Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The "Anti-Cloak" Regiment will be useless against an active cloaker. And remaining active is silly simple under my plan.

In 18 pages, which I haven't read, this problem may have been brought up, but it needs to be brought up or repeated:

The moment you use any visual, audio, or other cue to let the AFK Cloaker know his cloak is being compromised, it will take about a week before some coder has a macro or bot-type program that automatically warps the cloaked ship from one safe to another, and you'll be back at square 1 with a set of useless tools.

This.

Endeavour Starfleet,why do you insist on constantly bringing this bad idea thread back from the dead?
You have 5 likes on the OP (most of which I would guess are your alts) and only 2 at most in the thread that even come close to liking your idea. 1 of which changes his mind and states it's over powered.

Let it die, you failed.

OP is mentally challenged. It's as simple as that. You can repeat your counterpoints until you're blue in the face. He wants things his way and believes by responding to every post with convoluted arguments he's catching the designers attention. He isn't. He never will. Because the amount of cloak users subscriptions far surpasses this threads 2 carebears who want a safety net. If they try and break cloaking we can cancel subs and demonstrate our resolve.

For those just reading, the Op has yet to prove

1)AFK cloaking is detrimental to anyone other than bot runners or risk averse people in nullsec.

2)That cloaking as it has been has caused a serious issue with gameplay (outside of the fore mentioned class of players).

3)That AFK cloakers kill people in an unfair manner.

4)That AFK cloakers actually exist.

And he never will because he can not. Knowing this however doesn't dent his resolve at embarrassing himself in front of the community by considering himself the special snowflake that's going to change EVE into the game he want's to play.

Likes do have a very small measure of an idea, but as I said they are most likely likes from your alts.
But actual replies in the thread do have measure and so far only two have liked your idea, one of which only liked part of it, then later said it was overpowered. So it's clear after 18 pages that you don't listen to anyone, avoid difficult questions and have yet to understand the issue.

Your idea is not balanced, it nerfs cloaks and doesn't address the reason for AFKing. I think I can safely say it's not and never will be valid, sorry to burst your bubble.

Oh and I am glad that you do care about what I think.

Such a thing does not exist.

Some people who cloak in enemy ratting systems do genuinely go AFK during the course of a day, sure. But for the vast majority of the time they are active and looking for people to shoot at. At worst, they might be semi-active, doing more effort-effective stuff on their mains, but they are still checking their probes, checking the gates, the complexes.

AFK Cloakers are a myth.

Why would you ever train a character to recons 5 to sit it in a system doing nothing ?

It turns out that denying the enemies the ability to make money doesn't make you anything, nor does it make you feel good. Useful pvp characters are rather better used to do pvp-type things. Certainly much better than sitting cloaked at a safe spot.

If they are just out in a cov ops or a bomber, then they are NO threat to any solo ship. Not without back up. Doesn't matter how active they are, doesn't matter what they do, they are just too fragile to be scared of in practice. Even with a covert cyno, sitting still in a frigate while something shoots at you will near certainly kill you in a few seconds.

The only ships that can be a problem solo are decently skilled recons, particularly pilgrims, but in a pinch any of them will do.

No alliances have afk cloaker ACCOUNTS (lol seriously ?) let alone dedicated AFK characters. They have alts that have cloaked ships (for scouts, falcons, cynos etc) that are presently sitting in your back yard trying to find you. As a member of a corp who proudly fits cloaks on interceptors, no there is no such thing as an AFK cloaker alt. There is just a guy trying to find you and violence your boat. If there is a red in system, he is watching you.

No-one is favoring AFK cloakers (aside from them not existing) because they can't kill you while they are cloaked. And all of the cloaked ships are deeply underwhelming once they are out of cloak. They are either painfully fragile or stuck on frigate dps. They are not dangerous ships in their own right. They need friends. And thats where we run into a problem:

You seem to not really know what you are arguing for here.

You start off by saying its all about AFK cloakers (ie one person sitting in your system for days on end doing nothing), and then you complain that you are being killed by gangs that are portaling in to your systems. Or their friends running in from next door to attack you once the cloaker finds you.

And I don't see how that is unbalanced. 5 vs 1 = 5 wins.

To put it in (hopefully) terms that are simple enough for you to understand:

A solo cloaked ship is not directly a threat to you. His friends might well be, but that doesn't make the cloaker unbalanced.

That's like saying that your ship got killed by a titan, but the titan wouldn't have been there if the cyno kestrel hadn't been able to drop a cyno. So kestrels are overpowered, because they can cyno in titans to kill you.

