Not kept up with this thread, what’s the tldr on the observatories currently?
Sadly…nothing new. Wish CCP would provide something on this, but oh well. As usual they have their cards so close to their chest you could probably see them if you stood behind them. 
afk players cant do anything
cloaked players cant do anything
a combination of the two although redundant still means the player can’t do anything
do you also complain that people playing WoW need a nerf? because they are affecting you just as much as that afk cloaked guy
It would be unreasonable because it’s poor interface design that adds zero gameplay depth. The cloaked ship doesn’t have to plan out some complex and interesting strategy for where to move when they see probes, they just have to keep clicking the “warp” button occasionally. There’s zero chance of failure if you have even a minimal level of skill with cloaked ships, just tedious button-pressing. And game mechanics that involve mindless button-pressing with no benefits to it are not something that belongs in EVE.
First of all, local doesn’t require careful maintenance, it requires looking at local and hitting '“warp” as someone without that blue + next to their name appears on the list. Second, you keep ignoring the key difference between the two defense mechanisms: a player using a cloak for defense can not engage PvP targets or generate ISK, while a player using local for defense can farm PvE content at maximum ISK per hour. So yes, of course a defense mechanism that grants 100% safety (when used properly) and 100% income generation should require a little more effort than one that only allows you to passively sit in space until you give up your safety.
Too bad, because you’re wrong. If you nerf long-term cloaking without removing local then you make PvE farming far too safe. Local gives you 100%-accurate warnings about the presence of any potential threats, and the only counter is to enter a system and stay cloaked long enough that nobody can tell if you’re actively hunting or passively waiting. If you take away that tool and introduce a “make cloaked ship go away” button then the chances of dying in 0.0 PvE farming drop to effectively zero.
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Okay… I see it now. Makes sense.
Key word being Eventually.
Apparently cloaks have to be AFK safe for unlimited time to be useful.
Any mechanic which allows cloaked ships to be found fast enough to catch an ATK player is a “make cloaked ships go away” button, as the ATK cloaked ship can simply warp to new safespots every time you threaten to catch them if it isn’t. To be effective the mechanic would have to allow a cloaked ship to be tracked and revealed almost instantly. And at that point flying a cloaked ship becomes pointless suicide.
And yes, I’m discarding the idea of an anti-cloak mechanic that only works against AFK players. If you want to counter AFK players just close local and get on with your life.
I think this is where the majority of disagreement I have with you on this comes from.
I’m not worried about something being “risk free”. I’m much more concerned about them actually being present and expending time and attention.
A guy watching local while he rats or mines is present and interacting with the game. I don’t have a problem with someone who is at his keyboard and alert being able to escape 99.999% of the time if he performs the correct defensive action. I know that people often make the wrong choice or are not alert, so the opportunity exists for him to fail.
AFK cloaking… because of the fact that they aren’t at the keyboard… means it’s not possible for that guy to screw up. There’s no chance he accidentally uncloaks on a grid with me or gets lured in by a bait skiff or porpoise… because he’s not present to make a mistake. I’m okay with someone having a near perfect chance of safety if they do everything right… because lots of people don’t do everything right. Human error leaves the building when the human is no longer present.
I screw up all the time in this game. Nearly every loss I’ve had is because of something stupid I did that I could have avoided. I can’t think of a single loss where I said to myself “Well… nothing I could have done there.”
And yes… I’m for AFK timers for everyone, not just people cloaked in space. I want players to be present so they can screw up… and hit that undock button to put themselves in danger… or bite on that bait and uncloak their force recon to attack me. If you’re completely safe (cloaked in a safe spot or in a station) and you aren’t at your keyboard… there’s nothing I can do to entice you to screw up and make yourself unsafe. I think it’s better if you just get logged off to avoid wasting everyone’s time trying to interact with an empty chair.
Now I’m also okay with solutions that make people less than 100% safe while cloaked in a safe-spot. But I view that as more of a one sided solution. If I’m afk in a citadel and you’re trying to trap me… thinking I’ll come out to rat or mine and you’re trying logoff traps or other methods to try to lure me out… the cloak fix wouldn’t help that scenario either. The afk guy sitting in a citadel should be logged off just as much as the AFK cloaked camper in my mind.
