Main AFK cloaky thread

Mistake?

So you admit all you really want is for the cloaker to go away so you can undock.

But if you’re docked, how do you know he is cloaked?

Maybe he is orbiting the station waiting for you?

I’m sorry, I forgot your difficulties in understanding simple problems.

The only reason people quit undocking in combat ships to challenge the cloaker is because he’s 100% safe.

You can talk about people’s cowardice in not sticking around to be shot in PvE ships when you start lingering in enemy space in a ship that isn’t immune to interaction.

i’d be happy to go on, but ya’d not gonna like it.

Any alliance capable of formin’ a fleet doesn’t give a crap about the cloaker. They don’t give a crap about the possible hot drop either. It’s content. Proceed as usual. They don’t ■■■■■■■ need to know where he is. He’ll be comin’, or he won’t.

Any alliance INcapable of formin’ a fleet doesn’t benefit from knowin’ where the cloaky is’, ‘cause they’d still get hotdropped no matter what. Ya remember, right? The original and still lasting “argument” people made is that they’re stayin’ docked ‘cause of a potential hotdrop. When ya get to know where the campy guy is, then ya’d be just riskin’ gettin’ hotdropped.

Ya argument is absurd and it’s not amusin’ me to see ya keep this goin’. Ya makin’ me feel compassion for the trouble’s ya apparently must be goin’ through.

Have some ■■■■■■■ dignity, mate. Ya life can’t be that much of a shithole as justification for keepin’ this up.

You are assuming that a relatively small group would not be willing to try and hunt down a cloaker to kill it before it brought in reinforcements, rather than having to wait until it was actually bringing in those reinforcements to even try.

It’s a question of initiative. Those defending themselves from cloaking cannot have it under any circumstances. All they can do is raise the barrier of entry on when it decides to act.

But if he is immune to interaction how can he hurt you?

This is just another case of picking some random upstream event to somehow block a different event for which the player is completely unprepared. Getting ganked.

This is just like all the other threads: solo players who insist that they are somehow entitled to come out on top of an interaction with other players all working as a team.

The team wins the solo player loses.

It is selfish. Join a team.

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Drivel.

There is no random upstream event. You just don’t like it when someone wants to take proactive action to limit their exposure.

This is the random upstream event, just like scanners and bumpers, no one really cares, they just don’t have the emotional fortitude for the roflstomping that comes next :rofl:

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nah, it’s yaself who’s assumin’ and that’s one of the things breakin’ ya neck in this thread, mate.

Ya guys dock, ‘cause of the fear of a hotdrop. Ya can’t even know if he got a fleet behind him, but ya’ll assume he does so ya just stay docked. As ya rather stay docked instead of baitin’ him, it’s absurd to claim that ya’d be willin’ to go out there to shoot him down, ‘cause he still potentially has the fleet behind him, waitin’.

Ya “unwillingness” to undock without knowing if he actually really might have a fleet waitin’ is exactly what’s breakin’ ya neck regardin’ ya current argument.

Ya ruined it for yaselves, mate. It’s what happens when ya just keep tryin’ to stick to whatever “argument” seems to work at the moment once ya figured out the last one just can’t be kept up anymore. I know ya’ve been doin’ it, ‘cause i’ve been readin’ it. Yaself and many others “like ya”. I’ve been readin’ most of all of it. ■■■■■■■ hell this is. There’s probs not a single thing any future poster could be writin’ that i haven’t been readin’ already several times over.

Ya’rr the last man standing. I salute ya, mate, and ya truly deserve salutations, but for the love of bob have some dignity.

o7

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No. They quit undocking because, like you, they are low-skill players who hate PvP and anything that gets in the way of their PvE farming. Competent players would continue to undock because they can continue to farm despite the presence of the cloaker, as long as they present a strong target at all times and make decloaking suicide. They do not lose the use of their system because they are not weak. You, on the other hand, can not conceive of such things and refuse to undock.

