etc etc. The amount of work required to combat a cloaker in low is so high that you may as well just rat with the expectation of PvP, or go else where. In fact, low sec ratters are so uncommon, such small fish, so alert and so content with flying PvP ready or leaving, AFK cloaking low sec systems is often not worth the cloakers time.

- In null, the inability for non-friendlies to easily travel through null because of bubble camps and docking rights etc encourages an expectation of safety to the ratter. They expect to be able to rat safely despite the fact that a neutral in null is just as much a threat as a neutral in low sec. The perceived danger is that much lower than in low sec, they rat in pure PvE fit battleships or AFKtars.

This means; big fish, occasional low attentiveness, dont work together, risk aversion etc etc AFK cloaking is far more effective and worth while against such players.

NIkk this is the type of junk that drives me crazy and why I continue to say you misrepresent stuff. You are looking for me to confirm my view that I think an AFK camper is an obstacle to a player? When in my posts did I even make an illusion that I thought that might be the case. I dont think they are an obstacle to players at all. I personally think they are trolls sitting in a system looking to harass groups of people and I think they are wasting their time. I have never seen any corp fall apart cause some camper was in their system.

Do I think the PVE players on this thread have made good points on why they wish to remove them. Absolutely. Do I think PVP players have made good points against it. Yes. I do feel the PVE players have made a better case.

And no, I dont find it bizarre. I just wanted to answer to see if you were a high sec or null miner.

As for what I would suggest? I would suggest ripping cloak from the game. I see it as a drug that people have gotten addicted to. People use it for everything. Cloak on every single ship that can fit it. My trade in high sec depends on people losing ships, needing more alts, and generally blowing crap up. Last thing I want is a safe ship. However we will never see this happen.

LOL LOL seriously???? How are any of these statements remotely true? Just more junk logic.

Please explain to me, how anything can put pressure on a cloaked ship? The only possible way would be at a gate and several people have already pointed out that is the most dangerous time for a cloak ship, or any ship for that matter. Those are also situations outside the topic of AFK cloaking.

I dont honestly care what happens to cloak. I think its bad for the game in general but thats just how I feel. Overall I think Delegate, Nikk and Haywoud all had come to a pretty solid conclusion on alterations to cloak and local. You dont want my ideas cause they are drastic.

Only reason I jumped in on the thread was I was annoyed at the misrepresention of certain issues. Pretty well illistrated from the junk quoted above.

Making cloaks probable would put pressure on cloaked ships.



And by your own admission, self serving.

Idea about getting tracked by sleepers - best idea ever. Let say that if you are more than (random) 15-40min in the same spot cloaked , there is 10% chance that sleepers will show up to check what is hiding from them.

What only needs to change is to create ability to logout even with aggro timer if you are in cloak.
So you can do safe logout , when you have aggro and active cloak.

This is game , and RL aggro must be above any in game mechanic.

Was expecting to find this thread somewhere.

AFK Cloaking is AFK Area Denial it's often more effective to have 1 guy afking for a day in cloak than having roaming gangs cause havoc in a system.

I guess I'm industry mainly but I do like to reship and look for fights when there is a gang or soloer about - even if I get blapped I will learn something from the experience and getting blown up is part of the fun! Content for all I say.

However reading past changes made to discourage afk in mining and other activities makes me wonder why there isn't something out yet to counter this form of system denial.

Now Im not calling for an end to hot dropping or anything here (I actually find them funny and if people are too slow / dont use dscan to see something coming more fool them when the Redeemers and Panthers come out to play) but there should be a way to combat the cloaked afk alts that some of these guys use.

It also seems to be different types of players that abuse it - We've been visited by many lovely hotdroppers and the most successful (without dropping names) have been active pilots who swoop in - find a bear in an anom or belt - swoop in and drop before they react.

1 Dropper took out several billion of ratting ships around the areas recently in 1 week (before getting baited and losing his gang) and he would actively jump between systems and areas and catch people out. Hes gained some notoriety and respect even as a "bad guy"

In comparison we're currently being visited by a cloaky camp who has been in the area for 2 weeks now with 0 kills, tackles or cynos to his/her name. This one is simply viewed as a derp yet could be considered more effective than the 1st dropper as his/her afk camping causes a system to shut down.

