The reason that people “AFK cloak” is because of local. It provides instant, free intel of who is there. Because of this, the only way a covert ops ship can be actually covert is to stay there so long that people think they are afk and not a threat. So, you want to get rid of AFK cloakies, then get rid of local. Then the covert ops can;t use psychological warfare on you. Oh wait, CCP tried that and the bears whined and cried about that. LOL.
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Is the OP also upset about people logging off or docking up and becoming invulnerable? People can’t do much while cloaked and most of the better ships make you wait several seconds after decloaking before you can do anything.
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No, absolutely not, logging off or docking is completely fine… there is no issue with that.
Clearly your experience of what cloaking can do in the hands of people who know how to abuse it is fairly limited.
Picture this scenario, there is a cloaked sabre in your system, and a manticore, they are both there all day every day, the manticore lines up the target, the sabre warps straight to the manticore and drops bubbles, the manticore decloaks, drops a black ops cyno and in comes 12-15 recon ships, combined they deal about 3500 dps, whilst neuting their target, and have t3 cruiser logi, the moment the target dies they loot, destroy the wreck, cloak and leave… all this happens within a minute and they are gone again.
So the next day you set a trap, a tanked up battleship with smart bombs to kill the drones, which sounds great, but here is the thing, they are in your comms channel and know what you are doing, so they dont decloak and engage you, you spend a day floating around waiting to be jumped on and it doesn’t happen, you dock up and they hit one of your allies… again and again all day every day.
There is no counter play to this, no way to defeat them on the battlefield because they entirely choose their engagements, that is the issue with cloak camping, it gives too much power to one party involved, with no in game way to hunt down the guys who just sit there all day every day (this is not an exaggeration) just doing the same thing over and over.
Give us a way to hunt them whilst they are cloaked… give us a counter play.
This particular alliance I’m referring to has a 97% efficiency rating on zKillboard with around 150,000 kills, they are very good at what they are doing, but it is absolutely purely one sided and unfun for anyone else involved because they cannot defeat this meta.
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Removing local is a really weird way to resolve the cloak camping issue, when you’re logged off you’re invulnerable, but you’re not active on the battlefield, when you’re in a station, you’re invulnerable but you’re not active on the battlefield, when you’re cloaked… you’re invulnerable but you’re entirely active on the battlefield, not only that but a cloaked camping ship is armed with probably the most powerful weapon in the game, cynos… the ability to bring an entire fleet to bare without any risk, any intel, no gate flashes, no warning… nothing… just instant fleet on an unsuspecting victim…
Of course you can sit a cloaked camper in their staging system and watch what they are doing… but that doesn’t offer a counter play to cloaking directly… because you’re just using the same broken mechanic yourself.
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You say you severely outnumber them, but have problems with spies, etc. Sounds like the problem isn’t cloaks at all but your alliance. So you want to severely outnumber someone, and then when they put forth the effort to still be able to do some guerilla warfare on you despite the free intel local provides, that you cry that the mechanic needs to be changed.
–First off, if they were such a problem as you say, then your alliance should do something, but you say that the alliance feels they are a mere nuisance. Probably because they are. I imagine that you could mine, rat, etc in many systems but you choose to sit there in one system, letting the “AFK cloaky” bother you and then whine on the forums about it.
–Then you complain about spies. Again a problem not with covert ops but a problem with your alliance leadership and their recruitment tactics.
Time to get a better alliance because they are terrible and because they are terrible they are getting farmed by people less terrible. That is the “counter play” to your problems.
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Also I just checked your killboard and realized you are in Brave. We actually live right next to you and cloaky camp quite often in Brave space.
There are a few reasons for this. You have eyes, local and intel far and wide in that area. So you know we are coming and what we are in long before we get there. Then usually Brave comes out with 10 players for every 1 of ours AND comes way heavier. (I call it kicking the ant hill lol)
The solution is simple. Be stealthy, be fast. Get in there, kill something and get out before the cavalry arrives. Engage on our terms, not head on with the blob that comes from Brave.
You’re probably right about all of the above… however to expect “recruitment tactics” to resolve spies in Eve Online is very naive of you, there are spies everywhere in all alliances, from all other alliances, that is part of the game.
My alliance has some very good “safe” space that I can retreat to, but that isn’t how i like to play, i don’t run away from the problem, i try to find solutions, and yes they are a mere nuisance. We move trillions of isk on a daily basis and they catch the odd ship, it’s annoying and frustrating when it happens but we have bigger fish to fry as an alliance, thus resources are dedicated elsewhere.
The cloaking system is broken in this game and has been for years, but it’s been entirely exacerbated by black ops bridging, the most powerful thing in the game in pvp is the ability to choose your engagements, cloaking is a foolproof way to do this that requires very little skill investment, and there is no way to find you once you’re cloaked.
I don’t see how this isn’t a unanimous opinion about cloaking - I myself fly recon ships and have done since they were released and I think that it’s broken.
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That’s absolutely fine, play the stealthy game, hit nd run, get in, kill get out… but when it’s literally all day every day then it’s a problem.
I don’t understand why there isn’t a means to find stealthed vessels, or a system in place to counter being permanently cloaked.
If someone can give me a reasonable answer to this question then I will understand, but not one person has ever given a justifiable reason as to why this is the case?
