EVE General Discussion

Generally, WHers act as if there is someone AFK cloaked in their system all the time, hence the fear of AFK cloakers is a psychological side-effect of local, not a mechanic to be changed.

I'll disagree with you on this.

What you're suggesting here only serves to indicate whether a person is a threat, by their presence on local or not a threat, by their lack of presence on local. The only function of such a mechanic is to remove the terror that AFK cloaking is presently without adding any risk or perceived threat to the environment. Effectively, it's a buff to the locals and a nerf for everyone else.

With what HS is going through right now while CCP sits on the sidelines laughing at everyone involved, I'd be highly disappointed if they did as you suggested, effectively reducing risk in the environment from which so many HTFU's are coming.

No. You can be present in local and not be a threat, and you can be absent from local and still be a threat. It means cloaking your ship actually cloaks your ship, and that this is a double-blind (or, not entirely… one-and-three-quarters-blind maybe) state. If you want to find a target for your bombing run, you have to manually warp around (and risk being uncloaked) or use probes (and be spotted on dscan). Yes, you can still use dscan to look for people, but there's a limit to what you can do with that information and what it actually includes.

It increases the stakes on both sides of the fence: people can no longer tell whether a cloaker is in the system (AFK or not — it doesn't matter), but a cloaker can also no longer tell that there are any targets in the system… or whether they have backup. It provides buffs and nerfs to both sides: the psychological warfare of just being there is gone — you have to actually prove that you're active for it to work, but baiting any such potential attackers is also much easier.

The psychological factor having an unknown neut/red in local is replaced (on both sides) by the psychological factor of inherently being unable to determine whether anyone is watching or not…

wel the discution is years old and i'm 8 years old most in nullsec and i'm a damn good cov op pilot and they need to fix this afk cloacking s******.

if you are a miner and you have a nice system you always mine 1 afk cloacker can ruing your game , in inferno ccp claims to have a counterfit to every fit in game , wel here is some news they don't that afk cloacking is broken and gives alot of people alot of greef , here are some viable selutions that can solve this problem in the gamespirrit of eve .



sugestion 1

as the covop mod is active its a invisable bubble that cant get the gasses out and need to be vented every 10 min so it decloacks for a set timer say 30 sec , if the cloack button is not prest it stays uncloacked

suggestion 2 (my favorite)

create a ghosthunter specialized to hunt cloackies no offencive weapons filled to the eyeballs with electronica to spot them and decloack them prob verry fragile not cloackable basicly a flying coffin when the cloacky is not afk

suggestion 3 (also my fav )

we still have the deep space probes thea are basicly useless now , convert them to ghost hunter probes that can launched from a cov op or a specialized ship to reviel cloackies

Middle ground:

Force "constellation" chat (you can not close it), delete local.

You know there's reds about, but not which system.

Promotes roaming your constellations, scouting and generally undocking eyes.

Any serious nerf to cloakyfags is a buff to nullsec bots, or, as in the case of removing them from local, turns them into easy login traps.

Fix bots, and after that you can worry about fixing AFK cloaking.

Sure it does. Subs being like Cloak Ships evading sub hunting parties like Destroyers Screens in WWII?

Also poeple are going AFK because their is no opposition to hunt them. They would stick around and evade the enemy if their was an enemy that could track them.

What part tripped you up?

A lot of people here seem to be missing the point. An "afk" cloaker can at any point, set up a hotdrop on said combat ships. This includes lighting a cynobeacon while still cloaked at which point the "1 puny cloaker" turns into an army of reds and pops all your stuff. The fact that there is NOTHING a player can do to counter this threat, other than just leave system, is really bad. It is non-interactive and unfun. Discuss now that you are all enlightened to the danger this poses.

My full opinion on the matter is:

• Make Cloaking not effected by D-Scan but not reveal ship type.
• Improve D-Scan Controls / Make it Automated and Information Display and maybe shorten its range.
• Remove Local.
• Add a T2 Destroyer designed to Scan Cloaked Ships 120 seconds after the Gate Cloak wears off.
• Remove speed penalty for Prototype and Improved Cloak and tweak Black Ops bonus to suit.

If he's afk he can't harm you.