Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Just a couple examples of things in game.

Pro's.

- Bomber fleets need to be cloaked. That is how the operate. Without it they are useless. Same with recon ships.
- AFK Cloak camping. Though annoying. It serves a purpose for both intel and to stop system use.
- General travel. Cloaking makes this far easier.

Con's

- AFK Camping. Though an accepted tactic by CCP it does frustrate many players, as there is no counter. Either risk operating in the system OR move to another system. There is no way to eject the stealth player from the system.
- Ship hiding. I can literally have billions of isk worth of ships floating in space and no one would ever know. I can have a rorq on grid in a belt. As soon as there is a threat, I simply cloak the ship. Unless you witnessed the ship cloaking, you would have no idea where it was.
- The ultimate safety net. I can be chased by 100's of ships. As long as I make it past the gate camp, there is no possible way a cloak can be found in system. The cloak pilot has 1 challenge and that is the gate. However if I am a cloak pilot and I see the threat as being too high. I can just go afk and wait or just log off.

These are just a few examples. There are plenty more.

I dont like the idea of nerfing cloak, however I do feel its necessary. My suggestion has always been that of a stealth hunting frigate.

I personally would be ok with the removal of local from low and null sec, but changing D scan to allow all ships to be seen, even cloaked. However cloaked ships only showing a pilots name. Thus the player has to be more active about using D scan while operating, in order to be safe. Included in that would be a stealth hunting ship.

The rough concept for the ship would be this.

Small frig. Minimal offenses, high defense such as speed, tank, light tackle.

How it would hunt.

Use D Scan. Any ship that shows up as just a pilot name would be a stealth craft. With a skill like "Cloak Detection" or something, you could lock onto the disruption in space the cloak creates and this would give you a heading that would be displayed as an arrow in your tactical overview. This would also give you a basic distance, being more accurate with skill training. The goal would not be to land directly on the cloak player but to put you on grid with them. Once on grid, you have to actively hunt for the player using the arrow in your tactical overview. Once within 50KM you could see the ship, but still in a cloaked way, so locking on would be impossible. At 25km you could employ a type of EM burst that would decloak both ships and thus combat could begin.

This is just a rough idea. Certain aspects are tricky. Like how can you get a ship into warp without having a specific endpoint.

This is the idea I have always personally thought would work best. I have seen the same concept work well in other sandbox games.

True it is an assumption but considering the last comment anyone saw from CCP on the subject was "cloaking is working as intended" I'm happy with it.

• Why are you in nullsec if one neutral scares you to death? For godsakes, nullsec ratting grounds are safer than highsec and you're complaining about danger. Moreover, why do you need to "eject that stealth player from the system"? Since you're so adamant that you must be able to do it, perhaps you can explain why.
• What can you do with billions in cloaked ships? Oh, that's right, nothing. Cloaked ships cannot interact or do anything except float around in space. Maybe they can get decloaked by an errant bit of debris or perhaps if they're covert-capable they can warp around some, but that's it. Literally every other interaction requires decloaking.
• I can do the same thing with a MWD cruiser (or smaller), a safespot (a celestial can work too) and double-clicking in a random direction. By the time an aggressor scans me down, gets a warp-in and lands, I'm already out of range. An interceptor can keep this game up literally forever without ever touching a cloak. Also, you can just log off regardless of your ship having a cloak or not.

Your move, sir.

Just because there's more intensity of posting by people that don't think it's s problem doesn't mean that they have a better case or represent the players better. It may be that more people that like cloaky camping post more and nothing else.

Ultimately the only thing that matters is what CCP thinks about this tactic and how players respond to it. You might feel great in saying the cloaky whiners just need to adapt, but if they don't and CCP loses an account over it, that matters more than how well you sleep at night because of your amazing display of forum logic.

I agree with the OP that CCP should at least address the issue as they have addressed many others that were just as controversial (freighter ganking in highsec for instance). At least them we would know their position on gameplay and how it relates to their view of player satisfaction.

Yes your example had 100 people chasing him... take shifts

if you want to catch him wait for him or bait him out if hes not worth the trouble then don't

Exactly. Have Behr have you read any of the ALODs over at themittani.com? Find the one's where super capitals are killed. Those KMs are frequently the result of months of stalking the victim. There was just one the other day where a Hel was killed and the primary stalker was at it for a very, very long time. Here is a quote from the article,



A year and a half. If you aren't willing to spend the time to try and catch a guy trying to evade you, nerfing his game is rather arbitrary and simply a method to feed you easier killmails.

Sorry, but no.

Teckos. You did notice that I listed AFK camping as a PRO as well, right? It does have it's purposes and it's abuses.

CCP also thought that jump range was fine too. We see they have changed their mind.

Daichi

Why are you adverse to the idea of changing cloak? If it brings about more PVP, wouldn't that be good?

That applies to everyone really that feels that this topic is talked to death?

Why is the argument to not change anything. Any change to cloak would result in more PVP. So many topics about how people camp in stations and pos, and so many wanting timers for people to be kicked out of station. Yet it's the exact same thing with trying to fight a cloak in system. You just can't do it.

My other example of how I can just hide a Rorq when I dont want to fight. This again avoids PVP.

Wouldnt changes to increase PVP be a benefit?

Of course you would see it that way Mags. Although that ignores the three reasons that I already brought up here in the thread, two of those not being afk cloak camping.

Easiest way to avoid the topic is to close it I guess.