You stream? I’d watch that. Where do I find you?
Every Tuesday on CCP’s channel, at 00:30 UTC (Technically monday if you live in the U.S!). It’s a slow stream with lore bits thrown in, and maybe cloaky campers in the background.
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Cool thanks. I’ll check it out next week. (missed it already since I’m in the US)
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Well played !!!
If someone is actively hunting and wants to stay in a single system is ok. But going afk from downtime to another is not ok, they do because they can. It’s not much to have normal/covert cyno to have with skill injecting or plexing toons. Maybe Ccp can add an module for citadels to send out a pulse energy system wide and make afk cloaky campers cloaking device to dysfuntion. If it’s not active hunter and doesnt notice he’s not cloaked get what he deserves. Also Ccp can adjust these module stats like cooldown time maybe like 30mins-1hour, cap usage etc. That’s what I come up with, what do you think of it guys?
[deleted by OP]
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As long as local works downtime to downtime afk cloaking is a lesser evil to letting null bears rat in constant safety.
It still lets the locals know if the cloaker is active or not, which tells them whether it’s safe to rat or not.
- cloaker in system.
- Locals use pulse and cloaker decloacks.
- Cloaker is active and re-cloaks.
- Locals know that it is not safe to rat and therefore wait for the pulse to cooldown to use it again.
- Rinse repeat until cloaker is afk or leaves.
- 100% risk free ratting.
I’ve been digging around the lore of how the cloaking system works.
the lore of the game and its physics and how it all works in universe is actually quite interesting.
cloaking devices draw power from their capacitor, which actually is a hybrid capacitor which draws two different types of energy.
I feel based off of this changing the way how cloaking devices are fueled would be the wrong way to go.
i did have the idea of having some kind of fuel bay which a person could have say… 36 hours worth of fuel in it, meaning cloaking could easily fly around and do their thing but wouldn’t be able to cloak systems for weeks on end.
I had an idea of a compounding effect on the capacitor, but a lot of people do not like this idea.
a suggestion could be to prevent “AFK Cloaking campers” would be to implement some kind of activity monitor for a cloaking device, if your game client detects you as inactive for 15 minutes, it will put a small puzzle or question on screen, if you don’t answer it, it will log you out.
this way if you’re going to be cloaked, you can’t be AFK.
it changes nothing about how cloaking actually works. it just changes a players way of interacting with the game.
I have also mentioned in the past about the idea of a “system wide decloak weapon” but then there are obvious balance issues with this.
someone comes into system, cloaks up, weapon is launched, cloak is denied. ultimately making cloaking redundant.
so I did some digging on the lore.
we have normal space
then we have hyperspace and within that hyperspace we have
-cloak
-warp
-jump
then we hit subspace which is pure energy.
it would at first seem apparent that we have no way of interacting with people in the hyperspace area. this however is not true.
according to the lore videos I just watched
combat probes can detect ships in warp, but not warping cloaked ship.
because cloaking surpresses the warp drive signature.
when warping uncloaked you have a much bigger signature.
given that it seems people don’t like using the comparison of eve space ships to submarines
if the universe is a couch, cloaking is hiding between the cushions.
so with the lore in mind, i have an interesting concept.
I would like to entertain the idea of some form of autonomous satelite which can be launched by players from ships, similar to how you can drop an MTU or a warp disruption bubble.
what this satelite would do, in regards to the game lore, is it will scan low frequencies in hyperspace within a grid radius of for example 1 AU Range but it will not be looking for the hyperspace energy signature, it will be searching for the normal space energy signatue stored in a cloaked ships capacitor.
one single satelite might take a week to find a cloaky camper, but if you had several, dozens, even hundreads this would shorten the time.
the concept behind it is actually taken from how submarines find silent running vessels operate in the world today.
you have Nation A submarine on the surface and knows that on the sea bed below (a grid radius) has an enemy submarine from Nation B. what they used to do is drop charges down and analyse the data to triangulate the ships position before actively engaging it.
this is actually also something which happens in the TV Show firefly, they’re running from the law and are hiding in an ice cave and they begin triangulating their position by using some kind of charges.
given that the cloaked ship is hidden within the realm of hyperspace. finding something which radiates a normal space energy signature should be easy to find by comparison.
