Player Features and Ideas Discussion

What does it matter what goes on when you aren't there?

"mommy, they are doing something without me when I'm not there... Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

You came to hunt soft targets, you came to disrupt PvE, you came for PvP.

You got your fair shot at soft targets with gate cloak keeping you out of local. Only really active gate defense will mess you up there, and that's PvP. You still might get evaded based on Intel channels, but that's whole fleets worth of players stopping you, seems legit.

Unless pvp-ed at the gate, you disrupted PvE as soon as you broke the gate cloak. You have a fair shot at catching someone, and the rest are looking to evacuate. It would be your choice to engage anyone you catch and risk defense fleets catching up, or to begin a cloaking campaign where you have to actively evade pursuit to keep PvE disrupted. With the possibility of you being caught more people will be willing to hunt you.

While being hunted isn't the kind of PvP you would prefer, it is in fact PvP. You can fight, you can evade...the choice is up to you and depends on your goal, but you can't claim it's not creating PvP where currently there is nonthing but blueballing going on. I get that you really dislike any PvP where you are at risk of becoming a target, but actions should have consequences.

Mags
I really do not understand why having to decloak occasionally at a time and place more or less under the cloaked ship's control breaks anything.

All it does is add small windows where unsolicited pvp might possibly occur.

Well for one, because we also use cloaks for other purposes than purely annoying renters. Annoying the renters is a niche use at best; 95% of the time cloakers have more meaningful duties to perform.

Cloaky eyes for example. Don't make 'em tedious just for the sake of making them tedious.

Or for actually remaining undetected for long periods of time, as would be the case with dreads, carriers, black ops battleships etc.

Or how about a defensive cloak, allowing PvE ships, Prospects, Blockade runners and Deep Space Transports to remain safe when they find themselves boxed in?

Of course there are the active, non-AFK hunters that do need to set up safespots and create pings without anyone noticing. If anybody knew, that would defeat the purpose now, wouldn't it?

And then there's the often overlooked detail where you're deep in hostile space and something in Real Life comes up. You don't know how long it's going to take, but that's okay because you're cloaked. Unless some renter nerfed them and your perfectly laid out plan goes down the drain. Because safelogging would reveal your presence and possibly your location, which you really really can't afford.

And wormholes. You need to scan stuff down (which takes time), and you have absolutely nothing to work with. Even the bloody rats may kill you.

Oh, and of course there is the fact only covops cloaks can actually get to these 'recharge locations' you speak of. Improved cloaks using the cloak/MWD trick would no longer be able to pull some heroics even if they successfully evaded the gatecamp.... only to forcibly decloak some 80km off gate and still well within my point range. *rofl*


I can see you thought this through real well. Congrats. The impact is indeed minimal -- for the only thing we'd still be able to do without a care in the world, is scare renters

Well you could ignore the facts yes, seeing as you wish to ignore local.

There I am in an enemy system watching them and reporting back on comms. But wait, my cloak is about to drop, so I warp to some point that allows for recharge, only to get scanned down and shot to hell. Or do I even get the chance to recharge, would it simply die on me whilst next to the enemy fleet?

So break yes, seeing as now the covert cloak doesn't work as intended and is in fact a liability. But at least local is still fine, so AFKing can continue. Good news everyone.

I do like how you want to break active play though, in order to fix those who are AFK. It's nicely done.

They are right on this, Jerguhl.

Timers are unsuitable to the problem at hand. As has been discussed in the thread numerous times...

Any timer short enough to be reasonable for making cloaks huntable would break almost any other use of the cloak other than camping at a deep safe. I would consider reasonable no longer than 15 minutes because...

Any timer too long will leave us in exactly the same place. You might get the very rare case where someone's random frustration check coincided with the once in 6 hours window of vulnerability, but for the most part no one is going to make any kind of regular effort to hunt something when they have to continually scan for long periods of time just on the off chance that they get something. This is more true the shorter the window of vulnerability is. You think it's reasonable that someone looking to defend their system do nothing but scan for 30 minutes at a time, and if they ever stop they stand a really good chance of missing their 30 second window of opportunity? Frequency or duration of vulnerability need to be sufficient to catch them, and doing that breaks any use the cloak has other than camping under it.

The reason I suggested and support a system of false positives for scanning cloaks is because the cloak should start with a high degree of safety, that is then degraded by active effort of the systems defenders. The cloaker can slow their progress by taking action of his own, but if afk eventually that safety will degrade and he will be caught. The hunting and evading ideally would depend on a combination of luck and skill, until the situation resolves.

Such a system allows long windows of opportunity for other uses of the cloak without leaving a cloaked camp that snuck in at 3am when the defenders of the system are normally asleep to be permanently entrenched until such time as they choose to leave or attack, while still affecting activity in the system due to response to their presence.

I happen to agree that if you are going to be gone longer than a few minutes then logging off should be your best option if you are in open space. The entire beef that brought about afk cloaking was the idea that if you go hunting you have a reasonable shot at a target. That should either apply to everybody, in which case you are being hunted and your hunters deserve a chance at catching you... or nobody, in which case afk cloak camping is not a reasonable hunting technique.

