According to your statements defending your space is the point. But you won’t take Scipio’s advice in trying to engage them. Even if they are AFK and do not engage, you gain, at the very least some information–they are most likely AFK. So you can use your system. You can also rat “next door” and that comes with an added benefit as well: if that cloaker shows up, you know he is not ATK and again you can try to engage him. Yes, that attempt may fail, but you are, based on your comments, unwilling to even make the attempt.
Sure, if you do not want to deal that much with cloaked ships and AFK camping there are places for you. We call them HS, w-space, and probably even LS (haven’t heard of too many people complaining about AFK cloaking in LS systems). So you can go there and not worry about neutrals in local at all. So, you have your part of the game where you can freely exercise your desire play style more frequently. And, so AFK cloaking and cloaks in general should be a non-issue for you.
That is not a problem that the Devs can solve for you.
And I’ll be right here to criticizing them for it too if that is the case.
You know it will be. Just look at the level of vitriol any mild suggestion to do something so minor as to leave a cloaked ship detectable for less than a minute every couple of hours. You would think it was the very end of the game to even suggest it, and it would never be implemented.
Now actually provide a way for locals to protect their space by maintaining a structure? Hell will freeze over and all the creeks will rise, cloaks will be ‘useless’, and the servers will shut down within 3 months.
Because it’s a solution in need of a problem. Even a minor change is still a bad change if it has no purpose besides coddling stupid and/or lazy players.
You already have a way to protect your space: PvE in fleets of PvP-fit ships, stay aligned at all times, etc. I see absolutely no reason to replace this player-action-driven mechanic for defending your space with one that consists of “put down a no-cloak structure and go back to mindless PvE farming”. CCP should not give you a structure to compensate for being bad at the game.
I’m personally fine with a symmetrical approach to this issue, both local and cloaking are changed. Some still might not like that, but the vitriol Mike points too is, IMO, based on the fact that these “suggestions” are all almost one sided, “Nerf the other guy!”
It’s ‘nerf the other guy’ because currently the “balance” is tilted all the way hard against the wall in his favor. There is no ground to give on the PvE side of this situation.
Also “Stupid/Lazy” surely refers to the guy that’s hunting by activating his magic safety button and then going afk for the next week, right? Pretty sure it would not apply to the guy who wants to work to clear his space.
Of course there’s ground to give. You gain the ability to detect cloaked ships, you lose the ability to instantly know when a potential threat enters your system and have a 100% chance of docking up safely before they can possibly catch you. I personally don’t favor making this trade, but it’s absurd to suggest that there’s nothing for the PvE player to give up.
Ah yes, back to ignoring the fact that the AFK player can not inflict any damage on anything or gain ISK in any way while they are AFK, and the cloaked pilot faces significant risk if they ever want to attack instead of just sitting passively and hoping someone is afraid of them. And really, faces more risk, as they’re either flying an extremely expensive ship (T3) or a ship with crippled combat performance (anything else).
And no, you don’t want to work to clear your space. You want to press a magic “remove cloaked ship” button and go back to mindless PvE farming at maximum ISK per hour.
And what mechanic would be used to clear the space?
Oh right… confronting them and good old fashioned combat. Or they could evade, just like everyone else, rather than being endlessly safe because of their magic safety button.
I don’t ignore the realities of cloaked ships, you do. Sure, they are weaker, but it hardly matters— the targets they engage are weaker still, and they have an unbreakable lock on combat initiative so they can’t be engaged unless they want to be.
Making said ships scannable by probes. That is all that would have to happen. AFK cloaking stops 100% and there you go. You won by Dev fiat, the one true “I win button”.
Nope. See, nobody will AFK cloak if we make cloaked ships detectable via probes. So you won’t even have to do that combat thing.
Nobody is ignoring their capabilities we just aren’t going for the Bravo Sierra that is usually tossed out like how they’ll bridge through a 256 man fleet or some such.
See “your side” always uses the argument that the cloaked player and his buddies always have the superior force. But you never apply this assumption fairly nor logically. If the other side always has the superior force, they can just come take your space and kick your punk asses back to HS. They’ll take your stations, tear down your infrastructure and push in your poop.
Supposedly for somebody who wants to “take the fight to their aggressor” this should tickle you to no end as it means you get to take that fight…but funny thing is…I don’t see any willingness to fight in you’re background. It pains me to say this, but if you were Dracvlad, I’d believe you. But you aren’t.
Now. I do think the current cloaking/intel situation can be improved upon and I really do hope CCP does follow through with the Observatory Array. I think there is alot of potential there not just for cloaks, but for other things like the watchlist too. My hope is that it will lead to new forms of emergent behavior and make the game more interesting.
Yes, the ships cloaking ships attack are weaker, but that is by…choice. You chose to fit them that way. You chose to fly them solo into an anomaly. You could fit them differently and chose to work in a group. Those choices would change the dynamic. It would, in many cases, pre-empt the “unbreakable lock on combat initiative”.
Putting cloaked ships at even the most minimal risk would require them to actually actively maintain their own safety, just like everyone else in literally all of EVE?
Perish the thought.
I mean, if they had to actually move when they saw probes coming toward them to maintain that safety, and be aware of hunters looking for them… that would just be unreasonable, right?
