Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You are working from a few assumptions that a great many would not agree with. The first being that it should be a casual endeavor, let alone possible, to camp and lull into false security pilots who are being proactively vigilant. They chose their system and friends precisely to limit hostile traffic, and maintain that security through networks of observers and personal care. I have no problem with you breaking that, but doing so with an activity so trivial it is *best* accomplished afk is silly.

Other classes of afk play are not comparable. For them, the 'danger' is something you opt into. Market orders are subject to being undercut or manipulated by active traders, PI does nothing until the goods are moved by active players and only result in profit when used in manufacturing or sold through the market, at which point moving and selling is best done actively and you must accept greater risk if you decide to afk. Even those who afk mine or rat while afk are opting in to increased danger.

The sole exception to that are those who use cloaks to camp others. In their case they are opting out of danger while maintaining a hostile and effective front.

What of those who wish to engage in empire building by patrolling and removing perceived threats to the local residents? Why is it ok to make it unfun and extremely difficult to the point of impossibility for them to hunt their prey? By what special right does the camper deserve unlimited freedom to remain predator rather than prey even in the direct presence of active opposition?

I don't believe I have ever seen a serious request for a game mechanic to ensure security without proactive effort, except from the pilots that cannot stand the thought of an effective counter to cloaks. Apparently they are so vital elsewhere as to render whole swaths of the game utterly unplayable if they can't be completely immune to detection unless you literally trip over it on grid trying to fly up your exhaust.

I am glad your attention to detail remains unchanged. Lets present a simple counter arguement. You are right pi goods earn no cash till the are moved much like a cloaker is unable to attack till he uncloaks. The arguement remains unchanged, an all you are doing is throwing walls of text out as if it is additional content which it isn't you are recycling a repeated argument that the owners of a system should have first slice of the cake when they are just another camper. A camper using slightly different mechanics to camp.

See, I'm good with a compromise.

We could make it impossible to select a destination, use any form of scan, etc... while under gate cloak, and leave those under gate cloak out of local. That way you don't show up before you load, but you do as soon as you start hunting.

Where is the counter argument?

Or do you believe that saying "nuh-uh" is an effective counter?

Your argument is that AFK cloaking is comparable to other AFK activities like market trading or PI. I argue that other AFK activities expose the pilot to increased risk and/or loss of productivity in their chosen task, and are therefore not comparable as camping under a cloak suffers no loss of effectiveness, and in effect enhanced by going AFK and just waiting out the server downtime every day.

Further, it can be argued that other AFK gameplay actually provides content to the less skilled pilots, as their inattention renders them much more easily exploited in whatever fashion is applicable to the given activity. Once again, cloaked camping is an exception, as they are impossible to hunt in any effective way as they have opted out of risk rather than into enhanced risk.

If your efforts to secure your space can be undermined so easily by an AFK cloaker then your efforts are a joke, and your sad failure of an alliance should go back to highsec. And this is the issue we keep coming back to: good alliances that actively secure their space (with combat fleets ready whenever carebearing is happening, carebears that know how to do things like stay aligned at all times, etc) don't care about AFK cloaking because the AFK cloaker is not a threat. If they stay cloaked they do nothing. If they decloak and engage they are met immediately by combat ships and destroyed. The threat of AFK cloaking is only relevant to bad alliances that expect to be able to put their flag on a system, set half of EVE blue, and rely on passive observation and running away from every potential threat as their only approach to security. And I fail to see any reason why garbage-tier wastes of server space should be coddled by CCP.



Whine whine whine. If your failure of an alliance is so undisciplined that you can't get combat fleets together to protect your carebears unless you can guarantee killmails then you should go back to highsec. Your task of hunting prey and removing the threat is accomplished if you present a sufficient threat of your own that the cloaked ship (whether AFK or ATK) remains cloaked.



Because that's the whole point of a cloak. You give up the ability to engage in combat in exchange for being impossible to see. And they aren't really a predator at that point, since decloaking to attack would be suicide. They're just prey that is doing a very good job of hiding from the hunter.

You ability to see logical reasoning continues to overwhelm my simple mind. To first answer your question I will argue that cloaking is nearly identical to pi. You have a start up cost(initial fear) a slow gain(complacency) an then a cashout(hot drop.) as well as a tax(loss of any ships an ammo.) a complex connection that even a simple mind such as mine can see.

How ever seeing this topic is once again falling into the same trap as befor I wish to provide a challenge for both sides.

The rules are simple enough if both local and cloak was removed come up with three to five tools for them both to replace them with.... There must me an equal number of tools for the cloak replacement as the local replacement so if you come up with five tools to replace local you must come up with five tools to replace cloak.... Final rule is that the tool can not be a near perfect copy if what it replacing....


I do believe that this challenge will bring things into better perspective.

So you are saying that counter hotdropping, getting caught on gate by instant lockers and botched maneuvers to not be risky? Again you throw walls of text at me to bog me down, an once again it the same tired recycled argument. Please do my challenge instead of wasting your energy I gamble you will have a far better response from everyone if you do so.

I lol'd. Majority of nullsec is botters (drone regions), afk ratters, carebears and f1 monkeys if they're forced to actually fleet up. If they aren't, well, back to ratting! Got to keep that isk/hour up!

Then stop letting them. They're AFK, remember? The issue is not that your actions are being dictated, it's that people are afraid of facing any risk or having to take even basic safety measures like "stay aligned at all times".



Whine whine whine. All I hear is "I don't want to actively defend my space, I want CCP to hold my hand and make the threats obvious". If you aren't willing to actively defend the systems you claim then why should you have any right to hold them? There's always highsec if you want to be able to carebear without active defenses.

And it isn't 23/7 defense, it's only when you have people actively carebearing in a system. If nobody is out in space then you don't need a defense fleet. Why is your corp/alliance incapable of organizing ratting/mining/whatever fleets at scheduled times?



Remaining hidden until you choose otherwise is the entire point of a cloak. You give up the ability to attack anything (or even activate modules!) in exchange for disappearing. You might as well complain that it isn't fair that people can remain completely safe by docking in station when you want them to fight you.

I am just pointing out that it *will* happen. As soon as local goes down people will dock and reship or log until it goes up. That's what they do now if there is a neutral in system, and tying local to a structure will have the same effect only stronger. With it up, assuming it also enables cloaks to finally be scanned, cloaks will be kept out of system, and as soon as someone manages to bring the structure down they will go to a combat footing.

Net result is exactly the same as just making cloaks scannable, except your targets will be even harder to catch unless complacency has set in so far that individuals assume someone is hunting the neutral in system when they aren't. You would be served just as well to get speedy ships constantly moving that are difficult to catch in system instead of cloaks.

As I said, not much of a compromise, and nearly completely in the local residents favor.