I don't understand this 'nullsec AFK ratting' concept

PvE Gameplay Center PvE Ships & Modules
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o7 capsuleers,

I’m relatively new to New Eden, less than 7 million skill points, and having a blast. I’m lucky enough to have found a great group of people to play with out in nullsec, and when I’m not hacking cans I have been having a good time and making steady ISK doing combat anomalies in one of these 100mn afterburner VNI’s that seem to be pretty popular for null ratting.

I like actively playing/piloting my ship and when I get up from the computer I always either dock up or cloak up (if i have a cloak fitted) - just seems to be common sense / best practice.

However, browsing around on the forums I keep seeing references to ‘AFK ratting VNI’s’ and not that I would even play the game like that - but I don’t understand how that would work out in null. Neutrals / reds are out there roaming around, and I know from experience how fast they can scan you down and warp in on your ass - and if you’re AFK, you’re space junk.

Indeed, if I was to roam around myself looking for prey out there, I would probably specifically look for these type of players. Also, if i’m AFK i can’t keep an eye on my shield/capacitor, I can’t see the intel channel, I can’t know if that occasional Dreadnought has spawned, and I can’t do much as far as targeting new rats after I’ve killed the ones I’ve got locked (auto targeting systems don’t seem to do much of anything).

So I guess my question is - why would anyone go AFK in nullsec when they’re ratting?

o7

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The only afk rating I heard of is VNI ratting.

This is a fit that relies on the high speed/sig of a VNI fitted with an oversized prop (100mn compact) to handle the rats DPS easily. Thus it can be fit with DDA that increase its DPS to 600-700 ish.

A correct fit costs around 120M and can easily achieve 60M isk/h (more if loot /salvage).
It only needs to setup(orbit something, launch drones, activate propmod) , and then it’s almost afk for 20 min.

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Shows that you are new. :slight_smile: Large parts of null sec are completely deserted. You can run anomalies for hours without seeing a single other user in your system. Furthermore, a typical ratting VNI cost is recovered within just 5 ratting ticks, or barely 2 hours.

That’s all irrelevant. Your drones automatically aggro for you, you don’t need to check intel, you have (if at all) Near2 that gives you sound warnings if someone comes close to your system, you don’t care about dreads.

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Catching one of these thing’s even afk can mean the loss of your ship, you can’t scram it and switch off your mwd because it will burn out of scram range, you can’t leave your mwd on either as the drone’s will eat you alive with your sig bloom, hell they will even perfectly track your small ship even without mwd on.

Most roamers are using small ship’s because they are the only ones able to move around space quick enough to not waste a huge amount of hours looking for ship’s.

The VNI has such a huge abundance of fitting space that allow’s this to happen so lot’s of people are abusing it while they can because sooner or later the VNI is getting a huge fitting nerf.

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Which will be a great pity for those of us who use it as a ‘workhouse’ without going AFK…

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There are hundreds of ships that can do the same thing but can’t do it afk.

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Please name the ship that’s nearest to the VNI in all respects but does meet your approval, so I can see how much of my isk and training you’re going to waste on my behalf if your ‘nerf’ goes through.

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I’m not going to waste anything of your’s, just be prepared :]

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nope.

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I mean’t finish the site in the same time…are you saying there are no other ships that can tank the dps while doing 700 dps? make it 500 because of drone travel time. A macherial or Astarte will finish the site’s much much quicker.

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At some point 120m vexor would be nothing for you. And it would save hell lots of your time irl. Like, I can make isk while I read book, clean house or do any other stuff. I lost it? Pfft, just buy a new one.

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They do not need to nerf anything, the only things that need to change is auto agro, auto hits and auto targeting.

  1. Change the way drone agro works, make it work only for 1st agro target after being launched or put on assist. Then it will need to retarget manually, either by original pilot or assist controller.

