Main AFK cloaky thread

[Ridley_Rohan]

@Merin_Ryskin

If the net effect of AFK cloaking is a 0.0001% drop in income then it’s absurd to use that loss as justification for changes. If the net effect is a 99.9999% drop in income for even the most skilled and determined players then it is justification for a change.

If you want to believe that range is literally possible to the point it needs to quantified in an exact manner, I am not going to try and stop you. If that is what you believe I scarcely think convincing you otherwise is in the realm of possibility.

I will however point out that I am not a CCP employee of any kind and I don’t have access to the data I would need for some sort of calculation, nor is anyone paying me to do the tasks of 1) formulating how to produce such calculations or 2) the time it would take to do it all.

But since people (and I certainly thought you did) believe that AFK cloaky camping has a positive ISK effect to the corp/alliance of the camper and more importantly, a negative ISK effect to the folks being camped, that the practice had enough one-sided value that consideration of changes had validity. But apparently, you do not, and I will accept an impass on this rather than go into beating a dead horse.

@Merin_Ryskin

(Of course let’s be honest here,

Yes. I like honesty. Although I have to clarify I am not much interested in the honesty of people presenting their raw, irrational emotions, or the honesty of boldly pushing real bias despite knowing its a sham. I like the sort of honesty that has an aim in finding the general, universal-as-possible truth of matters, whether they be pleasant for the individual or not. One such truth is that people cannot read minds, and divining people’s specific reasons for whatever is fraught with difficulties…to wit:

@Merin_Ryskin

the reason you don’t want to quantify it is that the drop in income is small for skilled players and only significant for low-skill renters.)

Incorrect and based on I don’t even know what. Honestly.

@Merin_Ryskin

Once again: the status quo is the default assumption, the burden of proof is on you as the person proposing a change.

I would once again like to welcome you to the idea thread. This is a place for presenting and discussing ideas. Where this isn’t, is a board room where a hard and fast decision is going to be made and where adversarial debate is necessary to shake out the truth.

This is like a nursery school but you keep trying to force these baby ideas to take college entrance exams already. Slow down a bit.

@Merin_Ryskin

It doesn’t matter how much AFK cloaking costs RMT botters because I don’t have to justify anything.

If the only group AFK cloaky campers affected were botters I would be a superfan too. But it also affects honest small time corporations in competition with large alliances, or so is my belief from what I have read. I can’t say I have direct experience in that but even if I did, what would my experience be compared the experiences of thousands of other players?

And if that alone is going to be used to insist I am wrong then please direct me to some facts and figures that prove that at least the overwhelming majority of “players” directly negatively impacted by AFK cloaky camping are in fact those dreaded botters.

[Merin_Ryskin]

@Ridley_Rohan

Incorrect and based on I don’t even know what.

Based on your reluctance to quantify the income reduction. The most likely explanation is that you know the income loss numbers (to everyone but botters and bot-like players) are relatively low and presenting the honest numbers for discussion would be a death blow to your case for cloaking changes. Therefore you have to keep it vague and maintain the illusion that income losses are real and relevant.

This is like a nursery school but you keep trying to force these baby ideas to take college entrance exams already. Slow down a bit.

This thread has been open for literal years, following a similar thread on the old forums. And every single idea being proposed here has been proposed and refuted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. We are way past “nursery school” level discussion here.

And if that alone is going to be used to insist I am wrong then please direct me to some facts and figures that prove that at least the overwhelming majority of “players” directly negatively impacted by AFK cloaky camping are in fact those dreaded botters.

Again, burden of proof. You want a change, you provide the information that justifies it. But if you want a starting point you might look at the complete absence of complaining about AFK cloaking in wormholes, and the fact that complaints about AFK cloaking almost inevitably come from players whining about the fact that they can’t solo farm without an empty system and AFK cloaking won’t let them have an empty system. AKA bot-like players whose only conceivable response to PvP threats is to dock and wait until it leaves.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Gerard_Amatin

How would it bedangerous for the afk cloaked ‘hunters’?

