For the third time, bait them. AFK cloakers go after weak targets first and foremost. If you bait them, they’ll run off and camp somewhere else.
Covert ops ships have paper thin tank. They don’t stand a chance in a fleet fight.
They obviously don’t have a sufficient amount of functional brain cells. Dumb people dieing doesn’t make for a good argument.
That doesn’t scale very well. Campers need to be Omegas, else no cloaks and no cynos.
They only shut down the incompetents that have no business being in nullsec in the first place, which in turn then run to the forums to cry about it. That trash doesn’t deserve any better.
How often does it need to be pointed out? The camper is only free of risk as long as the people he’s camping are also free of risk. If the camper engages, he’s at full risk of losing his ship. If you properly bait the hotdrop, you can vaporize their entire fleet.
Your arguments clearly show that they indeed play the game. They scare you, they interrupt your activities, making your space and your alliance an easier target for attacks or extortion things. This is EvE.
Out of curiosity, what would be the effect of cloaked ships showing on D-scan?
Say, “cloaking field” appears on D, it doesn’t reveal the player, ship type, nor ship name, but would reveal a rough approximation of where they might be located and how far away.
The afk cloaky at a safe is still a presence, difficult (If not impossible) to find, but the at-attention carebears can actually get some intel before they’re hot-dropped?
I despise any afk activity, I’d support any changes that renders that kind of “playstyle” less effective.
It would have the same effect as local, and people could use it to determine if the player is active. An active player might warp between safes. If you are good and work at it a bit you can get an idea of where a player is–i.e. what celestial body they are near.
And to be clear, everyone has advanced warning thanks to local. You know a guy is cloaked in system because he appears in local and you cannot find him with probes.
Yes, but isn’t it highly unlikely they’ll remove local? Honestly, I don’t get all the teeth-knashing about afk ships; if they’re not there - They can’t possibly do jack to you.
Aside from the most cowardly carebears, those that’ll refuse to undock if anyone not blue is in local, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the PvE crowd that thinks that cloaking may be a mechanic without suitable counter; that a completely invisible ship should be able to appear and drop a cyno on your head without notice. Wouldn’t limited ability to detect cloaked ships, albeit non-afk cloaked ships intending harm, have some merit?
I have a perfect counter for it actually. You can fit a cloak on your own ship. Then you can both sit cloaked in space doing the exact same thing. His advantage is completely gone at that point.
Not based on what the Devs have been hinting at. In the old AFK cloaking thread on the old forums there was a link to Fozzie more or less saying, “Nobody complains about AFK cloaking in wormholes and for good reason.” The reaction from the hosts of the podcast was that “Local is going bye-bye” to which Fozzie more or less replied, “I can neither confirm nor deny”. Shortly there after, IIRC, at Fanfest, CCP talked about the observatory array (OA for short) and it looks like it will let players get a better idea of who is in their space and possibly even where. In short, it looks like local is going to go and in it’s place will be the OA. The result is cloaks will most likely become scanable to some degree, but your intel system will now be vulnerable to attack.
What do you mean without notice? Are you not watching local? Did you not look at your intel channels? This idea that cloaking ships come at you totally unseen is just not believable.
Not with local the way it is. Local was, IMO, not intended to be an intel tool. Local, again IMO, is too good. Are cloaks also “too good”? Yeah, I’m sympathetic to that argument, but my view is those two mechanics that are both “too good” really cancel each other out–i.e. there is balance. But it is not very good balance–i.e. if we can maintain the balance and improve game play, then so much the better. And any suggestion leaving local unchanged and nerfing cloaks does not maintain that balance.
Isn’t that the circular argument? Local is too powerful - cloaks are meaningless // Cloak in local, can’t find it, so cloaks are too powerful…
yes, the afk cloaked “problem” is essentially confined to sov null; Should the removal of local be tied to specific sov systems then I would imagine the birth of a whole new style of play… and just imagine the amount of salt-rage and wailing a null-empire exclusive content and development would generate, the path of least resistance may be a game-wide effect of cloaks, local, and other intel tools.
Honestly, I do get both sides of the argument; I just believe there could be alternate options other than “nerf cloaks” or “Remove local”. I don’t believe anyone outside of a troll would advocate an afk playstyle in a multiplayer game. Being available to detect hostile cloaks, say on D-scan in an extremely limited manner, allows an active non-afk player some form of defense or active involvement to locate, without removing another of the last remaining in-game social channels.
How are you not aware I am in system with you? You must not have been watching local. Local tells you I am there in system with you. The cloak does not tell you what exact ship I am in nor does it let you determine by exact location, but you know, thanks to local, that a hostile ship/pilot is in system. In that sense I cannot “sneak up on you.” Local provides that degree of intel perfectly and at all times.
No. You should not get local simply due to establishing sov. You do not get ADMs at 5 by simply establishing sov, you must maintain them. If you want an intel network you should be have to maintain it. With local you do not have to do much of anything for an intel network as it is there automatically–i.e. you do nothing for the primary part of it.
You are making the either/or fallacy. Nobody is saying “nerf cloaks” or “remove local”. Some are arguing for no change, that things are fine as they are. Others are arguing that if you are going to do one (e.g. “nerf cloaks”) then local and how intel works has to change as well. Local and AFK cloaking are inextricably linked. Fozzie is totally right in that nobody cares about AFK cloaking in wormholes. That is because local is not there. No local there is no point to AFK cloaking other than grabbing a drink from the fridge or taking a bio break. Without local AFK cloaking has no effect on other players. Now, the point is not “just remove local,” but that these two issues are absolutely linked. There has been many, many pages written by people who want to claim otherwise, but the wromhole space is very strong empirical evidence that they are linked.
What defense? If I am at a good safe–i.e. I am not sitting cloaked within 100 km of the warp in to a celestial and I am moving, there is almost no way for you to find me. Even if I am stupid and warp into a celestial at 70 km and then move 20 km from that point it would take considerable effort to still find me. So what defense? You are not getting enough information to do anything. You have the same problem you have simply using local. And if you get enough information to actively hunt down a cloaked ship you are simply, “nerfing cloaks”.
To be fair, I’ve kept the discussion to this tread, not the older one. I’m keeping to the thread position that afk cloaking is a problem, and attempting to have a civil discourse on ideas to address. It’s pointless to debate that the thread shouldn’t exist at all 'cause there isn’t a problem - That horse has been beaten so far that its not even a smear on the grass. However as a counter to the hardly “empirical” evidence ( a vague recollection that one developer might have said at one time, that was inferred by others not associated with CCP to mean “no local”): Lo-Sec has a local channel, but afk cloaked ships aren’t a problem there either.
I’m not being clear enough, apologies. You are absolutely correct, if you’re smart there should be absolutely no way to locate a cloaked ship in system. However, If you could spam d-scan, see a cloak at 5 AU, than at 1 AU, you’ve got solid and active intel that you’ve got a credible threat and not just a psyche-warfare on the locals.
Hopefully real players wouldn’t be so risk-adverse to actually undock if they had a fighting chance of actually spotting the cloaked threat before it’s too late.
That highlights the entire issue perfectly and outlines why cloaks are not actually a problem at all.
Krabs complain, not because they don’t have the tools already to deal with the issue, but because doing so requires effort and requires them to be at their keyboard.
Pvpers don’t care, because a fight that comes to you isn’t one you need to go looking for.
