OK, the basic issue is not that cloaking as a mechanic is 'broken',
it's not that having a pilot in a system who cannot be 'found' is scary;

It is the use of cloaking AND cyno together that is the core issue. A pilot in a cloaked ship at a well made safespot is COMPLETELY SAFE from attack by defending pilots until he decides to uncloak. If he then uses a cyno, the ships that come in, can avoid using defendable gates or closable wormholes in order to enter and leave the system anywhere in that system... this is, of course, the EVE famous "hotdrop". When the cloaky/cyno pilot hotdrops a PvP fleet onto PvE ships or mining shps, the aggressors have an unbalanced advantage.

OK, so change the cloak & cyno mechanic so that NO SHIP IN EVE CAN FIT A CLOAK AND A CYNO AT THE SAME TIME.

This is the simplest solution... CPU needs for a cloak are extreme and require a special ship type... ok, a slight change to the Cynosaural Field Generator module and if any cloak is fitted, active or not, a cyno CANNOT ever have enough CPU to be onlined even with a full set of CPU mods in the low slots.

Cloaks and cloaking is totally unaffected in W-space.

In null, AFK Cloakers are not affected in thier intel gathering and safety while cloaked... they just can't be the focal point of an indefensable incursion by a fleet into a system anymoar.

You want to open a cyno? Have your cloaky make a BM or sit on the desired warp in point and your cyno ship has to risk the run through the gate/hole then risk the run to the cloaky or BM and THEN you can light off your cyno and make with the violencing of boats... and the people in the system have a chance to organize a response.... fight back or dock up. Don't like em docking up? Fine... keep your fleet in there and you can risk that to carry out your Income Denial Op instead of ONE lone AFK char...

Who knows? Mebbe the ability of the defenders to actuallly fight back in PvP fitted ships instead of being hotdropped in PvE ships might just stir up a response and get you some PvP... only on moar balanced terms for all....

Go ahead, rage and cry about how unfair this would be... and how I suc at life because I want to fight back in a ship that stands a chance of winning.

...

It is the use of cloaking AND cyno together that is the core issue. A pilot in a cloaked ship at a well made safespot is COMPLETELY SAFE from attack by defending pilots until he decides to uncloak. If he then uses a cyno, the ships that come in, can avoid using defendable gates or closable wormholes in order to enter and leave the system anywhere in that system... this is, of course, the EVE famous "hotdrop". When the cloaky/cyno pilot hotdrops a PvP fleet onto PvE ships or mining shps, the aggressors have an unbalanced advantage.

...

I've read the proposal. And also read the answers to see if they provided something interesting.

Not.

AFK cloakers are part of the risk of living in nullsec. Deal with it or go back to empire space.

NO, the only thing you'll do with this sort of idea is make bots more profitable than ever.

Is it what you want?

Cloak fuel is an interesting idea. I didn't read a lot of this thread because there seemed to be a lot of unentertaining flaming going on. So If these suggestions have been mentioned before, forgive me for reinventing the wheel.

Cloaks could have a cycle time on the order of 5 minutes, like the siege or triage cycle does now.

I suggest liquid ozone as the cloak fuel.

A cloak's fuel consumption could be based on the module type, the pilot's skill with cloaking, and the mass or class of the ship. Ships designed to be used with cloaks, like blops, coverts and recons would receive substantial bonuses to fuel consumption.

New ship class specific (frigate, cruiser, battleship, capital) cloaks could be introduced, perhaps even the recon cloaks and the black ops cloak modules to handle those special cases.

As a consolation to such changes, other bonuses for skill with cloaking could be introduced, like the reduction of the ship velocity and scan res penalties - yeah more numbers for the servers to crunch.

Removing a cloaked ship from local sounds interesting but I can imagine the lag caused by a squad of stealth bombers decloaking on a fleet. How about just getting rid of local? It might cure some lag.

I have no opinion about AFK cloakers

If you want to get rid of cloacker just be on top after DT, ready to probe and cloacky characters on your watch list.

