You see though, your premise is lacking where as mine isn't. Local simply tells who is in system, nothing more, nothing less(information that can be, to an extent seen through the star map). D-scan on the other hand provides you a wealth of information, where in system someone is, whether they are cloaked and what ships they are in if they aren't. It also tells you of structures is space such as POSes, if the POses are off-line or not and what it equiped to those POSes. My premise also has validity due to the real world example of wormholes, cloaking isn't reduced by the lack of local in wormholes, if anything it is increased and use of D-scan is also increased. This shows that removal of the current local would simply aggravate the problem(and this doesn't include all the other things that removal of local damages/kills).

2. Thus why I refer to it as Cloaky camping because as I point out in #4, cloaked hostile in system requires the assumption of hostile active and likely cyno fit, thus why AFK cloakies are considered a problem.

3. You have to assume their active, you can't say for sure so setting a trap can be ineffective for many reasons.

4. I didn't take your comment out of context at all, your comment is that when a hostile or possible hostile anyone with half a brain is going to safe up, and I simply pointed out that anyone with half a brain knows that they have to assume hostile cloakies are a) active as to assume otherwise is stupid, b) fit with cyno of some type as to assume otherwise is dangerous and generally thought of as stupid. These mandatory assumptions mean that a) any sign of a hostile, cloaky or otherwise in system is results in safeing up, b) they aren't going to try to take the cloak on solo/pvp fit while running anoms. I personally know that my corp doesn't run anoms with a red in system, we move to a system w/o a red or just leave it be and don't bother doing anything, esp solo.

Edit: I should note here that I don't think cloaking itself needs to be changed, I do think there needs to be a way(a long and arduous way) to get on grid with a cloaky.

The "issue" of AFK Cloaking is entirely irrelevant in WHs because WHs have no Local to counter.
D-Scan tells you nothing about whether someone is cloaked or not. It tells you that "either there is someone cloaked OR there is nobody there." Local allows you to distinguish between those options. So no, D-Scan alone does not tell you whether or not someone is cloaked. You're failing pretty badly at being a pedant here.

2. No, it really doesn't. You can certainly choose to assume that and act on that assumption, others choose to assume that the guy who hasn't decloaked in 2 days is probably AFK. It's simply a matter of making choices based on incomplete information, which, hey, would entirely disappear if AFK cloaking were not possible (because you would know that the cloaked guy in local is active).

3. You have to assume they're active, so setting a trap doesn't work? Come again?

4. Again, not in my experience. If a KNOWN active hostile is in system, everyone safes up. If a POSSIBLY active hostile is in system, not everybody stays safed up. To entirely shut down your economic activity in a system because there is some possibility of the hostile being active is arguably just as stupid as not safing up with a KNOWN active hostile in system. Again in my experience, not everybody stays safed up when the big bad AFK cloaker is sitting around.

Removing the ability to indefinitely AFK cloak does the same thing as removing the ability to AFK cloak. The defender just has to set a timer/go on a quick hunt.

If you remove or nerf AFK Cloaking, what other mechanic introduces uncertainty in any part of the following: Local* allows you to know if a Hostile is present and whether or not that hostile (if present) is active.

*Local = Local + D-Scan. And I will no longer be making note of where I use this convention.

Local really needs a major overhaul to function much more like it does in wormhole space.

It's far too much of an unrealistic crutch and makes carebears, fleet commanders, etc. lazy with their intel gathering efforts. Intelligence should be moved into the hands of the players and not some magical tell-all device.

Local should still exist, but as a chat channel. Intelligence ought to be gathered from other players who are flying for that purpose.

The "issue" of AFK Cloaking is entirely irrelevant in WHs because WHs have no Local to counter.
D-Scan tells you nothing about whether someone is cloaked or not. It tells you that "either there is someone cloaked OR there is nobody there." Local allows you to distinguish between those options. So no, D-Scan alone does not tell you whether or not someone is cloaked. You're failing pretty badly at being a pedant here.

2. No, it really doesn't. You can certainly choose to assume that and act on that assumption, others choose to assume that the guy who hasn't decloaked in 2 days is probably AFK. It's simply a matter of making choices based on incomplete information, which, hey, would entirely disappear if AFK cloaking were not possible (because you would know that the cloaked guy in local is active).

3. You have to assume they're active, so setting a trap doesn't work? Come again?

4. Again, not in my experience. If a KNOWN active hostile is in system, everyone safes up. If a POSSIBLY active hostile is in system, not everybody stays safed up. To entirely shut down your economic activity in a system because there is some possibility of the hostile being active is arguably just as stupid as not safing up with a KNOWN active hostile in system. Again in my experience, not everybody stays safed up when the big bad AFK cloaker is sitting around.

Removing the ability to indefinitely AFK cloak does the same thing as removing the ability to AFK cloak. The defender just has to set a timer/go on a quick hunt.

If you remove or nerf AFK Cloaking, what other mechanic introduces uncertainty in any part of the following: Local* allows you to know if a Hostile is present and whether or not that hostile (if present) is active.

*Local = Local + D-Scan. And I will no longer be making note of where I use this convention.

Local really needs a major overhaul to function much more like it does in wormhole space.