If they see a sizable defence force in local, they won’t engage. Hence, low risk kills only.

You forget that these cloaking ships turn into a fleet sufficiently large enough to wipe out any defense force you have. Happens every single time…if you listen to those who complain the most about cloaks.

[Merin_Ryskin]

@Teckos_Pech

You forget that these cloaking ships turn into a fleet sufficiently large enough to wipe out any defense force you have. Happens every single time…if you listen to those who complain the most about cloaks

It’s tragic that this tactic only works for the AFK cloakers and can’t be used by the defenders. I really have no idea what CCP was thinking when they made it so that ships can’t jump to a cyno unless the cyno ship has been AFK in the system for at least 48 hours.

[Jint_Hikaru]

@Merin_Ryskin

It’s tragic that this tactic only works for the AFK cloakers and can’t be used by the defenders. I really have no idea what CCP was thinking when they made it so that ships can’t jump to a cyno unless the cyno ship has been AFK in the system for at least 48 hours.

If only this could somehow be used as a counter or “trap” for the cloaker in system. But alas, there is no counter to a cloaked vessel or so i’ve been told so many times in this thread.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Jint_Hikaru

If only this could somehow be used as a counter or “trap” for the cloaker in system. But alas, there is no counter to a cloaked vessel or so i’ve been told so many times in this thread.

It’s a perfectly viable and good option of counterplay against cloaky campers!

But it’s not really engaging gameplay for anyone involved sit in a counterdrop fleet on standby just in case the cloaky is actually active and not, say, at work or sleeping.

I like the gameplay of cloaks. I like bombing, using cloaks to explore unseen, stalking enemy players and cloaky camping. I like cloaked gameplay and the counterplay involved.

The only thing I don’t like is afk cloaky camping. Afk cloaky camping requires next to no effort for the afk player, yet requires the same effort for the defender as if the cloaked player were actually active (provided they don’t want to die stupid avoidable deaths), yet with much less of the fun interactive stuff like fighting and baiting, because the other player isn’t actually interacting with the game most of the time.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Merin_Ryskin

It’s tragic that this tactic only works for the AFK cloakers and can’t be used by the defenders. I really have no idea what CCP was thinking when they made it so that ships can’t jump to a cyno unless the cyno ship has been AFK in the system for at least 48 hours.

Nice strawman.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Teckos_Pech

You forget that these cloaking ships turn into a fleet sufficiently large enough to wipe out any defense force you have. Happens every single time…if you listen to those who complain the most about cloaks.

While I don’t complain about cloaks (just the afk variety) I can maybe explain this point a bit more:

When people can choose when and if to engage at their own terms, it’s not surprising that pretty much any time they engage they will have enough people to do so. Otherwise they wouldn’t engage. Does that make sense?

This is also one of the base principles of fights in EVE: no fight is fair and if you’re in a fair fight one of you messed up.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Gerard_Amatin

When people can choose when and if to engage at their own terms, it’s not surprising that pretty much any time they engage they will have enough people to do so. Otherwise they wouldn’t engage. Does that make sense?

This is true of just about all fights in EVE. If one side sees the risk as being to “large” they won’t engage. Cloaks have little to do with it. Ever since I started playing in NS the number of times I was in a fleet sitting on a titan waiting to bridge only to be told to stand down was quite common.

Second, while it is true a cloaking ship isn’t going to pick a fight where there is a good chance the cloaked ship will be killed, the “instant fleet” was a common refrain from even trying to counter at all. It was a lazy argument for why just doing nothing and whining to Mama and Papa Dev were the only recourse. The “Happens every single time…” was, at least I thought, a degree of sarcasm that would come through a computer screen.

The AFK complaints have always been lazy, unbalanced, and self-serving. Any hint of having to be pro-active on the part of the ratter/krabber has typically been met with resistance. My guess is usually the ratter/krabber is just that and nothing more. Whereas many of the “cloaks are fine” side will rat and krab, that is not all we do. Now, that’s fine if all you want to do is krab. But at the same time, you should have to put in effort to maintain your ability to do it.

