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AFK Cloaking™: Ideas, Discussion, and Proposals

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Author
Johny Tyler
Solar Forged
#2141 - 2015-05-09 03:35:45 UTC
I think every tactic needs to have a viable and scalable counter.

It is my opinion that cloaking in its current form is a little too powerful. For what it is worth, I have spent plenty of time cloaking and hunting myself.

I think the power comes from a combination of the invulnerability, the ability to collect information, and the obvious force multiplier of the cyno. The power of cloaking in WH space is greatly reduced. In WH space the ability to collect information is a little bit nerfed by the lack of local, and the opportunity for a cyno does not exist.

One situation I have seen which illustrates the power of cloaky camping was when an ally who had 30+ accounts left cloaky cynos throughout an entire region. We could then pick from a variety of targets when he wasn't afk to drop on. The defenders didn't really have any good options. I think the ability to do that sort of thing is abusive, and needs a viable counter.

One thing I don't think is often taken into consideration is how hard it is to move a potential target vs the mobility of both the cloaky itself and the hot drop staging area. It will tend to happen that systems with high amounts of activity will attract high amounts of interest from hunters/gankers. It won't take long after an industrialist changes their base of operations for the hunters to notice and redeploy. While it may take an industrialist considerable effort to coordinate the logistics of the move it will not be significantly hard for hunters to follow the target wherever he decides to go. So I think the options for evasion of the cloaky camper are not viable enough to consider it balanced in the current state.

As far as defending against cloaky camping, I think it is worth noting that a good defensive stance requires considering Potential Vulnerabilities while an attacker is able to narrow his focus to Actual Vulnerabilities. This difference is the reason why telling people they should just simply defend their space better is unbalanced in the current situation. It would take vastly more human time and effort to sufficiently defend against the potential threat of cloaky camping then it does for the aggressor to take advantage of the tactic. A team of AFK people can provide enough threat to make at least as many Active players necessary. Given a decent drop location that same AFK group could require multiple times their own number to be active to defend against the possibility of them coming back and dropping on any one of multiple targets they may be scouting. The amount of effort required for defense vs offense in this situation is entirely disproportionate.

I think that cloaky ships which are being actively piloted should remain nearly invulnerable, but that they should be made significantly more vulnerable in some way when not being actively piloted. I do think some sort of mechanic should be implemented to allow for the "hunting" of cloaked ships.

Another approach could be to nerf the cloaked ship. One possibility would be to add a decloak timer for cyno activation. Another possibility could be to require a ship to be decloaked to use dscan or detect anomalies.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2142 - 2015-05-09 04:37:37 UTC
Johny Tyler wrote:
I think every tactic needs to have a viable and scalable counter.

It is my opinion that cloaking in its current form is a little too powerful. For what it is worth, I have spent plenty of time cloaking and hunting myself.


So how exactly do we counter local?

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Johny Tyler
Solar Forged
#2143 - 2015-05-09 06:09:11 UTC
Teckos Pech wrote:
Johny Tyler wrote:
I think every tactic needs to have a viable and scalable counter.

It is my opinion that cloaking in its current form is a little too powerful. For what it is worth, I have spent plenty of time cloaking and hunting myself.


So how exactly do we counter local?


To be clear, AFK Cloaking was the tactic I was referring to.

I don't think "local" is considered a tactic.

Local as a tool seems plausibly balanced by the fact that it is equally available and useful for everyone in the systems where it applies. FWIW, it wouldn't bother me if local was removed. But this is moving a bit off topic for the thread.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2144 - 2015-05-09 18:56:39 UTC  |  Edited by: Teckos Pech
Johny Tyler wrote:
Teckos Pech wrote:
Johny Tyler wrote:
I think every tactic needs to have a viable and scalable counter.

It is my opinion that cloaking in its current form is a little too powerful. For what it is worth, I have spent plenty of time cloaking and hunting myself.


So how exactly do we counter local?


To be clear, AFK Cloaking was the tactic I was referring to.

I don't think "local" is considered a tactic.

Local as a tool seems plausibly balanced by the fact that it is equally available and useful for everyone in the systems where it applies. FWIW, it wouldn't bother me if local was removed. But this is moving a bit off topic for the thread.


And I'm referring to local. Using local as an intel source is a tactic. One that is even more impervious than a cloaked ship.

AFK cloaking is how many people turn local on those trying to PvE. Removing AFK cloaking basically buffs a tactic that would at that point have absolutely no counter.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#2145 - 2015-05-11 13:58:36 UTC
Johny Tyler wrote:
...

