Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Seems to me to be a classic case of using the wrong tool for the job.


That's the plan. If you can hide from everything, you're going to have to spend time preparing before you can attack, giving people time to notice the fact and get out.

Or you can just admit that your idea is awful. vOv


Lots of ifs and buts just to point out a minor detail (which still requires vigilence to notice), while ignoring the gaping hole his proposal shoots in nullsec.

Yeah, let me just point out how I'm not a carebear in nullsec, my carebearing is limited to hisec. When I log on in nullsec, it's to join ops. The only part of these idiotic changes of Ingvar's which'd affect me in any way, shape or form, is the fact that nullsec would become even emptier than it already is.

What's next, I'm a botter? Oh wait, Ingvar's already covered that angle.

Heh, "no local means everyone's safer until actual intel is uncovered". You mean intel like, say, someone getting blown up by a gang no-one saw because camping gates for several hours a day, every day, is so much fun?

You know, I think you should get your nose checked, because what I have an "inner issue" with is making a module or class of ships overpowered, which is precisely what Ingvar's idea would do. And regardless of what you think, I haven't shot a single rat (except a few while in fleet and we're holding at a gate), mined a single rock or done a single mission in well over 2 years. And before you ask, no, I haven't had any bots do so either.

PVP is pretty consentual in EVE as long as you fit a cloak tbh

"My ideas" wouldn't be here if there hadn't been moronic ideas like "remove local" or "remove cloaked ships from local". Things are fine the way they are right now (even if I personally would've preferred if camping a system actually required some effort other than log in and activate cloak. vOv).

But I'm going to go on record, again, and say that at this point I kind of wish CCP would actually listen to the cries of "remove local" or the like. Mainly because it doesn't affect me one whit, but also because I'll point to these threads when the "to hell with safety, bring on the pain crowd" turns into "waah why are there no targets in nullsec crowd". And I'll laugh, hard.

I'm supposedly one of those "risk adverse" players who have left for hisec, since I moved all my moneymaking into hisec. I'm still in nullsec, losing ships in defense of goon space, but that's because when I undock a combat ship, I'm in the mood to lose a ship. If I undocked a ratting or mining ship, I'd be in the mood of actually ending the day with a profit. I got tired of the work of keeping safe in "safe nullsec", so I moved that part of me to hisec, where it's hardly any work at all staying safe, and it meant less work to keep me in PVP ships, since I don't have to replace ratting/mining losses all the time.

As to who cares, I think you'll find alliances who depend on renters for income will care. GSF won't care, ratting taxes aren't our main income.

I think your idea is broken to be honest, and I don't mean OP and game-breaking; I mean so pointlessly underpowered as to be completely useless. Why bother using a probe ship to determine that there is something in system?

Not sure if it's a rare anomoly or a cloaked ship, but something is definitely there. And it takes 3 minutes to find that out. I could have told you that after 30 seconds in local.

Adding a feature like this to the game would be a waste of time; given that it really doesn't do anything or have any applicable benefit. It just wastes a pilots time.


Copied from my post in another thread of similar nature; this one being the opposite end of the spectrum.

#162 Posted: 2011.12.29 07:29 | Report Initially, as the idea was presented, I rather liked it. I see a lot of dissent here though.

The part I liked was the pinging idea, though I think it needs to be balanced a great deal.

Here's how I would make it work, based on the OPs idea.

Make them specific probes with small scan ranges of 0.125 to 1 AU, so they only become practical to use when attempting to locate cloakers within a relatively small area. This also eliminates the restriction against afk cloaking for the most part, as ships may move to a reasonable distnce from any celestial and be virtually immune to any attempts to locate them outside of very determined individuals.

Change the message to a literal ping. Pop-ups are boring and mostly annoying reminders that serve to sever players from immersion.

Modify the probe cycle to 20 seconds or higher. Nobody wants to wait a minute to recycle their probes for fear of falling asleep while they're at it. Final probe cycle time is still dependent on skills of course.

Require a minimum number of probes to overlap the area which guards the cloaked vessel. Perhaps 3 or 4.

Prevent the probes from disrupting the cloak. It can be argued that there is a mass limit on what will effectively decloak a ship, and probes fall under that requirement. Nobody needs to be decloaked by a probe anyway.

Finally, only a pilot with max. probing skills and best equipment should be able to find a cloaked vessel by this method, and then only if they really are good. This eliminates casual decloaks by just anyone from occuring, and restricts the task to only those with the hardware and skill to do so. Location of a cloaked vessel only gives a result of a warp point within the vicinity of the last known position, as of the completed cycle of the probes. It may be anywhere from 20-30 kms off target, or even more.


This results in a limitation: cloaking is still only subject to the same rules for decloaking that have always applied.

Plenty of time is offered for pilots to become aware of the problem and leave the area, provided they are paying attention.

Intel gathering is a reward in itself; it shouldn't come without at least a little risk.

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That's pretty much it. Not a huge all-encompassing OP game mechanic, and yet not completely useless. Let's call it the roughly middle ground, between this thread and the last.

There should be a way to counter all these things and actualy there are none. there is no way to kill spies near your pos, no way to kill cloaky legions and no way to kill those fkng AFK cloakers and greefers that spoils the game... and everyone can see, that all those who oposes probes beeing able to detect cloaked ships uses these geefing methods!

a cloak should help sneaks to do what it is intent to do, not just turn the ship invincible while it is active...

I don't see what the big deal of AFK Cloakers is. They are AFK after all.

The cause is hot dropping.

It's an incredibly cheap tactic. You put an alt in someone's system 23/7 cloaked up. Then you occasionally do a D-scan for wrecks and people ratting.

Once you find someone, get some cap pilots or a black ops gang in fleet, land on the ratter, point them, light a cyno. Then everyone jumps in, blows them up, and is cloaked up or jumped out before a home defense fleet can come up.

From an alliance point of view you can either deprive your enemy of ratting isk because they are afraid to undock. Or you get a stream of risk free high value kills as you blow up ratting ships left and right with impunity.


People like to complain about all of the reasons why it is abnormally difficult for small alliances to get into null and everyone has massive blue lists. I think the current hot drop mechanics are a large part of that. These large alliances can secure enough space to get a 14 light year blue radius (or 4.5 ly for black ops) around all their carebearing systems. Meanwhile anyone without a bunch of blue neighbors or a massive block of sov is usually within jump range of people who don't like them, and their systems fill up with AFK cloakies.


If you want this to stop then you'll have to either make it more difficult to go AFK while cloaked (either by probing, or a fuel bay, or whatever). Or you'll need to change hot drop mechanics to be more forgiving to the defender. Or you'll need to allow cyno jammers to also block black ops cynos.