I am not sure if this is where this needs to be but I can not seem to find anywhere else to put this so here goes.
I have been having discussions with some other friends of mine and we have a few suggestions on modifications to existing ships/systems.
With Covert Ops cloaking there should be a time limit on the cloak depending on the skill level, ship, possible other factors. This would help to make a more level playing field against the people who have tons of accounts that do nothing but sit in a cloaked ship in a system for 24/7 and provide intel when they see fit to check on that particular system.
One of the possible other factors could be if enough ships are scanning the system it will shorten the timer on the cloak possibly causing it to de-cloak.
It is just an idea and I am sure there are going to be people who think this idea is ludicrous as they are some of those that do this but wouldn’t it make it more interesting and fun to not know when you have to ensure you de-cloak and re-cloak your ship to ensure you are not found and destroyed than to just have it sitting there free and clear forever with no repercussions? I think CCP would make out in the long run with a stealth timer and the coding would be minimal I think as they already have timers for other things on them.
Just a suggestion, but please I welcome comments and if this is not where to put this please let me know where it should be.
There is a sticky thread to discuss AFK Cloaking. Your post and suggestion should go there. Otherwise, such topics tend to become flame fests and get locked.
I’m going to tell you now, that this thread will likely be locked for topical redundancy. You will be directed towards the cloaky camping megathread where your opinions on the topic can be quarantined and more easily ignored.
There is no good discussion to be had there either, because you’re debating with people who consider suggestions like “press a button every couple hours to stay cloaked” to be inexcusable nerfs to their “playstyle”, or who will parrot constantly as their only justification that cloaky camping is the only thing keeping New Eden from being overrun by bots that operate in part by monitoring local. The fact that these can be used for free intel and early warning systems doesn’t come up as often as it should.
CCP doesn’t care, or else they consider it to be a non-issue.
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?
CCP need some sort of script that checks posts for “cloaking” and “afk”.
It then pops up a window “You appear to be making a post about afk cloaking please note this horse is not just beaten and dead it is a bloody pulp mashed into the dirt”
It already gives a popup about other topics that look like yours. Of course it’s hard for the system to work when the OP has such a great topic like “Game Suggestions”.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that your “game suggestions” should go in the “player features and ideas” sub. Then, looking there, you’ll see a stickied thread for AFK cloaking where at least a hundred other people have suggested what yuo’ve suggested, and a hundred different people have said it’s a bad idea because of a myriad of other reasons. It is ultimately a good place for threads like this to go and die quietly.
Since I see someone linked it, I’ll leave it at that.
I’ll just say that it’s a complex and sensitive topic, because:
The cloaking device isn’t used JUST for afk-cloaking. It’s also used in a whole number of other scenarios by active PVP’ers, including black-ops raids. There’s a whole line of ships designed for cloaky operations as a fleet, from stealth bombers to (electronic warfare) recon cruisers to black ops battleships that can jump a whole fleet into enemy territory to a covert cyno beacon. All of these ships have been balanced to be relatively weak, because they can cloak. If you nerf cloaking, a whole bunch of players will be pissed that their ships are now weak for no reason.
As some of the others have pointed out, someone who is cloaked and AFK cannot affect you. To affect you they have to decloak, and cloaky ships are quite weak and easy to pop. So, instead of asking the devs to nerf the game for you, be proactive and find a solution yourself, such as bringing a defense ship or two to pop the guy when he shows up.
Cloaking has been present in this game for YEARS. Instead of removing it, a couple years ago CCP added additional ships that are invisible to scanners, for extra chances of “surprise” attacks and psychological warfare. So they seem to be going opposite of what you’re asking.
I don’t disagree with the vast majority of what you’ve said - in fact I do agree. except with the above quoted.
A combat recon is not any form of viable psychological warfare; they can’t make you wonder if they’re around or not, because you can probe them down and kill them.
Making them immune to combat probes though… oh my. That would be fun! CCPls? Want to trade dscan immunity for probe immunity. Soon as I warp to a safe, good luck finding me. It’s basically the opposite of a covops ship… they’re slippery. These wouldn’t be slippery, but they’d be way tougher. And the teeears! Ofc they can’t light a covert cyno so…
They’re shitty enough that nobody would be able to efficiently PVE in them (yes you CAN do it… but it’s not going to be a big deal if you do), so it wouldn’t be a huge problem to worry about people doing escalations in unprobable ships.
I moved this topic to the right place, then locked it, as there is allreaddy a Mega thread about it here. Having everything in one place makes it a bit easier to read and study.
