“Preemptively”.
I don’t want to sit and wait for them to make the first move. You’re just asking me to set up a trap and react to the cloaky player’s actions. Seems to me like cloaky players love to hunt other people, but they hate it when someone else tries to hunt them.
Well yes, how else are you going to catch a cloaked player?
If you want to be able to locate and decloak cloaked players, what is the point of having a cloak in the first place?
What’s the point of having an MWD if you can counter it with a scram? The existence of counterplay doesn’t make a module entirely useless. Right now the game lacks modules that interact with cloaks in any meaningful way. It doesn’t even have to be a module that turns off the cloak. There could be more depth to it than that.
Imagine if there was simply a way to detect that a cloaking device was in effect within 500km, for instance. Is that balanced? Are those the numbers that should go into the game? Should it be restricted to a certain class of ship? I don’t know. I’m spitballing here, so don’t focus on the specifics. I’m just saying that the mechanics of cloaking are underdeveloped, and there could easily be more modules that interact with it. Instead of adding garbage like the Battleship sig size reducer, they should add more depth to the mechanics involved in cloaking, so that we can get a more interesting metagame than parking Arazus in as many systems as you have Plexed accounts.
Maybe a ECM burst type module that emits a 360 wave in a certain range that de-cloaks ships?
More for WH and gate camp work since we got a mobile observe thing already.
I don’t think that such a decloak burst would be very useful for gate camping unless your hypothetical module didn’t respect the “Stabilize Cloak Duration” stat on cloaking devices. And I do think that the game design should be consistent in that respect.
Correct. And Shipwreck agrees. So what are you referring to as if his example is ‘not the same’?
The problem with “counter play” is that at the end of all the “counters” and “plays” one side inevitably wins.
Recon ships, for example are invisible to D scan, but you can still find them with combat scanners.
That means detection wins. So a Recon Ship is a risky ship to use for bypassing people.
But somewhere early in this game, it was decided that cloaking would win its version of the play/counter play. With the limitations that you can’t get too close to anyone, and you have to re-engage it every time you warp into a system. And only certain ships can warp while cloaked.
And lately, the cloak effect itself caps at 15 minutes. So you can conceivably find someone if you’re patient enough to keep smashing the “D” key until they uncloak for a minute.
Cloak only reigns king in WH/pochpoch.
Anywhere else you have the all mighty Eye of Local.
Not really, if the player is competent and knows how to use game mechanics. With a tuned DSCAN setup and a very liberal number of permanent pings within 14AU of every single gate, ideally made as far from gate-to-gate celestial routes as possible (like using random anoms, moons, etc., and even between your other pings), you can have a safe and overwatch that covers effectively the entire solar system trivially. You can easily cover a system in 3, 4 pings that even if a mobile observatory knocks out an active cloaked player who forgot to re-cloak… then what?
I’m active. I’ll say, “oops,” and recloak. No one is possibly scanning me down in that <20 second window. And if they miraculously put a probe on my DSCAN view in the short window of exposure… they still have to scan me, and by then I’ll have already warped to a random ping in my collection, already cloaked back up.
That’s the beauty of cloaking in EVE. If you literally are trying to avoid interacting with the world and making sure you keep your cloak fresh, there’s no offensive play that can touch you. Yeah, you can get someone on an in-gate jump, but out-gate? Nah. If I see a neutral in system, I’ll already know everything within 14AU of the gate. Why would I even go there if I see a sabre? If there’s nothing at all within 14AU, I’ll start aligning to the out-gate. Spacebar is DSCAN for me, so top that off. Clear? Jump. I’m already at speed, so I’m 100% getting out of the clean gate.
In-gates can suck. But unless you know the area that you need to target with a good amount of specificity, you’re gonna have a hell of a hard time catching any good cloaker. And they can expand their web of pings freely, while cloaked. I play both sides. Once I see someone has cloaked, short of ambling in their last direction, there’s basically no point unless you were very close to try to decloak them. If they’re like 20, 50km away… don’t bother.
When I’m the sneaky one, I’ll never leave a system or wormhole without at least several pings, one per gate minimum. I routinely come back to places now with safes and overwatches all over. It’s taken a long while. It’s like skill training. I put in all the time for that, so unless you catch me exposed in a “public” space or in-gate, it’s fine that I can gawk and plot with impunity in my hidey holes.
It’s all balanced fine, since cloaked ships have other various weaknesses in trade.
If you know how to smoke me out when I’m on that side, tell me, because I want to do that to others too when I’m on defense. How…?
Man, this thread is still going? Seriously?
Drop combat probes before you drop the observatory. You might be able to catch your target when they log out. Even if you can’t, the target probably only uses one safe spot - so you can catch them on the second try.
If they’re smart they warp away when you probe them. When I safely log out my cloaky hunter it is aligned to a safe spamming dscan while watching the timer tick down.
Still worth trying!
I am trying to work within OP’s contention that this is just a dumb logout bot with no biological components.
Dafuq
Cloaked ships cant target while cloaked. Cant cloak if too close to something and have to recloak if they jump. You can see them in local too. Then there’s cloak stabilisation timer.
It’s the most carebear gimped cloak in almost any game ever 
The fact that this type of gameplay is possible is ridiculous.
It’s not ridiculous. Someone is obviously going to a lot of effort to keep the CCTV network alive. Back in the day when everyone could afk cloaky camp effortlessly, that was a little ridiculous.
Nowadays hardly anyone is cloaky camping. Cloaky campers used to be ubiquitous. This is a rare example of a change that CCP got right. They reduced the oppressiveness without eliminating the playstyle.
I don’t think this comment 'autistic no-lifers’ that was made about the player is necessary at all.
Yes, it’s called a computer algorithm.
The CCTV eyes network are dodgy as anything - far than predictable and consistent behaviour than you’d expect from human(s). If they were getting banned at a sufficient rate to actually affect the network it wouldn’t be so bad, but they’re clearly not: Average camping enjoyer | Alliance | zKillboard
Currently full-region cloaky camping is perfectly possible if you’re happy to break the EULA and repeatedly ban evade - which isn’t a good state of affairs. Previously botting wasn’t anywhere near the competitive advantage it is now in this area. They either need to relent or crack down a lot harder on cloaky camping with game mechanics.
We should be thankful that the actual hot-droppers using the network aren’t too disciplined and very capable of being baited.
CCP and bots go hand in hand.
Bots provide income for the big Fleet fights that make the news and advertise Eve.
Bots often have at least one person somewhere in the chain subscribing and many subscribing Mainline alliance members rely on the income bots provide to their Alliance.
You can tell how much Bots mean to CCP by how quickly they walked back the black out of Null Sec.
Thats a nice opinion you got there.
You just necroing threads for lulz or
If you want CCTV cameras, use alt accounts on four different low end computer systems.