EVE General Discussion

I have been afk cloaked. And I have done afk cloaking. I also run around in w-space.

Remove local. w-space is perfectly viable without instant intel on who's there. Honestly, spamming d-scan every few seconds is impractical. The odds of you catching a covert cloaker on dscan are pretty small. You might see probes if they aren't very experienced. The good ones will have all your sites already bookmarked.

Don't fly what you can't afford to replace. In nul or w-space I suggest to modify that to say don't fly what you can't easily replace. If losing a T1 BC is too much for you, you may want to go back to hisec missioning for a while and build up a war chest.

You will lose ships. That is a part of life in nul. Plan for it and mitigate the risks.

It's ironic when people defend a "no-consequence tactic" by stating "Eve has consequences".

And people wonder why so many are leaving 0.0. I know I did because there was and remains NO counter. Used to rat in a -0.9 system a lot. Made some good coin, bought some ships and jumped into CTA's and small gangs at every opportunity.

Sanctum nerf happened, AFK cloakies moved in and my income disappeared. Got to the point where I couldn't afford to lose ships anymore so stopped roaming. Couldn't rat, couldn't mine, couldn't roam. So I left.

And pray tell, removing local fixes it? How? Ignorance is bliss?

Even less people would bother with 0.0 if that were ever to be implemented. Yes, fights might improve but less people would bother being there if the income was as good as removed.

All other sources of income (moons etc.) is owned by the alliances..... What's left?

We need to promote 0.0 as a place to make money and fight for the right to do so - and it's not done by allowing silly little cloaky games and scaring everyone off.

Where are you getting that 30 day figure from? Training plan for a fresh alt, please. I can't see how you could make a 30 day covops alt that's actually a threat in that time. Enough skills to sit in local under a regular cloak, maybe, but that's harmless. To actually stalk someone and light a cyno? You need cloaking IV, racial frigate V, covops I, CFT I (CFT V for covert cynos...)

Way to misquote! Well done for trying to build a strawman.

The problem isn't that it makes it less profitable or hits profit margins, the problem is that it makes null LESS profitable than hi-sec. Do you really think that is right?

The secondary problem is that it gives a very cheap and risk-free way of seriously fecking up your enemy's economics. This heavily breaks the risk vs reward that EvE is based around. More risk = More reward, except in the case of AFK cloaking.

Now please try addressing the real problems and see if you can come up with an actual answer.

You can AFK cloak in a system with covert ops and covert cloak in 26 days. (with +3's)
An ordinary cyno on a covert ops is approx. 31 days (with +3's)

Agreed, fitting a covert cyno is a further 30 days but you only need that on jammed systems.

But yes, a covert ops cloaky can warp cloaked within 5k of you and drop a std. cyno at approx. 30 days.

Then, it seems to me, the problem is with cynos and hotdropping, and not cloaking. The most immediate counter-strategy that comes to my mind is to fit a cyno to the bait ratting ship and bridge in a fleet to counter the dropped gank fleet. Then they drop another fleet through a cyno, etc etc. Then the node crashes.

And you think a scanner tool is going to save you from a cyno drop from hell?

Or anywhere in nullsec where friendlies lie. Most juicy systems for afk cloaking are down long, long pipes, where you only need to be seen once for everyone to know what you're flying.

The proposition of a solution implies a problem. There exists no problem with AFK cloakers. AFK cloakers by definition are AFK and cannot hurt you.

This is very, very true. Which is why it is actually done using Recons and not Prowlers

The word "rapier" puts more fear in me than "20 reds 5 jumps out".....