Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Oh FFS, if "WHAT IF PEOPLE UNDOCK SHIPS WITH NO MODULES FITTED JUST TO SEE IF THEY CAN DIE" is the best argument you have then you're really a pathetic troll. Stop wasting time with unrealistic scenarios involving stupid players, they have nothing to do with the real game.



Not only are you a troll, you're an illiterate troll. Complex stealth gameplay is not "a development cycle away" because it would require massive changes to core mechanics. For example, how do you do line of sight in a game engine that has no concept of line of sight, and where the developers have explicitly stated that line of sight calculations are impossible for server load reasons? It's very hard to have complex stealth gameplay when your game engine can't even support things like "can I see this person, or are they behind the obstacle".



Only if you go to the other end of the scale, where cloaked ships have to watch their environment but it's trivially easy to escape the counter. Forcing cloaked ships to warp between safespots while still remaining 100% immune to attack unless the player screws up is not an improvement in gameplay, it just adds more buttons to click.

Now, it does have an effect on AFK cloaked ships that can't move to new safespots, but we've already established that the only people who suffer from AFK cloaking are pathetic failures that need to be evicted from EVE anyway.



No, you're just a troll who likes building straw men. I'm fine with losing ships in a way I didn't choose. In fact it happens to me pretty frequently. I attack a bait ship, I get caught on a gate, etc. The issue here is not the possibility of losing a ship (which cloaked ships face if they ever want to engage and accomplish anything), it's the fact that you want to effectively remove stealth gameplay from EVE based on idiotic "I MUST BE ABLE TO KILL EVERYTHING" principles.

Yes, if you choose the interact with the environment then the environment can respond.



And put that ore he just mined back. Then yes, what you are saying is not completely unreasonable. Oh...wait, we can't put the ore back into the asteroid. And even if it is jettisoned and destroyed it is still having an effect.

Really?


So the cloaked ship should have to go back to his own home system upon decloaking then? I somehow doubt your 'logic' is going to work out.

You keep running into issues trying to justify the power of the cloaks because it's simply not justified.

Merin's arguments are old, and long ago dealt with. Weak ships should not be immune. Expense has never been a major balance factor and especially should not be immune. Shutting your modules off should not make you immune.

Nothing in space should be immune. Making an immune thing that should not be immune actually not be immune through effort does not remove all value for that thing from the game. It just corrects an overbalance introduced a long time ago.

Just because people have a different playstyle does not mean they are bad, garbage, or otherwise less than you. It does not mean their playstyle should be less supported in a 'sandbox' than yours. This is especially true in this game, where 'sandbox' is the key selling feature.

Just because the way you think of doing stealth isn't supported by the engine does not mean stealth isn't possible. There is plenty of data already sent to your UI that could be used, like distance, signature size, proximity to other objects, speed, active module effects, etc. It does not have to be elegant and fully realized so that you can dodge in an out of asteroids, just giving a bonus because there are asteroids near would be better than what we have.

You don't have to be a troll to point out the inconsistencies of logic in the Pro-Cloak arguments. ;The thread is badly misnamed, the problem isn't AFK, the problem is the cloaks themselves.

Well, it's nice to see you change your argument a little, but it still does not hold water.

To make your statement true, there would need to be some kind of flag on every ship that undocks. As soon as the ship moves or takes any other action the flag clears and you are now a valid target.

Of course, cloaked ships would have lost that flag as soon as they moved too. In space means being subject to non-consent. You don't get a magic button to just be immune whenever you feel like it. Or at least you shouldn't.

That cloaked ship could have also had a miner on it, and cloaking after shooting a rock would still render it effectively immune to interaction, though I suppose you will be pedantic and point out it would have to move a short distance from the rock to pull that off and if it was near a rock someone might possibly come along and bump into it accidently if it stayed right there.

I'd then point out that the need to move around a little to avoid hunters is all I've asked for.

FFS, at minimum just giving the scanning bookmarks a margin of error so it's very unlikely to land directly on the cloaked ship would be enough. No one really needs the exact location of the ship to have a chance at finding it, and a chance is all that's asked for. It's just not that hard to make things be more reasonable.