  2. Change the way auto missiles work, make them manually activate / launch only, maybe up to 3 volleys max, or something like that. Want to launch more ? Hit the damn button then.

  3. Change the way auto targeting in the game works, this is extremely important as it helps a lot in botting and AFKing alike. Remove the target back option found under settings altogether, completely. Any normal player, even PvE player, has it disabled anyways because it messes up with kill / target order etc. and of course PvP players have it disabled cause it causes all sorts of issues. It is only and exclusively used by bots and AFKers and needs to be removed from the game.

  4. Change the way targeting computers work, same as above, instead of doing what they do now, keep the passive bonus and either give them a 2nd passive bonus (like significantly more sensor strength) or let them cut through ECM / Damps, for example when active, you can pick one target and target it normally despite Damp / ECM. This would be another helpful thing vs botting / AFKing while at the same time helping somewhat in other areas of ship balance, the module itself is self balancing since it takes up a slot and if it does become more powerful, it can also have increased PG/CPU reqs over the current ones.

In addition in helping to address the whole AFK / multibox problem it would also impact botting a lot as many bots will have to be changed and the ones that do remain will have to now spam automatic inputs to retarget everything always thus making them that much easier to detect.

But none of things like this will ever happen cause CCP needs bots to shore up their “active playing accounts” numbers as well as will never dare to offend any of the multiboxers / AFKers / botters. And on top of that, things like killing 2 birds with 1 stone type of moves are just way too complicated for them. I firmly believe that CCP simply no longer has the personnel capable to think in such terms, much less correctly impliment anything of this nature.

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I want to believe!

But to be honest there is even more abuses with drone’s like the ability to launch your drones on a single target and fly 400km’s away while your drones slowly kill the target, using this method a new bro 1 week old can do lvl 3 fw missions in a drone ship.

But I guess it’s not really called abuse if its still in the game, must be intentional.

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Its not 400km, do not exaggerate. I forgot the number but I have flown into that limit many times and do so on regular basis, even actively playing. You can fit your ship for extended drone control range, but those modules are rather resource intensive and each one gives you what 25 ish km give or take ? ( I forgot but I think its CPU ) to the point where I very rarely use them at all anymore cause they cut into the tank, or mobility or whatever else on the ship too much making them not worth it.

In addition, you still have to come into both your targetting and control range to put your drones on a target. They do continue to kill the target, but only just the one and they become inactive / drop all agro, if there are no more agressive targets withing your ships targetting range. they just become kinda inert and sit there even when being hit by other ships. Sometimes when you are at the edge of either control or targetting and dip in and out you will see like 1 or 2 out of your 5 drones still engage another target if its on auto agro and it usually gets killed because its not strong enough by itself to kill whatever is killing it.

Also, after doing this sort of thing, you have to come back for your drones or have to abandon them. You can’t AFK rat while abandoning drones on every target you kill like that. You run out of drones very quick. Trust me, it doesn’t work out.

Now I could actually see that in 1 vs 1 or small scale PvP scenario where you don’t care, jsut say “screw it” abandon / lose drones as long as they kill the other guy, or in some cases force him to withdraw. But not in PvE / ratting. You need those drones.

Which brings me to another point, drone agro. Drone agro is actually pretty good and you do lose drones a lot. The reason why people do not is because they macro / bot, have the drones return or swap drone groups or alike when their shields get below X number. Of course, they all will say that they don’t but yea, actually they fkn do.

Last but not least, its not the just the ships, but the mobs, the way the anoms work that needs a huge change. Having a couple random here and there super fast scramming / webbing frigs of random faction warp in on such a VNI or Gila or anything else AFK ratting like this for that matter, would go to great lengths to put a huge dent in it, it is a simple solution which any active player can deal with easily, but again, CCP is incapable and / or unwilling or both.

15

Waaaaiiiiiit… Are you saying that anomalies have to change like I have been saying for only 6 years now.

Awesome how quickly mankind catches up.

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