Main AFK cloaky thread

CCP is just tempted to do what every F2P mobile trash developer does and sacrifice quality game design in favor of short-term monetization goals. Prior to being bought by a F2P developer CCP made it very clear that they agree 100% that there is no problem with AFK cloaking.

Yup. Its clearly just me. :roll_eyes:

Look man. This is an idea subsection and thread. Its a place to discuss ideas. We all know our ideas are unlikely to lead to actual change, and thatā€™s anywhere on the forum and not just here. I have said this before too and even in this thread.

So why you come after me and only me I donā€™t even know.

Who said this had to be only a thread of cloak nerfing ideas?

The end result of suggested changes could be a net buff to cloaks, at least as far as the ideas go.

But thatā€™s never gonna happen if people keep using this thread as a place to troll every idea concerning changes to cloaks.

Imagine some sort of timer/fuel idea combined with the ability to gate jump cloaked for covert cloaks. I would be well happy with that trade off.

But its hard to tell if people are trolling this thread for the fun of it, or because they really think they are protecting cloaks.

Thereā€¦needā€¦beā€¦noā€¦problemā€¦toā€¦haveā€¦anā€¦ideaā€¦forā€¦changesā€¦toā€¦afkā€¦orā€¦cloakingā€¦mechanics.

Of course there does. If there is no problem then the status quo wins.

Imagine some sort of timer/fuel idea combined with the ability to gate jump cloaked for covert cloaks. I would be well happy with that trade off.

Iā€™m sure a lot of RMT botters would be very happy with a nerf to cloaking that removes the ability to mitigate local while doing effectively nothing to buff cloaks in return.

Who said this had to be only a thread of cloak nerfing ideas?

It doesnā€™t. If you would like to post suggestions for buffs to cloaking with sensible analysis of the problem you are trying to fix and the effects of your solution then feel free to do so.

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@CCP_Dopamine if I have a counter for afk cloaking and donā€™t want to post it in the forums because it would make my own, and a lot of other peopleā€™s lives hellish, how do I send it directly to you, or whoever is working on ā€œfixingā€ it?
If there is a counter to this, and I think there is, cloaking wouldnā€™t need to be changed at all. That would waste of developer time, and eliminate the need for mega threads on the subject.
I donā€™t know who to send my method of doing this to, and Iā€™m sure as hell not putting it here.
As it stands now, people can get stuck in systems for days and being unable to stay cloaked would flat out ruin it for a lot of people for no other reason than the people in gigantic corps canā€™t handle a little pressure, they created the need for this in my opinion, have failed to protect the systems they think they own and then want god to change the universe for them.
This sort of thing is messing up Eve as one very vocal group after another gets things changed on a fundamental level. If there is an ingame solution to a problem (as they see it) the rest of the people in New Eden shouldnā€™t have to suffer because they didnā€™t use it.

Sorry it took me so long to respond, but holy cow! Great post, and thanks for doing all of that math, most of it is beyond my ability.
Two things, Iā€™m not stating it here, or telling anyone who could use it against me (or others) in game or out. To do so would be idiotic on my part.
The other thing is that once someone is in ā€œyourā€ system they can make bookmarks, so itā€™s too late at that point, what Iā€™m talking about is having the forethought to prevent it in the first place. Something no one has evidently done yet, at least in terms of the people squeaking about it to CCP.
Everyone has their own ā€œop-secā€, the less than idiotic donā€™t put that stuff on the forums, itā€™s just bad planning.

Anyhow, thank you for that post, itā€™s a bit over my head math wise (this is an understatement) but I get the idea in a big way, itā€™s also surprisingly close to what Iā€™m thinking, just sort of the other way around.
Seriously, Iā€™m amazed, and kind of awestruck.

Thanks! It was fun to get the numbers, and math wise itā€™s nothing complicated, just big numbers. :stuck_out_tongue:

But yea, the idea is that once a ship is cloaked in system, thereā€™s no way to find it if it doesnā€™t want to be found. Space is huuuge.