Right now a cloaker who is asleep 100 miles away from his keyboard is at no risk. Lets deal with that first, as it’s by far the more egregious problem.
The ratter at least has to be awake, aware and at the keyboard.
I’m interested if this would actually work. If I’m in a covops cloak capable ship and I warp to a safespot, start flying in a random direction then hit cloak… could I still be effectively countered by just being able to be scanned down?
You’d find my location at the time of your scan… you warp to 0… but when you arrive would I likely have moved enough to be pretty close to completely safe from decloaking… right?
But isn’t “watching local” the same as “maintaining their own safety”? They’re actively working to make sure they don’t get surprised. Wouldn’t it be acceptable to have a solution that required the cloaked ship to have about the same level of engagement at the game to get the same level of safety… mainly being present at their computer and awake.
Nope, they should be dealt with at the same time. Nobody should get a free ride here. Nobody. Make it so the longer you sit in system doing whatever, the longer it takes for somebody entering to show up in local…how’s that. Want to spend hours ratting, fine. But it comes with a cost…which you can reset by simply moving one system over and then back–i.e. taking a risk.
Scanning is pretty fast with good skills and the right ship. Add on a few buddies in interceptors and popping cans…yeah, with a small determined group you’d most likely die and come back to find yourself in a new clone in a station/citadel somewhere.
It takes me just a few seconds to scan down drones. I was just trying it the other night. Shockingly easy and I haven’t done scanning in years.
So I scan…warp in. Wait a bit…scan again. Now I have your direction, my buddies in interceptors burn ahead and start popping cans and I keep on scanning you. Eventually we’d find you.
Doesn’t matter. The idea is nobody should be risk free and allowed to have an impact on the game, right?
A ship with it’s cloak active is not doing anything to impact the game beyond the psychological effect of scaring you via local. No resources are being added. No ISK is being added. No nothing beyond scaring you via local.
Or to put it this way…shouldn’t a person in station have to do something to maintain their safety? After all, a guy in station can have a direct impact such as trading, contracts, market transactions, etc. And in certain systems they too can say “Boo!” via local and try to scare you as well.
So…how about that “undock now” button? Yeah? I know…this is somehow different.
Except the cloaker does have an impact on the game, and he is completely risk free. Even in the situations that there is a risk of him being decloaked the chance is so vanishingly small unless he is actively courting death that it’s virtually zero unless he is at a gate with hunters actively searching for him.
To claim it is purely psychological is intellectually dishonest. His presence must be accounted for by fitting compromises and gameplay changes or you should just be self destructing your own ship every few hours.
Let’s pretend it was possible to scan down the cloaker and fix his direction, etc… An active pilot would be able to see the probes and change direction, warp to a different point, leave the system, etc… to avoid destruction. An AFK player took the additional risk upon himself of being AFK, and deserves the consequence of it—just like everyone else. No one is getting a free ride in that scenario, either you reap the benefits of defending your space, or you don’t and suffer the consequences. On the Flip side, you can be as disruptive as you like so long as you are active, or you are not and are more easily caught.
Yes, the psychological effect is effecting you and the choices you make. That is not, as I noted, a direct effect. A cloaked ship does not have any direct effects. The biggest effect a cloaked ship will have is an indirect one…by scaring you via local.
Ironically, we can get this same effect on AFK cloaking and cloaked ships being vulnerable to probing by also removing local. This of course is not Mike’s goal. The goal is to reduce his risk by changing the game mechanics. Notice Mike wouldn’t even consider making a change to local and cloaks at the same time. That lack of response actually speaks volumes, IMO.
You are getting a free ride in that your perceived risk has been reduced not by your actions, but by the Devs.
Ironically, we can get this same effect on AFK cloaking and cloaked ships being vulnerable to probing by also removing local. This of course is not Mike’s goal. The goal is to reduce his risk by changing the game mechanics. Notice Mike wouldn’t even consider making a change to local and cloaks at the same time. That lack of response actually speaks volumes, IMO.
Nice how you try and make my arguments for me, yet are completely wrong. I have addressed this many times.
I am all for the Observatory Array, as it’s generally presented. I look forward to the ‘hunters’ that can now be defended against crying rivers because their safety button now requires effort.
My oft repeated stance is that despite the poorly constructed argument otherwise, Local and Cloaks are 2 different issues that only tangentially interact. Cloaks are too safe no matter where or how they are used requiring nothing more than a trivial fitting allotment and a button push, while Local only becomes valuable when carefully pruned and maintained by the local residents and actively watched while flying in a safe manner at all times.
This thread, or at least the one started by the devs on the previous forums, was supposed to be about cloaks. Local is it’s own thing, and I’m generally happy to discuss it in threads created for that purpose, but I don’t feel that it is required to completely rework a fundamental part of the game to address a single module.
I do feel that simply removing local would be a bad idea, and point the relatively low usage of WH space as partial evidence. There are other important differences in the environment so that it’s not a direct analog to removing local, but it plays a strong secondary role to why the general populace ignores it. That’s another thread on it’s own though.
Mike’s Goal, if you ask Mike, is to have logical consistency in the balance of the cloaking mechanic. What exists now is a hamfisted excuse to placate whiney gankbears, supported by the devs because they were hired from the ranks of those who enjoy that sort of thing.