market traders have no risk of ship loss while plying their trade
corp scammers have no risk of being podded while cleaning out a corp hangar
someone sitting on the undock who does not agress is in space and in absolutely no danger unless he's a complete bufoon

http://www.fatal-ascension.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=48204

What's that? A carebear ship defending itself? Gee thought that wasn't possible. Now kindly explain why AFK cloakies are a problem again? Seems to me your argument (as usual) boils down to "AFK cloakies are a problem for me"

GǪand the question is: what is the problem with AFK cloaking that needs to be solved? Why are the proposed solutions to this (supposed) problem not adequate?

Someone sitting on undock not agressing isn't earning anything, zero risk, zero reward..... seems fair!

None of your points have ANY merit at all really......

Discussing removing local is pointless without some knowledge of the scanner system that would replace it. Until we have an idea about that we simply don't have the information to know what affects ANY change we would have. Removing local without some decent scanner system to replace it would just be dumb. I know I'm not willing to hammer a button every 3 seconds whenever I'm in space and I'm sure a lot of other people aren't as well!

Discussing removing local is pointless without some knowledge of the scanner system that would replace it. Until we have an idea about that we simply don't have the information to know what affects ANY change we would have. Removing local without some decent scanner system to replace it would just be dumb. I know I'm not willing to hammer a button every 3 seconds whenever I'm in space and I'm sure a lot of other people aren't as well!

No one with any idea of balance expects you too have to mash every 3 seconds either. But as and until local in it's current form is changed, cloaking should not be touched in any way, it is balanced to the current situation.

You list problems but the only problem I see, is that you and many of your ilk are way too reliant upon local and it's 100%, risk free, instant intel. As soon as you allow someone's attempts to subvert it to work upon yourselves, you run crying for a nerf to cloaking. When really it's local that's the root cause of this. No one who is AFK, denies you anything. It's is your choice, that makes denial a reality.

So, far from talking about local change being pointless, it is in fact cloaking nerf talk that is. This whole thread tbqh.
Local is set to change and intel is going to have to be worked at to be gained. No more on a plate instant intel with any luck.

Problem 1: Risk vs Reward broken for Null-sec sanctum runners - Basically makes the system worthless with an AFK cloaker in since the risk now outweights the rewards, and running L4s in hi-sec becomes more profitable when inevitable ship losses are taken into account.

Problem 2: Risk vs Reward broken for cloaker - Any decent cloaker has practically zero risk, and can cyno in a massive fleet with very little risk on any target.

Problem 3: Effort Vs Reward broken - A afk cloaker can effectively deny a whole system to his enemy while sleeping.....

Problem 4: Nothing should be totally safe, cloaking is about as close as it gets apart from docking up and not doing anything but the potential rewards (Note the Nyx kill mentioned above) are massive.

Yes, if you do it right, as I've suggested many times in this thread and apparently must again. So, here we go...

1. When a ship cloaks, it gets removed from local. The other ships in the system cannot see it, but they can see each other and all non-cloaked ships as they do now.

2. When a ship cloaks, it loses access to local. Now it cannot use local as an intel-gathering tool, and, just like in wormholes, the cloaked vessel would need to actively gather intel through use of probes, dscan, or simply flying somewhere and looking.

3. When a ship uncloaks, there's a delay in being able to lite off a cyno of, say, 15 to 30 seconds. This prevents the imbalance of the invisible pilot being able to hot drop a fleet on someone's head.

* Possible exception to 3... allow Black Ops ships to be able to lite a cyno with no delay after decloaking. They could use a little love.

So, here you go. Cloaks act as true cloaks and are balanced by requiring the active gathering of intel and minimizing (or removing) the instant hot-drop risk a totally unknown vessel would pose. Intel for a covops vessel becomes an active endeavour instead of simply scrolling through local. The "afk cloak" issue goes completely away and null space still retains the risk of null space. Finally, and most important to me personally, by not breaking cloaks you're not breaking a very important aspect of wormhole life that requires cloaks to indeed be able to remain unknown, unseen and undetectable.

An AFK cloaker does not receive any rewards. Also an AFK cloaker does not increase any risks. Therefore you Problem 1 is invalid, because it is derives from false premises.

no? someone cloaked and afk in space isn't earning anything either, zero risk, zero reward

I'd say my point has lots of merit

Incorrect. A cloaked ship cannot open a cyno. When a cyno is opened the cyno ship is uncloaked and unmovable and can be killed very easy. The cyno itself appears on the overview. Since the incoming fleet appears at the location of the cyno, a response fleet can react immediately and decimate the cynoed in fleet. Therefore your problem 2 does not describe EVE "reality" and as such is invalid.

So your solution is to have a massive cap fleet sitting on hold ready to counter ONE AFK CLOAKER..... please tell me how that is in any way balanced?

So your solution is to have a massive cap fleet sitting on hold ready to counter ONE AFK CLOAKER..... please tell me how that is in any way balanced?