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Well, you would like to reduce the game to just N+1 with no ability to use tactics other than just be a larger blob than the other guy.
Look at the citadel spam. For example, in U-Q, how many citadels are there now, when that was not even a station system before. So now you can hide and be invincible in a limitless amount of structures, and if a small fleet comes in, you get instant intel from local and your eyes. Then you can choose to blue ball them or blob them.
Really the only reason that we kill anyone at all is because they just plain aren’t paying attention. Otherwise everyone in your alliance should be pretty much 100% invincible.
In any case the cloaking/dropping is there as a counter to local, as a counter to needing plain N+1 tactics, and a way to still catch people whom would just warp to one of 20 citadels when the first thing shows in local next door.
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My calling for an answer to perma cloaking isn’t me suggesting that the game be N+1 with no ability to use tactics other than a bigger blob than the other guy, there is a place in the game for stealth mechanics that’s for sure, it’s one of the best aspects of Eve, having the ability to tackle situations with different strategies.
Being able to be cloaked for hours on end and bringing down an entire fleet on someone at a whim with almost zero warning and zero risk isn’t good gameplay.
I’m not suggesting that they remove cloaking or hit it out of the park with the nerf bat, what I’m asking for is a way to find cloaked ships, or at least have a time limit on how long they can just sit there - it’s not engaging gameplay, it’s not fair gameplay and it’s absolutely abused by people.
The player structures mechanic is an entirely different issue that’s very broken too, but this thread isn’t about that.
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This is completely wrong. You see them in local, and you can look at their killboard history. You are warned long before the drop comes that it is coming.
As for zero risk, there is risk to the droppers. As you said, you have tried to counter drop or use bait to trigger a drop so you could kill them. But then they countered your bait with a spy. So then you need to deal with your spies or figure out how to manipulate the spy. Again, there are tactics to counter the drop and the issue is not the cloaking mechanic.
We drop quite often and sometimes we do encounter “baits” that trigger our drops. Sometimes we have lost our dropping fleet to a counter drop or a hidden fleet somewhere. It can and does happen. I do notice that certain alliances / corps are better at countering drops than others. And usually we have to use different tactics or be more cautious when engaging them.
Conversely we get dropped on a lot as well. We know who the droppers are and many times try to think of how we can kill them despite them dropping us.
So what do you do when they are in local, in your alliance home system all day every day? - no exaggeration here, they log in after downtime every single day and they are there… for 23 hours and 45 minutes a day - cloaked and waiting - you don’t know if they are AFK or if they are active and online, but they are there all the time - you can’t do anything about them, they have all the power, all the cards are in their hands… so how do you counter that individual player?
I want a way to hunt them, I want a way to find the guy who is out and active in my home system all day and all night - Fair enough if he is active and flying around, that’s fine… but you have no idea, they are just there… always.
That doesn’t seem right to me, atleast when you undock in a ship without a cloak it pops up on dscan, you have a way to see if that player is active and hunting, but when you have no idea if someone is afk, hunting, or whatever ALL the time what are you meant to do?
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And it’s not as though this is some idle threat “oh no an annoying little cloaky ship giving intel” no… it’s an instant death sentence to anything they decide to drop on… again with very very little counter play.
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What are you so afraid about? Losing some ships in nullsec? Isn’t that kinda the whole point of the entire game?
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No, I love a good fight, i lose ships regularly, i throw them away in the wind for fun, im a very hap-hazard kind of pilot and i love it, what I don’t like is not being able to counter something that is clearly a broken aspect of the game.
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You are thinking defensively and failing to understand the big picture. If CCP got rid of all cloaking devices tomorrow, you would still face the same threat - the people attacking you would just adjust their tactics.
Well, I have been on both sides of this coin. I have “AFK cloaked” myself. The reason being that they see me in local and run away. So I will be there sometimes all day, even multiple days. Also sometimes I will put out combat probes ALL day. Just to get the people used to seeing them. This is because cloaking doesn’t offer you actual stealth. They see me in local so they know I am there. Thus I have to “AFK cloak” to create the element of surprise by psychology since the game doesn’t allow actual stealth. Usually the targets get greedy enough and come out anyway because they have to make those tics or mine that ore.
Conversely, when an afk cloaker is in system I think of what are the abilities of a cloaky ship. Many times I don’t bother stopping what I am doing at all. Remember that most cloaking ships have a delay before they can tackle you. When one decloaks near you just warp off. Well, then make lots of safe spots and mine always aligned to one of them. Also they will be decloaked by objects too close. Lots of trash will cause them to uncloak. Learn which deadspace they can light cynos in and which they can’t. Then if they come in your site/mission/whatever, they need a 2nd toon to light the cyno outside so the fleet can then warp to you.
If that is too scary, the mine in one of the many systems that you are in control of. They will leave if they aren’t getting kills or if there is no activity. Then you can come back.
As for “hunting them” you can. Just as they sit all day wasting their time to hunt you, you could camp the out gates of the system and leave. Given long enough they will come out as there is nothing to hunt. You can then catch them.
But I’m not asking CCP to remove cloaking devices?
I just want a way to hunt cloaked ships.
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Uh . . . you are asking CCP to drastically reduce the effectiveness of cloaking devices. Almost to the point that they would be rendered worthless.
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