Not necessarily because if it’s a bot going 23/7 then they generally dock up soon as you enter.
TL;DR: the AFK ratter makes obscene amounts of ISK, so much that it’s warping the entire EVE economy. The AFK cloaker accomplishes nothing while AFK, other than having a name in local. So yes, there is a difference in how vulnerable each of them is. AFK PvE players can have the same safety level as an AFK cloaked ship when they give up all of their PvE income.
If your response is “Have a response fleet ready”, then you need to realize this person is cloaky camping 23/7. Not only is it unrealistic for any group to have a standing fleet up ALL DAY (other than insanely large alliances like horde, test, goons, NC, ect.), but it’s also unrealistic to expect them to be able to react in time. Especially, when dealing with something like the mar5hy camp or goon camp of Kalevala/Deklein. It’s simply unrealistic to respond to such a large area in time 23/7…
Then don’t farm 23/7. Accept that farming is something you can do when your group is active, and you aren’t entitled to be able to log on at any time and solo rat at maximum ISK/hour. The problem is not that defending PvE is unrealistic, it’s that entitled PvE players insist that anything less than maximum farming efficiency is unacceptable.
Alternatively, it makes local a far more effective tool. If I wanted to, I could put cloaky eyes in all of delve/geminate/fountain and give you the location of any player in those regions simply based on local. I would take 0 risk in doing so and gain an insane amount of intel.
Exactly. Therefore nerf local.
It’s also most certainly not supposed to be a social tool, considering that 0% of players talk in local lol…
Wrong. CCP has explicitly stated that they originally intended local to be primarily a social tool and that its importance as an intel tool surprised them.
You’re not supposed to know whether hes there or not. That’s the whole point.
What’s broken is that you know exactly the moment a bad guy enters the system. Afk cloaking is used to make it less obvious as to whether a system is safe to rat in or not.
Intel should require effort too.
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Counter what, the cloaked ship can’t do anything.
And don’t say cyno because that is what cyno inhibitors are for.
Ok i wont say cyno… covert cynos on the other hand cannot be stoped by a cyno inhib and are often fit to the same ship thats doing the cloaky camping
Are you also saying that goonswarm’s cloaky camping campain is for nothing more than gathering intel and is not an attempt to ruin the game for others so that they wont log in by abusing cloaking and the fact that EVE dosen’t kick inactives
I agree, it does help with botters, and that’s a great thing…
Although, I would argue that it’s CCP’s job to stop botters, not ours. That being said, this is by far the best reason to keep cloaky campers.
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They’re there to try and kill you if you undock. If you aren’t in some way prepared for that, why are you in null?
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Too funny, so your sov alliance can’t handle a black ops fleet?
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OWWWW dammit I didn’t have my tinfoil hat on! 
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A good pvp’er will always choose when and where he engages his targets, and he’ll have good intel.
That’s how skirmishes are won, that’s how bots are killed, etc
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Covert cynos have a limited class of ships that can use them. If your enemy drops in a black ops fleet you warp in your capitals and say “thanks for the killmails”.
an attempt to ruin the game for others so that they wont log in
Welcome to EVE, where the game is all about ruining it for everyone else and you either kill the guy trying to ruin your fun or join the pile of failures. If the presence of a name is ruining the game for you so badly that you can’t even log in then you and/or your alliance suck at EVE. The solution is to get better or go back to WoW, not to whine on the forums until CCP gives you your 23/7 risk-free PvE farming space.
When people reference covert cyno that’s when you know they are theory crafting 
@Mike_Voidstar hey I was ratting in a system with an AFK cloaky. You told me this was not possible. Please reply. 
AFK cloakers have no impact on the game.
They have an impact on how others perceive the game.
This is an issue of human psychology, not game mechanics, and last time I checked CCP can’t patch the human brain.
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You are so polite, they are afraid to undock, pixel fear is real! 
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Agreed, a good pvp’er will choose when and where he engages targets. Usually they choose carefully, but they don’t have to with cloaky camping. There’s no challenge in finding a good fight. PvP should be a challenge, more so than PvE.
I fly around lowsec looking for fights (not on this account obviously lol), but every time I warp to a site I risk losing my ship. That’s the price I pay for my intel. However, if I just started cloaky camping I would run no risk and get to choose my fights for free. So, why would I ever roam lowsec again? (point being the free intel isn’t given in other forms of pvp)
is that why there’s a thread with 4400+ replies
No that’s because there are 1000s of people who are afraid to undock. They are also afraid to undock if the person is in a station other than their own.
It is not a cloaking issue, it is a pixel fear issue
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There are a lot of bears in nullsec…