Player Features and Ideas Discussion

OMG, you must be trolling! A ratting ship in null space might as well be defenseless when you and a dozen of your small gang jump them. And you wonder why people dock up?

I don't really feel I "missed the point". This whole thread is about afk cloaking in null space and you then chimed in saying that a ratting ship is not defenseless. I simply pointed out that it is, because MOST pvp in null space involves a 10 on 1 scenario and a ratting ship can't possibly win with those odds.

In any case, this is a little off topic so lets get back onto topic.


This thread pretty much boils down to:

1. People pointing out that someone cloaked can harass players in a system for days/weeks at a time with no counter, and that something like a log off timer or cloaks falling off after an hour or so would improve the issue.

2. Pvp white knights rushing to the defense of current cloaking and claiming that local intel is the issue.

3. Pvp white knights failing to realize that if you take away local intel and make it imperfect intel, then people in cloaked ships would have a MUCH easier time killing ratters. The end result would be ratting becoming impossible in null sec because cloaked ships would be able to sneak up on ratters on a daily basis.

Simply put the pro-cloak crowd has not provided a reasonable solution to AFK cloaking while the pro-ratter crowd has provided a somewhat decent solution, which is logoff / decloak timers.

I've seen pvpers D-scan down people in 20 seconds flat. Get rid of local intel and the ratters wont stand a chance. A pvp frig will easily prevent a ratter from aligning to warp away until 39475439759834759873489 of their friends arrive to finish the job.

1. Even your much touted intel channel relies on many people actively doing the work of keeping that space secure. They have to be awake and and aware to make reliable and timely reports. The power of local relies on active participation in securing space, and should not be significantly disrupted by afk activities.

This is very much like complaining you lost a 1 vs. 90 fight.


2. That cloaked hunter does not need to do anything but warp into a given system and start warping to belts at range to keep his cloak from dropping. In most decent systems you have small mining ops and ratters in the regular belts pretty often. Those guys would never see probes, and have no chance at all of avoiding the fight. As their ships were designed by CCP to rely on evasion for defense this seems pretty one sided.

He can put out probes, but if he is just roaming and looking for targets its not required, and since these are stable systems with known value, he can easily target the areas most likely frequented by his prey.

Please don't slap me. I'm going with probes as it seems a few people have mentioned this.

Surge probe launcher.
-30 min cool-down reduced by skills
-Fires one larger probe with radius and strength dependent on skills
-Senses the manipulation of light and wavelengths (chance to false read signatures from other entities)
-Manual control is limited to as many tries as allocated skill provides (No more than 5)
-Surge probes are unable to be D-scanned
-When the cool-down ends the surge probe moves automatically switching manual control off
-Probes in automatic mode home in on the target with accuracy based on manual control results
-Automatic mode places the probe 50-250 KM of the target and begins to roam quickly for 1 minute
-Probe detonates like a bomb if it wanders less then 2500 meters from target
-Explosion knocks the cloaking device offline until cap reaches 100% (Alert is broadcasted to probe user)

That's all I've got. Positive and negative feedback welcome.

First off: Thanks!

You really have got me there and I admit that I've not come up with a contingency to benefit the cloaked
player. The thought was based around a fear dynamic promoting awareness for people who cloak in this
way. I'm not so much against it as much as I'd like to see the risks of scouting cloaked be brought in line
with the risks of something like not being able to eyeball local while mopping up rare spawns in belts.

Both sides would have to practice caution and awareness. Gets the blood pumping. You are right though
there needs to be a little something thrown in there for someone who has to remain active while cloaked
maybe some cool counter options or additional "modes" while cloaked. That of which I admit, I really can't
think of.

Give the nestor cov ops cloaking ability instead if the silly hacking bonuses.

Well, on the one hand I think all the Black Ops battleships should be using the Cov Ops cloaks, or just as there are 2 varieties in the lower hull weights, another black ops battleship that lacks the jump capability but focuses on covert assault so uses the cov-ops cloak and isn't quite so paper thin.

On the other hand, as we have been discussing, it's my firm belief that cloaks as they stand right now are OP, and that needs to be addressed across all classes of ships.

I like something along these lines, as long as:
a) the scanning process takes a reasonably long time (perhaps 60s per scan and 8 or so scans required to pinpoint a target, unless you have a decent idea of their location to start with).
b) player using scanner will be in space and vulnerable


I think there are a lot of activities in eve that are influential and can be done semi-afk. Most of the others I can think of, however, carry a modicum of risk that scales inversely to the player's level of vigilance (ratting, mining, structure bashing, FW plexing etc). Cloaky camping should too.

Cloaky camping in and of itself is a legit way of disturbing systems and stalking prey, the problem is the 100% impunity that exists even when a player doesn't engage with the game. The cloak probe idea is a possible solution. Obviously this solution doesn't address local, which being closely related is a different debate and the issues extend beyond that of just cloaky camping.

EDIT: Having the probe scanner and some parameters that effect local chat tied to the OA is something I think would be ideal, and obviously some way for outsiders to effect these things with entosis ofc.

1.5 billion - 600 million = 900 million. Looks like way ahead of the game to me. The return is 1.5x times the expected loss. And if you are shelling out 600 million for a ratting ship...FFS, stop and use an ishtar, you'll spend less than half and can get just as much ISK....which is why many call it the isktar. Now your are over 4x your loss.

You don't need a response fleet FFS. That is just dumb. One good ratting system can have up 10-15 people ratting, IMO. All of you get in fleet and rat. Now if one of you gets in trouble, ask for help and your buddies can come save you. I have not said you need to keep a fleet of inactive PvP ships sitting in system.

Now if you are being camped by a guy most likely AFK and you are very risk averse then get into a group and rat as a group. You can fit much more PvP oriented fits and if you are on TS you'll be paying much more attention, at the very least if you have 4-6 guys together chances are one of them will see when the camper becomes active--i.e. shows up on overview and/or D-scan.

Will it reduce your precious isk/hour? Maybe, depends since yeah, more people shooting the rats will lower your bounty payouts, but you'll also be going from anomaly to anomaly much faster...i.e. the bounty payouts will likely be rolling in faster. And so freaking way? The alternative is zero ISK/hour. Really, I've never seen somebody whine so freaking much. "Oh noes, my ISK/hour!!!!" /0\

And if 99/100 times they endlessly cloak...then ****ing undock for fooks sake. If the probability that he is going to go active in any given hour is 0.01 then you can expect to rat for 100 hours before he'll try to get you. In other words that is 50 million ISK*100 = 5 billion ISK before you expect to have to worry about him doing something....which may or may not succeed.

And as I have noted before, you can usually further refine those probability estimates by a bit of research. Check kill boards and find out when the guy is typically active.

You complain you can't secure your space, but a single guy in a cloaked ship sends you guys to the outpost/station and that's it. You wont move over a system, rat in groups, even do any research to find out when he is likely to be active, etc. What exactly do you mean by "securing your space"? Having CCP deal with these rough men who mean to do violence to you if they catch you in space unprepared?