Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Mike
You are not really disagreeing. The afk influence on active players is profound merely because it can be sustained without cost.

You are suggesting the issue can be resolved by a proximity warning when a cloaked ship lands on grid. That would also work of course. The additional "blind as if in a station" while cloaked simply degrades utility somewhat.

Wander
A mechanism requiring active cloaked pilot intervention to remain safe would only render afk pilots unsafe.

Well let's think about this...

Can you attack someone while cloaked? Nope.
Can you attack someone while docked? Nope.*
Can you uncloak and attack someone? Yes.
Can you undock and attack someone? Yes.

Huh, look at that. Seems like cloaks are self-restricting.

Yes, you can, in a covert ops cloak warp around, but this does increase one's risk. Seems reasonable to me.

*Soon™ with citadels this will change to yes...can we change cloaks so we can attack while cloaked? [/sarcasm]

People also ignore how you got there in the first place.

Nalia Whites killboard gives an interesting perspective on how "safe" cloaks are to move around with.

There is that too. People have said, "They could just be in a velator! It is so unfair!" Of course how that velator got 25 jumps through NS is a valid question. If you are not securing your space to stop a velator, STFU.

Go find me even a handful of credible residents of high, low and WH space who give a single **** about cloaking.

Again again you forget the two way street of the fact they can't touch you either and as always ignore the fact is the ONLY counter to the 100% free, perfect, infallible, and inescapable early warning system that is local. You know, that thing that has nothing to do with this, according to you, but we can't possible get rid of it. Nooooooo. Then people might need to click d-scan. THE HUMANITY. WON'T SOMEONE THING OF THE RENTERS!!

Our newer players - amongst whom I count myself - are the only ones dependant on ratting and mining, because the vets apparently have massive trading operations and jumpfreighters and possible POSses (ran by alts) to make a living.

Those new players are unable to even fly a fully-skilled Rattlesnake, sometimes even lack the medium drone skills V to feel competent enough to field an Ishtar or a Gila.

As it turns out, us litter boys NEED each other to even be able to run a site -- we simply can't run it by ourselves. We do this in PvP ships because we're nervous as hell about it and being out there in HACs or battlecruisers gives us more thrills than money in our pocket. Of course, we could go to highsec -- but that's not why we came to null in the first place.

Either way, the new guys learn to work together early on because nullsec sites are too hard for us. Being PvP oriented, I like to think this is because NPCs cheat big time.

While running our sites, we're always on the lookout for the neuts in local. Perhaps a target we can snag on the side? We reship as needed, gathering intel from our surrounding systems. Needless to say we are on comms (where the vets make fun of the "poorboys" doing sites).

Losing our ship is always a possibility - though guaranteed not without a fight. It is why highsec missions are boring and nullsec missions can be quite entertaining, when ran occasionally. It puts us on Dotlan as NPCs killed/hr in the hope that perhaps somebody will set desto for our system and pay us a visit.

When roaming, we see guys printing free ISK solo in their bling machines; and we can't catch them even when they have no eyes up, no backup fleet, no nothing ... because they see 1 neut in local and they bolt.

Please tell me again why the newbros would think it's a neat idea those guys, who can apparently afford the finest PvE hardware we can't even dream of, should have the ability to clear ALL neuts from local? Newbros want to make a kill too. Newbros may not have a second account for eyes and are very happy they can cloak up in a distant system and wait it out.

In short, I don't think it is the newbros who dock up for The Neut In Local. We run in 80 mil T1 ships, insurance has our backs if things go south. For DPS support we use stealth bombers against BS rats. Nope: those complaining on the forum are fielding expensive T2 or T3 ships and are unwilling to run sites as a team and share loot.

Miners? Same story: a Procurer costs 30 mil. Insurance covers .... 30 mil. If you're talking about the fear to undock your Orca / Skiff / Hulk, then you're no longer talking about "newer players" in my book.

I suspect the very same thing that keeps some guys docked, the danger and uncertainty, is the same thing that makes other guys come to null in the first place.

Would appreciate fellow newbros to share their story: how do You handle the Neut in Local? Did You ever field something big enough to warrant a cloaky camper's attention?

