Let's remain civil, as both Zoners and Order too started employing this tactic in some capacity. None of us however is fully aware what are full implications (Order indie capital ships pulled ot house space, for one) or whether procedeer is actually permitted on FL 24/7 RP server.
I have attempted to gather information though skype with the admins whether usage of Cloak and Jump Drive (for any purpose, including pulling people away) to no avail, I pressume admins may not have a clear answer right now. I would like to have community input and also answer in Admin Green and/or Dev Gold concerning what is actual deal with those. Is use of this combo being turned on at the same time:
a) legal action
b) sanctionable according to rule set
c) an exploit that needs dev intervention
I rather have it dealth with rather than wait for unnecesary drama to happen.
Remove cloaks and make the server a better place where people actually have to interact with one another. I personally don't care much for the jumpdrive as with cloaks removed you'll be more than aware that you're about to get beamed somewhere fun.
Not really. The JD MK4 needs a long time to charge and you don't necessarily see it charging when the charge started outside sensor range. That can be seen in the video I posted in the Erzieeffinghero thread. The problem is not related to cloaks, it is only related to cloaks combined with JD MK4, and JD MK4 used on the Geb, which is a baecruiser.
Please don't turn this into another cloaks-are-bad instrument, because the only bad thing about cloaks is the potential to buttcloak people. I rather have 50 people flying around cloaked than 50 people not being logged in, since cloaked people can be cloak-disrupted.
As I understand it, it was intended for cloaks and jump drives to be useable together since the jump drive fuel cells were introduced. Given that this is a PvP balance question, I think it should be Erzie's prerogative to decide if this is to be upheld.
However, there are grey areas. Core and Order indie ID lines prevent the user of the idea to go outside of a select number of systems. However, the focus here is on one's own agency. If you are being jumped, you do not leave the allowed systems; you are being made to. That is why I think that, simply going by logic, being forced to leave the allowed systems can never result in the sanction of the one being forced to jump.
Maybe one could make a case that the one jumping is breaking that ID line, though, as he is basically using the other player as a tool to have that effect. Still, I doubt it is really the intention of the rules to punish people for the random result of blind jumps, which are just natural progressions of the encounter of those two players.
It is because of this that I would suggest that people start asking the question of whether the restriction on cap movements for indies of the Core and the Order are really necessary, given that the majority of factions with capital ships can already move their capital ships wherever they like.
On the tactical side of things, it makes perfect sense from an in-character perspective to de-cloak right on top of someone to forcibly jump them to somewhere far away.
Buuut.
On the fairness side of things, being able to de-cloak on someone and forcibly jump them feels incredibly unfair, especially if they're left in a system far from home.
To play devil's advocate, it's tactically unsound to have a fear of being cloak-jumped while not equipping yourself to counter this. In my eyes, the Order is the faction for nomad hunting. Cloak disruptors should be standard equipment for them - in fact I would even go so far as to allow the Order to purchase cloak disruptors from npc vendors, much like how nomads may purchase cloaks from their own npc vendors. This I feel, would make them feel threatening to nomad players again. Not to mention, the Order has the Resheph, which can mount a disruptor and still maintain 3 CM launchers no problem. Alternatively, the Grizzly can be used for this same purpose to possibly greater effect - only light fighters would be able to escape a Grizzly's pursuit. If such a Cloak Disruptor were implemented, it would require it's own tech cell, so that only the Order could use them.
In my personal opinion, if you're going to cloak-gank someone, be it by actually shooting them or jump-driving them, you should be required to wait 20-30 seconds from the time of your first FULL sentence of RP before de-cloaking next to your intended victim. To me, that feels like a reasonable amount of time, especially if there's the chaos of 8+ people RP'ing all at once. That gives the defending party time to react and fire off cloak disruptors. 10 seconds is... Rather too fast in the spirit of fairness; again, that's just my own opinion, but I have an old-school mindset about me.
As a side note, adding to Foxglove's voice here: It would be nice to at least see Reshephs being granted the ability to travel around house space without ZoI limitations. After all, there should be a reason they call it the Reconnaissance cruiser. With it being a small, light cruiser, it doesn't have nearly as much destructive potential as say, most of the House cruiser vessels. I always loved the Resheph as a potential RP platform, but never had the time to invest in an SRP Sirius-wide version, nor the time to invest climbing Order| ranks to obtain one.
(10-17-2017, 07:57 AM)sindroms Wrote: And this is why we do not usually process things straight from the game logs.
Your ship has been kicked out and back on Erie. The players complaining about the actions of the IRG and others in relation to jump drives must submit a proper report.
As already mentioned back in the Nomad jump drive thread, the usage of a JD to jump someone without their consent is a hostile action by the definition of the server rules and as such must:
1. Be allowed by your ID.
2. Allows the player you jump to defend themselves.
If we combine it with a rule that attacking without roleplay is forbidden, and that players should be given reasonable time to react to hostilities, I think it gets pretty clear that jumping people while cloaked is inadvisable at the very least, unless you provide some RP.
P.S. In the end, it all comes down to the abducted person being made aware that the jump is about to take place in a reasonable amount of time to take some distance/fire CDs/whatever. If cloaking doesn't give away a jump in progress, then it should be done by the person initiating the jump, even if it's as simple as: *Your sensors pick up ripples in time and space as a wormhole is about to emerge in the area.*
In a quick thought jump drive should be included in the game as well as cloaks as they are both very real in today's time. The military has special paint that bends light around an object. However it may be that cloaks in the game may be a little to powerful maybe having them cause a distortion to their background would help balance the equation.
On a more pressing note I think the use of jump drives as weapons is brilliant. The only thing I would say is that even though it has a long charge time it is less desirable to not have any control on your situation. as most space games have interdictor ships. I think that at the cost of a main gun a ship cruiser on up could mount a interdiction module. This would keep any ship withing its range from performing a jump. Which in-turn would require the attacking party to eliminate the interdictor ships before attempting a jump. It also limits the number of interdictors in a fleet, and gives the fleet assets to protect. Sort of a support version of ships.
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