It is an assumption, but it is a correct assumption.

  1. We know you reject PvP and won’t undock, there’s nothing hypothetical about it. If you see a non-blue name in local you aren’t leaving station.

  2. You can’t hunt down a ship before it is ready, cloak or no cloak. Any cyno ship can warp between safespots faster than you can chase it, the cloak provides no defense here. It’s an offensive module that allows the cyno ship to get into position without the target knowing the attack is coming and warping back to station before the cyno ship can get into tackle range.

It’s a question of initiative. Those defending themselves from cloaking cannot have it under any circumstances. All they can do is raise the barrier of entry on when it decides to act.

And if you raise the barrier to entry to “never” then you win, and the camper probably goes elsewhere to find more vulnerable targets. This is fine for competent players, bots like you are the only people who aren’t satisfied.

True, when he initially enters the system. If you are in a ship that is not suited to PvP, you put it away when a potential hostile enters the system.

For those ships, allowing a ship on grid with you is practically suicide. So you dock.

However, you don’t have to stay docked. A great many years ago when we were all much newer at the game we did undock in combat ships and try to engage… but the enemy is mechanically perfectly safe. After a while, we stopped trying. There is no point to forming up against a cloaker because they are virtually immune.

A decade and a half later, with most of the people we once flew with long since having left the game and newer players never having known a different way, we have this mess. It’s not really different, since there have been no changes, but the idea that a cloak should be perfectly safe is more entrenched in the minds of people.

The idea that someone sneaking deep into enemy space should face some sort of danger while lingering and setting up their ambush or gathering their intel has fallen off in the face of the incessant noise Teckos and his friends make.

Every now and then someone posts a thread regarding ‘cloaky camping’, the act of hiding cloaked in a system for hours, days, or even months with the purpose of either trolling residents and travelers, intel gathering, or seeking a ‘perfect’ target. The behavior has been described from annoying to outright infuriating to those on the receiving end in nullsec. However, when it comes to the wormholes, the subject is often met with silence because those in the wormholes accept the behavior as another part of the game. This does not mean that the ramifications of the cloaker in k-space is the same as the cloaker in W-space because of some crucial differences in the nature of K and W-space.

The most dramatic difference is the lack of local chat intel in wormhole space. Look at the following two possible scenarios:

Player A has been hiding out in system W

Player B has been hiding in system K.

Both players are hiding in the same cloak-fit ship (let’s say for consistency’s sake they’re both interdictors with a basic cloak equipped.)

Both have been in the system for three days monitoring the behavior of the locals in the system.

Both have been watching a retriever mining solo in a belt for the past two hours, blasting arkanor away.

Both decide to attack the miner.

So what happens in this case?

Player A is in wormhole (W) space. He has no local chat so he doesn’t know if this miner is truly alone or if he has friends hiding nearby. He makes a calculated risk to attack the procurer for the killmail believing that this miner has no backup. At this point, two things will happen. The ship will either be on its own, and an easy kill, or it will be a ruse, and Player A will find himself tackled by the barge which sent the message to a fleet cloaked on grid that drops on Player A. Player A is unable to flee finding himself engulfed in a classic wormhole ambush. His ship is destroyed, and he is podded.

Player B is in K space. He has access to a local chat showing him exactly who is in the system at all times. With this knowledge he can choose to wait for the perfect moment when he’s guaranteed an easy kill. Even though the residents know he’s there, there’s nothing they can do to set up an effective trap against him since player B will see it coming miles away. Even if the miner is utilizing a tackle fit, he could tear apart the miner or burn out of scram range and warp off before the response fleet arrives.

Let’s say that both players A and B managed to get themselves killed. Player A has been knocked out of System W and he’s not coming back. By the time he can get a new ship and warp his way back to the entrance wormhole (granting he even knows where the entrance is to begin with) the residents of that wormhole have the entrance rolled, and Player A is out of luck. But what about the Player B? Well that cheeky B has bought a new ship and has snuck back into the system within the hour.