I also like the time-delay cyno + no local idea, so long as

1: When cloaked the cloaker has reduced D-scan range (or he may as well have local with very very little effort) Say 1-2 AU, so he has to manually investigate planets.

2: Limit probe strength or increase probe time or something similar.

Removing local for a cloaked ship also not on local alone isn't much of a punishment when Local is more a defensive intel tool, probes and D-scan are the offensive scanning tools.

So your solution is to have a massive cap fleet sitting on hold ready to counter ONE AFK CLOAKER..... please tell me how that is in any way balanced?

in the best interest of my alliance im posting on an alt.

On my main i am in null sec and seen enemies to my alliance go in each of our systems with an alt and go cloaked for days and days on end. this disrupts our operations to ratting mining and other profitable isk ways. it started to tear down my alliance these people sitting cloaked off grid waiting to pick off the easy targets when we least expect it and hotdropping us time to time.. It brought my alliance mostly to a halt.

A debatable Solution:

Make it so to activate cloaking modules you must have a fuel to power it instead of using Capacitor power. Maybe a fuel like nitrogen isotopes that is consumed per hour using your cloaky module and is stored in your cargo bay or a cloaked fuels bay. So say covert ops cloak ships with the bonuses to use less fuel per hour would use less fuel per hour while being cloaked moving around while ships with prototype cloaks use more fuel per hour.

Just a thought

cloaking ships are invincible if not seen and menacing and fun to use to your liking. Its a pain in the ass when an alt is sitting in your system for days and days on end... a fuel to consume would eventually run out in were the fuel is held and uncloak the ship therefore easier to find and sotp

cloaking ships have no counter everything else has a counter lets make one for cloakies

I think the best argument FOR AFK cloaking is that it's not a big deal, or that hey you just think having an impact on your enemies while AFK is OK. AFK cloaker not having an impact because they are AFK is a poor argument:

-Either the ratters/miners assume the AFK ship is active and take measures to mitigate the risk (loss of profit) OR
-They assume the ship is AFK and risk being blown up (greater loss of profit)

I think the best argument FOR AFK cloaking is that it's not a big deal, or that hey you just think having an impact on your enemies while AFK is OK. AFK cloaker not having an impact because they are AFK is a poor argument:

-Either the ratters/miners assume the AFK ship is active and take measures to mitigate the risk (loss of profit) OR
-They assume the ship is AFK and risk being blown up (greater loss of profit)

The AFK cloaker does have an impact even if they are AFK as debatable as the severity and fairness of that impact may be.

The fallible arguments for AFK cloaking annoy me more than AFK cloaking itself.

Sorry was meaning system scanner not D-scan, had a brain fart. Just don't want them to be able to find the sanctums and havens as quickly as they can currently, make them search for these if cloaked.

Same with probes.

Basically its so if someone is AFK cloaking, they have to spend some time hunting round when they come back from AFK instead of within a few couple of minutes having the locations of all the sanctums and havens and sites within the system. If someone is willing to gimp their ship to make themselves unprobable to cloakies, I don't see the problem there, since all the cloaky has to do to get as high as he can cloaked, drop cloak for the final scan, re-cloak, warp to target. Doesn't make anyone immune to cloakies, just means they can make it harder for a cloaky to get them at the cost of several mid slots. Seems like a fair deal there!

well either a fuel based mechanic or a time based mechanic but something needs to be done about this...

Why? Is there any other reason other than "it's an inconvenience for me?"

It isn't even an inconvenience unless you let it be one.

let me explain... cloaking is ok infact its needed and great... but perma afk 23/7 cloaking is silly and op in its emotianal affect on the game.

furhtermore after 28 pages there has not been a single post in favor of afk cloaking that was not just a sense of entitlement staw man arugment based on ad hominem fallacies...

And if he had been sitting in the system for 10 hours previously AFK, does it make any difference?

Its the sitting there for 10 hours with ZERO risk and the threat of a hot-drop that is the problem here! If they had to be active to maintain the cloak then there wouldn't be a problem. It would be a pain in the arse when someone did it to you, but it would be OK. The problem is that someone AFK can sit there, with zero risk, holding a entire system to ransom, with no effort.

I use AFK cloaking myself to massive advantage and let me tell you, if people are stupid enough to rat while I'm in system (I check back every few hours when I can) then they generally get a bomb in the face followed by torps at a rather critical moment. If I have cap backup online, well then its even worse for them!

Basically the only defence for AFK cloaking that it's supporters can offer is that it can in theory be defended against, however you are asking the defenders to put literally thousands of times as much effort in as the AFK cloaker AND to be the ones taking the big risks (losing their expensive PvP and ratting ships) which simply isn't viable.

As for 'defending your space', well I can get a SB into ANY SYSTEM IN EVE with virtually no risk or effort so basically what you are saying at the moment is that no alliance in eve is capable of defending it's space....... due to AFK cloaking. If anything this is another reason it needs to be fixed.

could not say it better my self