It's far too much of an unrealistic crutch and makes carebears, fleet commanders, etc. lazy with their intel gathering efforts. Intelligence should be moved into the hands of the players and not some magical tell-all device.

Local should still exist, but as a chat channel. Intelligence ought to be gathered from other players who are flying for that purpose.

To simply remove local from null-sec and low-sec would kill the game end of story. And to remove local without killing the game would require a complete revamp of the whole game. Where as to fix the issue that is AFK cloaking have much much smaller requirement of resources.

How would a slighty delayed local make the system better?

If this is the case can you open up a second high slot on all the blockade runners as the only one that will be used for the covert cyno would be a prowler.

Just a note :D

Because it would give the hunter a chance. Right now a pimp officer fit BS in 0.0 is far safer than one in Empire. In empire the same fit would be nuked by suicide gankers that found him and it happens all the time.

literally all the time.


In 0.0 that same ship is actually never going to die if the user simply has a pulse and doesn't fall a sleep at the keyboard.


Thats a skewed system of risk, Local is the reason why.

Your argument becomes defunct because the game developer that makes the game you play agrees fully that Local as an intel tool is broken. They've been saying for years that it gives too much for no effort at all.

Have you ever seen this commercial?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m0VnzPFxew

This is currently what its like hunting in 0.0, you know, the part of the game thats supposed to be dangerous.

None of your jockeying can change and or deny that as an actual fact of the game, the players agree, the developers agree, its just the risk averse that think they should be immune to harm while making money who are against it.

Climb down from that high horse... I wasn't arguing for local as an intel tool but i don't think a "delayed local" system is the magic wand you make it out to be.

Lucky for me i live in wormhole space.

Has there been any desision on weather or not blacks ops are going to be split into two ships or remain just one?

What is being done about the Jump Portal Generation skill? Is it part of the larger rebalance? When Black Ops were introduced you needed strontium to open the bridge, and training jump portal generation beyond level 1 reduced strontium consumption. Then CCP changed it so that no strontium is used. Some of us had trained this skill (Rank 14X btw) up beyond level 1 and got told "oh well it will be useful when you are in a Titan".

Has CCP given any thought as to the bonus for this skill now that it is useless to Black Ops pilots? Or is this issue simply not on their radar?

Hey everyone, just a reminder that the Retribution 1.1 patch release date has been changed to Feb 19th, as announced in the news update last week.

What "issue" is that?

You've admitted that you can adjust your behavior to avoid the consequences of a possibly active hostile being in system (and further claimed that only idiots get caught by them, by claiming that the only rational response is to assume that they are active), so you've admitted that they can be countered (preventing a hunter from catching anything = countering that hunter). So the issue can't be a claim that they have no counter.

You also haven't provided an example of another way for Local to not provide both knowledge of the hostile presence and knowledge of the hostile's activity level (showing up once every half hour means that he will be active at least every 30min, so if he's cloaked for more than 30min, he's active. Being probeable (with however much inaccuracy) means that not being able to find him means he's active [not to mention, you'd likely be able to triangulate their position with your suggestion]). So either suggestion results in local now providing both knowledge of presence and of activity.

3. Get better at baiting.

4. So you would continue economic activity with a known active hostile in system? Continue Ratting and Mining? You were saying that you safe up when there is a known active hostile in system and that you consider all possibly active hostiles to be always active, so I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say now. Besides that, suggesting that a probability of <1 equals a probability of 1 is, frankly, silly.

I'm back \Gùï/

The issue is that indefinite Afk cloaking creates wormhole*null-sec risk without the reward as well as the cloaker being in the same spot of being invincible as you speak against.

Haha ok then, Awoxing is a counter to local and dscan, a counter is a counter no? Neither are true counters, discouragements maybe but not counters.

As you continue to show with your really bad ideas about ways to 'fix' or counter afk cloaking, my thoughts on local would be equally bad(though I am a fan of a 30-60 second delay on entering local, a delayed transponder ping or something). Local still doesn't note activity with either of the suggestions. Just as it is now you have to put effort into finding out if they are active(and trying to triangulate is part of the idea, so if you want to effectively locate someone cloaked you would need to do it multiply times, either with one person or with a gang).

4. You still didn't read "we move to a system w/o a red" though as cloaky campers become more common that becomes more difficult. The probability is 0< and it isn't like the weather where if the the probability is simply for true/false.

Want to make the Black Ops more worthwhile flying?

Simple, give them their racial EWAR bonus.

Right now the only ship benefiting from it's racial EWAR bonus is the Widow, and to good effect, because why would I jump a billion isk ship into a fight, when I could throw a stealth bomber into the battle instead, with almost double the DPS at a fraction of the cost?

Making the Sin a long range point with damps, the Redeemer a close range neut boat like the Pilgrim and the Panther a web bonus like the rapier would make them more worth fielding.

- Dread

New black ops role bonus

"Micro jump drive can be activated while cloaked"


CCP Fozzie, what do you think?

THIS. Maybe include a 10% reduction on cap cost per level? Not game breaking and its still slightly helpful

Also, sorry for double post.

How about just giving it covert ops cloak