Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So that someone can catch you, in a nutshell.

I'm sure there's also a limitation on activating modules while cloaked.

Whats so imbalanced about not getting caught on a gate in a covops?

Gives them a whole server tick to lock you, actually. Also there would still be plenty of chance to decloak someone using bubbles in nullsec or drone spam on gates in low.

But you have the chance to activate your cloak in that same sever tick so in the end it balances out reasonably well which is likely why CCP has never changed it.
This is an older article but the basics of the server tick have not changed much since it was written reading it may hel;p you understand the situation better and it will better equip you to handle this transition.
Understanding the server tick.

I have never seen anything on this from CCP so everything you read here is just our thoughts on the issue.
Essentially this comes down to the restriction on activating modules while cloaked and who or what is providing that cloak is not relevant. If the game was re-coded to allow you to activate an on-board cloak while you were still gate cloaked then others could target and fire weapons while they were gate cloaked and trust me that would be a really bad thing. Yes CCP could code around this but to be honest it would add a level of complexity that is not required the gate to on-board cloak transition has worked well for as long as I have been in the game and there is really is not any reason to change it.

Some things to think about and remember.
You control when you make the transition, while that seems like an insignificant thing in reality it is huge.
Those who may be looking for you will not see you until you do something that deactivates the gate cloak.
Once they see you average human reaction times (0.4 second as determined in continual testing by the NHRA more at the end) dictate that you will likely have an entire server tick before they can spot you on overview, move their cursor to and then click on your ship to select it and then press the target button / hot key.
So in an average situation you essentially have one and possibly two server ticks to get your cloak activated and in most cases this will be all you need. If you die in low or nul sec flying a ship with a cov ops cloak you are far more likely to die to your own carelessness(low sec) or a bomb (nul sec) than you are to a dedicated action to target and shoot you.

Scattering crap around a gate to force a de-cloak is not as much of a problem as you may think. Mostly because CCP frowns on the activity because of the lag it can produce and in fact section 16 of the TOS specifically prohibits this activity if / when it affects another players ability to play the game. A lot of gray area in this and no doubt it would be a judgement call on the part of CCP, but my advice is if you are ever de-cloaked by junk scattered about a gate, something other than the obvious wrecks from a fight file a ticket with CCP. Here is a link to the EvE Online TOS.

Bubbles are something you will only run into in nul sec since there use is prohibited in empire space, yes low sec is still empire space so you will not run into bubble in low sec. Bubbles do not affect your ability to cloak they only prevent your warp drive from working. Please note I said warp drive as an AB, MWD or MJD will still operate inside a bubble. Someone their watching the bubble is the biggest problem you will face and to be honest the biggest issue you face there is if they have a bomb launcher.
So basically if you land in a bubble your actions will depend on the specif circumstances and covering all of the possibilities would not be possible here instead here are some general ideas.
Cloaking and moving away unseen is usually but not always better than trying to MWD, MJD or AB out of the bubble.
If there are people watching the gate and they have one or more bomb launchers you are dead no matter what you do if you are flying a cov ops frigate, usually they do not have the EHP to survive a single bomb, they will not survive two or more.
If there are people watching the bubble and you do not die to bombs then a second or two after your cloak engages change your direction of travel since the only hope they have is trying to de-cloak you and there only real clue is the direction you were traveling when you cloaked so changing directions gives you a better chance of getting away.

The EvE University page on interdiction is a great place to start learning more.

Now that more at the end thing regarding the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association). The NHRA sets up kiosks at their events (drag racing in the US) where fans can test their reaction times to the starting lights and compare it to that of the pro drivers. The NHRA also records this data (times only no names) and uses it to adjust the delays used in the starting light sequence and for the last 20 years those delays have been set based on a 0.4 second average response time.

Based on a comment on Reddit a few months ago by a Dev I believe all module activations as well as things like reps actually happen intra-tick. That's why it can look like someone's health didn't move while they're being shot and repped, but it's not actually possible to over-rep to let someone survive alpha that would have killed them. The health update sent to the client does happen at the end of tick though, so the health doesn't move.

We could always play around on Sisi to test locking a cloaked ship, but based on the amount of "no you're wrong" I got the last time I tried to espouse the view that you could lock someone before they cloaked up I'm inclined to believe that it's not reliably doable even with an insta-lock setup.

How about this, do you have time this weekend? We can throw a cloak on a Carrier and an insta-lock ship of some kind. Easiest way to check if it's intra-tick is have the person with the cloak say "go" at the same time as they activate it. Assuming shorter latency between the players than the server that should answer the question at least for the purposes of 99% of the playerbase.

While I agree it would be very nice to be able to pre-heat a module, changing ammo types and activating modules would be horribly OP.

I'd much more prefer to have heat remain persistent; if you pre-heat a module, it stays pre-heated until you spin it down again, regardless of any session changes.

Fitting a cloak is not immunity from gameplay, especially not gameplay trying to enter your ship without using the airlock.

As Shadowlance said, the gate cloak is more of a hacky workaround left over from when it routinely took players 15+ seconds to *load the system* after jumping. The reason you can't do anything is so that any extra time you may have under gate cloak doesn't give too much of an advantage.