One situation I have seen which illustrates the power of cloaky camping was when an ally who had 30+ accounts left cloaky cynos throughout an entire region. We could then pick from a variety of targets when he wasn't afk to drop on. The defenders didn't really have any good options. I think the ability to do that sort of thing is abusive, and needs a viable counter.

...

Not that I advocate for people to go to the trouble and effort to maintain 30 accounts, but this seems an example of going above and beyond expected player effort.

If we are to recommend changes to game mechanics, let's try to avoid fringe play styles, such as this.
If he were to park 30 drone ships outside of a sov null undock, he could also have a dramatic effect, as well as using 30 mining ships, etc.

Multiplying anything times 30 dramatically creates a perception of overwhelming impact.

As to cyno use...
You can have an overwhelming hostile force show up in many ways, with little warning to a target.
Only in sov null, with current use of intel from local, is their any EXPECTATION of safety, which spoils players to operating in otherwise similar conditions.

That WH can have the hostile force already present, yet cloaked.
That high sec system can have a gank squad present in unrecognized neutral form, if not simply one gate out.

If you frame your argument around local being innocent of skewing the game's play, the ability to redraw how things connect to support that can be done.
It's not objective, and makes some bad assumptions, but we see it happen.
Johny Tyler
Solar Forged
#2146 - 2015-05-11 18:02:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Johny Tyler
Nikk Narrel wrote:
Johny Tyler wrote:
...

One situation I have seen which illustrates the power of cloaky camping was when an ally who had 30+ accounts left cloaky cynos throughout an entire region. We could then pick from a variety of targets when he wasn't afk to drop on. The defenders didn't really have any good options. I think the ability to do that sort of thing is abusive, and needs a viable counter.

...

Not that I advocate for people to go to the trouble and effort to maintain 30 accounts, but this seems an example of going above and beyond expected player effort.

If we are to recommend changes to game mechanics, let's try to avoid fringe play styles, such as this.
If he were to park 30 drone ships outside of a sov null undock, he could also have a dramatic effect, as well as using 30 mining ships, etc.

Multiplying anything times 30 dramatically creates a perception of overwhelming impact.

As to cyno use...
You can have an overwhelming hostile force show up in many ways, with little warning to a target.
Only in sov null, with current use of intel from local, is their any EXPECTATION of safety, which spoils players to operating in otherwise similar conditions.

That WH can have the hostile force already present, yet cloaked.
That high sec system can have a gank squad present in unrecognised neutral form, if not simply one gate out.

If you frame your argument around local being innocent of skewing the game's play, the ability to redraw how things connect to support that can be done.
It's not objective, and makes some bad assumptions, but we see it happen.


I used that example because it is a clear case. I have participated in many blops/drops where essentially the same effect is achieved through other means. It is quite common to have multiple people with multiple alts out looking for targets. The collective effort that would be required to defend against those tactics is much more than we spend employing the tactic.

I think the blame on local as an intel tool is misplaced. It does contribute to the status quo, but what is in a typical intel profile will consist of a lot more than simply the local list. There are often a lot of other pieces that contribute to the intel picture. Even without local, a decent alliance would monitor choke points at the very least to have an idea of who is in the area.

Being afraid of what that one cloaky in your system can do is not an unfair assessment in many cases. The people I often fly with tend to turn the people who are not afraid into kill mails. Knowing there is someone with a cloak and a cyno in your system is not the problem imo. Having no tool to look for the cloak and cyno seems to be unbalanced to me.

Your other examples of sudden death are not quite the same. WH conditions are very different due to the changing connections. If you have even a moderately competent corp you can reduce the chance of an enemy surprise very effectively. For your other examples being one jump out is vastly different from being cynoed onto a target, and even that can be mitigated even without local by having a decent intel network. If an industrialist decides he will only undock if systems are clear for 2 jumps in every direction that would be possible to monitor, even without local.

If local didn't exist it would simply change the requirements of gathering the intel someone would need to make a good decision to undock. New habits and procedures would need to be learned, but the basic equation of security for the operation would be the same.

I have lived in WH space often. Cloaking is still a very powerful tool in there. But I don't think it is quite as powerful in WH as in null because it can't have a Titian on the other end of a cyno. The lack of local doesn’t mean we ignore possible cloakies, it means we use different techniques and often much higher intel standards to decide how we should operate.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2147 - 2015-05-13 06:05:29 UTC
Johny Tyler wrote:


I think the blame on local as an intel tool is misplaced.


For the love of....

How exactly do you know there is a guy cloaked in system with you? What tells you he is there?

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Johny Tyler
Solar Forged
#2148 - 2015-05-13 07:05:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Johny Tyler
Teckos Pech wrote:
Johny Tyler wrote:


I think the blame on local as an intel tool is misplaced.


