Main AFK cloaky thread

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Salt_Foambreaker

Right but you are getting a reward, the ore, the cloaked ship gets no reward only the tiny chance of random discovery from a ship that flies by.

Since there is no reward there doesn’t need to be any more risk.

I don’t feel like starting this same discussion again. But let’s keep it short.

1. A cloaky camper in system (afk or not) has a negative effect on the ratting activity in system, lowering ADM for the system you’re camping. This makes it easier to follow up with other plans that can benefit of the lower ADM.
2. AFK cloaky camping a system for hours gives you a big chance to catch a ratter in system once you come back at your keyboard. This chance will be bigger than if you just appeared in local due to logging in or jumping into system, because a wary ratter will get to safety in the second case while nobody is able to tell when you get back at your keyboard in the first case, until it is too late.
3. Getting intel without giving certain intel is a reward. Cloaky afk campers can check everything in a system at the moment they are at their keyboard, without giving away their moment of logging in by being logged in cloaky and afk all day.

There is no way to deny these benefits of afk cloaky camping. You could argue these are only small benefits, or that a lower ADM, bigger chance at catching ratters or keeping away intelligence from your enemies aren’t material rewards, but they are benefits nonetheless; afk cloaky camping has rewards.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Gerard_Amatin

A cloaky camper in system (afk or not) has a negative effect on the ratting activity in system, lowering ADM for the system you’re camping.

The pixel fear of other players is not the fault of the cloaked player.

@Gerard_Amatin

AFK cloaky camping a system for hours gives you a big chance to catch a ratter

And do what, that is not a reward. Killing the ratter might be a reward but that is for killing.

@Gerard_Amatin

Getting intel without giving certain intel is a reward.

Intel is not a reward, what you do with it is the reward.

[Halcyon_Fensor]

@Merin_Ryskin

Nerfing AFK cloaking is not going to let you interact with anyone. The sole effect would be that when people go AFK they would log out instead of staying logged in cloaked in a safespot. The result of this is that local becomes a more accurate intel tool for RMT farmers, but no additional PvP interactions ever happen.

if effects RMTer (as well as anyone playing the game normally) it must not be allowed seems to be the driving point of your argument

@Merin_Ryskin

No, have a 500 man fleet to beat whoever happens to show up. That’s the difference between the strong and the weak. The weak can only react to a threat, usually to run and hide. The strong act preemptively to show a greater threat of their own and discourage everyone else from even considering an attack.

strength=greater response
weaker= nothing says they can’t respond, except cloak of course

i think it’d be swell to have a 500 man fleet ready but the reality is not everyone has a 500 man fleet and there should be more to the game then having a 500 bodies on standby

i’ve never advocated against someone logging out anywhere they want - if they’re logged out they don’t get any intel on the system/assets on grid/etc. they can attempt to go in raw and blind and hope, that’s ok, because there is an interaction/response when you see them show up and you can know when they’re active + make an attempt to get them.

@Solecist_Project

Spotted the RMTer.

same

[Gerard_Amatin]

Are you seriously arguing that a lower system ADM, free intel or a bigger chance at getting a kill cannot be considered a reward for an activity? What is considered a reward by you, ore, ISK and kills only? The game is so much broader than that.

You’re hopeless. Or a troll. Either way, good luck with that. This was the last time you got a reaction out of me.

[Merin_Ryskin]

@Halcyon_Fensor

if effects RMTer (as well as anyone playing the game normally) it must not be allowed seems to be the driving point of your argument

Not quite. A change shouldn’t be made if the primary effect is to buff RMT farming and players whose goal is to act like RMT bots at all times.

weaker= nothing says they can’t respond, except cloak of course

How does the cloak prevent them from having a defense fleet active and ready to engage if the cloaked ship ever decloaks to attack?

i think it’d be swell to have a 500 man fleet ready but the reality is not everyone has a 500 man fleet and there should be more to the game then having a 500 bodies on standby

If you can’t have a large defense fleet ready then maybe you don’t deserve to succeed and should go back to highsec. Success is not guaranteed in EVE, and failure is always an option.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Gerard_Amatin

Are you seriously arguing that a lower system ADM, free intel or a bigger chance at getting a kill cannot be considered a reward for an activity? What is considered a reward by you, ore, ISK and kills only? The game is so much broader than that.

You’re hopeless. Or a troll. Either way, good luck with that. This was the last time you got a reaction out of me.

I’m not the one arguing points in a 4000 page garbage thread that have been made and refuted 100s of times before.

[Solecist_Project]

@Halcyon_Fensor

same

A “no u” equivalent.
“Mirror mirror”.
“i know you are but what am i”

Is this why you can’t get a real job?

