Forever cloacked and AFK

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
49

Someone who is ‘forever cloaked and AFK’ will easily get decloaked by a mobile observatory.

A single mobile observatory pings 9 times with 40% chance each, which means they have a (1-0.6)^9 = 0.01 chance to still be cloaked after a single mobile observatory. A 99% chance to decloak them with one observatory, or 99.99% chance with two of them. This is pretty much a guaranteed decloak.

The “permanently cloaked” player is no longer a thing in EVE since the introduction of the mobile observatory, anyone who leaves their ship in space 24/7 while they go to bed or go to work will likely come back to see their ship destroyed, which was a good change to the game.

This doesn’t mean that the balance of cloaky camping is entirely fair now.

There are two main issues I still see with the balance of cloaky camping:

  1. Deadspace ESS grids.
  2. Third party tools.

1 - Deadspace ESS grids

Some cloaky camper is in system and has been for an hour. You deploy an expensive mobile observatory and manage to decloak them, but they turn out to be in a part of space you cannot warp to and have like 10 minutes extra to recloak while you try to burn over to their spot in space.

This abuse of game mechanics is easily fixed, but requires some changes by CCP:

  • delete deadspace grid in front of the ESS gate, and
  • disable cloaks behind the ESS gate

Easy fix, now cloaky players cannot abuse the ESS to cloaky camp.

2 - Third party tools

There are tools you can download that read your game logs and chat logs to provide intel. This is legal, but not balanced, in my opinion.

These tools can send a warning to a player who is cloaky camping on 10 accounts that one of their characters just got decloaked, so that cloaky campers can still safely camp without paying attention.

That’s broken, in my opinion.

The solution to this is harder, as reading game logs client side is easily done so even if it were made ‘illegal’ people could easily cheat.

One unorthodox solution I can think of is: do not tell a client that their ship got decloaked by a mobile observatory.

No client knowledge means no logs and no third party tool to help. You would still be flying in space with your cloak ‘active’ according to your client, but suddenly someone can warps to your location as if you weren’t cloaked, because you are in fact not cloaked.

An active player who is paying attention could spot that, a semi-AFK cloaky camper relying on third party tools to warn them of decloaks is going to get caught.

Sounds like a good fix to me.

To conclude

I hope CCP can iterate on the cloaky camping balance and deal with these two ways cloaky campers are getting around mobile observatories.

‘Forever cloaked and AFK’ is not possible, but with some nasty deadspace tricks and third party tools it’s still too easy to camp systems.

6 Likes
50

Yeah, it’s already bad enough that you cannot tell if you are cloaked or not as an active player at the moment. Not being able to tell that on purpose sounds like a really great idea.

I am way more partial to increasing the cost for MOOBs but making them recoverable. If they cost 100M, it would incentivize campers to kill them instead of just resetting their cloaks (I know I would because I already destroy them whenever I can), and making them recoverable after every pulse or every 30 minutes (shouldn’t be at the end of their active time because it is so long), locals would potentially be more willing to use them. Naturally, you’d need to limit them to 1 per system because swamping the system with 10 recoverable MOOBs is not good gameplay.

2 Likes
51
53

More expensive but recoverable mobile observatories are not a bad idea if only a small limited number can be deployed in a system.

I like it.

It creates more opportunities to fight cloakies as they are tempted to destroy the deployable to deny you the chance of picking it back up, and the increased cost keeps it risky to deploy one.

It just won’t do anything against players who use third party tool warnings, which I think is still a big issue.

2 Likes
54

“Build a wall”…

1 Like
55

Removing cloak is a interesting idea :laughing: :star_struck:

56

Sure - just so long as we can make gate-camping a thing of the past.

57

Removing the Bubbles is an interesting idea too. :blush:

1 Like
58

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:tf:

59

I don’t know if the cloaking needs some kind of nerf or not. I don’t live in null, but in one of my favorite books, cloaked ships would become visible if struck by EMP pulse or nearby explosion.

I don’t know how bomb launcher works, but something like that interacting with cloaking could be healthy.

60

The op is frustrated, thats why the uses phrases like “forever afk”. You and I know that he isn’t afraid of the truly afk cloaker but afraid of the fact that he can basically not tell if the cloaker is afk or not and the fact that this cloaker can get from “afk” to “hunting” any moment without any sign. And can then instantly cyno in a whole fleet on top of whatever target he choses. But I understand that it is very easy to target such exaggerated complaints and then make it look like he had no point at all. I think that cheap argumentation and I believe it only clouds the fact that there truly is a reason for these constant complaints. And it is not that “people are just greedy/lazy/entitled” - because I am absolutely not and I clearly can see their problem.