In these two examples we see the two main source of complains regarding cloaked campers in K-space, and why people aren’t bothered so much when similar nonsense happens in W-space. First, in wormhole space it’s far easier to ambush the camper and force him to fight on the defender’s terms because both defenders and attackers can use the same cloak mechanics to their advantage. It’s as even of a playing field as one can get in EVE. Second, it’s possible to kick the camper out of a wormhole system and keep them out for a very long period of time, if they ever come back at all. The same is just not possible in K-space. Even the most vigilant defenders will have to go to sleep and that’ll give the local nuisance an easy re-entry to start the whole mess all over again. Wasting all that time to keep one pilot out is not fun, and people want to play the game, not play a second job as a security guard. Unfortunately I cannot name any good way to correct the issue in K-space that won’t negatively impact the meta of W-space.

The infamous ‘cloaky camp’ is both a fiercely guarded and vilified ambush technique. Players in K-space who utilize it don’t want any changes. Players fighting it want a viable way to track such players, and everyone living in W-space just don’t care (Like me). So the question to the dear viewer is should anything be done to address this concern?

If you dont care, why bring it up?

And why outside of the main thread?

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you make some valid points in regards to the relative safety of J-space vs K-space and the ability to control the field and deny access. but one other key-component you have left out, is that J-space doesn’t have cynos. which means that the potential for escalation is inherently limited. so, everything that you said above about the differences is true. but imagine if in J-space, when the cloaky camper de-cloaked, they could also open up an instant one way wormhole to say HK or LZHWK (or whoever of the big boys is left in wormholes and hasn’t moved to drone lands) home system that they can bring an infinite number of ships of any size through… and then you start to get a better idea of the differences between how the mechanics operate in both areas.

personally, I don’t have much of a problem with them being the way they are now either. similar mechanics, but with different uses and different counter-options. and overall I think it works pretty well, if slightly differently in both areas. the problem comes from one area of space being convinced that if only they did this, that, or the other thing to make it more like the other area of space, the whole game would be better.

im conflicted,
you don’t technically deserve the usual paddling,
but aaaaaaaaaaany second now some earnest little bright spark is going to sound off so im going to preempt it now.

source

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Mike defeating himself again. Instead of mining or ratting in pvp tanked ships the just gave up. Defeated by an empty chair.

So? Why didn’t player B fit a cyno? And why use a retriever if you see a guy in local who isn’t blue when the exact same skills get you into the very tankable procurer?

And why didn’t Player A use d-scan? Handy tool to see if one is alone. How come the retriever wasn’t using d-scan. Interdictors cannot warp cloaked.

Great story…but not very compelling.

Perfect and clear synthesis. Can’t say better myself.

Even a very long cycle would be fine (2 hours if you want) but force player to stay focused on his game.

I just used a retriever at random. You’re right that procurers are gonna be used instead of the others in these situations.

For Player B, there are cloaked camps who are either random alts or salty lone wolves with a chip on their shoulder. My old nereus had survived two such encounters in one day, but that’s a story for another day. Now my knowledge of cyno usage is virtually non-existent since I haven’t used or even been a victim of its use. If you know or observed how cloaked campers use cynos to attack enemy ships, please educate me on it.

For Player A, I’ll explain a few essentials about wormhole activity. Because there is a lack of local chat, wormholers like to exploit this mechanic to its fullest. There’s a reason why covert ops ships like the astero and stratios are immensely popular in wormhole corps. Now if Player A is observing a lone mining barge out in a wormhole system they’re hunting in, he’ll only know what he can see and what D-scan will pick up. D-scan will not pick up those cloaked ships sitting on or off grid and waiting for the order to attack. Until Player A initiates the attack, he’ll never truly know if he and that barge are the only two players in the field.

The one thing I’ve learned about wormholers is that they are some of the most patient bastards you’ll ever meet in this game.

And sneaky, don’t forget sneaky.