For the love of....

How exactly do you know there is a guy cloaked in system with you? What tells you he is there?



Local is not the only tool for intel. In a decent WH corp you will have a fairly good idea who is in your space.

I could describe the step by step process if you would like. It takes constant Dscan, lots of vigilance but it is common in all the WH corps I have been a part of. WH people tend to not be as passive about gathering and sharing intel as Nullsec people in my experience. There are also a lot more times where you don't have the intel gathered to safely take out your PvE ships, so you do something else. In WH space it is generally best to behave as if there is someone watching you if you don't know for sure. If local was taken away in null they would lose a bunch of ships then learn to do better. They would be ganked and dropped until they learned to keep track of who was in their space.

Any decent alliance could keep tabs on who is in their space and where they were, without local. The bloated, lazy nullsec corps would lose a lot of people and a lot of ships if local was removed. The standard would gravitate towards 'if you don't know for sure that your system is clean then don't undock for PvE.' So instead of having a few systems where an AFK cloakie shuts down industry for a while, any system that isn't constantly monitored would be a bad idea to do industry in.

If pods were cloaking in local no one would pay attention to them, because it is not the entry in the local channel that is keeping people in station or in pos, it is the very real threat of points, cynos, and other fun toys that come with that entry in local. It seems quite ridiculous to me that you seem to think local is the major problem with afk cloaking... If you haven't gotten it by now I doubt it will do any good to explain it to you again.

Edit:
To be clear I am all for removing local. I think it would be great. It just isn't the reason that afk cloaking needs a counter.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#2149 - 2015-05-13 14:04:39 UTC
We can cycle through all the old arguments, that's cool.


Local is not the problem. Other than wormholes, it does exactly the same thing in all areas of space.

Why isn't this same tactic used in exactly the same way in high sec?

Local does not become effective as an intel tool until masses of players put forth a continual, coordinated effort in making it useful by forming fleets and driving out the opposition. That is in fact the reason local exists in the state that it does in the first place, to help drive conflict---simply put, Local works exactly as intended.

The problem with 100% safe cloaks is that it allows a single individual absolute impunity in hostile space. There is no way to hunt a cloaked ship, thus a single guy--afk or not-- can thwart the active and coordinated efforts of an unlimited number of players to prevent the very thing he is doing.

That is what is broken. Cloaks need one of their 100% effective areas of operation reduced---either duration or effectiveness. There needs to be a way to hunt them. Disrupting PvE activities should depend on active player investment, not victory through boredom. The fact that the PVE miner or ratter had to head for station as soon as a hostile showed up or else face near certain destruction should be victory enough, and that gameplay should center around getting to the secured area, not camping in it until frustration and boredom win out.

One effective means of balance would be to make cloaks and normal cyno beacons mutually exclusive. Covops ships are already balanced around the cloaking ability they have. The fact that a single cloaked ship in system has to be treated as an entire titan fleet of hundreds in terms of risk assessment puts far too much initiative in the hands of a single ship. If cloaks could be counted as one cloak=one ship then there would be far less of a balance concern and almost all afk cloaking would dry up.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#2150 - 2015-05-13 14:38:20 UTC  |  Edited by: ISD Ezwal
*Snip* Removed a reply to a deleted post. ISD Ezwal.

Johny Tyler wrote:



Local is not the only tool for intel. In a decent WH corp you will have a fairly good idea who is in your space.

...

Edit:
To be clear I am all for removing local. I think it would be great. It just isn't the reason that afk cloaking needs a counter.


Thats our point. we're not saying local is the reason afk needs a counter, we're saying AFK cloaking IS the counter to local. AFK cloaking needs a counter because its infallible, not fun, nor engaging. But without it, local is also infallible, omnipotent and provides too much easy safety for lazy players. Change one, change the other.

And like you've just said, taking out local doesnt cripple a groups ability to gather intel and monitor their space. But it does mean it takes more effort and coordination than glancing at a chat channel. And thats for both attacker and defender.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs

Nikk Narrel
Moonlit Bonsai
#2151 - 2015-05-13 15:06:37 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
We can cycle through all the old arguments, that's cool.


Local is not the problem. Other than wormholes, it does exactly the same thing in all areas of space.

...

Cloaking while AFK is not the problem.
Being AFK, and not stupid about it, means you place yourself out of harms way.

In Friendly space, your allies have created POS structures and Outposts to protect you while AFK.
(Limits to protection may vary, but safe to say you have more than enough time to return before it becomes an issue)

In hostile space, being able to chose AFK over simply logging out can be a valuable option.
The returning player creates opportunity for mutual content, and if that happens more often because they were simply AFK rather than logged out, then it has value to all of us to protect this option.

