Well sure it is. Make a thread about cloak proximity deactivation.
What you’re talking about comes back to afk cloaking, no matter how obtuse you are.
So what does that tell you about his status?
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Again… What’s your point?
People won’t enter space with soft targets while he’s there? So what? He doesn’t have anything to say about people not in space with him.
If you know whether he’s active or not you know not to rat. You go afk/log off and try again later. And so on and so on. Until you know it’s safe.
Not gonna happen. Not whilst local is a thing.
You are failing to make a point.
You aren’t entitled to soft targets. If he does not enter space with a hostile waiting to shoot him, that’s called being smart and playing right. It’s a feature, not a bug.
You can certainly disrupt his use of space, but that needs to be an ATK activity, not an AFK one.
It matters absolutely not at all from a balance point if soft targets die under your guns. Simply keeping those ships out of space so they aren’t making ISK or mining minerals serves the exact same purpose. You can do that by being ATK and evading local defense, and everyone gets to have fun.
If local was the problem you think it is, it would have been removed long ago. The fact that they just had to redo the entire chat interface and went through pains to keep it working should tell you something.
No its allowed to be afk activity. Clearly! Because more important than preventing this afk (lack of) activity is making sure null ratters can’t tell if that bad guy in local is active or not.
It is absolutely necessary that null ratters don’t feel completely safe. Even if this safety is a result of effort and time, it must be fallable.
Oh on the contrary. Local has only just been changed because it was part of the spaghetti of old code. I wonder if the new local has been written with structures in mind.
Soon tm
Let’s see if I can sneak this in before a bunch of whiny crybabies keep the chat scrolling about their fear of the Boogeyman.
What if we made a Scanner Sov module. It uses (technobabble) to look for minute distortions of (technobabble) enough to detect if there are Cloaking Devices active in the system. Then it uses Acceleration Gate technology to zip you off in that general direction, leading you to end up somewhere on grid with the Cloaked ship. No guarantee you’ll land right on top of them. No guaranteed you’ll be within any reasonable distance either.
Then once you’re on grid, you can feel free to start letting your drones wander, or start firing off Smartbombs, while you motor around in a search pattern. Maybe you’ll find them right away. Maybe it’ll take days of flying around to locate that one spot in 3-dimensional space. And maybe… they weren’t AFK at all, and they flew off to another deep safe as soon as you arrived.
That way you have the opportunity to patrol for Cloaks. But you aren’t guaranteed anything.
They could have made all of the game into delayed mode long ago without touching the code, if they had wanted to.
They could have simply removed the chat roster window (the actual “problem”) from the client long ago, had they wanted to.
They could have left it broken and not being accurate when they went to the cloud just recently, but they went through pains to fix it instead.
They allow AFK activity because in most cases it’s self regulating, resulting in a higher degree of risk or at the least a lowered efficiency in a given activity. It only becomes an issue when combined with cloaks, which actually increases the efficiency and enhances the safety when camping to degrade the value of a system.
Even that’s not really a problem, except for people that are wanting to actually protect their space. I’d personally rather they directly turned down the rewards in Null Space to a tiny fraction of what they are now and got rid of Blueballing being the best option.
That very thing has been suggested multiple times and shot down by the pro AFK crowd as being too dangerous to them.
All most people have asked for is the ability to get on grid with the cloaked ship. But no, that’s far too much risk for them. They might actually have to move or something. The terror.
I kinda agree with @Daichi_Yamato too though. The “problem” of AFK Cloaks isn’t the Cloaks. It’s the fear you instill in yourself by seeing a name you don’t recognize in Local.
I still think a tweak to Local is very deserved after all this time.
- Leave High Sec and Low Sec alone. Both of those are Empire controlled spaces, and the Local functions reflect that.
- Unclaimed Null Sec should lose Local functions almost entirely. Basically, make it like Wormholes. You only show up if you speak or if you are observed by an “official” rat (Navy rats count, Pirate rats do not). Maybe even give it a delay before you’re reported, that way you can attempt to pop them before you’re given away. And your name should disappear off the list if you remain silent or unobserved for 5 - 15 min.
- Claimed Null Sec should have the option of deploying a Sov structure that re-enables Local (for the most part). If you enter system through a Stargate, are observed by an “official” rat, or speak in chat, then you will appear on the list. If you enter the system through some other means (Wormhole exit, Cyno, etc.) then you will not appear on the list.
