Player Features and Ideas Discussion

yes i know all these things.

and when the method of this form of attack is moved to inties, the 'problem' will still not be whether the intruder is afk or not.

it will still lie with: the nature of instant free intel, the feeling of entitlement to that intel and the advanced warning it provides, the threat of cyno's, and the ease of getting those cyno's into range before anything can be realistically done about it.


edit- let me just make it clear, there are counters to the actual damage a cloaker can do no doubt, i know that too. im simply emphasizing why this is even a discussion at all, or that the reason that this is a discussion is not anything to do with AFK players.

I completely agree. The problem stems from a desire to reap the rewards of more dangerous areas of EVE without the risk. This is the reason the colloquial phrases "carebear" and "nullbear" are used. Which describe players that reject risk of loss as a gameplay mechanic of EVE.
If you remove/alter cloaking the discussion will simply shift to another mechanic and then another and another until the game is as bland and static as highsec or some other less sustainable MMO titles.

I feel this is correct.

The problem was never the hostile, entering the system in search of targets.

The problem is that the 'target', feels inadequate to handle the hostile's presumed threat.

We already know and accept that players avoid fights they expect to lose, as both costly and not interesting.
Let's make these PvE ships capable of fighting, on par with the stealthed threats they can expect to encounter.

Enough of this running like scared rabbits.

What the nerf cloaking crowd needs to do is start a thread on cyno mass limits. That seems to be the actual issue for you guys

I believe the only change to a cyno that is needed, is to expose the system to risk in exchange for convenience.

By that, I mean have a spool up where no ships can travel, but it is highly visible on local grid. No beacon would appear on the overview until the spool up completes, so ships able to travel happens when the beacon appears.
Have this last anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute.

The result, is a cyno can be used very much like it currently is, with the exception that if you do it on grid to another player they can see it and have time to react.

In the version where PvE ships are as formidable as their stealthed opponents, I expect this should allow the PvE ship enough time to chop up the cyno boat into small pieces, and serve it as stir fry.

My basic premise is that fights should happen between PvE and stealthed craft, which means the PvE must have a reasonable expectation that they can win, IF they make the effort.

wouldnt increasing travel time also give ppl 'even more time to react' as well?

Do you not know how much risk cov-ops ships come under attempting to get from what one system to another? Something people seem to fail to understand in this thread, they make claim that cov-ops ships are risk free intel or combat. That is total bull, and they never, I mean NEVER flew cov-ops able ships. First, cov-ops able ships are nerfed to all hell, they have no combat ability outside their designated targets. Stealth bomber for example primary targets are large slow moving targets. Targets that can't escape quickly because those bombs do have a travel time.

All cov-ops ships take a massive nerf to combat abilities due to their ability to fit a cov-ops, so when traveling through gates, if you don't plan everything down to the wire, you are going to get destroyed, and all that isk lost.

You want to add a timer to my cloak? Fine, give me the ability to cloak while being locked!
You want to add fuel to my cloak? Fine, make it so that when I get too close to objects, I no longer uncloak.
You want to make probes hunt down my cloaked ship? Fine, then buff all my cov-ops combat ships so that they can compete on the same level as other ships.
You want to add an AFK timer to the game: Fine, as long as you do the same for those that are docked, and those that are docked, fail the AFK timer, you get kicked out into space to be logged off.

I think this can be adjusted a couple of ways.

It could be determined that a recon ship is exempt from needing a spool up time, or can simply precharge this off grid ahead of time.

It could be that a number of ships working together can reduce the spool up to zero, following the same logic that they can pool their power together.

Either way, a single T1 ship by itself should not be able to shoulder this degree of leverage, and only the recon ships should wield this ability solo at all.

You're one of those awesome guys who defines a conversation as a reinforced echo box with no dissent, right?

AFK cloaking is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. In order for an AFK cloaker to actually do anything he would have to invest hours, possibly days, possibly more, in order to have an effect on the game. The vast majority of that time is nothing but opportunity cost.

Besides which, there are legitimate purposes to cloaking up and taking a walk. Like -- cloaking up and taking a walk. This is a part of the game. You've already made the sacrifice of fitting a cloak, you might as well get some use out of it.

Broken? Perhaps.

I would say this is not in conflict with the view that it is also balanced.

Something can be broken, but also be effectively balanced. The problem is often that it takes something equally broken in order to balance it.

I feel that is what we have here, two broken systems, both effectively an absolute in their respective areas.
Since nothing can overcome an absolute effect, where these two overlap results in a stalemate.
It is resolved frequently by players logging off, or going AFK.

I feel these are left in place because no clear solution exists to them, and they both define extreme limits of intel.

You can ALWAYS see pilots in a system with local.
You can NEVER scan down a cloaked vessel.

I believe this absolute nature of their mechanic is what ties them together, so they cannot be handled separately.