So your solution is to wake up at 3 in the morning every day (if you live in the US) then hope that you can probe someone down faster than they can land on grid and hit the cloak button. And if you fail, whelp better luck tomorrow at 3:00 am. Then you go on about people "not putting in enough effort" to get rid of afk cloakers. Good grief.

add a fuel bay to cloaking devices, make it so people actually have to kill each other in actual fights rather than just lazy hot dropping.

AFK cloaking has become one of the key issues with EVE, 1 person can shut down an entire alliances PVE for as long as they wish. Faction battleships people have worked hard on sit in hanger and don't get used, and how many do you think log on to play, notice and afk cloaker and no pvp ops atm and just change skills and log off instead of actually playing the game?

I know many including me that do it all the time.

Sure, you can try to trap, until you get hotdropped by 20-40, it is normal protocol for almost EVERY nullsec alliance to just not rat with a cloak in system afk or not. [/quote}
System Cyno Jammers. Problem Solved.
And no it is not normal protocol, I rat with CLOAKERS all the time. And I don't buy ships I can't afford to lose, in fact i just lost a 100mil Tornado and my alliance just lost two Carriers. But we never fly what we can't afford to lose.

Yes it is an answer, local is nonexistent in WH's and never I mean NEVER is it as easy as a 30 second dscan. In fact it would be even easier to implement security in 0.0, you know the entrances and exists, pay a guy 5 mil per site you run to watch gates and call jumps. And that, by the way, is a very balanced means of protection.

[quote=GuRasta]The current system makes 1 smug and 30 annoyed and discourages play, it should be apparent it is not good for the longevity of EVE online.

The Solution: Cloaks should require something along the lines of "liquid Nitrogen" to "cool your thermal signature"

By causing every cycle of the cloak to consume some fuel from cargo it would effectively prevent afk cloaking, while having almost no effect on active cloakers or pvp. It would be a huge boost to nullsec pve, give players more options when they sign on, and stop the 20-30 ppl being annoyed over 1 person cloaking then going to work, if you need to be gone that long players should be forced to log off. It is time something to be done to correct this issue, as I and many others I'm sure strongly believe it is in the best interest for EVE and its future.

Yes it is an answer, local is nonexistent in WH's and never I mean NEVER is it as easy as a 30 second dscan. In fact it would be even easier to implement security in 0.0, you know the entrances and exists, pay a guy 5 mil per site you run to watch gates and call jumps. And that, by the way, is a very balanced means of protection.

If he is really AFK... THEN RUN THE D@MN SITES and quit b****ing, else its not AFK cloaking and it is a legit form of gameplay. If cloakers have to carry fuel, then where will they carry their munitions? you would effectively take any ship that can use that and make them so underpowered and overwhelmed that they couldn't be used, all so you can run your sites in "Safety", news flash, it's 0.0! It's not supposed to be safe!

And thank god you are not in charge of CCP, if you were we would be even worse off than before Crucible came out. You think you know what's best for EvE and I doubt you even know whats best for wiping your own arse.

Theres a reason almost every null sec alliance tells people to not rat with cloaky in system wether active or not, why don't you ask them? You'd rather me tell you? Ok, maybe its because even if theres a 1% chance for them to come back/hot drop it makes it illogical to rat with faction bs, use t1 bs you say? you obviously dont have a marauder or faction bs in hanger then because then you'd know almost any of them would rather log than rat for half the ticks and risk being a lawl on the kb, not to mention many alliances will kick you out for losing a ratting ship while ratting with a red/nuet in system. Sure trying to trap sometimes works, but not agaisnt afk's, are you really going to sit in a sanc for 3 hours with a bait bs? not to mention they could just come back and hotdrop 20 in on you anyway. Normal protocol for null sec alliances is to not rat with cloaky in system, because the mechanics and risk of it make it an illogical decision, and effectively allow 1 afk cloaker to shut down an entire alliances pve for literally days on end. I'm seeing more trolling going on than reasoning, and until some1 without a smartass answer disagrees with a logical pro/con list of why i'll keep the troll bat ready. Ending afk cloaking and provide a means to kill botters/severely hinder what botters can do while providing almost no detriment to actual cloak usage? Even the trolls should agree, but then again I guess trolls aren't very smart.