It just doesn't make any sense to say that the scout is the overpowered bit.

And to restate it once again: A ship that is actively trying to find you is not an AFK cloaker.

He is a guy trying to find you who is currently cloaked.

On a different topic, how do you know that your claimed AFK cloakers aren't moving around ? Or are AFK ? Or are alts come to that.

Valea, You can try to hide the fact that they use them all you want. But we eventually blue to them and learned just how extensive their AFK operations are. And proved it to me with killmails (Not showing them as this is indeed a posting alt) Of course they didn't suspect that I would use said knowledge against them and the other AFKers later on.

Also you I will never really convince anyway. Nor zim nor anyone other than CCP that has the logs and the data to say "Oh wait the logs do say that these cyno activations happen within a short time of a client reporting active again."

I do seriously need to make a refreshed topic tho. This one has become a bit outdated with some changes I have come up to the plan (I noticed recently that the amendment allowing time before the probe even registers there is a cloak out there was not added to the OP whoops.) I ought to spend a great deal more time with mah gimp skillz to make a much more detailed set of images.

Basically if you want to afk you log off, as in EVERY other game. Cloaking=cheating, should be removed/rebalanced.

Since you mention how good the cloak is on non-covert-ops ships, I keep wondering if you actually fitted those mods yourself?

* Dscan and probing can be done while cloaked, but:
- You need to decloak to actually warp or target someone
- You need to decloak to drop your probes (and probes expire, so you don't have those probes indefinately unless you decloak again, and again, and again)

* Scanning information
- Sitting at a SS dscanning only gives you intel of what's in range of your dscan, and your targets have to sit still for you to be able to pinpoint more exact location
- Sitting at a SS probing only gives you intel until your probes expire, then you have to decloak to put out a fresh batch

* Negatives with the non-cov cloaks
- You have a targeting delay after decloak, which makes it really easy for potential targets to warp off before you even start lock them (and you still have your regular lock time to consider too)
- You move really slow cloaked, this is not ideal when travelling at gates and can make you quite vulnerable vs camps
- You lose a utility high for a module that gives you zero more damage and zero more tank, and has no offensive capabilities like a neutralizer or similar mod. All it does is keep your ship off dscan/probes while the module is activated
- You reduce your signature resolution, which means you lock slower too, a ship you normally would've been able to target in X seconds will slip away from you purely because you have a cloak fitted - even if it's not online
- You can't warp cloaked, so obviously anyone paying attention to dscan will know you are in space and in what ship
- High CPU cost to fit the cloak

Then, as alot of people don't seem to get this, a few things needs to be cleared up
- When you log off, your ship shows on dscan and can be probed, cloak or no cloak
- When you travel, you have to decloak at gates, and if someone locks you you can't cloak
- When you drop probes, get within 2 km from someone/something, want to engage a player etc, you have to/gets decloaked

There's plenty of time to kill non-cov-ops ships. If they are actively moving, fighting (players or npcs), if they log on/off, enter/leave local etc, you can always dscan/probe and find them. When they are afk, or not doing anything, no you can not find them. But they can't do anything to you either.

I never understood why so many players think that extra ~5 seconds (depeding on cloak/skills) that it takes for the ship to even *start* lock you, and the extra time it takes to lock due to nerfed sensor strength, and the fact they can't warp cloaked and/or move really slow to get close to you - is not plenty of time to get away. If you keep moving on-grid, or if you pay attention/are not AFK, there's absotely zero reason for a non-cov-ops cloak fitted ship to ever tackle you. The only time you should ever be tackled by such a ship is if you are AFK or don't pay attention. Isn't that exactly the same argument you use vs the AFK-cloakers? But as been pointed out so many times by Tippia, Mag, Ingvar Angst, Feligast and virtually everyone that posted here: you break the mechanic for non-AFK cloakers as well in your suggestion. So you break a working, balanced mechanic for actively played characters, so your AFK- or lazy players get an easier life, while these suggested changes would do nothing to stop AFK-cloakers as they already uhm, are unable to do anything. That's already been posted here a number of times, tho.

What's not stressed out is all the setbacks, and vulnerabilities that comes by just fitting a cloak on your ship. It's not an i-win button, it's a gimp you put on your ship to potentially win another advantage. A tradeoff. And the supposed defender, vs this cloaker, gets extended time to GTFO, or a 'weaker' hostile to fight in return.