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The size of the numbers got me good, even with a calculator I couldnā€™t do that. I have trouble even reading the price of stuff in Eve once it gets into the billions, it drives my friends nuts because I have to ask ā€œhow many Praxisā€™s is that?ā€.
One of the first things I tried to do in Eve, like in my first couple of days, was to try flying to the Eve Gate. Eventually someone calculated how many decades it would have taken me, and that ended that project in a big hurry. Same with trying to fly out to bump into the skyboxā€¦
Iā€™ve since had all sorts of ideas about leapfrogging multiple fast ships, ships with micro jump drives and so on and it still doesnā€™t work. The only thing that might get me to the Eve Gate is having a clone that does nothing but, year after year after yearā€¦
As you said, space is huge!

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You donā€™t. If your idea is so terrible that it canā€™t survive criticism in a public discussion then it isnā€™t worth sending to CCP.

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I think the point is to discuss ideas. Nowhere does it say all posts have to be constructive or that we have to work together to create and improve ideas.

From the pinned post;

  • This is a breeding ground for ideas. If someone has an idea, listen to it. If you donā€™t like it, think about why.
  • Constructive feedback is good.
  • Posting ā€œThatā€™s an awful idea,ā€ is not constructive.

https://forums.eveonline.com/t/welcome-to-player-features-ideas/

Constructive feedback does not have to always push an idea forward. Posting ā€œThat idea sucksā€ when its an idea which has been posted over and over and over again, while harsh is also fair. If you come up with an idea it may behoove you to scan back a bit in the thread to see if someone has come up with something similar, and what was the response.

Iā€™ll be constructive. I like your idea, but to make it even better Iā€™d do away with the whole timer/fuel thingy. So useless unnecessary.

Thenā€¦howā€¦isā€¦itā€¦makingā€¦itā€¦better?
AKAā€¦whatā€¦isā€¦theā€¦reasonā€¦forā€¦theā€¦change?

Just give us a better clue than you already have. Or better yet tell us your idea. Whatā€™s the worst thing that could happen?
Also Iā€™m assuming you are already using this to hunt down and kill AFK cloakers all over New Eden. You should start a Cloaky removal service. Iā€™m sure you would make a ton of ISK

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What I love about this thread is consistency. I can leave for a couple months and when I get back and catch up I can see that other than a higher post counts nothing has changed.

Thanks everyone :slight_smile:

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What is it? Just post it here, I donā€™t see why you shouldnā€™t. And you got me interested, is it something new? :smiley:

For example ā€˜Remove local chatā€™ is one such solution to make AFK cloaking useless while also make a lot of peopleā€™s lives hellish. Is that what youā€™re thinking about?

Nope, itā€™s super old, itā€™s been done, itā€™s even been done by accident. Thereā€™s a couple of PvP heavy groups who use it on a small scale.
I do love the idea of doing it as a business, but honestly I want people to keep doing it, it keeps my enemyā€™s off balance and I find it very amusing that something so simple makes them so very unhappy. In the long run the campers are doing me a service by keeping people that I donā€™t have the ability to fight cowering in their metallic hovels. Meanwhile I get to run amok as I please.

@Skriven Penshar
I donā€™t want to post it here because of people who arenā€™t in either large corps, or ones like Signal Cartel who would be severely effected by it. I have been effected by it, though in one case I made a bloody killing because someone else used it and wasnā€™t around to stop me.

Also people like @Merin_Ryskin, who might want to think more and speak less donā€™t need to be spoon fed ideas or methods of accomplishing things. This is the sort of advantage nasty people use in large scale, and in large scale only the exceedingly wealthy (by my standards) can use with any degree of practicality. Itā€™s a way for them to keep getting ahead while crushing the little guy. Something they donā€™t need more help with as it is.