The same is true of someone who goes AFK and logs off. And of someone who goes 99% AFK and comes back to move the mouse* just in time to keep the AFK flag from going on. You aren’t going to catch them either way because they have decided not to engage under any circumstances. So why is it ok to log off and avoid your trap but not ok to stay idle in space to avoid your trap?
*Or, like I would, builds a little robot to bump the mouse every few minutes and keep me from registering as AFK.
As a WH player I’m fine with my cloak needing me to be ATK, as long as I can go through WH’s into known space without showing up in local until I jump a gate, I mean how does anyone know I’m there until I do something that registers me in that space?
I’m sure many WH players would be happy to be able to pop up in NS/LS without showing in local.
Ed:Anything that lets a cloaked player be scanned down in any way is going to make the module useless for WH players.
The same is true of someone who goes AFK and logs off. And of someone who goes 99% AFK and comes back to move the mouse* just in time to keep the AFK flag from going on. You aren’t going to catch them either way because they have decided not to engage under any circumstances. So why is it ok to log off and avoid your trap but not ok to stay idle in space to avoid your trap?
Because you don’t just waste your time doing that, you waste the time of everyone trying to interact with your empty chair.
I don’t favor a log off timer for the exact reason you state. It applies equally to any sort of timed decloak or similar mechanic that is predictable and within the pilots’ control. This game is exceedingly prone to people making bots to automate everything.
However, non-consent is one of the central pillars of the game. They have changed the design of other modules specifically because they were not susceptible to being interfered with by other players. Cloaks should be no different in this regard.
And yes, I’m discarding the idea of an anti-cloak mechanic that only works against AFK players. If you want to counter AFK players just close local and get on with your life.
It shouldn’t work against just AFK players. It should work against anyone who remains inattentive or negligent enough to allow it to happen. Asking someone to be at the keyboard and aware of their surroundings to maintain their safety is an extremely low bar to set, and yet it is resisted as if having to play the game makes the game unplayable.
I’m not worried about something being “risk free”. I’m much more concerned about them actually being present and expending time and attention.
This is the real issue. What they want is completely risk free, because if they had to interact then there would be an inherent element of risk from human error. They love their default effortless I Win button, projecting the shame of that onto the PVE player by making out that Local somehow makes them safe without further effort or input beyond it’s mere existence. Yet somehow that’s not the case in High Sec or Low Sec…
But apparently it’s ok to waste the time of everyone trying to interact with you by deciding that you will not, under any circumstances, engage? Or by docking up the moment a potential threat enters local? You don’t want reasonable game mechanics, you want a “get killmail” button you can press so you can go back to PvE farming.
It’s resisted because it’s utterly **** game design. Forcing cloaked ships to warp between safespots offers no improvement in gameplay depth, there’s still zero chance of getting caught. The only difference is now you have to keep pressing buttons to accomplish the same result.
We’ve already explained, over and over again, why this is a stupid argument to make.
Local in highsec is mostly irrelevant because it’s full of neutrals at all times, and major threat in highsec is suicide ganks by players you’ll never see coming. In the rare situations where you have known threats (such as a war) local goes back to being a powerful defensive tool and makes it virtually impossible to catch a target.
Local in lowsec is irrelevant to PvE defense because no PvE occurs in lowsec. The closest thing to lowsec PvE, FW plex farming, happens in expendable T1 frigates with lows full of WCS that can ignore any PvP threat entirely.
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But apparently it’s ok to waste the time of everyone trying to interact with you by deciding that you will not, under any circumstances, engage? Or by docking up the moment a potential threat enters local? You don’t want reasonable game mechanics, you want a “get killmail” button you can press so you can go back to PvE farming.
They are interacting. They also have to be paying attention and keeping themselves safe because they don’t get a magic button to do it for them. No one has asked for a ‘get killmail button’, what they have asked for is a way to place the burden of non-consent on both sides of the equation.
