Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Why not? When the counter to AFK cloaking is something you should already be doing, and that counter is nearly 100% effective, what more do you need? It all keeps coming back to this: good alliances that can organize effective PvE operations and actively defend their space have very little to fear from AFK cloakers. Only bad alliances that don't belong in 0.0 suffer any real harm, so why should CCP coddle bad players with additional cloaking counters?



I think once we're talking about fleets of 200 titans we're no longer discussing AFK cloakers preying on PvE players.



Because statements like that reveal your ignorance of the entire design concept of a cloak. The whole reason cloaks and covert ops ships exist is the ability to hide, if you take that away you effectively remove those roles from the game. And the only thing you gain in return is that garbage-tier alliances have an easier time of farming PvE content in their 100% safe 0.0 systems.



It was dismissed because it does absolutely nothing to fix any of the problems with local. Once you break gate cloak to start locating a target and warping to them the delay before you can actually arrive on-grid and attempt to engage is more than long enough for your target to warp out. Any "delayed local" solution needs to have a much longer delay if you want it to accomplish anything.

Why are you so obsessed with the idea of "hunting" a cloaked ship? Balance is maintained if you have a way to prevent the cloaked ship from accomplishing its goals, even if you never get to press F1 against it.

Also, you know what else is impossible to hunt? PvE ships in friendly 0.0 systems. Unless they screw up there is no way you will ever get a kill against one. The time between the first warning of the presence of a potential threat and the ability to get a point on the target is much, much longer than the time required to warp back to a station/POS/cloaked safespot and be 100% safe. Much like cloaked ships you can deter them from accomplishing their goals, but you will never get to press F1 against them. And much like cloaked ships the only way they will ever be vulnerable is if they voluntarily forfeit their invulnerability and choose to engage.



Going AFK while cloaked does not give you a boost in any way. An AFK cloaked ship is no more effective than an ATK cloaked ship. In fact, it's considerably less effective. An ATK cloaked ship can gather intel, hunt for targets, etc. An AFK cloaked ship can literally only commit psychological warfare against garbage-tier alliances that don't belong in 0.0.



The problem is that EVE's core mechanics do not support things like line of sight, target visibility, etc, that are required to have complex stealth gameplay. In fact, CCP has explicitly stated in the past that the engine can not support line of sight calculations, especially at the scale of the largest fleet battles. So what you end up with is one of two possible outcomes:

1) A nerf which makes cloaks less convenient to use, but doesn't really make them less effective. Fuel requirements, AFK flags, etc, just give you another tedious exercise in button-pressing but don't add any meaningful gameplay changes.

2) A "press F1 to kill the cloaked ship" button. The various proposals for anti-cloak modules are inevitably massive overkill nerfs that make being anywhere near the anti-cloaking module suicide. And, depending on the proposal, that "anywhere near" limit may include the entire system!



You don't understand the problem here, at all. When you jump into a system you don't have an immediate destination to warp to (unless you have a scout in system, in which case they're visible in local and your targets already docked). You'll have to spend time using probes and/or the directional scanner to locate your target. Adding a few seconds of local delay to a process that can take minutes changes absolutely nothing, your target will still see you in local long before you can get on-grid with them.



Who said you have to suck at EVE to do PvE? There is no requirement that PvE fits be incompatible with PvP, it just reduces ISK per hour. And lazy incompetent carebears want to farm 0.0 (supposedly the most dangerous space in EVE) in complete safety with their max-ISK/hour fits. A smart player who knows they're operating in unfriendly territory, including "friendly" territory that is not actively defended by friendly PvP ships, might decide to PvE in a PvP-capable ship.

And as for having a chance to evade, it's called not being careless. Move your ship off the warp-in point so any potential threat has to travel a long distance to get a point on you, and stay aligned so that you can instantly warp the moment a ship appears on-grid with you. But of course this requires genuine awareness, not just occasionally glancing at local to see if a threat is in system.

PvE players in null aren't the only ones with an issue, it's just a particular pressure point of the problems with cloaks. For instance, I have not been in Null for many years, yet here I am.

Why are you so obsessed with hunting soft targets? So what if you never get to press F1 against a ratter or miner, you still disrupted his activities and sent him back into a dock. The difference is that your much lamented "100% safety" is a hyperbolic lie, and maintaining what safety there is requires constant vigilance, proper piloting, and can still run afoul of random events like being stuck on gates, asteroids or other structures, NPC tackle, and other factors. The fact is it is entirely possible to hunt ships not using cloaks, even if you have to rely on random mishaps, incompetence and inattention to get you on grid, unlike a cloaked ship where it is absolute fact *impossible* to even try.

Going afk while camping under a cloak exposes you to zero additional risk of being caught. It also removes the temptation to examine any potential bait, and prevents accidents induced through boredom. By removing yourself from the equation, you enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of your camp by ensuring your constant presence. When the only way to break such a camp is pilot error or the pilots own decision, removing the pilot boosts the activity.

