Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It's ships all the way down.

It retains a 1% damage capacity, more to create the impression of bad or trivial hits.

What makes that trivial, is that it emulates the tracking and speed of the weapons used as well, so while a bigger ship's guns might be more notable hitting a smaller ship, it would still be unable to hit it most of the time, and still have the damage penalties on top of the 1% damage rate.

Effectively trivial, yes. A few damage reports that looked low makes the illusion more real than having none at all, but still seeing weapons firing.

As for bait-ship Hulks, only the asteroids know it is fake. No actual ore is mined.

That is a potential use the devs would need to approve, balance wise.

Part of the AFK cloaking effect, specifically, is the perception of danger affecting how people behave in these systems.

If it is decided that you are not risking enough to create that perception, it won't happen.
If it is cheaper to use the actual ship instead, it would be pointless.

It is also a consideration that the bait ship may be easier to train, than the actual cloaking cyno ship. If the bait ship is also more expensive, then it becomes a trade off, and might be considered balanced.