I see cloaked camping as being a valid tactic, just because large corporations donā€™t like the threat it implies doesnā€™t make it any less valid, in fact it makes it more so. I donā€™t like large corporations thinking they own the space I travel in or through but that doesnā€™t mean that having a large corporation needs to be changed. There are plenty of people freaking out about the ā€œblue donutā€ though I have found them to be less odious than what I call ā€œthe brown donutā€ (lowsec) and Iā€™m not suggesting either be changed by CCP, I learned to get around them instead. Can I fly a cargo ship through these areas and expect to arrive at my destination? No, but I can still get my stuff from anywhere in Eve to anywhere else usually and I can do it without help from CCP.

Anyhowā€¦
The main thing is that cloaking doesnā€™t need to be changed, it works fine and in fact could even use some improvement in my opinion. It most certainly doesnā€™t need to be changed by CCP, thereā€™s been quite enough of that lately and with things like the new jump animation breaking jumping itself, maybe a bit too much.

Itā€™s not large corps that are complaining in this thread, it is solo players who think they are entitled to be alone in a system (mainly NPC null) and donā€™t feel safe if they are not.

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I cannot think of any legitimate reason to bring something to the table you are not going to discuss. I donā€™t know if you did it on purpose, but its trollish to tell us you have a cloak counter but are not willing to share what it is. It doesnā€™t help us in any way to discuss this topic. In fact, it hinders.

Change is often its own reason, because stagnation is often detrimental in itself. I can think of no solid reason for the new gate jump animation for example. No ā€œproblemā€ was solved. In fact, some people have said that strongly dislike it and it created a problem for them. I donā€™t care for it one way or the other, but the change made EVE slightly more interesting for most people I think.

There is no reason why changes to AFK cloaking could not be similar. There could be something small and almost insignificant, but the change is good just for being something new.

But I am positive thatā€™s not gonna happen with all this ship-posting going on.

This is a fundamentally stupid way to design a game. Ever hear the saying ā€œif it ainā€™t broke, donā€™t fix itā€?

There is plenty of counterplay, and AFK cloaking is only low effort if you never do anything but sit idle in a safespot where you can be safely ignored.

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No it hasnā€™t. EVE has been built on changes addressing problems, not on making changes just for the sake of having changes.

None of these things can be done while AFK.

There are plenty of solid counters. The fact that RMT botters are incapable of using them effectively is a feature, not a bug.

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Just because you donā€™t know how doesnā€™t make it not true.

Maybe you should learn to play?

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Actually it partly is solid. Technically itā€™s a colloid. A gel. A combination of liquid and solid.

  • Uncloak and blow stuff up - Be quicker/tankier/more likely to bite back (Verdict = counterable)
  • Uncloak and pop a cyno - See above. Especially the quicker part. Though a waiting fleet or your own cloaky cyno would work also (Verdict = counterable)
  • Provide intel to attack fleets - Not if youā€™re AFK (Verdict = not a thing)
  • Provide warp ins - Correct me if Iā€™m wrong, but couldnā€™t bookmarks do the same? If you are warping to an AFK pilotā€™s ship is that not the same as a bookmark? Again this falls under the first precautions. (Verdict = counterable)

Technically none of those things can be done while you are AFK other than the warp in thingy, but that is of dubious use since youā€™d have no idea what you were warping in to. And if you did know it would most likely mean the AFK cloaky was no longer AFK. Which circles around to your constant beating of the dead horse which is ā€œAn AFK pilot becomes an ATK pilot and you donā€™t know when that happensā€. Schrodingerā€™s cloaky.

Tell that to the people whining about the lack of content

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I like the cycling idea because it makes the cloak module more in line with other modules.

Another good point is that it will keep my attention on the module more. As it is, I tend to ignore it, and when I accidentally get decloaked its easy to miss.

Also it seems much simpler to implement than other cloak changes as the mechanics/ programming already exist.

Of course some will create devices to recycle the cloak automatically. I suppose that realization makes me begin to see the long cooling down time in a more positive light. But even without that, its still another layer to the onion and one more thing that could go wrong for those abusing AFK cloaking.