EVE General Discussion

if people know youre in a combat rifter with a cloak on it, you won't be treated like a risk. Don't underestimate alliance intel - if anyone ever saw you decloaked while you were coming in, you have to assume everyone in the region knows your shiptype. If you *never* do anything, people will realize that and won't be worried. You need to be an actual known threat to be a really effective AFK cloaker.



Relative terms. A ganker, roaming gang, or fleet are all very visible things thanks to Intel channels. You'll know they're coming for a good 5-10 minutes before you are in any real danger. However, an ever-present AFK cloaker with a habit of decloaking and ganking is a complete wildcard, and can take you completely by surprise. It is a disproportionate danger for the effort involved.

Yeah, mines are definitely not an answer no doubt, if cloaks burned some type of fuel for every cycle past... say the first 20 minutes, that'd be one way. if balanced properly to have a maximum of a 24h cloak capability for a bomber for example that would be fair both ways, and those that would try to macro it to their advantage would be spotted pretty easily.
Cloaks could hold a charge such as cap boosters do that would keep them cloaked for a few hours on a fill... I predict about a 5% chance we'll see this within the next two years though

You're in luck OP, I still have an Anaconda Mine BPO.

I'll set up a few runs and sell you them cheap, say 50mil for 10?

Its a pretty good point but it involves getting everyone who's been online prior to the cloaker showing up to open their log folder and ctrl+F all their intel logs for that time period for the pilots name.

Which is "ok". its a method. but in my experience most null dwellers don't give a **** about single neutrals, and if he's in a force recon or bomber your unlikely to get a Dscan on him unless he's ********. so your relying on eyes only intel at gates and again, lone hostile in null = meh. most ppl consider it a waste of intel channel space.

Its the recons and bombers that can quietly gather intel indefinitely and attack without warning and are counterable only with bait tactics and superior manpower thats the issue.... and as a recon V pilot I hate to admit that because what little roles we had has been usurped somewhat by cloaky T3's, but invulnerable intel and 23/7 gank-on-standby is imho the carebearish form of null PvP, so bite me.

AFK cloakers are very visible due to local. You shouldn't even know they are there, but you can tell when they enter and leave the system. And while it may not require much RL effort to AFK cloak 'camp' a system, it does tie their character up for hours/days/weeks.

The one time I ever bothered to put myself on the other side of the AFK clocker equation was when I was on my alt and heavily engaged in sov warfare. it took little more than 24+ hours to get a kill, geddon vs. pilgrim. no contest. for the amount of time it took to setup safes to observe pos's and be able to Dscan the whole system it was probably the dullest most boring and most one sided 1v1 I had of the whole year.

If you have an alt your not useing it's a meaningless investment, if you have duel-monitors, a single glance that barely even registers because its so fast gives you all the intel you need.

That was two years ago, these days I can run BF2, Eve, Civ4, Distant Worlds (all of them, at the same time) and a bunch of old games simultaneously on the same machine and not break 50% ram usage. other than ram my machine is not special in the slightest.

Other people have alt+tab.

Most 0.0'ers have alts.

I don't have a personal problem with afk-cloakers since despite living the vast majority of my eve existence in 0.0 I haven't been in null for a year and have only once had an issue with an afk-cloaker and never lost a ship to one, but if you can't accept that there is an issue with a game mechanic that allows near zero risk 23/7 gank-on-standby semi-/AFKing in sovereign held 0.0 then... ehh... I dunno.

The ships that in my experience most commonly do it (recons) are falling more out of favor by the day due to T3's and thats bad. The tactic itself is valid aside from the fact it has little counter other than disproportionate manpower, and thats also bad. If it had even the slightest most underpowered countermeasure then I'd say its fine, but as it stands a 23/7 intel force alone even without the possibility of it ganking you is not the "hardcore" Eve that I used to play, when prototype cloaks used to be tens of millions of isk we used to relish the slight chance of killing that s*** at gates and I bet you did too, now... its just carebearish definite win b*******.

simple answer... add a cycle timer to cloaks and don't allow auto-repeat. People sitting afk in space and being completely invulnerable is a bad™ game mechanic. If you want to be invulnerable, log off.

Alright, let me put it another way.
If your spending most of your time shooting players or structures with a capital, and you have all the isk you need, and your just out there with anouther char in space for s**ts and giggles, then its meaningless.

And there's a lot of that to go around

Infact 90% of what I do in Eve these days is for s**ts and giggles or because something is easy isk that enables such.

I notice you didn't argue the rest of my argument, i'm not actually looking for an argument, the reality of the situation or the thoughts behind it doesn't effect or diswade me in the slightest, if there is a convincing discussion to be had as to why a game mechanic that causes a single player to have multiple other players on combat-standby while that one player attempts to make isk in null... null which as it stands is behind the isk making curve compared to highsec.... then do please enlighten me...

To reiterate: I don't have a problem with people cloaking in sov held null systems and ganking random ratters.
I have an issue with the disproportionate amount of manpower required to defend against it due to the lack of a game mechanic that mealy *limits* it to an acceptable compromise that requires player attention on both sides.

I also find it funny that people hate on botters/macroers but one of the few broken (imo) activity's that can disrupt entire systems in null and has no parity-counter is "ok" because its an existing game mechanic despite it requireing near zero in-game activity

HINT: He really isn't.

you can see cloacked ship on d-scan ??? interesting...