And now we're at the "completely pointless" part of the cycle between "pointless" and "remove cloaks from the game". Forcing a cloaked ship to warp between safespots is not going to allow you to catch it, nor does it require any meaningful skill from the cloaked ship. You just wait until you see someone discover your safespot and threaten to get into position to kill you, and then you instantly warp (you are aligned because you aren't stupid) to your next safespot to repeat the process. The "chance of finding it" is ZERO. It might make you feel better that your idiotic obsession with being theoretically able to shoot at a cloaked ship has been pandered to, but you are never going to catch a cloaked ship with even a marginally competent pilot.

The ONLY time this system of probe results with a significant margin of error will let you catch a cloaked ship is when the cloaked ship is AFK and unable to move to new safespots. And, as we have already established, the only alliances that are hurt by AFK cloaked ships are garbage-tier failures that need to be booted back to highsec and deserve no sympathy at all.

Why? I am not having a direct effect on the game and I am using a module CCP put into the game where they knew this kind of behavior was a distinct possibility.

Are you asking why you should be subject to non-consent while in space? It's EVE. It does not matter why you undocked or what affect you can or will have while out in space--- if you are in space you should be subject to non-consent. It's the most basic concept in the game.

And, as has been pointed out, this rule is sheer stubborn idiocy. It is entirely reasonable for there to be situations where a ship is, for all practical purposes, immune to PvP. Those situations should not involve being able to make money, engage PvP targets, etc, but there is no blanket principle that would prevent situational invulnerability from existing when it fulfills a design goal.

But of course you'll keep repeating this argument, because it's the only one you have. If you lose the blanket "I MUST BE ABLE TO PVP EVERYTHING" rule then you have no further argument against cloaking.



No, of course it doesn't, that's why I filed that proposal in the "useless" category. Merely being able to get an inaccurate probe result on grid with a cloaked ship accomplishes nothing, because the cloaked ship will immediately warp to a new safespot if you get anywhere near it. All you've accomplished is adding more buttons to press without adding any meaningful gameplay decisions or interactions. And that's **** design.

For your proposal to have any practical effect you have to combine it with some kind of anti-cloak mechanic that deactivates the cloak and allows you to see the cloaked ship. And such an ability will immediately be exploited to provide instant warning of a cloaked ship on-grid with you, giving a target plenty of time to warp out before the cloaked ship can get into position to make an attack. So if you're going to have very little benefit from being cloaked you might as well just bring a HAC instead of a recon and hope you get lucky enough to land within tackle range when you warp in.



Uh, what? You might want to re-read that post and try to understand the context. The current situation is that cloaking doesn't let you do anything while you're invulnerable. You become invulnerable, but only at the cost of being unable to activate any modules. If you want to accomplish anything besides sitting idle in space you have to decloak and give up your invulnerability, at which point you can be killed just like anything else.

It also kinda stupid to hear people scream nerf cloaks when it clear they never used them before. So speaking of kettles.

Nope. Cloaks are fine. What can you do while the cloak is active and you are at a safe spot? Here is a partial list:

PI,
Contracts,
Market orders if I am in range,
D-scan.

In that list, and add more if I have missed any, the only one you can't do in station is D-scan. However, when in station you can also,

Use jump clones (totally safe and invulnerable instantaneous travel between vast distances,
Access the corp hangar (if there is one and you have access rights),
Trade with other characters,
Access station services.
With a citadel you can even undock, remain tethered and use D-scan and remain pretty much invulnerable as if you were docked.

So the general rule is this:

When playing the game you are, generally speaking, at risk. There are exceptions. These are when docked, tethered, temporarily when in a POS shields, and when cloaked at a secret safe.

Edit:

You also might want to have a think about what it means when there is non-consensual PvP. In non-consensual PvP one side is "consenting". If both sides are not consenting then why are they fighting? Why aren't both players warping off? Or staying there and doing stuff other than shooting each other?