Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Because you don't. You don't rat in a fleet when there is a hostile there do you. The default option for ratting is everyone in their own sanctum/haven. Hostile shows up, everybody heads for safety.

If you ratted in a group you'd be much more of a problem. Ratting in a group in PvP fits is even more of a problem.

But this never happens. You might fleet up if somebody comes along and enstosises stuff, but otherwise nope. One dude with or without a cyno and you do not do anything. At all.

Admittedly, I tuck in to find cover when I'm vastly outnumbered but if it's just a camper... meh. Go out in something cheap. My default response is "Lets go do something about this then, yeah?" Which is such a slim chance of pulling off in an offensive manner on a cloaky camper/hotdropper that it might as well be zero. Unless they're really bad.

There are defensive options to deal with such things, as you mentioned above. But all of them hinge on reacting to the drop, or that cloaky camper coming in on you. They get near-perfect safety while sitting in local watching intel and probes while people who live in that space have to deal with the over-arching presence of someone with violence in mind. Why shouldn't we have an offensive option to put them in a place where they have to play defensively as well?

That was my original point.

If you want an offensive option what would you give for it?

Fitting room, Time spent looking, lessened combat abilities on the scanning ship in exchange for the cloaky scanning, specialized skill training time.

Cloaked ship has local. I have local. Cloaked ship has defensive and offensive actions they can take to deal with the other people in the system. I only have defensive. I can't force them to take a bait. I can try to make it alluring enough, but I can't force it. He has an option to bug out at any time, where my window of time to run is much more brief.

So for the price of fitting power, combat power augmented by the lack of whatever equipment is taken out of the fit, skill training time and the work to scan someone down... why is it suddenly not acceptable to have a specific module that allows probes to pick up a cloaked ship so that THAT other player also has to play defensively?

If the cloaked attack ship (non-afk) is paying attention, he will see the probes homing in on him and move, making it a cat and mouse game of who can get who first. Which is my intended goal. Not to nerf cloaks into the ground, but leveling the playing field so that if I am willing to sacrifice the requirements for it... I can put a cloaked ship on the defensive without having to wait around all day hoping he drops on me.

Is the need to sit afk while cloaked really so strong that it's game-breaking to think of someone being able to pin them? I'd even accept it being harder and a longer process to pin a cloaked attacker down, just so they have a chance to relocate. Again, forcing them into a cat and mouse game where it comes down to skill. With the observatory array... I don't imagine you can link into it at range, so I would imagine you'd have someone scanning and someone else chasing. Otherwise you'll be warping onto them to find the cloaked fighter gone and back you go to the array to continue scanning.

Or something. It's not a particularly elegant solution as it has been described to me thus far.

Also, for the sake of argument... I don't mind putting local on a delay or keeping it the way it is. It's a non-issue for me. Just one more window to split my attention from my d-scan.

Delayed local will not do anything to cloaky campers, it will just make it easier for losers to get kills.

Whatever makes you feel better and you need it mate for being such a loser.

EDIT: Let me point out why your suggestion will do nothing, it is simply because people who cloaky camp are risk averse and lazy, they will not be interested in moving around in interceptors on the hunt to grab something, they are still going to use cloaky AFK camping regardless. And not understanding that means you are dumb. This game has been made easier to catch people, we have ships that do not show on D-scan for example, ships that warp really fast and yet people still have to sit AFK cloaky camped while playing other games, because that is what they do.

I infiltrated the last group of people to cloaky camp me and I had great fun playing WOT's with them while they waited for me to do something in Eve, little did they know... I only say this now as I am leaving the game and don't care that they could work out the ID of my spy toon, though it is highly unlikely as they most probably de-subbed anyway.

Sucks to be you mate...

I can't read all the posts (and I suppose this will be lost in the noise too) but if the perceived problem is afk cloaking rather than cloaking per se, then the answer seems simple to me - give cloak cycle time an increase, and force auto repeat off.

Assuming the timer is fairly long compared to now, an active cloaker can get pos Intel or whatever he wants in one cloak cycle, and if he wants to watch something longer term, he warps to a safe, cycles his cloak and warps back. (I'm assuming covops cloak here, of course)

Mr afk cloaker meanwhile decloaks when his cycle finishes.

The fact you call people "losers" for playing the game a certain way really invalidates...well, everything you're saying.

People are no more entitled to a free kill than others are to 100% ratting safety; the latter of which is perfectly possible with the current system.

AFK cloaking is the only counter to the intel you get from local chat.