[Bronson_Hughes]

@Gerard_Amatin

If you want to see a good suggestion that makes AFK cloaking useless, go up in this thread to 14 days ago and look for Jint Hikaru’s suggestion:

@Jint_Hikaru

MY SUGGESTION,
Cloak removes players from local (and denies them Local)
If they break cloak for any amount of time they stay in local for 30 sec then drop out again when they reactivate cloak…

This makes cloaks really cloakie, still gives other players Local… Makes it pointless to AFK cloak, and makes it so people have to work to both actively hunt while cloaked and pay attention while ratting.

I want to come back to this for a moment because I’m not quite sure my initial reply quite covered how bad a change this would be from the standpoint of players who dislike AFK cloaking.

AFK cloakers use local as a weapon, and space owners use local as a shield. (There are other use cases obviously, but these are the two I want to focus on.) This change, removing cloaked ships from local and barring cloaked ships from seeing local, would totally up-end the current dynamic.

AFK cloaking, the deliberate use of cloaked ships to reduce the economic activity of a system based on the perception that the occupants won’t undock with a hostile in local, would totally cease to be a useful game mechanic. It simply wouldn’t work anymore because you can’t scare people who can’t see you. So, victory for the local space owners, right?

Wrong. Oh so wrong.

The second part of that equation, using local as a shield, would go away too. Tracking cloaked hostiles across systems would become virtually impossible, especially if said fleet was smart about how they moved (i.e. staggered system movements, use wormholes, send stragglers to other systems, etc.). In order to maintain the same level of situational awareness, you’d need players (uncloaked players mind you) watching every single system in and around your space taking perfect notes on every face that pops into local for just a second (EDIT: 30 seconds as per the suggestion, but still) before they cloak. The only other way to know that you’ve got hostiles in local would be the more traditional “flaming datum” (i.e. they start shooting). And to top it off, this cloaked fleet would be able to operate almost exactly as they did before because they don’t need local to do their jobs. D-Scan and the giant, warpable beacons of asteroid belts and anoms make sure of that.

So, yes. This change would totally stop the passive loss of ISK due to AFK cloaking, but it would also certainly increase the active loss of ISK due to ships getting exploded and make “owning” space in nullsec a lot harder and less safe.

Of the vocal subset of players won’t undock when their perfect shield of local tells them its unsafe to, how many do you think would undock knowing that their once perfect shield barely provides any protection at all? I highly doubt they’d support this change.

And for the record, yes, I’d be all in favor of this change because anything that makes gameplay more engaging and results in more ships getting exploded gets a huge +1 in my book.

[Jint_Hikaru]

@Bronson_Hughes

AFK cloakers use local as a weapon, and space owners use local as a shield. (There are other use cases obviously, but these are the two I want to focus on.) This change, removing cloaked ships from local and barring cloaked ships from seeing local, would totally up-end the current dynamic.

Yes, thats exactly what I was trying to do. Make cloaks truly ‘cloaky’ and also remove any reason to AFK-Cloak without nerfing the cloak functionality.

Yes, cloaks are quite a bit more of a threat now. This is why I suggest removing Local from the cloaked vessel. While they have the benefit of being invisible from anyone else in the system, they are nearly blind. Relying on visual eyeballing of the local area.

They can warp between sites and belts, but this forces them to be a Covert-Ops vessel, meaning they have all the drawbacks that this brings. If they flip their cloak to get a view of local, then they stay listed in that local listing for 30 sec. This gives ratters,miners,residents the opportunity to notice they are there (if they are paying attention!).

D-Scan… some thoughts would have to be made for this. It gives the cloaked vessel information on the positions of local residents and maybe that would tip the fairness balance too much in the favor of the cloaker??? I don’t know.

The point of denying the cloaker local, was to force them to ‘come up for air’ and be briefly visible in order to get wider ship/system information, and thus giving active residents the chance to notice that there is a cloaker in play.

This would also remove the ability to use an AFK Cloak vessel to monitor and log Local information, I am sure this would have an effect on the protection of 0-sec ‘owned’ space, (i do not have enough experience of this to fully comment), but that would be something that would change the dynamic in 0-sec.

And Yes, I agree that there will be a lot of opposition to this idea from the Ratter Bots, and renters who want to ‘own’ 0-sec system but not bother working to protect it. (but really shouldn’t these people be protecting themselves rather than relying on local to provide system protection)

@Bronson_Hughes

So, yes. This change would totally stop the passive loss of ISK due to AFK cloaking, but it would also certainly increase the active loss of ISK due to ships getting exploded and make “owning” space in nullsec a lot harder and less safe.

Isn’t that what we really want from this huge threadnaught.

Anyway, thanks for quoting my suggestion and sensibly discussing it.