So sorry no one wants to engage in the PVE boat. Try sticking around for the defense response if you want a fight so bad? Somehow that never happens…
Local in highsec is mostly irrelevant because it’s full of neutrals at all times, and major threat in highsec is suicide ganks by players you’ll never see coming.
And how is it that Nullsec Local isn’t full of Neutrals? Did that happen by some mysterious accident or did the residents of the area do something to get it that way?
In the rare situations where you have known threats (such as a war) local goes back to being a powerful defensive tool and makes it virtually impossible to catch a target.
As pure guesswork on the number of threads started by on the subject, it does not seem that rare, nor does it seem as if the targets were impossible to catch. Of course, that’s because Local doesn’t really protect you, you protect yourself.
Local in lowsec is irrelevant to PvE defense because no PvE occurs in lowsec. The closest thing to lowsec PvE, FW plex farming, happens in expendable T1 frigates with lows full of WCS that can ignore any PvP threat entirely.
More Hyperbole. There’s a reason very little PvE happens in Low Sec… I’m sure you can figure out why. I somehow doubt that filling your lows with WCS makes you able to ignore enemy ships… Perhaps you are missing a step somewhere. You seem to have a real problem with people using preparation and evasion. Perhaps you should try some PvE where the rats line up for you and never run in self defense.
If you are coming back to the client every 20 minutes to avoid logging off… you still have the possibility to take action. You might not be disciplined and notice what looks like an easy target and decide to take a shot. The point isn’t that you fall for my trap… it’s that there’s a CHANCE you fall for my trap. It’s fine if you successfully avoid it. It’s fine if you fall for it. I just want there to be a CHANCE you fall for it… however small. If you log in just after downtime and stay AFK cloaked the entire day… the chance of you screwing up is zero. Even if you’re coming back every 20 minutes… it’s greater than zero.
As for building the robot… I guess congrats for being that handy. I’ll just have to hope your robot building skills suck and it accidentally decloaks you when it’s trying to move your mouse to avoid the AFK timer.
edit And I’ll note that some of you may be a lot more disciplined about safety than I am. I know what I need to do to remain nearly 100% safe… but I still get lazy and take short-cuts and every now and then get caught because of that human error. But I suggest there are a lot more who are like I am than those who always take the 99.9% risk free path.
Yeah, the risk/reward calculus is rather crap for most players. For a slight increase in risk you go to NS and get much larger rewards…or for a significant reduction in risk you go to HS, for a lower reward.
People are generally fairly decent at determining risk-reward. They do tend to screw up with extreme events/outliers mainly they get the bajeebers scared out of them my idiot journalists who focus exclusively on such extreme/outlier events. In this latter case people totally over-estimate their risk. For example, stranger danger and kids is complete and total Bravo Sierra when looked at from a relative risk stand point. If you are petrified of a stranger abducting your child you should absolutely never drive them anywhere in an automobile. The vast majority of child abductions, like over 99%, are from friends of the family and other family members. So perversely many people are literally “looking the wrong way” as danger approaches. But that aside people often do alright. This is why things like air-bags do not have the initial effect in terms of safety. People think, “Oh…I was fine with the previous level of risk, and now I have airbags…so I can drive faster.” And presto! The initial claim in improved safety does not materialize. Now, if we really wanted improved safety we’d install Tullock airbags.
So, maybe Tullock is on to something here. We sure as hell wouldn’t be texting and driving if there was a big-ass dagger pointed at our sternums while we drove.
A Tullock airbag will most definitely improve driver safety…just not in a very comforting way.
This is all well and good. But the thing is local is still too powerful to be left alone even if everything your write is true and correct. People who actively hunting stand very little chance of imposing risk on ratters, miners, etc. with local. It isn’t the case of making a slight error–i.e. looking away for a few seconds as you grab your coffee cup. To catch a ratter/miner now that player really, really, really, really has to feck up so bad that he literally deserves to die. [At this point I expect Mike to start spewing nonsense…given that he has never hunted before and absolutely refuses to do so his comments should be heavily discounted.]
Local combined with intel channels make players in NS who are ratting, mining, etc. extremely safe. Now some might say, “That’s fine this takes effort.” But not really local by itself is the single most important factor in this and it costs no effort. You anchor nothing. You get it automatically. It is never wrong. It provides nearly complete intel as well in terms of safet (is the intruder, blue or not).
