Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Well, you switched up your fallacy in any case. Good job.

Going to ignore your other bleating about "OMG GOING AFK IS BAD" and just highlight your complete lack of understanding of game mechanics here:



This is never going to happen. You seem to be under the impression that the hunting ship gets closer and closer, actively chasing a target before finally getting on-grid with them. That's not how it works, at all. The hunting ship is going to either be sitting at a safespot multiple AU away using d-scan on a 5* cone to identify where their target is, or on-grid and moving in for the kill. In the first case they probably aren't the nearest signature, and you have to scan everything in the 14 AU bubble to make sure it isn't a threat (and an AFK cloaked ship in that 14 AU bubble will look just like an active hunter). In the second case the cloaked ship is on-grid and made visible by your ridiculous second half of your proposal, and the signatures are irrelevant (but the cloaked ship has failed, because you just warped out). But even if you dump the on-grid half of your proposal a cloaked ship on-grid with a target is moving in for the kill and about to engage, if you're screwing around with scan probes that's way too little too late.

No fallacy Mike, your statements lead me to believer you are an ignoramus when it comes to using cloaks for PvP. Specifically for hunting down ships and killing them. For example, all ships fitting a cloak...cloaks come with a significant targeting delay. This delay comes through the scan res penalty for non-covert ops cloaks. For example, a VNI without a cloak will lock another cruiser in 3.6 seconds (using All 5s). With an improved cloaking device II the lock time goes to 6.1 seconds. That is a 69.4% increase in lock time. In short your claim that all or even most WH ships fit cloaks is ridiculously ignorant. A prototype cloaking device is even worse in that is more than doubles the locking time.

You simply don't know what you are talking about.

Seriously go load up Pyfa and check this for yourself.

I am talking about cloaking.

Afk camps hiding under cloaks are a symptom, not the problem.

Regardless, you can easily talk about it without dragging in local as a distraction, especially if you have any interest in having a discussion at all. Local is it's own discussion, balanced by its own neutrality, other than those few seconds of load time. It's not equivalent to cloaks in any way, one being a universal game condition everywhere but wormholes, the other being a fairly cheap and trivial module.

But by all means, make a thread and discuss local.

Yes of local. No local and AFK camping serves no purpose at all. Nobody will be AFK camping. They might be AFK, but only because they needed to be (bio, phone, etc.).



No local, no AFK camping. Without local how do you know somebody is in system with you while they are cloaked? You won't. Whatever effect one was trying to have with a cloak and being AFK



No, AFK cloaking only works because of local. Local and cloaks are inextricably linked. Local also tells you an ATK cloaker is in system too.

No dice Mike you tried this Bravo Sierra before and it failed. You just keep making yourself look foolish.

Not empty posting, Mr. Teckos here ignored this discussion. I'll assume he just forgot about it.

Anything changed after 400p.?

Or the gangers/ and afk cloakers still speaking about:

- delete local - that will fix afk cloakers?

just wonder;

I understand your issue, but it's built around a couple of assumptions that aren't necessarily true.

First, you seem to believe that there is a solid Need to directly engage ratters and miners. Certainly I understand the desire. I also understand the boon to the economy that ship destruction provides. I even understand the need to disrupt industry and ratting as both a conflict driver and as a check on the economy.

That Need does not exist however. It is simply a desire. The economy benefits no matter who explodes. Mining and Ratting are disrupted, the economy is checked and conflict driven, simply by having hostiles in striking distance. The actual 'physical' security of those particular assets is immaterial. If you can force them to retreat to a dock then the Needs of the game have been met.

Second, you are essentially assuming that those who put in effort into securing those softer assets have no right to benefit from those efforts. I don't mean the right to rat and mine without disturbance, I mean the basic right to attempt to confront potential hostiles. The issue is that there is no way to even try to confront the cloaked ship, not that the cloaked ship is succeeding in evading, in exactly the same way the cloaked ship has no right to confront the soft targets it wants, just the chance to try.

Even Teckos's oft repeated claim that the opportunity cost of putting an alt in a cloak to camp balances the equation fails at that point, because dealing with the threat also comes at a cost, and would still come at a cost if the opportunity to actually pursue a confrontation with the cloaked ship existed. The cloaking mechanic itself is bad so long as it remains as is, regardless of what you do to local. The two issues are not connected, they are simply adjacent.

Sure, with the right effort Local becomes a powerful tool. But it does require effort and dedication to get there, maintain it, and use it. Even if you accept cloaking as needed to counteract it (I don't, though if things were balanced it would be worth discussing), the 100% unbreakable, effortless nature of the cloaking mechanic as it stands is far too powerful for that purpose. It should require a similar expenditure of effort and dedication as those who are maintaining and using local to break it. That's partially true, when you consider the real danger is the hotdrop, but you should still need to actively participate in keeping yourself hidden just as anyone in the solar system has to actively participate in keeping a watch for hostiles.

My suggestions are all mostly one way because the current situation is almost entirely in favor of the other way. If it's a scale of 1(Coaked Hunter) to 10(Intended Target), and we are stuck at 1, any movement at all is toward 10. Ideally we should be at a 5, but we aren't anywhere near that.

We have a thread about local. This one. Tell me how you would be upset about an AFK cloaker with no local chat. I'm patient, I can wait for you to explain that to me.

You're right though, one of these things is a fairly cheap thing. Being able to see what hostiles are in your home system with zero effort, and being able to get away literally 100% of the time without even needing a module is an unbelievably cheap way to play a game. Let's get rid of that cheap playstyle. No more local, this debate is solved. /thread.

Right because people in ships with cloaks never die. And the preferred scout these days are ceptors. Yup. I totally see your point.

Cloaks are designed to let players get behind enemy lines, and yes, when a ship is cloaked that can afford considerable safety. However, cloaking ships have noticeable tradeoffs. Weakened tank, limited DPS in some cases, they often have ewar bonuses but that really puts them more in a support role. And yes, they can usually fit a covert cyno. Additionally cloaking ships have to move to really be useful. Sitting at a safe will keep you 100% safe or so close the difference is trivial. But then you present no threat (sure there may be a perception of threat) but this nullifies your "want their cake and to eat it too" assertion. You cannot have 100% safety and be an actual threat in game. So when a cloaky dies they are usually caught on a gate or while moving in some fashion. Even warping to a moon to can entail risk as some people do put up bubbles on moons, and if there are some cans there....well it could end badly. When checking moons in various regions in a cloaky there have been moments where I had to GTFO due to a decloak.

I also find concerns over uncertainty to be nonsense too. There is uncertainty in the game get used to it. If a player decides to go down the road of being sneaky with a group of friends and they all skill for, invest in and fly the appropriate ships…then what is the problem? They might be inconvenient for other players….uhhh isn’t that the point? That even in a cyno jammed system you can face at least some degree of uncertainty and risk? After all do you know if that battlecruiser jumping into your gate camp is a brick tanked cyno ship or just some guy you are about to bone? The point here is uncertainty is a feature, not a bug.

Further, risk is not something that CCP should be balancing. Risk is about player choices. If you make bad/imprudent choices you face high risk…because of your choices and also the choices of other players. If you are prudent and make good decisions you reduce your risk. Risk is not something imposed by the game, but by what you and others do in the game given the mechanics. If a player shows up in your system and you conclude he is likely cloaked, then it is up to you to deal with that new risk. Asking CCP to do it is, IMO, unreasonable.

And this has all been discussed to death.