There are other methods of doing stealth gameplay than using line of sight mechanics. A few have been presented. At the moment it would be an improvement if you could at least *get on grid* with a cloaked ship. Ignoring any of the one click decloaking suggestions (which I also disagree with), that is the first hurdle. Such measures could involve equally costly, equally weakened ships specialized in scanning, multiple deployable structures with several minute anchoring timers, revamping scanning to include false positives along with cloaks, etc. Similarly, once on grid a decloaking module could be limited to ships of similar design to cov-ops, be deployable with ample time for a ship to move or engage on its own terms, or use a spotting technique similar to scanning that includes error so a ship attempting to get close enough to decloak has to be using manual piloting and physically circle in.

I understand what it takes to get on grid. You aren't owed a mechanical advantage in getting an engagement with a soft target. It's fair to say you deserve to be fully loaded and able to act, but you should have the need to locate your target or take your chances with the easily navigated belts and such. Your target may or may not be paying attention at that particular moment, have been practicing safe piloting for the entire time, or be dealing with npc tackle or other mishap. What you want is instant gratification in your hunt, and you can't have it. Expecting others to be constantly vigilant for their entire playtime while you casually stroll around shooting them at your leisure is not reasonable.

It is you that apparently does not understand the difference in dynamics of PvE fits vs. PvP fits. General incompatibility exists because most PvE focuses on sustained performance instead of extreme burst performance. It's not just about ISK hour. It's not universal, it depends on the activity (no amount of compromising a fit is going to make a freighter a combat vessel, and PvP pilots are hardly shaking in fear at even the most aggressive of mining ships), but the general design of PvP and PvE fits are incompatible and mutually exclusive.

Your problem comes down to people that are not being careless evading you. Some of that is botting, which is its own issue. Some of it is your own unwillingness to engage defense rather than soft targets (it's not that you can't find a fight, you just can't find an easy kill), some of it is local reporting you before you load. What isn't a problem is people putting time and effort into remaining vigilant and maintaining Intel networks and defense fleets keeping space clear of hostiles actually having that effort pay off. You can break that with effort, but you should not get to break it indefinitely with a single trivial module.

If this is happening it is your problem. Your problem and that of your alliance. You aren't figuring out a solution to that problem, which ironically has been posted here dozens of times.

And I know you Mike, you'll come back with the usual misrepresentation about a combat fleet sitting idle in a POS. NOBODY is suggesting that. NOBODY. Your use of that argument is really a type of lie.

Get on comms, get in fleet. With PvP fit ishtars. Warp to an anomaly and start killing all the things. If the cloaker shows up, kill him. If he cynos in some BLOPs kill them too. Killing just one BLOPs ship will be a serious loss for the droppers. The hull value alone is worth a few PvP fit ishtars. And PvP fit ishtars put out considerable DPS.

You'll be making ISK, keeping the ADMs up, and not sitting around bored.

Just in this thread...

People trying to hunt unescorted Capitals. People trying to defend their space. People trying to deny intel on fleet movements.

literally the only one of those that doesn't apply to PvE-ers in sov null are people hunting unescorted capitals. and they haven't complained about AFK cloaking in this thread.

so let me ask again. What group in the game complains about AFK cloaking outside of PvE-ers in sov null? Link specific posts where they complained about it.

Good lord you nullbears are painful to listen to.

Lol WTF? Have you been reading anything I've posted? I've been advocating the use of defense fleets to create hard targets, and would be perfectly happy with a situation where all 0.0 PvE happens in organized groups with combat ships present and AFK cloakers never get a single kill for the rest of EVE's existence.

(This is of course a fantasy, because there will always be an abundance of garbage-tier alliances that are incapable of defending themselves and should get evicted back to highsec. Those people will continue to be stupid and lose ships to AFK cloakers, and get shut down entirely by a single unarmed covops frigate.)



These things do have their effort pay off. When you do them successfully you get to farm PvE content and make ISK, even if you never get any covert ops ship killmails.

You asked for a reason. That's all the reason needed.

There are a host of other reasons it would improve the game and would be something needed by many, but at the very most basic level of the game all that should be needed is the fact that he is in space and someone wants to shoot him. It's not about what exists now, because that is deeply flawed and prejudiced against whole perfectly legitimate playstyles that already have enough stacked against them.

Simply shouting down any suggested change that does not also provide a huge advantage to the guys already holding nearly every card isn't holding a discussion.

The fact that you want to shoot someone does not mean that you get to. A fact which you seem to understand, given the amount of "you aren't entitled to kills against PvE players" whining you just did.



{citation needed}

Which legitimate playstyle has enough stacked against it? Are you talking about hunting PvE players in 0.0, where it's literally impossible to kill them unless they voluntarily expose themselves to being killed?



AFK cloakers hold very few cards against good players. Good players in alliances that actively defend their space have every advantage over an AFK cloaker, all the cloaked ship can do is sit there cloaked. Any attempt to decloak and engage would be met with instant death. The only people an AFK cloaker has any cards against are the garbage-tier alliances full of incompetent PvE players that think they can treat 0.0 like highsec, and those people deserve to be ganked until they ragequit back to highsec where they belong.

Yup, and at what price? A gimped ship in terms of DPS. A gimped ship in terms of tank. And you can only do something when you have presented yourself as an actual target.

Go cry some more Mike.