edited because realized using a smartbomb as is in high sec has some BIG ticket drawbacks... so instead, if you use the improved smartbomb in high sec, the onboard safety system will null out the damage causing part and it will only send out a nondamaging grav wave... unless you turn off the safety system, and thus will suffer the concequences if it hits someone that is not an enemy.

AS I SAY AGAIN!!! THE AFK CLOAKING BIT IN MY TITLE WAS A JOKE AGAINST CAREBEARS WHO WHINE ABOUT AFK CLOAKERS BREAKING THE GAME WHEN THEY DO NOTHING BUT SIT IN ONE SPOT WITHOUT EVEN SITTING AT THEIR KEYBOARD!!!

FIRST: CCP makes smartbombs able to be used anywhere including high sec, without concordoken, as they are weak, pathetic, near useless as anything more than anti missle ships or doing depth charge runs to try and find a cloaky.

SECOND: CCP... LEAVES THE DAMAGE AMOUNT ALONE and quadruples the range of the AOE... BUT... it makes it a tiered distance system. TIER 1 AOE distance is original range as it is now with full damage. TIER 2 AOE range is 75% damage. TIER 3 AOE range is 50% damage. And TIER 4 AOE range is 25% damage.

This means that the closer you are the more damage your target takes, and the further away the less damage your target takes.

Now what does this do for the cloak whining carebears?

It gives them something to combat the so called "AFK cloaker" without doing ANYTHING at all to the cloaks themselves, it forces them to take an ACTIVE role in their defense. And it makes it more challenging and more fun to be able to zip in close to a fleet of carebears under cloak, harass them, and not get smashed by the smartbombers depth charging.

Think about it... what is really so fun about being cloaked and scouting a bunch of carebears in high sec right now? Almost nothing. If we give them a means to actively defend against us cloakers WITHOUT changing cloaking dynamics or breaking one of the most awesome game mechanics in eve ever to be devised, wouldn't that be at least a little bit more fun?

If the whiny carebears can actively kill us while we sit cloaked, and they get off their butts and stop station spinning and actually go on the offensive... think about the adrenaline rush you will get running from them while still staying in observation range.

And please don't come back at me with that "smartbombs are too powerful for high sec" crap. No one uses smartbombs BECAUSE they are weak and pathetic. They are only useful right now as missle swarm fly swatters (and they fail at that even) and for depth charging cloakers (and they are too short ranged to be effective for that too).