Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Introduce Solar Flares that decloake all ships.
Make them appear randomly so both sides do not know when they happen and there can be no simple makro to counter them.
They can appear 5 times a minute or not for 3month in a system nobody knows.

Here is where linking local and cloaking would fall through on this...


Solar flare goes off randomly with a bright flash in space, disrupting cloaks and local for 30 seconds, after which local comes back online and the re-cloak timer starts on affected ships.

Worst case for the locals is that if there have been active hunters in the area they head for safety until local comes back up and the area is known to be secure again Cloaked campers now suffer the re-cloak delay and if they were alert are already in warp to their next safe location they have established so they can keep moving in system. Sleepy campers get scanned down and sent home by pod express.

Campers now almost exclusively are either active and alert, or using macros and are most likely in a Cov Ops.

It's not griefing. It's just not balanced because they remain immune to player disruption of their activities.

That's EVE. Your PVE is being disrupted. It's fine that it can be, but it should move from there to interaction, rather than stopping and stagnating.

Where the conceptual disconnect comes from is that the pro-camper crowd believes that they should be able to disrupt PvE 100% of the time, as well as striking when and where they choose against flying loot pinatas.

The anti camper crowd believes they should be able to secure their space and use it for their own chosen purposes, most of them think this should also be 100% of the time.

I am in the middle. I don't mind if they disrupt so long as I can force an end. Active defense should trump passive aggression. I side more with the anti-campers, because I recognize the alliances effort to clear and secure the space as a valid trade for the security of individual operators within the alliance, but I fully support the ability for day trippers to come and disrupt and therefore provoke PvP- but not indefinitely nor by casually handwaving the defensive effort required to secure the space in the first place.

Wormholes with their limited traffic are a different situation.

Regardless, the camping isn't griefing by EVE standards. The issue is that there is no way to force a confrontation. The devs have clearly stated that everything should be subject to interference from other players. They have not made efforts to fix the things that have drawn this criticism even from them yet, however, so in the end there is nothing to do but wait until they decide something else related needs changing.

In this case this will likely happen with cloaks with the OA. That they consider allowing OA to detect cloaks is a sign they recognize the issue, though they have avoided commenting on it for years, likely because they don't have a good solution.

The OA will likely end AFK camping. It does not matter if it can be shot down- that won't be done by a lone guy somewhere random and undetectable. Shooting it down will be risky, keeping it down likely impossible, and people will just not PvE anywhere without one.

You can't have "imperfect security". It's either secure, or not. It's much like being only a little dead. Secure does not mean it cannot be attacked, it just means there is no danger currently present.

Wormholes have so-called imperfect security, but it's been discussed why their systems would not work in Kspace.

I agree that security should be able to be compromised, but that is the case with or without cloaks and with or without local. The two really are not linked like you think they are. That's been the mantra for a while, but if the OA do what we expect and allow both to be compromised then you won't get your extra engagements from cloaks, but rather from the fleets maintaining the OA and trying to knock them down. PvE won't be involved any more than current, they just won't be present without a OA up and running.

I am still waiting for Stealth Bombers to go D-scan immune, lose all abilities for covert cloak...

For the local aspect people keep saying need to be balanced.
I'd go to a 1-3x5 Grid system.
It would sit in the top of the window on the right side. It would list the number of each standing type in system with you. You can see everyone in system still, but can't see what their individual standing is with out clicking on them. (Maybe tie it into something where standings are only listed on ships within D-Scan range, even if cloaked/immune)
Once the new structures are in place, the system can work with them to provide the same details.

I don't feel the best thing to do in any Know system is kill local. It limits the social aspect of the game to much, and can hurt the games development.
There are a few people like me who play to meet and make friends... not so much to log on and bleep bleep people...
The ability to still know that a hostile person is in your area is needed, specially as there are no "hard" counters for a cloaked player who knows what he is doing.
A 30 million ISK ship shouldn't be able to solo a multi-million to multi-billion ISK ship, into submission in a few seconds and able to call his/her friends from a few light years away to do greater harm.

-Maybe the other option would be to add "Travel Time" when your CYNOing somewhere. Say 5-10(?) seconds per LY from CYNO for ships jumping to the CYNO.
- Starwars and even Star Treck had travel time while in warp/hyperdrive... If this is done, I'd do it to all forms of JUMP(bridge/cyno/covert)

And have them undock people who are AFK in station.

Because asset denial should always be a thing, and you have already got an awesome source of intel, local, no need to make it even better.

As for cynos and cloaks, stop it with trying to buff your play style over others.

And why do you need a counter to people getting into a station? That's absurd.

If you drive them into a station, you won. The longer they stay in station, the more damage you inflict on them and their alliance.