I have gone with the idea of automated satelites because not all cloaky campers will be at a position witin a gravity well, such as a planet, moon, structure, etc. most will actually create bookmarks in space, while in warp and float in the middle of nowhere.
so having satelites which can warp around and narrow the field and get closer and closer.
would make it feel like a drag net sweeping over an area and closing in, if a camper moves, they’re active, the more satelites, the more they’ll have to move, too many satelites they might not even get the chance and may even have to leave system.
however if a cloaky camper is AFK they will not see it coming and they’ll eventually be decloaked by the satelites
satelites being small would naturally be fast and able to keep up with a camper should they move via MWD/AB and depending on specific size in the game, possibly hard to hit.
meaning a cloaky camper would become exposed then pewed, where as an active camper, has the ability to move on cloak up and start over, making intellegence gather slightly more difficult.
A person could theoretically launch multiple satelites from their ship if currently the number of players online happens to be low, meaning cloaky campers can’t exploit areas with low time zones
I was thinking that each satelite, would be launched and then possibly fueled in space, the amount of fuel will be relevant to its duration.
honestly this kind of thing would actually be very much suited to EVE Valkyire players if the games were ever connected, causing them to be HUGE assets towards system security and relevant to capsuleers.
in terms of the satelites, honestly it just seems like an easy solution, there doesn’t have to be any kind of modules for different kind of ships, everyone can use them based off of drone skills. perhaps as some kind of edencomm technology release, making it universal instead of one for each empire.
with peoples scanning skills being what they are, being able to scan down someone who is cloaked, by the time you arrive in warp, if they’re actually there, realistically they could be gone.
this would create a swarm of in essence satelites which decloak you, weather or not they do anything else then becomes a balance issue. i think it would be cool is the satelites terms of the lore all communicated with each other across the solar system.
and they would naturally widen the search grid, starting at their point of launch, going to the next nearest gravity well and scanning and rinse and repeat untill if finds someone who is cloaked. once its done this it could follow them untill they warp outside of their scan range, return to their inital pilot.
part of me is thinking this could be seen as some kind of drone, using the bandwidth and such or simply have it so one per person can be launched, but i’ll leave that to better minds than myself.
it turns cloaky camping to a game of cat and mouse for active players without directly meaning anyone is instaganked. for anyone sitting AFK it will just put a target on their back after eventually being discovered.
what are the communities thoughts on this one?
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How would I be able to disrupt the intel utility of local chat for a rival if I can’t cloak up my ship and go AFK? They would then be able to tell with 100% certainty when it is perfectly safe to mine or rat.
I do have another question for you regarding your lore exploration. Did you find anything there about how a communications channel is able to detect silent ships, even cloaked ones or ones that enter a system via a wormhole? The fact that you always show up there in local chat when in nullsec kinda breaks my immersion and doesn’t make sense to me. Like why isn’t it like wormhole space where you are invisible until you broadcast something?
well you would still be able to disrupt the intel, but you won’t be able to do it in an AFK problem
the problem ultimately isn’t cloaking its AFK cloaky campers.
so if you want to disrupt intel, you have to now make an active effort.
you can still camp. with this suggestion if the satelites get too close, move around.
you can still cloak
but you can’t be AFK.
it changes nothing about cloaking, grants a viable defence against cloakers in a system and also makes it fair to the cloaky in question by not immediately denying content with a system wide weapon.
this could possibly be explored with command bursts which seem to of been discussed, however when a camper is at a deep space book mark the people in a system have no viable means of getting to you.
having the ability to search the whole system, by sending out satelites which gradually cover the whole system i’m sure would be a much more viable option for things like the game engine as well.
it would allow people to leap into action once a cloaky is found.
to answer this I have not looked into it yet,
I was more curious in how the cloak mechanic worked in terms of the lore. I figured by being aware of it and also having mentioned in a previous post about a compounding capacitor usage while cloaked, I felt it would be interesting to build a solution out of how the capacitor works in the game’s lore.
however to attempt to answer this, based off the lore i have researched, even if you are cloaked or even in warp, the communications systems would simply be able to breach the “floor” aka the hyerspace barrier, so when you’re in warp or cloaked you can still communicate.
theoretically speaking when you jump via a titan or jump bridge you’re actually moving faster than information can even travel within the game’s universe, probably because you’re covering such a vast distance in a very short amount of time.
when you land it would be my opinion based off what I researched that the ship’s systems have take a moment to re-attune back into the networks and systems of normal space. but again this is just my opinion/theory.
But I can’t do that. I can only play a little bit each day. Do you have any other idea of a counter I can use so my opponents do not have perfect intel? I really need to get those ADMs down so I have a chance to invade in a time zone that me and my friends can play in.
But why can’t the communication technology do this in wormhole space?
Well, anyway it seems to me there should then be some delay as the communication system “locks on” to you or something, especially if you are cloaked or entering the system not from a gate.