My point isn’t that I want to remove cloakies. My point is that I want to equal out the effort for both sides. If the defensive side is required to hold a shield up the entire time to be safe, the offensive side should be required tho hold up a spear the entire time. Which basically means

  • the Cloak Stabilization timer should be reduced to 1 minute, applying the same rule PvPers repeat like a mantra in every other situation “if you want to go afk, even for a minute, dock your ship or log out!” - THAT is exactly what they tell everybody who ever gets shot and complains he was “just at the door for a minute”. Cloakies shouldn’t be an exception here.
  • MoObs should be rescoopable but limited to 1 at a time in any star system (increase costs maybe, @Gerard_Amatin and @Dyver_Phycad have talked about that already, the idea is good and I support it fully). I would just add that the location should be limited to the Star’s grid and a clear message should appear in local if one is anchored. Also it should create a warpable beacon for everyone to see and use. This gives an opportunity and motivation to fight over it or ambush it if the locals can’t/won’t protect it properly. A Bomber or T3 doesn’t need long to kill one.
  • MoObs ping faster, like every 5 minutes, need 5 minutes to anchor up so after 5 Pings (all in all 30minutes) they automatically unanchor and can be scooped again. Each ping should be a coinflip of 50/50 to hit any active cloaking device in the system
  • when hit by such a ping, the cloaking device is set on a 1 minute delay before reactivation is possible. Which means the defenders now have a chance to combatscan, force him to warp and really be active and on his toes. After he survived this minute, he has breathing room for 4 minutes until the next ping might hit im.

All that poses no threat to a really active hunter. He will be able to do his job as he can do now and he will be able to evade the defender’s efforts with a very very high probability. So the core gameplay of going on a hunt with cloaky ships isn’t affected at all. But those changes make sure nobody can put a char in a system and posing a (cyno)threat with minimal effort for hours, always risking a lot less and doing a lot less than he requires from the locals to do “to be somewhat safe”.

5 Likes
61

i still prefer the blackouts event, right now the prey can just take a look at the local list and dock up as soon you enter it

it’s null sec, concord don’t have reach there, they shouldn’t be able to have structure for that ( lore thing )

1 Like
62

You don’t care about that, you just don’t want possible targets get away from you in WH space.

63

Decloak sound is louder and has more sense of urgency than the hull damage alert. I guess CCP wanted to make sure AFK cloakers wake up if they decloak.

64

The problem is the rare ore became common and common ore became rare. Everything since then has been a series of hacks to try reverse that even tho probably nobody was complaining when you could mine in high sec and make decent ISK

1 Like
65

Do cloaks really last forever in null sec? In high sec, there is a 15 minute timer on a cloak.

People are saying “forever cloaked and afk”. What cloaks allow people to go afk forever while remaining cloaked?

Nevermind. I found the info.

66

Are you… uninformed? Neither MoObs nor Cynos work in WH space… Everything I suggested has zero impact on targets or cloakies in WH space at all.

4 Likes
67

No, it was a mistype due to editing, I typed out a longer post but decided against it and messed up. Here is why I understand why you would want this:

Lets say that a group living and operating in WH space gets a null exit, they have a quick peek to see what’s there and if there’s someone’s there that can’t be found drops their MoObs, the fact that these cloaking timers are so short would certainly help with that because the cloakers wouldn’t anticipate “invaders” from WH space, no alarm bells or safety measures triggered.

With the changes you proposed a WH group could sweep a null system real quick, grab the afks/cloakers and disappear in the night. And given the issues that WH life has on resources being able to pick up the moObs would be a hilarious boon for that play style.

68

Just remove local from null and problem of afk cloakers is solved :slight_smile:

2 Likes
69

Yeah thats some nice made up story. Unfortunately for you it’s just that.

You don’t really believe that a ‘WH group’ (why specifically a WH group and not just anyone coming into the local?) checks the whole system (aka warping to every structure and counting how many people are docked and then comparing it to the localcount, then combatscanning the whole system to exclude recons or people on safespots) and if that tells them that probably someone is cloaked here, they warp to the star, drop a MoOb for ~150 million ISK which will create a warpable beacon (so they can easily lose it if the locals just read the message in local), to have a 50/50 chance to decloak said guy. Who can btw. also just go docking or leave the system or log off after seeing the beacon or reading the MoOb warning message in local.
And then they would have to wait another 25 minutes to rescoop their MoOb (if the local’s haven’t managed to simply kill it, because it hasn’t that much HP). Sry, thats a hilarious idea to begin with.

Not even counting the fact that you could only catch people this way that ignore the local for at least five full minutes, because as I said “dropping a MoOb would display a clear message in local” hand has an initial anchoring timer of 5 minutes before the first ping. Which means you can only catch people who are truly afk cloaked in space. Which is exactly the purpose of a MoOb.

So, after all things considered, I believe your idea to be

  • extremely unlikely to happen
  • not having any bad impact on the game even if someone would do it
  • mostly aimed to sow doubt the posters intentions rather than adressing arguments
1 Like