I still believe there should be some method to scan down a cloaked ship.
Granted it should take a very long time for actual cloaky ships and less for say a drake with a cloak but both should be scannable with enough time.

I am talking 20 minutes.

One probe to find a player and put you on the same grid. (random 100 ~ 200km distance from them)
Another probe that can find a player with a slow moving probe that basically explodes and decloaks them.
Wrath of Khan "The thing has to have a tail pipe"
PS - can only use a covert OPS to find the cloaky ship.


IF someone is truly AFK they can be found. if not well the chances would be almost 0.

I get the OP's point, although he could have nuanced it a little better. For this reason I think cloaks should overheat, or otherwise gradually run down, or use some kind of fuel in order to keep running. Doesn't have to be on a short timer, or use a lot of said commodity...

Nobody can seriously argue, unless they do this kind of thing for fun, that it isn't somewhat game breaking.

While I don't believe AFK cloaking is botting, I do find it ironic that pvp tough guys post in these threads defending an unkillable ship that cannot be countered? How is that Eve?

I do not know what the afk timer is, but is the issue the length of it? If so that could be changed, and if someone defeated it then that would indeed be botting.

Wormholes are much more risk vs reward though tbh, yes I cant see local in my wormhole and theres a risk that there at any time may be a fleet of cloaky ships ready to strike, but at the same time I can solo a site and get about 100million isk rather quickly.

The main issue here is that there are no counters for a stealthed ship shutting down an entire system and it is game breaking. In null sec I lost count of how many times everyone was banned from ratting or doing whatever they were doing because some guy was in local stealthed.

A good fix for it would to be to make it so stealthed ships can be scanned down with combat probes

yes make it hard to do, make it a pain to scan them down but make it possible.

I beleive this would silence the cries of frustration because the stealther can still be there, he/she can still shut down a system but they will have to be actively playing so that they can warp around to avoid being scanned down and killed. I see no reason why a stealthed ship cant be scanned down.

This whole topic is debatable
Turning up in a cloaky ship in a enemy system and creating havoc and messing up any pve or industrial ops is a valid tactic , however. Waking up in the morning moving a cloaky. Ship into a enemy system and then go to work or school for the rest of the day is in my opinion pretty lame and depends how you look at it even be regarded as a form of botting or even a exploit

I always been in favour for introducing a new gamemechanic that will prevent such a thing
Preferably something skilledbbased that will not actually decloak. But will reveal a sphere where the cloaky ship is inbetter your skill and more time you invest the smaller the detectionsphere will be and will be up to the defenders to figure out a way to dispose of him , a cloaker who is active will be moving around and be almost impossible to detect but a real afk cloaker will eventually be detected and will most likely find himself in a new clone when he comes back home a new kind of probes could do the trick

Probing out a cloaked ship does not undermine the mechanic.
The entire series of ships you are talking about can do something no other ships in game can do.
That is warp and maintain the cloak, that is the mechanic that should not be broke.

Not the I can sit cloaked in system all day while I play WoT.
Nobody is asking for (well if they are forget it) for existing probes to be able to find cloaked ships in a few minutes.
It is about finding cloaked ships with some effort and time and expense.

And no, fuel for cloaks is out as well cause that goes to far.
The expense should be on the hunter of cloaked ships not the cloaky.

And yes the mechanic is broken cause it should be possible.

Cloaking is already penalized because you can't do anything while cloaked. Now people are suggesting to stack more penalties on top of that.

Limited time on cloaking devices? You have to be on bath salts or something.

Here is my suggestion. Everytime you dock up in station, you get a limited amounted of time to stay docked. After a certain while it starts to charge you isk for taking up a docking port. If you don't pay, it spits you out into space.....Yea, that is about as stupid as your cloaking ideas, you damn babies.

if he is in system with you, move to the next system. If he follows you, he isn't afk. If he doesn't, he is afk and can't hurt you. Jesus H. Christ I am smart.