Let's be clear, AFK players do not drive content, assuming they are out of harms way.
Nor should they be considered an obstacle to play.

It is the confusion created by information available through a chat channel, being misunderstood, that is to blame for this.
It is equally hard to hold accountable players who realize this confusion exists, in order to meta game and use that to affect opposing players. They are simply using local to further their own ends, just like the defending players are.

This issue descends from two separate game mechanics which evolved into allowing this, and both must be held accountable if at all.

If that means establishing a more limited version of cloaking specifically to enable being AFK in hostile space, so be it.
We already have two primary cloak types, adapting these should not be game breaking.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2152 - 2015-05-14 04:33:04 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
We can cycle through all the old arguments, that's cool.


Local is not the problem. Other than wormholes, it does exactly the same thing in all areas of space.


Of course, nobody, but nobody has argued that local does not work the same in all areas of the game.

What is different is how people use it in different areas of space.

But hey, at least you went totally off the rails 3 sentences in so I could stop reading the rest of your post. P

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

ISD Ezwal
ISD Community Communications Liaisons
ISD Alliance
#2153 - 2015-05-14 11:17:40 UTC
I have removed some rule breaking posts and those quoting them. As always I let some edge cases stay.
Please people, keep it on topic and above all civil!

The Rules:
5. Trolling is prohibited.

Trolling is a defined as a post that is deliberately designed for the purpose of angering and insulting other players in an attempt to incite retaliation or an emotional response. Posts of this nature are disruptive, often abusive and do not contribute to the sense of community that CCP promote.

ISD Ezwal Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs)

bonekill Rinn
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#2154 - 2015-05-16 00:08:01 UTC
Racial Cloak Detection Systems

Highslot utility.
Low fitting requirements.
Utilities special ammo.
D-scan like system. (Limited range and FOV based on camera position.)
Does not de-cloak objects, only reveals for a short time.

Amarr
Sky Blazer "Rainbow road"

Small optic drones and multiple frequency's of light projected from the host ship to detect the presence of nearby cloaked vessels. As low intensity light beams impact the cloaking device can absorb the light and energy, however by doing so prevents the light from continuing unnoticed by the optic drones.


Gallente
Shell Shock "Neon Dispatcher"

Railgun shells that are designed to desolve in flight projecting florescent particles outward from the shells path, any physical objects in the path of this particle stream will collect a build-up and begin to glow.


Caldari
Condensed Sensor Package "Trolling Missile"

High sensitivity, but short range sensor equipment is loaded into a missiles payload and scans for objects as it travels reporting any anomaly it finds.


Minmitar
Kinetic Dispersal Unit "Confetti cannon"

Mortars loaded with small light emitting objects fire a cloud of debris from the host ship bouncing into any object it encounters.

Newt BlackCompany
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#2155 - 2015-05-16 18:18:35 UTC
Remove local from nullsec and the problem will magically go away.
Madd Adda
#2156 - 2015-05-16 21:59:03 UTC
Newt BlackCompany wrote:
Remove local from nullsec and the problem will magically go away.

no it won't, cloakies will be there regardless, it would an out of sight, out of mind instance

Carebear extraordinaire

Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#2157 - 2015-05-16 22:04:48 UTC
Madd Adda wrote:
Newt BlackCompany wrote:
Remove local from nullsec and the problem will magically go away.

no it won't, cloakies will be there regardless, it would an out of sight, out of mind instance


It will not go away? Why not? I think you need a bit more of an answer.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online

Nat Silverguard
Aideron Robotics
Aideron Robotics.
#2158 - 2015-05-17 04:56:24 UTC
TIL null carebears WHINES as loud as hisec carebears. o7

"oh look, an AFK cloaky in our system, let's dock!" - nullbear #1

"warp to safe! warp to safe! warp to safe! we are all gonna die!" - nullbear #2

"dammit, i'm shitting my pants already!" - nullbear #3

Just Add Water

Newt BlackCompany
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#2159 - 2015-05-17 06:39:35 UTC
Madd Adda wrote:
Newt BlackCompany wrote:
Remove local from nullsec and the problem will magically go away.

no it won't, cloakies will be there regardless, it would an out of sight, out of mind instance


Correct! But you don't hear the WH guys whining endlessly about the cloaky tengus in their systems. They know they are there and work accordingly.

Thus, removing local from nullsec will solve the problem because the whining will stop.
Newt BlackCompany
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#2160 - 2015-05-17 06:43:45 UTC
You know, I suspect that CCP must be keeping local in nullsec out of curiosity just to see how long this thread gets. 108 pages so far!