If you must know, Jerghul, why I am here in the first place: I consider cloaked ships (boosters, transports, cloaky stilettos) targets I'd rather evict from our system. I do not like the enemy to have eyes on us; I would be very happy to blast a bling bling Tengu into oblivion. But after much discourse I have accepted the fact that if you miss the initial decloak when they first jump in, you've lost them until they move again. Good for them. Going as far as claiming they "ruin our day because we can't undock" sounds far fetched. Sometimes it's the other way around: yesterday we had some guys bottled up in our system for hours because they simply couldn't leave: interdiction bubbles, containers everywhere -- it was the Cloakers who asked us in local if we'd please let them leave LOL.

There you have heard the story from the perspective of a low SP newbro like myself.

Brokk
My line of thinking is not dissimilar to yours. Hence my axis of attack being limited to the afk contribution to 4/4. I am fine with cloaked ships running a gauntlet of small degrees of vulnerability to do their thing (whatever that might be).

The afk bit removes vulnerability as it can be sustained indefinitely within a system and the afk tool is not newbro accessible as it requires multiple accounts (of which only the first -at best- is a paid subscription).

Afk cloaky campers really are Eve financed multiple account fluff. One of those established entitlement issues that some long term players will go to great lengths to protect.

As QED'd in this thread.

Edit
In null-sec, ratting should really not be a peak time activity. It does depend on where your corp/alliance is at in the grand scheme of things, but as a general rule, when you can put together a fleet, do so to find pvp content.

Ratting and mining are ideally just means to an end (financing doctrine ships for pvp activity).

Your proposals are not all that dissimilar to what has been proposed in the Observatory Array (OA) thread.

--Removing local: I think this is necessary if we are going to give players the ability to actually track down cloaked ships plus some of the other features proposed for the OA. A common complaint is that people should be able to “secure their space” however right now it is entails little more than anchoring some modules and then watching local. Building an intel infrastructure making choices as to how it will work and facing trade-offs is completely in line with the general principles of the game.

--OA Transponder: There absolutely should be a way for players who want to invest in their space should be able to see when intruders enter their space.

--The high slot transponder jammer is an interesting idea in that it means you have to again make choices. Go with a cloak and lose yet another high slot…or go with another type of ship, but go with reduced stealth options.

--Scanning new ship, not sure this is needed as expanding the roles of the existing ships could meet this need.

--AOE decloaking pulse, I’m a maybe on this one. I like the restrictions, typically people ask for it to be system wide which is just patently ridiculous. The high slot also means it comes with a cost…and depending on the CPU and PG requirements I suppose there could be some balance with this. Maybe.

--The small OA. Not sure on the distance. It is keeping a log for a period of time so to me that says decrease the range. How many could you put in a system? And I’d add to retrieve that data you have to be within 2000 meters—i.e. if you want the information you’ll have to take some risks to get it. Either that or you cannot get the data while cloaked.

Interesting list of ideas.

This whole situation stinks. The devs know it and any clever person who really have thought this through knows it as well. Cloaking is broken and stupid. What makes it worse is how stupid it is that its used to counter the isk printing null space farming that also is just as stupid.

Back in the day before cynos, IAC one of the dead Alliance I was part of, owned a constellation. One of the systems had archenor and was a nice source of isk for the Alliance. Some time after we moved in some jackass moved into the system with 2 cloaked BS and a cov-ops Arazu. Clearly he was selective about who he targeted but from time to time people would die to his cloaked attacks. We did bait him and kill him from time to time but he just replaced the ships and cloaked back up. All he did was to attack miners at random by locking them down with the recon then jump said target with the BS and pop him before any aid could get there. He didn't kill any bigger target then some random guy who did mine or rat alone. Just the fact that this stupidity did exist before cynos is a testiment that cyno removal wont fix the problem.

I have also been part of wormhole corps and I can also put in a note that AFK cloak shenanegans do appear in wormhole space as well. Sometimes assholes cloak up in smaller WH corps after probing down sights and jump people while they try to run said sight. You just end up having to move to another system to do anything with the included risk of getting jumped by a cloaked ship when trying to go through your wormhole.

Everything about cloaking is broken and only a portion of it is influenced by local.

Teckos
Removing local masks the afk cloaking issue by superimposing a far worse implicit threat into null-sec.

Compensating mechanisms would need to be far more than the ability to deploy a module and would also have to include Sov holder control of gates in addition to importing many other features found in wh and high sec space.

It really is quite off-topic. Through not my call. We can just ask the moderators if the thread continues along the observation array tack.

AFK cloaky campers really are EvE financed multiple account* fluff.

*Accounts you control, but do not pay for with RL funds.

Not realistically accessible to the average EvE player (who is about 2 months old and who plays about 10hrs a week). So just another one of those established entitlements.