It is currently possible to basically shut down activity in a none-empire system by just cloaking up a scanning ship in the middle of nowhere and then going afk. By just coming back once in a while to scan down what is in system and hot drop it if you find something worth the effort, you're either shutting down an entire system or forcing other players to be 100% vigilant (which is no bad thing), but you're putting basically no effort in at your end. That's not interesting, and it's not fun. But, in case you disagree, let's look at the fluff.

Cloaky ships are supposed to be the space boat equivalent of submarines, right? Well submarines aren't invisible. A skilled sonar operator can find a sub given time and means. It should be the same way with cloaks. Utter undetectability makes the game unengaging and uninteresting. If cloaks made ships invisible on-grid and disappear from overview, but only reduced their sig radius significantly for combat scanning purposes, it would stop this dull stalemate from happening. Perhaps some kind of sliding scale should be introduced whereby cloaking skills, module tiers, and implants make a cloaked ship harder (but never impossible) to scan down, versus better scanning skills and equipment making it easier. Even if you don't think of cloaks as the spaceboat answer to submarines, look at any sci-fi where they're featured. Ones where the crew cloaked up and then went for a brew would make for very boring stories.

Move along if this has already been discussed ad nauseum and I'm late to the party; I couldn't find any recent discussions on it with a cursory search.

It is currently possible to basically shut down activity in a none-empire system by just cloaking up a scanning ship in the middle of nowhere and then going afk.

Move along if this has already been discussed ad nauseum and I'm late to the party; I couldn't find any recent discussions on it with a cursory search.

First!


I see your points but you know you are poking a hornets nest, don't you?


I would leave cloaking "alone" in such a manner that nobody gets an instant defeat cloak and gank measure.

The only 2 changes I would make:


1. If the client has no activity for a given time, the player is logged off (as one who has tried to play after a long weekend of outdoor work, and fallen asleep at the keyboard, this would be a good thing).
2. Allow special probes to "see" but NOT get a warpable hit on a cloaked ship. It should always be impossible to get a warp hit on a cloaked ship. But it would be nice to know if a cloaked ship is on the move or if within the D-scan range. Frankly I think that having a general idea of where it is makes things more interesting and also makes lurking more fun for the cloaker too as cloaking in a system to "bother" people can be quite boring but the "victims" of cloaking activity would be rather unnerved if they saw the cloaker "moving".

Look at it this way: SCUBA divers KNOW there are sharks below the water at the beach. People know sharks are in the ocean. Ever fly over a beach in a helicopter and see all the sharks amongst the people in the water (I have, from a CH-47 "shithook" in Italy). Every time I see aerial pics of that I know that if the people in the water could see what I was seeing their beach outing would have a bit more.... "edge" to it.

Meh. You can't post without someone getting buttmad. I'll just be ignoring the "hurf durf if u dont like it dont play eve XD" posts. Good suggestions, though. Being able to see what grid the cloaked ship was on but not warp to the ship, combined with some kind of depth-charge module, like a mid-slot mod that extends Smart Bomb range, for instance, would be a good solution.

People decide to stay docked, but nobody is actually forcing them.


I don't see the issue. Cowards deserve punishment.

It is currently possible to basically shut down activity in a none-empire system by just cloaking up a scanning ship in the middle of nowhere and then going afk. By just coming back once in a while to scan down what is in system and hot drop it if you find something worth the effort, you're either shutting down an entire system or forcing other players to be 100% vigilant (which is no bad thing), but you're putting basically no effort in at your end. That's not interesting, and it's not fun. But, in case you disagree, let's look at the fluff.

Cloaky ships are supposed to be the space boat equivalent of submarines, right? Well submarines aren't invisible. A skilled sonar operator can find a sub given time and means. It should be the same way with cloaks. Utter undetectability makes the game unengaging and uninteresting. If cloaks made ships invisible on-grid and disappear from overview, but only reduced their sig radius significantly for combat scanning purposes, it would stop this dull stalemate from happening. Perhaps some kind of sliding scale should be introduced whereby cloaking skills, module tiers, and implants make a cloaked ship harder (but never impossible) to scan down, versus better scanning skills and equipment making it easier. Even if you don't think of cloaks as the spaceboat answer to submarines, look at any sci-fi where they're featured. Ones where the crew cloaked up and then went for a brew would make for very boring stories.

Move along if this has already been discussed ad nauseum and I'm late to the party; I couldn't find any recent discussions on it with a cursory search.

You know what? Never mind. The flaming is strong with these ones.

You know what? Never mind. The flaming is strong with these ones.

Have faith.
My High Sec Empire cartel lobby is kind of busy right now defending me from imagined threats.

Soon enough, they will get CCP to kill the afk cloaking ability.
High sec serfs must be happy to pay their tithes to their Empire overlords. It is bad for business otherwise.

Have faith.
The null sec cartel lobby is kind of busy right now getting CCP to rob high sec of any ISK generation capabilities.

Soon enough, they will get CCP to kill the afk cloaking ability.
Null sec serfs must be happy to pay their tithes to their overlords. It is bad for business otherwise.

FTFY