Hello Everyone,
I decided to share the biggest revelation of shower thoughts I just had regarding the cloaking update that hit the server recently.
The idea is the following:
Have cloaking up stop cap recharge. That way being cloaked in a system becomes the 4D chess that it is supposed to be for hunting down anyone in a system or exploring in a hostile enviroment.
Have cloak modules drain the capacitor slowly (i.e. Tier 1 module draining 10% of overall cap per minute, giving you around 10 minutes of being stealthy, higher tier modules dropping that - this could be changed to some flat numbers as well, but I think capping it at % of overall cap regardless of your max cap could be best). Ship role bonuses could further limit the drain. That means that a basic ship that is not used for explo decloaks in 10 minutes, a T1 explo frigate might do it in 20 minutes (having 50% reduction to drain), Covert ops, bombers and all the really stealthy ships reduce drain by 75% or so.
This would ensure that person cloaking up in a system has to be there to manage their cap, and if they get decloaked because of cap being drained, they cannot just immediately recloak like the change with observatory allows to. It would make them frantically decloak and recloak giving people hunting them more chance of catching the cloaker - they can’t just warp away, because they got an empty cap anyway, which makes them way more vunerable than being decloaked by observatory, waiting your cooldown and recloaking.
This gives us several new opportunities ingame:
Possible new line of cloaking modules - compact that might cost more cap but be way easier to fit in, more faction modules that bridge the gap between T1 and T2 modules.
New meta for ships - someone might start going for passive regeneration fits to recharge between gates quicker or cap booster fit to make sure they can recloak fast (but since cap boosters do take some space, a lot of ships would have very limited possibilities of cloaky camping).
This could engage players in a way more active gameplay style when it comes to cloaking up and harassing enemies in systems. Having to watch where you jump, how much cap you have left, do you want to risk it going all the way cloaked in a system and praying they have enough cap or they might have to cloak mid warp to make sure they can land on grid and be stealthy there.
Having neuting bombs could become a way of hunting cloaky campers if you have an idea where they are as hitting them with such bomb can decloak them completely.
Explorers who go and hunt relic and data sites might not be affected by this much as if they get into a site, they will be regenerating cap while they are hacking cans anyway.
I’m sure there are some flaws this would have and people can easily find them, but I thought that this is mad enough to work.
Ok, I didn’t realize that the neuting ones also damage somoene a litttle, fair point. Told you that there might be some holes in this, I wrote it up 5 minutes after the whole idea struck my head
When I warp around as explorer I do that cloaked, to not give away information about my ship type to the hostiles in the area. I prefer them not knowing whether I’m flying a combat or exploration ship at the moment, as I switch a lot between them, and a cloak stops them from knowing what I’m flying until it is too late.
When I warp around exploring I drain most and in some systems all of my capacitor to warp. Luckily I’m in a small frigate so that capacitor is completely recharged by the time I need to make my new warp.
Now your suggestion: my capatitor does not recharge, so you’re making it impossible for me to travel around cloaked.
I do explore quite a lot as well and I do understand this concern. However, eve is about having to do your thing while others try to stop you. Currently covops cloak makes you basically invunerable because people won’t always be able to ram you and uncloak you on gate.
With this, you might need to plan ahead how you travel, like the nullification changes made people reconsider their strategies, hold gate cloaks to have timers go down so they can still run bubbles (and gate cloak would not affect your cap, so you can prepare for a jump through with a passive regen fit).
What you omit here though is that if you are in a WH exploring for example, the hunters won’t be able to sit cloaked for hours on end and wait for you to land on site, they might run out of cap, have to uncloak to recharge, giving you a heads up that something is wrong with the system you are in.
So yes, it will make exploration a bit harder, but it also hits the other side as well, making an overall more instesting situation in the end.
Forgot to mention one more thing - if you have a system that is so big you have to sacrifice whole cap to jump through, uncloak when you hit warp, you’ll have time to regen while warping and then when you hit gate, you’re safe anyway because of the session change (unless in NS, you can just hit recloak before hitting grid in case you are suspecting a bubble).
Cloaky camping still is an issue, the observatories are far from being perfect and if someone is not afraid of getting banned, thye can make a throwaway char that will be uncloaking and recloaking every 14 minutes to keep the char invunerable to any decloak attempts.
Cloaky gameplay won’t be affected that much, especially with the changes taht were announced by CCP today, basically lowering cap cost of warping around for covops ships.
