Cloaking Counter

Mostly I developed this idea in response to the “make cloaking devices take fuel/capacitor” ideas. I felt that the cloaking device itself didn’t need a change and would rather see new gameplay, roles, ships, and skill introduced, offering a wider variety of combat to eve players.

With this in mind I also didn’t want to destroy the role of covert ops as scouts, bombers, covert cynos, etc. My goal was to eliminate the “AFK cloaker”, mostly because I feel everything in eve should have a counter and nobody should be 100% safe, especially in space surrounded by hundreds of reds. In my mind there is something wrong about logging into eve, cloaking up at a safespot, and going to work/school/out drinking and still having an impact on gameplay because at any moment you could come back to the keyboard and light a covert cyno. The covert ops class/module is fine, so long as it has a counter.

The exact details of my suggestion can of course be tweeked, such as the ship used and the time it takes, but here’s the example.

First, I think this would be a great role for another T2 destroyer class. Destroyers just seem to “fit” the role of sub hunter. They’re pretty small and agile without quite being a frigate, they don’t have a ton of tank, but they can put out a decent amount of DPS. Plus… Destroyer! So we need a new T2 Destroyer class that can fit new probes/probe launcher. CCP could use the current expanded probe launcher and give the T2 destroyer a bonus to using it, or we could have a new one complete with new skills. A new type of probe charge would be needed.

These new probes have a 10 minute cycle time (They could also be 10-15 minutes, adjustable by skill level and/or ship bonus). That is, from the moment you hit scan, the scan takes 10 minutes to complete. There is no signal strength to this probe, it is always 100% on any cloaked object it finds. To successfully find one though the cloaked object cannot have changed grid and must be in the radius of at least 4 probes (to give you a single point). These probes are 64 AU, large enough to scan a small system in one swipe, but it could make scanning larger systems difficult.

Here are the reasons for some of this. The 10 minutes gives a scout plenty of time to change grids. All they would have to do, if they were active and at the keyboard, is warp to a planet and back to the gate or whatever they are watching. Probes will not find them. However, someone that is AFK will not have changed grids during this time. Signal strength always at 100 (as long as 4 probes get a hit) because, with a 10 minute scan time, trying to narrow a target down would take ages.

Once a signature is hit on you can warp to it. Once you land you still need to decloak the target though. So this favors small fleets working together, interceptors and the like spreading out on landing and people assigning drones to them so they can try to decloak the target. Signature location is given for where the target is at the end of the 10 minute cycle time. So an AFK cloaked target that was burning in some direction would have a head start (depending on the distance the fleet had to warp), but could still be found if ships spread out quick enough.

I think this makes cloaked ships virtually invulnerable so long as they are at the keyboard. Even if they stayed on grid for 10 minutes they could warp when the fleet is spotted on d-scan, or when they land and just aren’t in range to decloak. However, it makes it fairly easy to find a target that’s AFK and just burning in one direction.