From Beyond The Veil

Ever since I've started reading science fiction, I've been in love with the concept of the invisibility cloak. When I first started playing EVE I built a meticulous skill plan that would steer my character into flying Stealth Bombers and Force Recons.

Then I got sidetracked by solo frigate PvP for about two years. Thanks Wensley.

As I began my solo piracy career, I started understanding EVE combat and EVE pilot psychology. As I understood what makes people in lowsec tick. I realized that the best way to get fights was to be visible, rather than invisible. If people know you are there, they can come to kill you, and if they want to kill you, you can turn the tables, and kill them instead. My wish for better performance in my chosen frigate world skewed my training plan onto more and more support skills and more and more cross-training of other racial hulls and weapon systems. The cloak was, for a time, forgotten.

But the dream of appearing off someone's bow and opening fire with little to no warning never quite died and as my long and winding path towards Force Recons seemed to get me nowhere, CCP did something rather unexpected.

They released the Astero.

At a first glance, the Astero is nothing more than a glorified, expensive, exploration frig. And it is fortunate that quite a few people I've shot at thought so. It is a very capable combat ship that can be fit in many different ways ranging from passive/active armor fits, to shield gank fits, brawlers, kiters and pretty much anything in between. It can even be Hull and EWAR-tanked quite effectively with the advent of hull HP rigs, if you're truly inclined to hull-tank your ~80mil (not including fit!) investment.

But, this is not a post about the Astero. Rather I wanted to write about cloaky solo piracy in EVE in general, so fitting the Astero for PvP is left as an exercise to the reader (I've always wanted to write that, so here I go).

So, back on track: The Astero brought my frigate world right in-line with my desire to kill people who have no idea I am even there, and allowed me to practice the art of stalking other pilots in a way I could not do it before. As I started flying the Astero, and later, the Stratios, I realized a few things about lowsec pilots:

1. They love their D-scan. If you are not on the scanner, then you do not exist. Even if you are the only person in local. Even if you're not docked in any station in the system. Even if your last 50 recorded kills are with a cloaky combat ship of some kind.
2. People love to fall into patterns, and this isn't true just for newbies or bad pilots. It seems like most people will go top belt to bottom (or bottom to top), while looking for Clone or Mordu's rats. To do it in an even more silly fashion, they will always warp in at the same range.
3. People under-estimate ships they do not frequently see, and which do not have much of a reputation in the common wisdom.
4. People go AFK in space when they feel secure. They, at times, do this at various celestials, such as empty moons, or next to a defenseless POS.

The above points provide you ample opportunity to catch people unaware if you're flying a combat ship equipped with a cloak. For example:

1. People go about their business if they cannot detect you? Good. You can follow them around, cloaked, and gather intel on their fit (via "look at"), check the range at which they warp to places, check if they have friends within help range (pop into neighboring systems to check for traps), and so on. As a defense against predators, don't ever assume that you're unseen just because d-scan is clear. Never loiter on gates or stations, you're giving people free intel.
2. I have killed dozens of people who went about their ratting in a predictable fashion: Top to bottom, or bottom to top, warp to belt at 0km. It amazes me that people would do that when they are not alone in a lowsec system. To be honest, I've been guilty of this as well, and I paid for it before, but the fact I've sinned so doesn't make the activity any less idiotic. Don't pounce immediately, warp to the belt where they are on d-scan and assess the situation. If they at the zero and unaligned, you can de-cloak and go for it. If they aren't, follow them in their next warp and see where they land. You will catch them one belt after that (even if that will happen in the next system). If you're on the prey side of things: Don't ever, ever, ever warp predictably. Cover the system's belts in a random (or nearly random) pattern. Never warp in at the same range: A 20km shift in landing point will be often enough to save you from a cloaky scram-ranged pirate, and doesn't delay your rat murder by long. Finally, stay aligned, as much as possible! Of course, if you are alone in a system, do what the hell you like.
3. The Astero aside, combat Cov-Ops frigates are viable. I suggest you experiment with a hulltanked Helios in EFT. The extra mids are quite helpful to mitigate enemy frigate DPS, and few frig pilots will refuse to engage a Helios that has "de-cloaked by mistake."
4. You're cloaked: Warp to POSes, check celestials, people really do AFK in silly places. Obviously, if you're prone to go AFK in silly places...well, don't!

That said, cloaky combat suffers from a visible drawback: The de-cloaking delay to targeting. Often you will creep up to a target, de-cloak, spam lock and have it warp off just as your locking timer expires. It is CCP's way of balancing cloaky ganks, and while rigs can reduce the de-cloaking penalty ("Targeting System Stabilizier" of the appropriate size is the relevant one), they consume valuable rig slots which makes them useful for ganks, but less-than-optimal for killing people flying PvP ships.

There are a few solutions, however:

1. Make sure you de-cloak when your target is unaligned (do a look at and see where they are headed) to gain valuable time to lock them. While this won't let a Stratios catch a frigate unaware, the Astero will often be able to catch a frigate or a destroyer hull sufficiently off-guard to lock and point it before the pilot can align and warp out.
2. Make sure to de-cloak when your target is at a disadvantage to catch them further off guard. Someone who is pointed by rats is not likely to manage to kill them before you tackle him and someone who is busy shooting NPCs is paying less attention to his surroundings. Use this to your advantage but keep in mind the NPC tendency to switch targets to the person who is killing the person who was killing them. What a bunch of ungrateful pricks.
3. Engage when your target is exiting warp. This can be done against belt ratters by predicting where they will go next and de-cloaking as they decelerate from warp (they will see you there, but they are helpless and all the while your de-cloak targeting delay is ticking away). This can be done against faction warfare mission runners by warping to a newly activated mission beacon at 20km (which will not de-cloak you on landing) and waiting for them to appear. This can even be done against mission and site runners by spooking them out of the site and then sitting cloaked on the entrance gate or right inside the first room. You will be amazed by the  greed of people who will return to their site after being chased out.

Finally, the most important trait of the cloaky hunter is patience. You're not just looking for a fight!You're aiming to bend the engagement to your favor before it even begins by collecting intel and striking when your target is at its most vulnerable. Stalking prey does not provide instant gratification, but the ability to give someone a true "Oh Shit!" moment is absolutely priceless.

Give it a try, you might like your inner psychopathic stalker self.