Maybe there could even be types of ships that are invisible to local, like there are some already some that are invisible to Dscan? That way, me and my friends could use those ships to harry and spook our opponents? Then they could not be perfectly sure that no one was in the system with them and we might be able to surprise them?
not my deal dude, if you don’t have that much time to play. find something else to do.
my understanding is that WH space doesn’t have the communications network set up that the rest of the galaxy does and that what is typed in local is broadcast out into space, those who can see it can respond to it, i believe this fades after a time in WH space though.
but regarding cloaking, ultimately cloaking is going to get a fix, trolling players just by your presence is clearly something which collectively as a community agree is something which needs to do.
either do it actively, find an alternate role to fill in game which is enjoyable or play a different game.
Friend, I think you will find the “fix” CCP is going to provide is going to include changes that are still going to allow plenty of space for me to “troll” my opponents. This is a PvP game after all, not Hello Kitty in space! I mean, we already did get the ESS, and there will be more changes coming to allow players like me and my friends to apply pressure on our enemies, even if we can’t play 16 hours a day.
I was hoping to get some lore possibilities for these other compensatory changes, but I am disappointed in your lack of creativity. Ah well, I should have know better that the limits of the carebear imagination do not go beyond their wallet balance and their daydreams of changes that make them safer and keep the bad people away.
Turn that back around on the folks complaining about AFK cloaks: defend yourself actively, find an alternate role to fill in game which is enjoyable, or play a different game.
Sounds just as asinine when pointed the other way, doesn’t it?
Your idea ignores all of the non-nullsec scenarios where AFK cloaking doesn’t cause issues and in fact solves for other problems. Taking away the ability to be cloaked and not at the keyboard in wormhole space, while being actively hunted, means players are forced to sacrifice their ship and probably pod (because safe logout uncloaks you) instead of ‘pausing’ for a moment in a possibly hours-long hunt to run to the bathroom, get some food, answer the door, etc. Sleep, even, because a hole can be camped to the point where there is no escape window for days on end. Why should these people be punished for null sec players objecting to AFK cloaked campers degrading the perfect intel of the local chat tool?
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there is no way to actively defend against a cloaky camper.
however bare in mind CCP is clearly working on ways to have players actively more engaged rather than donig things afk or semi afk
I didn’t say it was a perfect solution, i said based off the research i had done, this is what i had come up with. you don’t like it, oh well.
the idea of basically having system searching sensor linking satelites, hustling people out of their hidey-holes could easily be a way forward, it also gives a way for invading groups to attack WH’s and find people cloaked up out in belts as well as for people in WH’s to defend against cloaked people who might be in their space.
you don’t have to like, its what I’ve got.
There is - having a response fleet.
These people claim to own the space that is being camped. They need to be prepared to defend it at any time - they have no way of knowing when someone might filament in, drop through a wormhole, or login from a safe-spot where they logged out.
My challenge to your suggestion isn’t a matter of ‘not liking it’. I asked you to consider the impact on other areas of the game. If you are proposing a change, you need to be prepared to defend it against critiques like unexpected impacts. How is this idea balance for areas beyond nullsec?
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a player base cannot spend 100% of their time logged in, people have lives also.
well if this idea was linked to something like the ihub module where players linked to find cloaky campers there would be no viable solution in lowsec, highsec or in wormholes. so having a deployable asset in all regions of space would be very viable and accessable to all players.
people attacking or defending a wormhole could send these things out to find cloaky AFK campers while they form up.
with the new fleet formation mechanics attackers can come in and not only form infront of the WH exit, but also find anyone extra cloaky in the WH or perhaps someone trying to sneak out the back.
seems pretty straight forward to me. if you were actively hunting something, it would be a lot like releasing the hounds to usher the prey out into the open.
a few cloaky campers not a problem but when you have a cloaky camper like mushy that has 30+ accounts and can cover a whole region, and most likely has a monitoring software that checks what comes in and out of local in every system in the region it is very hard to combat that and still have fun. Because the cloaky camper can choose when to strike and with what to strike with, you the non cloaky camper will have a hard time baiting someone with regional wide monitoring software and apparently unlimited resources in and out of game.
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No chance that cloaked ship is a real player who has just as much right to play as you do?
Why are you so afraid of one cloaked ship?
If he uncloaks near you just warp away.
But they can field a defense fleet when they want to be engaged in money-making activities, or when the camper is known to be regularly online. They don’t have to have people vulnerable to attack 23/7, but when they have people out, those people need to have people to call on for defense - or need to accept some level of risk for being in space.
… Did you even read what I posted?