EVE General Discussion

Hunting submarines:

TLDR: I’m going to talk about real world mechanics because I am bored and waiting for my kid’s after school activity to end. What I am working up to is a way to actively hunt a cloaked ship, but personally I kind of like AFK cloaking, it keeps people paranoid. Yes I know features and ideas is that way --->

There are several major method and tactics for hunting submarines, some of which could be employed in some fashion in Eve. However, given the speed at which these ships can move it would be debatable just how useful they might be. Anyhow, a couple ideas.

Sound

A submarine needs to be able to limit the sounds it releases in to the environment. Such releases of sound can be detected by others. These sounds can be compared to a database of known sounds to gradually track and identify the target. In the vacuum of space this would not apply, but what could apply would be the release of heat or other radiation from the ship that can only be mitigated via the cloak.

A follow up to the computer tracking sounds from a submarine is a system that tracks all sounds in the water but is able to detect blockages of those sounds. You are not looking for the sounds themselves, but for where the sounds are being blocked by submarine’s hull being in the way. You are looking for a sound shadow. In Eve this type of system could also work if a still ship were to monitor the background radiation of the area and look for anomalies (like the Predator or the cloaked ships from Star Trek).

Tracking submarine sounds is done by a collection of sensitive microphones. A similar system in Eve could be introduced as background radiation monitors. A fixed system could be part of a SOV infrastructure(like the SOSUS line). Mobile background probes could be deployed by scanners, but would need to be fixed in place and have a warm up time (see sonobuoy) and would be disposable. Ships use fixed and towed microphones that improve their ability to detect subs; a similar system for an warship flying slowly in a straight line might be an option in Eve.

In Eve, using the ‘sounds’ of background radiation could introduce a background noise problem for the hunting fleet. If there are a lot of active moving ships in the system (NPC or Pod Pilot) the results from the probes would be much poorer with enough ship movement in the system effectively blinding the hunters. This would make the hunting of cloaked ships a smaller scale event, ie reduce blobs. Things like asteroids (and hiding near them) would benefit the cloaker (and encourage him to be in those areas).

Once a ship is localized to an area, like scanning you’ll eventually get a 100% hit to the grid, you will be able to use something between a radar and a smart bomb (active sonar) to pin down the ship. Yes, they can just fly away, but the radiation stamp left behind in the tracking would reduce further hit delays to grid (faster follow up acquisition). There would always be a chance of the cloaker escaping, but not without player interaction. Also looking for a background blur might be entertaining as well, but I can see that being a hack people use (replacing the file in their system so it show up as a yellow dot or something)

Also a ‘ping’ from and active tracker against a cloaked would fire an aggression timer, so they can’t run away until it wears off. No logoffskis. It would also apply a 30 second cool down so they can’t just jump out of system.

Magnetic fields

Another way to track a submarine is by its magnetic field. These systems are called magnetic anomaly detectors (MADs) and they can sense changes in the local magnetic field by things like submarines. In eve this would be a type of sensor to help pin down a cloaker by people running a search pattern once they are on the grid. Again, any nearby ship would alert the sensor, so large fleets would be an issue. I would add interference from asteroids as well (making asteroid fields a potential battleground?)

TLDR part 2 Maybe this is all too complex, but if you want to hunt cloakers like submarines, might as well find real world examples, and the small gang aspect of the hunt might be interesting for some of the anti-blob players.

This thread is not about AFK cloakers by the way. Reread the first post if you think so.

The most likely thing that will happen is that there will be some way to gradually find the position of an on-grid cloaky.

If your safe'd up you need to be probed out, and no current probes can hit a cloaky, and I rather doubt they're going to introduce probes that can scan out cloakies.

The ships that get hurt most by this are cloaky dictors trying to camp a gate tbh.

As a submariner IRL, I can assure you that finding another sub is not an easy task. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

If finding a cloaked ship is anything like finding a submerged submarine, only a small handful of players will be able to pull it off.

BLA BLA BLA, I hate cloaky afk ships. Is what i gathered between the lines

I think the term "submarine" is being used as an analogy for a "sweep" rather than requiring uberskills.

eg: If an active cloaky "hears" the ping he needs to move and/or counter. If he doesn't move/conuter, the returns strengthen by %'s.

IMO, counter probably best option so active cloakies can stay in one spot which is fine.

counter to the cloaky hunter is my stealth bomber torps and bombs. a destroyer or cruiser or even BC hull wont last one volley. i use my cloaking skills to hunt/recon, not to sit afk. i'll find the hunter hunting me before he will find me and if he does find me, it'll be the few seconds before impact when i voluntarily uncloaked.

as i do not AFK cloak, i think it is fair if there is a cloak hunting ship that can, over time, eventually find an afk cloaky pilot. but then again, i'm torn, because i can see how afk cloakers can help keep bots from botting and simply just make the residents of a system paranoid. and since i'm torn on the idea, i cannot support it one way or the other.

And who's there to remind the AFK cloakers that they aren't safe themselves? And that they themselves can be killed if caught with their pants down (ie at the movies for hours and AFK in the middle of hostile space keeping everyone but themselves on their toes)?

Why shouldn't someone be able to keep AFK cloakers on their toes?

I'll just add that I have no problem with a cloaker terrorizing a system or even laying downeth psychological warfare. I DO have a problem with being able to do that with zero risk to yourself.

If you want to actively terrorize a system for days or even weeks, do it, but BE AT THE KEYBOARD for that time or get caught with your pants down.

This change is long overdue.

I think this is overdue and a brilliant idea. As long as it takes a certain amount of time to find the cloaked ship and allows for losing accuracy as he moves it sounds like a logical response to a standing technology. Cloaking is one of the few areas in Eve where the creation of a counter has been held up. In any sci-fi universe of note cloaking technology has counters which usually are difficult, take coordination and far from 100 percent accurate. It would be great if this cloak ship gains bonuses from being fleeted with other cloak hunters, sort of a magnified detector dependent on the number of ships in the hunt.

Cloak ships have gotten sort of a free pass so far, it's time the defense industry started to catch up.

This could very easily break covert operations in eve. what is needed is delayed local in a true sense. if local cant be removed than make it so that when someone jumps into a system a minute or two passes by before player names show up, or something along those lines.