I don’t think I need to explain cloaky campers so my suggested fix:
Tachyon System Emitter, can be fitted to Fortizars and above only, it saturates a system with tachyon particles that “stick” onto cloaked systems. Ships remaining in cloak in a tachyon emitter system build up a “saturation” timer. When this timer hits 60 minutes activation of a cloak becomes impossible and any active cloak is deactivated. Note this timer only increases while a ship is cloaked, uncloaking stops the timer from accumulating however it does not clear it. To clear the timer you can either jump to a non tacyon saturated system for 10 minutes of active login (ie timer will reverse at 6x speed) or tether. Tethering instantly clears the timer during the repair process.
Logging off does not clear this timer only the above mechanisms will. This pretty much only impacts cloaky AFK campers. The above system cuts both ways, no friendly or unfriendly distinction in a saturated system.
Amazing how your suggested “fix” gives you an easy way to make local intel 100% accurate and thus your PvE 100% safe with no downsides or additional risk to yourself.
I see why you would ask for the game to be skewed in your favor, but you can’t really expect CCP to just do so. If they just wanted to hand you a way to make your space perfectly safe, they would have years ago.
This thread comes up on almost a weekly basis. In fact, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a nerf cloaking thread in the first 2 pages on this forum section. Almost every single one of them goes like this:
OP posts a post with a new (lol) idea that always boils down to some variation of the following:
“There’s a big meanie who is sitting in my system and not doing anything, but I don’t know where he is and I can’t ever just go next door. I can’t find said meanie and even though I know that he’s probably at work and poses no threat at all, I wont do anything in my system that I absolutely can’t leave ever because he might not be at work and I might lose a ship. CCP please stop the meanie from being able to do nothing to me because he’s probably at work”
Thread gets trolled because its been done literally to death. This horse has been beaten so hard and so often that it’s little more than a memory of a memory of a red smear on the grass, and yet it STILL WONT DIE! In fact it’s been done so many times that this particular horse is now undead; even if it does die, it will still be remembered and parodied.
Someone comes along and suggests that AFK cloakers can’t hurt you, because they are, by their very definition, AFK. No one ever lost a ship to someone who ISN’T PLAYING THE GAME.
Someone else comes along and points out that while the cloaker might be AFK, he might not be, and so we have Schrodinger’s Hot Dropper. The cyno pilot who might be AFK… but he might not be as well, and you will only know for sure when he decloaks, points and lights his candle. (Yes, I know this isn’t how the cat works)
Someone else comes along and suggests that you use bait and setup a TARP. Or have a defence fleet on standby. Heaven forbid you have to actually fight to defend your space.
A further person comes along and suggests that the problem isn’t cloaking AFK in your system that you can’t possibly leave ever, but that you KNOW that the person is AFK in your system… and perhaps local should be removed because free 100% accurate intel is probably not the best thing in the game and if you didn’t know that the big meanie was in your system, you wouldn’t be worried about leaving the undock/POS.
Then another person pokes their head in and complains that local is 100% NEEDED because D-Scan and probing are such bad mechanics, and IF YOU TAKE MY LOCAL AWAY IM QUITTING FOREVER AND NO YOU CAN’T HAVE MY STUFF!
Someone asks if they can have 7’s stuff.
We end up with another thread which goes on for pages and pages between complains about local, defence fleets, inability to just go next door, people who aren’t playing the game but are playing the meta, lots of bickering and in the end nothing gets solved. CCP wont remove cloaking because it would mess with waaay too many things and it creates content (which is a good thing) by removing content (which is a bad thing) but they can’t really think of any way to do it without a complete overhaul of the local and scanning systems.
Now that I’ve had this entire thread’s conversation, can we just let it die? Please? Sauce
Probably best to take the fix you suggested, fold it up and place it in your cargo hold. Then I suggest you join the Armada that is sailing across the Ocean of Complaints it’s early evening out there so screaming (cough cough) I mean’t sailing of into the sunset with your fellow complainants maybe most beneficial.
Just make cloaks require fuel. Every problem solved. You retain meta, you retain behavioural impact, you stimulate active behaviour, you stimulate planning and plotting.
Let’s be honest, it is stupendously easy to park cloaked camera’s all over space. Especially these days, and that is only something which is going to go up in volume and occurance. There’s a simple lesson found in behavioural psychology and game theory which applies: extremes are never good.
Don’t get me wrong. I like that it takes less than 50 days to train a manticore alt that I can park all over the place. I like that it provides intel. I like that it has a behavioural effect on locals. And I like that it lets me use them for dropping by unannounced without any sort of effective counter.
But I do admit that it’s getting silly.
I would not object to a mechanism that would encourage me to actually think and plan, to take logistics into consideration, to plot for both risks and rewards. Why should I, it is part of the game.
To me a cloak requiring a reasonable amount of a fuel type is fine. I can think of using infiltration and meta games to make the current theater interesting. I can think of running deep ops and supply caches. Beats just going through 6 series of 12 spots in a row and imagine all sorts of magical impact. Beats just sitting for days tracking names and patterns in a spreadsheet to figure out where to park a Sin and commit an action which is anything but
I’m not talking cyno levels of fuel, obviously. Cloaky camping should still provide as a means of intel and behavioural effects. But it being zero risk and zero cost? It’s like roleplaying a nightwatch guard in a museum ultimately nobody visits but goes to another one instead.
Year after year we get these topics. Year after year we get the same theater, drama, posturing and pseudo-argumentation.
Why not be honest for a change, think a little outside of the box, and try introduce some options to make things interesting. What’s the harm really.
Can we please put all the cloacky camper whiners and the “nullsec is more secure than highsec” whiners into one thread and then close the door so they can discuss who is the bigger victim undisturbed?
good suggestions.