Teckos, I can't verify his point, but I can provide an ancedote where cloaked camps did impact things out in Providence years ago. ...And breathe, man. You have sound reasons why this would be a minimal impact on SOV war. Let it stand that it could have some effect, and let your own stance stand that any effect would be extremely minor unless the entity in question has much bigger problems already. But on to the story, that began shortly after I created this account and I could not even board a battleship yet. This is actually why I have a hanger full of Arbitrators stacked out there somewhere to this day...

There were a couple of vital pipeline systems that were just lousy at all times with cloaked reds, and there were times when those of us who were more PvE centric had to halt our activities for lack of ammo due to lacking station services and choked supply runs.

Now, did that make anyone quit? Not really. It wasn't that hard to run the gauntlet back to a trade hub and load up on enough supplies for my small group. This was of course long before activity levels had anything to do with SOV.

I can say it did contribute to our leaving the area eventually. There was more, but basically all of it was just a huge hassle for no real benefit.

In all honesty, I am playing only a few hours a month at this point. The last year has seen some setbacks in real life that left me with little time for being in game. I can forum a lot, but actually logging in requires me to be at home and at leisure for more time than I generally have. I doubt I could make it worth anyones time at this point.

If I did get time and start devoting more to the game, I would rather give some smaller fleet pvp a shot. I love Command Ships (yes, I have been known to do level 4's with corpmates in a fleet with a command ship and logi supporting multiple battleships, because...well...we can...) and with boosters maybe coming on grid soon I'd love to fly a combat support. Flavor really don't matter, in 45 days or so I will be able to put any subcap hull in space(barring T3 or new skills introduced). Faction War has also looked interesting, but Fozzie Sov seems like it might actually make things interesting for me. But that would require my job to stop working me 7 days a week for 10 or so hours a day at some point, or for my kids to graduate school.

Why not do this in NS. A command ship providing boosts and some logi means that only some of the biggest gangs will be a threat. 2 stratios vs. 3-6 ships for damage (at least partially PvP fit) along with a fleet booster and you'll only have to worry about the biggest gangs.

Not doing this because of a single guy in local who is almost surely AFK is just being foolish.

I would, if I still had the people to do it, and the inclination to deal with other hassles that null sec living provided. I never stayed in dock over a hostile in system. Thus the pile of arbitrators out in some null station somewhere. They were more sexy to me than Vexxors, and I went through lots of them. One day I will go get close enough to stick the things on the market- I left with the intent of coming back one day, and when I flew my clones out I forgot about them. I hate a messy assets tab. This character was created with the intent of providing escort to friends that did a lot of mining, my sole job was to scare off tackle so that we would not have to dock every time some neut blew through the system. I ratted the belts while they did their thing, and sent the occasional tackle running away from a pack of angry Warriors. Could not even space Warrior II's at that point.

The natural extension of that intent is actively hunting down the camped cloakers in the territory, with the mining fleet out. It frustrated me then, and it bugs me now. I really don't care if they leave, explode, or are too busy running from me to bother anyone else... but to be immune to any outside interference is not in keeping with the core design of EVE. I'm not out there anymore, and it certainly wasn't this that made me leave on it's own, but it contributed.

When I say ISK does not matter to me, I mean that. I have less than 200 million in my wallet these days, because as I finish off more ship skills I buy hulls to try them out. Spend it on practically nothing faster than I get it.

It does not change my stance on the cloaks being innately broken.

I understand both sides of the issue. I have repeatedly said 'If your purpose is PvE'. I believe in the sandbox. I *am* a carebear.

I argue for a more balanced mechanic because I believe in it.

With my playtime it would probably take me a week to make the trip without the passwords to the jump bridges. I don't even know if they are still there, and surely their owners would frown on me using them. I can't even remember the system without looking at my assets tab. Everything out there was just letters and numbers.

And it's a lot of arbitrators. It would probably take a freighter to move them. I bought a cheap bpc and just ran the whole thing. I think it's 30 something. I am just going to put them on the market or reprocess them and sell the minerals. I don't have any use for them anymore, since I don't put drones in space for PvE anymore. Thankful for the skill though. I love almost the whole Gallente ship line, but the Prophecy and it's variants are my favorite hulls, and I never would have bothered if the arbitrator had not impressed me over the vexxor as a drone boat. That was before the revamp of the Navy Vexxor, and the sheer terror that is now the Ishtar and Eos. Now I can fly everything but Minnie and Caldari BS With just about all skills at 5. Black ops BS will take longer as I have never had a need for the jump drive skills. (I have often thought they should have attached MJD to it as a bridge to capitals).

But it's not that I don't think you can protect yourself from a cloaked camper by being in a fleet. I just don't see it being reasonable as a counter. It's a single potential aggressor that must be treated as an enemy fleet at all times. Hunting it down should be an option. Even were I a PvP pilot looking to protect my space with an hour to kill... That camper should be a target, not a dangerous terrain feature.