[Molly_Moon]

Cloaking should just be a visual effect… You can’t see them on grid, but probes should be able to detect their gravity signature. Just have “covert probes”.

[Jint_Hikaru]

@Molly_Moon

Cloaking should just be a visual effect… You can’t see them on grid, but probes should be able to detect their gravity signature. Just have “covert probes”.

Sorry Molly this is a bad idea that had been brought up many times before, normally by people that haven’t thought it through.

A single ping of these probes, and you know if a cloaked vessel is present in the system. (yes it takes some time to narrow them down, but the initial ping tells you they are there).

Congratulations, the entirety of Wormhole Space is broken.

[Salt_Foambreaker]

@Molly_Moon

Cloaking should just be a visual effect… You can’t see them on grid, but probes should be able to detect their gravity signature. Just have “covert probes”.

Before you design a change maybe you or someone in this 4000 page joke could come up with what is broken??

And “Afraid to Undock” is not a reason to nerf cloaked ships.

[Pawiie]

Suggestion for a Citadel module against AFK cloaking.
While this might have been posted… I don’t think anyone reads the entire post anymore.

A service module
It will have a fuel cost 2-4 fuel an hour. Adjustable to CCP’ balance.

The service module can be activated like a moon drill can; activation cost 1000 fuel, cycle time is 2 hour. (So you can only activate it once every 2 hour)
The service module can only be fitted to a citadel - Astrahus, Fortizar or Keepstar.

For 5 minutes ALL cloaking in the system is deactivated.
The activation of the module needs to be delayed for 1 minute and broadcasted in advance to everyone in system via sound or log entry (NOT a pop-up), so that the active cloaky campers do get a warning that they need to get ready to move out.

The service module can only be activated if you hold SOV in the system (This won’t break wormholes then. wormhole interference won’t let it active, something like that…)

The 5 minutes gives people enough time to scan afk’ers down and kill them…
5 minutes isn’t long enough, that you can’t warp around uncloaked and not get caught, or leave system - wait and then come back. It does however force the camper to be active…

Active camping is a great form of warfare, the AFK campers are not.

This would make it a purely defensive module as it would not work unless your alliance had SOV in the system.

---

Please come with constructive criticism for improvements.
Will update with new ideas or suggestions if they are in line with this module.

[Kasaili_Crisman]

This sounds like a great idea to balance out those that afk in system and those that are in system paying attention

[Lumukanda_Theleraese]

@Pawiie

100 fuel, cycle time is an hour

What about 5000 fuel and a cycle time of 6 hrs

[Kasaili_Crisman]

think what he means is you activate it costing it 100 Fuel to decloak the system for 5 min and only able to do it once every hour

[Lumukanda_Theleraese]

Yeah, just seems 2 mill isk is kinda cheap to effectively know where everyone is once per hour if the fuel is something like Hydrogen/Nitrogen etc. And went with the every 6 hours to balance it out if someone is at the keyboard and gathering intel, perch spots, who’s flying what/where etc to come in at a later date. If they are genuinely AFK you will get them regardless.

[Pawiie]

I upped it to 1.000 fuel and 2 hours…
I see your points of the low cost and short duration.
However, not everyone have 5-6 hours to wait if it had just been used, most people only play 2-4 hours a day.

It is still an effect that only lasts 5 minutes, not the entire duration, so I don’t think the cost should be that much higher… some structures don’t use 5.000 fuel in a month and having the price the same as a month worth seems off balance to me.

[Lumukanda_Theleraese]

The 5 min duration I personally wouldn’t have an issue with as long as there is some sort of warning that the cloak will soon be deactivated. If paying attention that would give enough time initially to start moving to avoid the inevitable probes and dscan, and to bounce for the duration.

Fuel wise fair point, just the activation timer still seems a bit low as it would still be another powerful defensive tool for the system when most times people know you are coming from multiple jumps out via intel channels and you pop up in local chat before grid is even loaded. It’s null so should have that element of they are out there so try to bait first maybe or just risk it. Not adverse to the idea as it has merit just like the hacking gates, or removing local from those cloaked, would just like to see the timer strung out a bit more as it still seems a bit too powerful for every two hours.

[Gerard_Amatin]

I like it.

A module like that would be a good tool against afk cloakers, while active cloaky campers are able to jump and hide in another system for the duration.

Just one thing: I think that the activation of the module needs to be delayed and broadcasted in advance to everyone in system, so that the active cloaky campers do get a warning that they need to get ready to move out. Otherwise this module could be abused to catch cloaky ships in gatecamps (even though it would be only once every 2 hours) or catch active cloaky campers that suddenly lose their cloak right next to an enemy fleet. We wouldn’t want that to happen: cloaks should be a reliable defence system.