Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Unless cloaks sitting still remain undetectable. Would make sense lore-wise I guess; but more importantly: the non covert cloak could sit in its safe and wait it out for as long as there are cloaky combat scanners out, then proceed slowboating.

The AFK Cloaker would be undetectable too, until he starts moving and "doing stuff".

It is the complete opposite of Mike's proposal of course, who would rather force the cloaker to keep moving. (which only 1 cloak can - the others cannot). I'd rather have a rough indication "some" cloak is moving nearby. If it's not moving, it is of no consequence to me and therefore I'm okay with them being perfectly safe.

On no local in null sec
You know, the argument that central government no longer wants to support local is fine. Combined with central government no longer wanting to support jump gates. Why on earth would they not support free coms and nanite transponders (Big brother does see you and like to keep track of you as a public service), but be willing to pay to fuel jumpgates free of charge. It makes no sense.

Mike
You know, another fix would be to take advantage of the new grid and have huge asteroid fields. A cloaked pilot would have to be incredibly skilled to pick his way through the rocks without getting decloaked.

Ratting modus could be the same, simply with tons of debris for same effect.

Reintroducing mines (the minefield kind) would also work. But perhaps in the form of a small deployable citadel with various combat modules that can be deployed virtually anywhere and returned to the cargo bay when you are done mining or ratting.

Does not work because you can check the station. He actually is harmless in a station, so gets watched but otherwise ignored. People who want to hunt him knows right where he is and can wait on the undock. I have seen it happen where the station is watched and warning given if someone enters the system and does not dock, and when people leave the station but don't leave the system.

It is ironic. Mike is upset really, because the cloaked ships at a safe have what he, to a large extent, wants....problem is he wants his cake after eating it (can we make a human centipede reference here?) since he wants to rat and mine without having to worry about defending himself from the cloaked ship.

However, isn't the very point of a cloaked ship to present a degree of uncertainty? Seems to me the Devs would have figured this one out. Sit at a safe with the cloak on and that guy who was mining or ratting is not going to feel safe enough to continue doing so in a min/maxed ship while solo.

And the funny thing is that 10 guys in skiffs with combat boosts and solid tanks will have huge tanks. A BLOPs gang is going to have to be substantial to take that group on. Hell, if I were in that mining fleet I'd even want to have an alt in a hictor or dictor cloaked at a perch. If the BLOPs guys did drop in, bubble, release drones and eat them alive. In short, they could be their own defense fleet.

And if they joined the standing fleet with a bunch of ratting ships....

It is like the rest of us are playing an MMORPG whereas Mike, et. al. are playing an ORPG.

Mike,

You have made an ISK/hour argument, although oddly enough you deny it. You point out that all of the counters to cloaked ships result in less profit than HS (I'd love for you to explain how this is NOT and ISK/hour argument). However, you have seen a pretty much across the board dismisal of the ISK/hour argument from your opponents. Have you considered why that is the case?

I'll tell you. To me, at least, there is more to the game than ISK/hour. It's totally fine with me if that is the metric you want to use in game (really). But that is not my metric. I like living in null not because of the ISK/resource rewards, but because that is where I find I have the most fun. I hang out on comms with guys much more than I ever did in an empire corp (there is the social aspect). I like the challenges of NS, so much so I am willing to forgoe some of the potential gains I could get from living in HS. Blitzing missions day-after-day in HS just sounds horrible to me....even if I could get more ISK in my wallet. Further, being NS I accept that disrupting my ISK making activities is much easier in NS than it is in HS. Further, part of living in NS, at least for me and how I measure the game, is having to go on deployment periodically. What do you think happens to my ISK/hour in that context? What if you get invaded? Some of the most fun I've had in game was when our space was getting invaded. In other words, my different metric means I am willing to make trade offs you may not be willing to make.

I will also argue that by-and-large you will not do well in a NS alliance if your metric is simply ISK/hour, or is dominated by ISK/hour. If you keep thinking, "Why should I put in effort to defend this space when I can earn more in HS?" You will probably not stay in NS overly long. Your view, IMO, is just...incompatible with living your game time in NS.

So, yeah, the AFK cloaker reduces your ISK/hour. To me that is: working as intended. I find it a weak argument at best since I've already accepted that my ISK/hour may be less than if I lived in HS. I think this is true of many of the people who live in NS.

I am going to summarize quickly before I go and, you know, play EvE.

For null-sec

1. AFK cloaky campers are not a peak-time problem. In peak times, null-sec players are either doing pvp stuff, or they have backup to protect their PVE activity.

2. PVE activity is generally geared towards PVP. Either individual players isk tanking to buy their pvp ships, or industrialist fueling the SRP machine.

3. AFK cloaks tend to target outside their timezone when the intent is to engage. Same timezone targeting is not good due to overlapping peak times and point 1.

4. The only argument with merit in regards to "pretty big psychological effect" relates to access denial being inherently deflationary. It gives less raw materials and less isk.

5. The other arguments fail when applying the principle of reciprocity. Anything said that about PvE players is either equally true of cloaky campers, or more true for cloaky campers.

6. No local aggravates the "pretty big psychological effect" by giving it a much more effective vehicle than afk cloaky campers are. It is by no measure a fix.

7. No local in null sec makes no sense. If central government can afford to sponsor gates, then of course it will also sponsor local and pilot ID services. Whatever change is done to local must also be done to gates for the change to be coherent.

Now off to pilot the ship.

I will be back on the soapbox later.

Where did I say profit/ or ISK/hour is wrong. I never said that, I just said it is not the (only) metric I use when deciding to stay or leave NS. It is just not the dominant factor.

And our response to your request to "fight for the use of your space" is that you have to be able to adapt to these challenges. Also, that maximizing your ISK/hour is not really even feasible. Let me put the problem in the context of math here. To me the problem is not:

maximize profits(x).

Where x are the actions your take.

It is actually,

maximize profits(x;a)
subject to g(x;a) ≤ c.

That is, the problem is a constrained maximization problem, and when a cloaking ship shows up he imposes a constraint on you. Same as if a non-cloaking ship shows up. He too imposes a constraint. Both are legitimate, to me. And they may pose different constraints. If you want less constraints my feeling is that HS is that way. ==>

Further, do not complain to the Devs when you go to an area of the game world where players are essentially given very wide latitude in imposing constraints on other players game play, and are not only allowed to come up with new methods of imposing constraints, but are essentially encouraged to do so.

8. Removal of local is also a hideously poor marketing idea that would re-enforce any player perception that EvE is dying by masking the number of players online in a system.

9. Players truly concerned about isk/hour revenue would look at PvE activity like PI and in particular moon harvesting as much more appropriate than relatively vulnerable ratters and miners.

10. Players have adapted to "pretty big psychological effect" by creating buffer zones around core sov by denying afk cloak support access to bases within practical reach of important PvE systems. The mechanism is sov expansion, but handing off sov to renters or other allies. The net effect is alliances holding more systems than they can possibly exploit effectively, with combat activity derived from afk cloaky camping mainly taking place in fringe buffer areas.

Citadelle will almost certainly see players revert from taking undesirable sov to a scorched earth policy of destroying citadels to deny bases for cloaky camping backup to stage from.

The effect of both measures is responding to denial of space with denial of space.

Confirming moon harvesting is never contested.

Holy crap, nearly, nearly but not quite as funny as Mags