Sharing an idea I heard on the Fanfest pub crawl

A one way directional jump bridge module.

1. You fuel it up and get everyone within range
2. Pick a rough destination on the map, no cyno required
3. Click the button and launch the fleet into the unknown
4. Based on the distance travelling the fleet does not necessarily land in the system they were aiming for
5. The fleet itself may also be scattered out over a system or even constellation
6. Everyone gets some amount of jump fatigue of course
7. You have to slow boat / pod express back

Could be an interesting day tripping mechanic.

On the other hand, I've had the problem on multiple occasions that random gank fleets, 5 ppl or less are just uncatchable by 50 ppl +, just by bouncing safe spots and waiting out the safe log off timer.

It's also very, very wrong that the owning side can't force a fight eventually.

These player built gates can be traversed by everyone without the need of payment, but they can be fitted with gateguns and other mods (like having a small gate cover a greater distance than it is supposed to cover with some mods and giving Jump fatigue because of that, while a proper size gate wouldn't give you any fatigue).

The Shotgun into another area of space idea is somewhat nice, as long as it is coupled to the same range of a JB or something. Else it would make moving around large distances really simple. If it's implemented like it's stated there it wayy to easily exploited for simple travelling opportunities. (Travelling from deep nullsec to empire, just blasting yourself near Jita or Amarr. Logging off for the night after your done with your business so you can shoot yourself back again the next day)

if you sit in space you don't own for literally hours, you should be catchable.

NO, this is an utterly terrible idea! No structure should provide a direct non-consensual warp in mechanic on arbitrary ships. This is what the damn combat probes and scanning skills are for after all!

Starting on from this much more feasible idea i would propose the following:

Introduce Cloak Dissolution as a new mechanic that comes with every cloaking devise. Once a cloaking device gets active, it starts accumulating cloak dissolution (either visualize it as another circle around the module or as a "timer" icon in the upper left screen corner that starts to fill up) at a fixed base rate per minute. Once a critical value of cloak dissolution is reached, the cloak deactivates and starts its cooldown phase.

The actual accumulation rate and critical limit can be influenced by ship bonus (like e.g. 33% less rate for covops or 100% more limit for recons, etc...) and by the cloaking skill (like -10% per level to make it meaningful).

Interaction with the new OA structure could then work like active sonar pings that incur additional cloak dissolution on any ship either in range or system wide (maybe depending on size of the OA or rigs/services/whatsoever) and with a varying intervals and dissolution strength (again depending on configuration/size). However, there need to be certain constraints like say no overlapping areas of effect for non system wide OAs and at most one system wide OA with this "sonar" effect.
Furthermore I imagine a few rough limits on the amount of time it takes such a system to decloak a freshly cloaked ship by means of cloak dissolution:

• no combination of effects should be able to force a decloak on a covops at max level in less than 30 minutes
• no covops ship should be able to stay cloaked longer than 3 hours at max level
• regular ships without inherent cloaking bonuses should not be able to stay cloaked very long (maybe something below 1 hour)

I think this mechanic is exactly what could solve the "afk cloaking" disaster. For every active pilot it should be trivially easy to watch his or her cloak dissolution level and either recloak after a forced decloak or simply reset the timer at a save or when in warp in deep space. An actual afk-cloaker on the other hand will be subject to being probed down as soon as his cloak dissolution level reaches the critical point and forces him to decloak. A win for everyone complaining about current cloak mechanics ;)

im in a sov holding player org in a large coalition and have been subject to pizzas cloaky camping campaigns before and we have weathered it where others haven't.

The problem is not the mechanics of cloaking, its the mechanics of covert cynos in conjunction with cloaks.

ive never had issues with the cloak and its effects on a hostile in a system we have sov in, its the instant backup they can bring in in a split second, and the relative safety that backup enjoys from the undock of npc stations.

Don't you feel that without some guidelines/limitations on range, created gates could massively undermine jump fatigue changes?

Gates are ok, fatigueless jump bridges 2.0...less so. Just imo, of course.


edit: or is there an implicit suggestion that they can only link to "adjacent" systems?

I'll confess to being a little unclear on what you're responding to here. I'm assuming it's my post quoting you a page back but that doesn't seem to exactly fit. For one, unless things have changed drastically in the Uni in the last ~1.5 years, Unistas are only allowed in Sov Null under very specific circumstances and are otherwise not allowed in there under pain of eviction from the Uni.

Also you're missing the point a bit with AFK cloaking. The difference between a docked up character and one who is logged off is hair thin. Effectively the docked character can trash talk local, and the logged off one can't. A docked character is otherwise contained and no threat. They will show up on D-Scan or probes if they undock, while a cloaked character is capable of taking indirect action against characters in space without decloaking, and can decloak on-grid with far less warning than other ships appearing on grid. Not all of these are a problem, but on the whole the system is pretty one dimensional and without risk to the cloaked party as things stand.

None of this has anything to do with a Uni fleet looking for a fight though. If you want to provoke a fight with sov holders then attack their in-space assets, simple as that. No one should ever be absolutely forced to fight with no possible way of backing out just because someone comes looking to fight them.

Also, if installing an Observation Array means losing Local and with no comparable replacement I don't see many Null Alliances using them (at least for systems they actually intend to defend) since it's basically shooting yourself in the foot just so you can get a cast to doodle on.

With regards to Observation Arrays [OA], I believe that their effectiveness should be tied to the number of the owning alliances members in the system at that moment in time, possibly with an upper limit. I think the OA could use these alliance ships to help pin-point a hostile ship, naturally if there are a half a dozen cloaked hostile ships it should take longer to pin point them.

This may well lead to a situation where a cloaky camper enters a system and an alliance drops 500 members into the system to pin-point him more quickly, but I don't believe that this is an issue as it should always take xx minutes to pinpoint a ship. This should be long enough to give a cloaky capsuleer time to find a target or transit through a system. However, if he decides to loiter with no intention of fighting he will eventually be tracked down.

The math involved should prevent two capsuleers in a remote system from being able to quickly, if at all pin-point a cloaky pilot.

Essentially, it should require active participation by capsuleers in conjunction with the OA to pin-point anything.

Lets put aside all your unsubstantiated assumptions about other players since clearly you don't understand the basics, and lets focus on other fundamental issues about why the Observation Array is a potentially good thing that can fix the currently broken game mechanics behind cloaking.

There should never come a time when an AFK player is allowed to be deep into enemy territory and completely safe to the degree that they can leave their character unattended for hours on end and expect to come home and find them alive and safe. It's a mechanic so broken that it's insulting to the people who live in the systems they camp. If your'e going to fly into enemy territory, the least that should be expected of you is to be at the controls and actively playing. That's not too much to ask, and having to dodge enemy patrols and countermeasures makes for more exciting and realistic game play both for the hunters and the hunted.

The discussion isn't really about *IF* cloaked campers should be de-cloaked and more about how often and under what circumstances. Should the Observation Array cover an entire constellation and pulse a de-cloaking wave throughout every system regularly? Should multiple OA's send out a stronger and/or more frequent pulse? Should a player's cloaking skill level and ship type affect his chances of being de-cloaked? These are far more interesting issues to discuss.

If you want to carry on about saving the sadistic vestiges of your broken AFK cloaked camping game mechanic there's other threads for that.

for just disrupt and make pew pew you on't care about ennemi control of intel, just wait prime time.