I also have Cov Ops ships and I enjoy them as they are so I don't think just nerfing cloaks with cap costs or timeouts is really of any use.

A new player deployable structure could be a "fun" and active way to combat the problem (and provide more content). Dropped like an MTU it could enhance the players ships DScan and combat probes while in range allowing it to detect and display "Shadows" on the readout. If you want to get more technical you could use some technowaffle saying it uses a hyper advanced form of "something" or something which bounces off objects even when cloaked.

This structure would then have a secondary use which when activated sends out a pulse in a 25km radius (maybe less even?) disabling the cloaks of any ships caught within it.

You could even make the activation / deploy timer something ridiculous like 5 minutes - remember im not against cloaky campers who are active it is a legitimate way to play after all. This way the only things you would catch with this deployable is the true afk derps, any other person would have seen your structure and left or dropped you already.

Mobile Detection Unit

This scanner once deployed and activated in space greatly enhances the on board scanners and detection equipment of ships within it's range.

Directional Scans are able to detect "Shadows" which are cloaked objects in space, in addition Combat Scanner Probes launched within the Units influence can also detect these "Shadows" however due to the intensity of the scanning equipment they can only operate in a pinpoint formation of 0.25au - again makes the process slow and painful and allows any active cloakers to simply move away.

Activating the MDU produces a Pulse which can travel for a maximum of 25km and disrupts the cloaking systems of ALL ships within it's range and temporarily increasing the vessels signature radius by 1000%

Cannot be deployed within 100km (maybe?) of Stargates - got to be fair to active cloakers!

The whole point is for it to be sucky and slow so the only people it catches out are afk all stars. Everyone else can just see it coming and move slightly.

I'll probably be hotdropped for days for suggesting this :D But like I've said too many times already I take no issue at all with hotdropping or cloaking in general - just the little minority who log in for days afk with cloak engaged.

I see this thread is a useful lightning rod that prevents the overflow of "afk cloaking" threads and keeps them all in one place where...

Has anyone who would -do- anything (besides add even more posts to the thread) even posted? No blue tag or anything after all the pages. I'm sure they appreciate it (see above).


Oh yeah, I've afk cloaked. I'll make sure to link all the guys down in the south to this thread before i go afk tomorrow.

Being able to get to a safe, cloak and then afk is important when you might not be able to otherwise leave and people are angrily trying to stop you shooting their structures.

This is my thinking about allowing destroyers to hunt for cloakies with a paired module of some kind of space SONAR and also a remote SONAR so that at least 2 destroyers are required. They would only be able to scan a cloaky if it is actually active i.e. some module other than the cloak running. Only then would some emissions be produced that would be detectable.

This would be balanced whereby the locals could put pressure on the cloaky whilst (s)he is active but if (s)he is hull down in deep space (s)he could not be scanned whether (s)he was at the keyboard or not. This would then allow for another layer to cloaky play where the locals can scan and best guess if the cloaky is active or not, but also allows the cloaky to be there and simply increasing paranoia for some reason. AFK cloaked still remains a valid tactic but locals can at least verify safety (or think they have...).

How does that work for AFK station occupants? Should we purge them into space after some timeout period?

Maybe everyone is looking at it wrong. Perhaps the cloaked ship should automatically join a special C6 sleeper unit and randomly attack everyone in the system. Nothing should be 100% safe in eve.

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Anyways, it appears from most "solution" providers to this "problem" that it should be turned into an opportunity for a kill. IMHO, that is not a solution to a problem, but a way to bump something else.

This completely disregards the true nature of the problem, which is simply the knowledge of a cloaked ship being around. THAT does not even make any sense. "There is an invisible person in the room, I want to find that person." - sounds very much like the old poem "Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there."

I am all for removing revelation in local, in order to help the people experiencing this as a problem. This works wonders in wormholes and would work just as well in low and null security space. People does not want this because they want what has been referred to as "free intel", and frankly there is no other reason to reveal characters in local, is there?