I disagree. Cloaky presence is never an issue as long as the pilot is at the keyboard. The problem is that the local resident wants him gone, although both have the right to be in that system for their activities, which are legit for the cloaked player btw.
Stealth is an important element in the setting, and meant to be dangerous (for both sides, which it is). The latest change addresses AFK camping - which is anti-play. Having to deal with a cloaked presence in your system is simply part of the game, with very easy solutions even. That some people don’t enjoy having to deal with it doesn’t mean cloaks should be nerfed in any way.
Being at the keyboard, uncloaking and recloaking every 14 minutes, ensures that the pilot is at least at the keyboard, not AFK. There’s no need to worry about being banned, it’s legit gameplay, maybe not enjoyable for the local resident, but still legit.
Chipping away at the uses for and viability of cloaks one step at a time is not something I’d like to see happening.
Looks like a solution seeking a problem.
The point was to stop AFK cloaking not Nerf cloaking. Even then, AFK cloaking was the only counter to local. They already damaged active play enough with the observatory. The observatory already gives you 100% safety combined with local. What more do you pos krabs want? We don’t need more crap like this, especially as long as local remains.
This does not nerf active cloaking though. Even with the parameters I provided (and it could be changed in any way), a cloaky camper that sits at the PC has 40 minutes of being able to sit and should do something in that time - warp off, uncloak, recharge and keep the staring contest up or go, scram, light that damn cyno and have the attack go. If anything, it makes someone who wants to remain in system active instead of sitting and being invunerable to everything.
It’s not supposed to drain your cap in 5 minutes, it is suposed to make you move and do something with the time you have left.
Currently even with observatories, if you sit at your PC, you are invunerable pretty much to all of it’s effects all the time, which is not at all helping with the counteracting being dropped on like it was supposed to.
I didn’t add - they will probably make macros doing this so they can still park 24/7 in those systems. Because let’s face facts, if someone will want to do it, they will do it inevitably and a lot of them won’t get caught doing it because you don’t have any proof.
It’s not supposed to counter dropping according to CCP but It does. Most drops take longer than 15 minutes to sneak up on the target so if you have observatory out they will be decloaked while positioning likely. So either they warp off to reset their timer and start over or they are decloaked and you kill them or run away.
The whole “decloak to prove I’m not afk” mechanic is the most idiotic thing CCP has implemented in recent times.
I don’t get how active play was damaged with observatories if you actually can force someone to at least recloak every once in a while. Also, if they are there and recloak every 15 min, they are completely invunerable to the effects of observatories, so they encourage active play, but are laughably easy to overcome if you wanna camp a system.
And I don’t get the 100% safety part - you can’t get rid of someone who decides to sit in your system with an observatory that gives you 40% chance once every 10 minutes, has 9 pings in a lifetime only and will cost quite a bit to keep up at all times due to short lifespan. And as I said, if you recloak, you are immune to their effect for 15 minutes, which defeats the purpose of having the observatory in the 1st place.
Let’s look at it from the other perspective. Your suggestion wants to nerf cloaks - although you claim it doesn’t, the ship does become inoperable or the pilot has to stop what he was doing and move away, that is a nerf - for the sole benefit of being able to be “safe” and continue what you are doing.
Assuming you are krabbing, why should you be left alone in safety ? Why would your capacitor not deplete automatically over time, and regardless of what you fitted on it ? What makes your situation so special ? What is it about cloaked presence that some people have difficulty dealing with ?
You can’t do that on grid while positioning because the enemy will see you. So you have to warp off, recloak, and try again. Losing eyes and having to start all over.
No they encourage less active play. You know the cloaky is there from local and know they are active from observatory. So you dock up and there … wow such active play vs docked person in citadel. Roflmao give me a break.
if someone is ratting on a site or mininig, I’m pretty sure dscanning, warping to the spot, bookmarking a rock or a wreck, then warping to that takes way less than 15 minutes.
The purpose of the observatory is not to prevent cloaky presence, but AFK cloaky presence. But even then, if you deploy multiple observatories, life for the non-AFK cloaky pilot is quite miserable.
I’m not having difficulty with cloaky presence, this is just an idea that I came up with that in my opinion could be better than the observatories, which in my eyes is just another jump on trying to make a weird material dump for people. Just like they did with battleships - added parts just for the sake of adding parts and making production cost more.