Then you get rid of the paranoia inducing Local list, and everyone is free to fend for themselves properly. As befitting Null Sec.
No, the problem is that there is no counter to an active cloak. It’s hands down the safest thing in the game.
It’s not the fear, it’s that you can’t ship up and head out to confront them. The entire game is about non-consensual PvP for anyone in space… but not if you have a cloak.
Personally I don’t give a flying fig about Local. It’s a completely separate problem used as an excuse.
All you should ever need to know about how stupid cloaks currently are is to scroll up a bit and look at folks going “Save the Titans” because their capital ships can’t just turn on a cloak and be safe from hunters until downtime.
This could be the best post you’ve ever made.
Yeah it’s true they could have made local delayed as easily as they could have allowed you to probe down and decloak cloaked ships.
But they have opted for the status quo for this long because it’s working. You’ve been around long enough to know how sensitive null bounties are, and now that rorquals do what they do, I wonder if minerals are the same.
Changing anything could seriously affect the economy. The rumored changes involving local and structures should shake things up a lot. But it can also have a detrimental affect on balance.
So why now? I guess they just got tired of our whining.
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‘S not right to talk about renters as if they owned space, ‘cause they ain’t. They’re all liars in here claimin’ they’d be defendin’ their crap.
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Stop lying. The inevitable conclusion of any anti-cloaking mechanic that allows you to find a cloaked ship is that you will have to log out when you go AFK. There will be no AFK cloaked ships to hunt, as staying logged in while AFK (for more than a brief bathroom trip or similar) will be suicide. So what is the result of it no longer being possible to stay logged in while AFK? Local becomes more effective because a name in local is guaranteed to be an active player and once a player becomes inactive they are removed from local. The direct result of your proposed change is vastly increased safety for farmers.
Now, the only remaining question here, after this has been explained to you over and over again, is if you are incapable of grasping simple concepts or, more likely, have a personal stake in farming becoming safer and don’t care how much you have to lie to obtain that safety.
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You’re starting from the completely incorrect premise here, assuming that the farmer owns the space as a default state and the AFK cloaker is disrupting it. The opposite is true. The farmer owns nothing. The default state is hiding in station, too afraid and weak to accomplish anything. Use of space is earned by being strong, organizing fleets of PvP ships to farm PvE content, etc. And once you have done those things the AFK cloaker is no longer a threat.
You can do that by being ATK and evading local defense, and everyone gets to have fun.
Again you are wrong. You are not entitled to have fun. You do not deserve to have fun. If you and your alliance are so weak that an AFK cloaker is a threat then the only thing you deserve is hiding in station 23/7 and some occasional lossmails when you’re foolish enough to undock. Weak victims do not get to have fun, and the desired end state of their existence is being evicted back to highsec.
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Actually, I"m assuming the guy actively hunting down threats in space owns it, not the farmer. If that guy allows farmers to use the space, that’s his decision.
Actually, I’m assuming anyone who decides to play a game for entertainment is entitled to fun.
OMG, and you are trying to call other people weak? You have to be all snuggled up so warm and safe you can AFK indefinitely or you just can’t deal? That sounds to me like you are trying to take on more than you should, not that your opponents are weak. Maybe we can find someone to hold your hand and bring you milk and cookies while we are at it.
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Mike, you have the patience of a saint, I don’t know how you do it…
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You mean no one should be 100% safe when undocked?
More or less, you should be doing something to guarantee your own safety.
Like getting into an alliance that defends their space and actively hunts potential threats, getting away from potential threats by traveling to empty areas of space, or even hunting those threats down yourself.
So Farmer Joe who makes sure space is clear before undocking is doing it right. it’s not ‘too easy’ or 100% safe as anyone could come at any time, and if he does not keep a watchful eye, fly appropriately and take action when hostiles show up then he will be a killmail in short order.
Mouthbreather Bob who gets into the system to menace the farmers by actively dodging defense fleets and picking his targets is also fine.
It’s when Mouthbreather Bob turns on a cloak and sits safely in space forever more regardless of the active players attempting to find and evict him that it’s a problem. Likewise for Titan Sally who got caught out without a support fleet and now has to deal with the consequences unless she cloaks up and waits for downtime. Also Lurker Joe gathering intel, an activity vital to EVE operations, worthy of being opposed yet impossible to stop unless he is either an idiot or seriously record breakingly unlucky.