I’m not sure if I’m an exception to how you describe null ratting/ratting or if your assumption of how people rat in null is off.
I play in Providence… so it’s often busy with reds or potentially hostile neutrals. I pay attention to local and intel channels… but I don’t flee my asteroid belt or my anomaly immediately if I see a red in a neighboring system. I might recall drones and align… but if I warped to station/citadel every time a lone red entered the system I’d often be interrupted multiple times when running a site that takes 20 minutes.
But many aren’t interested in a VNI… they want fatter game. Some are travelling to catch back up to their fleet. Sometimes I’m alone in system and they don’t want to bother checking anoms or scanning you down if there’s only one target that may already be warping to a station.
So I often wait to see if they’re coming for me. I’m often hitting warp as I see them arriving at my anom. And at times I’ve been caught because of that (and even once or twice I chased off hunters with the drones from my skiff when caught).
Maybe I’m “doing it wrong” by not hiding every time a red is in the next system or shows up in local. But it feels like (to me at least) there are more people who are doing it wrong in the same way as I am than you suggest. It feels like hunters in providence find plenty of targets… which may just be a providence thing.
As far as removing local… when it comes down to it if I don’t have a way to tell if reds are in system beyond them landing on grid I’m probably not going to rat there as much as I do now. I definitely won’t use anything pricier than a VNI. Right now I switch isk earning between mining/missioning/anoms/deds/FW plexing/exploration/trade/manufacturing due to getting bored of doing any one thing for long periods of time… I’m going to likely do other things for isk when I’m not wanting a fight than ratting in null. When I’m in the mood for some combat… perhaps I won’t go raid lowsec FW plexes and will run null sec anoms in a combat capable ratter instead. If others act like I do… I’m still not sold it would cause more targets for hunters. I think they’d catch a higher percentage of ratters at an anom then they do now… but there’d be fewer ratters out there and it would take longer to find them (and they’d be better able to fight back).
I’m not going to be overly upset with it if it changes. I’m just predicting a different end result than you are if it happens.
The fact that you respond by recalling drones and aligning pretty much makes my point. Local, which you expended no effort to obtain, increases your safety while doing things like introducing resources into the game and/or ISK.
Now, we have the “nerf cloaks”…at least be honest…so we can have even less risk.
Except I am not advocating for a removal of local. There is a thread on that right now and my participation has been minimal at best.
When it comes to the AFK cloaking discussion, I see two distinct issues:
Issue 1: A cloaked ship can uncloak and light a cyno at any moment in time. The defender cannot counter the cloaked ship until it has decloaked, and is mere seconds away from bringing in an undetectable, and mechanically unlimited number of reinforcements. This is the reason that systems shut down when there is an AFK cloaker there. In my opinion, it’s a gross misalignment of risk vs. reward, as the attacker risks nothing until they have perfect positioning and timing of their choice. I see three ways of fixing this.
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Adjust cyno mechanics in some way to limit the amount of threat that a cloaked ship represents. You could do warm-up timers for cynos, mass limits etc.
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Less perfect cloaks. Basically, you can hunt cloaky ships in some way.
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Force ATK, probably through some sort of button you have to periodically press in order to keep you cloaked.
Issue 2: Risk is already too low, leading to excessive amounts of resources to be gathered by nullsec dwellers. Local-based intel channels, combined with carrier and supercarrier ratting-while-aligned is a nearly risk-free activity. Against an established coalition, AFK cloaking remains the last practical means of economic warfare outside of a full-scale invasion. This also puts risk vs. reward wildly out of whack, as risk goes down as you rat with larger/pricier ships. In my opinion, it needs to be changed. I see two ways of doing it.
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Do not allow carriers and supers to warp out instantly while running sites.
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Limit or remove local intel.
How can he be hunting if he’s AFK?
That seems kind of impossible.
He’s no threat at all while he’s AFK. You are 100% safe from him in that case.
However, when he’s not AFK, then his gameplay is a lot less stupid/lazy tthan the PVE player that is running sites AFK.
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