There are no new ideas here. I have watched this “discussion” for years. I have gone back and collected “fixes/suggestions/ideas” from the archival record. I have linked them. Dozens of posts if not even a hundred and typically they all have one common factor - huge benefit for the krabber with a huge nerf to cloaks across the board. The suggestions nerf AFK cloaking…and all cloaking.

Discussions around balanced or attempts at balance have taken place multiple times. Typically around a structure that is vulnerable to attack, possibly more vulnerable than other sov based structures (partly because this structure may not be just a sov based thing - you’d want it to work in say NPC NS as well). These discussions exist, they can be found via google. The butthurt recent complaints they are not taking place are silly because they already have. Those who care about balance and not just krabbing away usually participate the other side…not so much.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Gerard_Amatin

Nice strawman.

I think the point is to show the lazy and invalid nature of the argument, as I already noted. This complaint can be levelled at just about any combat situation in EVE where there is a choice to engage or not.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Gerard_Amatin

The only thing I don’t like is afk cloaky camping. Afk cloaky camping requires next to no effort for the afk player, yet requires the same effort for the defender as if the cloaked player were actually active (provided they don’t want to die stupid avoidable deaths), yet with much less of the fun interactive stuff like fighting and baiting, because the other player isn’t actually interacting with the game most of the time.

See, if you truly and honestly are stating your views here, then any nerf to atk cloaking is bad if the intention is to reduce afk cloaking. Nerfing the play style of the player who is “not the problem” is like slapping your sister for something your brother did…stupid, lazy and probably ineffective or will at least have repercussions you really didn’t intend.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Teckos_Pech

See, if you truly and honestly are stating your views here, then any nerf to atk cloaking is bad if the intention is to reduce afk cloaking.

Exactly. I want something to be done about afk cloaky camping with minimal impact on at the keyboard cloaky camping.

I’m not sure whether such a solution exists, but I’d like to discuss the possibilities.

Too bad the only place to discuss those possibilities is this thread.

I’ve done suggestions for this earlier in this thread (and retracted one when I noticed the impact on some regular cloaking strategies was too big), but I still have seen no good counterarguments against my latest suggestion:

(CovOps) Cyno modules slowly leak cyno fuel while cloaked

• cloaking works as normal even without this fuel
• leak rate is slow enough to allow cloaky bomber to camp a system a couple of hours without refueling
• after a day of camping, cloaky campers can engage solo, but cannot cyno in a fleet without getting fuel first

This change will require afk cloaky campers to refuel after a day of cloaky camping (either by leaving system, having a blockade runner move around with fuel or by opening their secret container in system, either of which is a window of vulnerability for the campers).
And this change will barely have any impact on legitimate cloaking strategies. At most a blops fleet may need to bring an extra fuel hauler or restock in between a longer session.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Gerard_Amatin

Exactly. I want something to be done about afk cloaky camping with minimal impact on at the keyboard cloaky camping.

Again these discussions were had. Usually around the promised Observatory Array (OA) CCP referenced years ago. Usually the idea was the default was very little intel via local, then the OA would allow players to “claw back” some of elements of local. How much intel was part of the discussion. I always favored letting players hack the OA in some way. Failure meant you were discovered and the owners could come and secure it and possibly find you. Success meant that you’d be getting bad intel. And of course, once you started blowing up ships well then it would be clear what had happened.

The reason this is the only place to discuss them is this thread is because the anti-cloak players would drop turds in the forums on a routine basis and ISD were always having to come by and clean up the “code brown”.

@Gerard_Amatin

(CovOps) Cyno modules slowly leak cyno fuel while cloaked

Yeah, that’s the fuel suggestion. Sorry…I don’t know how long you’ve been playing, but that idea (and variations on it) is as old as AFK cloaking.

Besides, what if I AFK cloak with…no liquid ozone? It doesn’t even really address the main issue.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Teckos_Pech

Yeah, that’s the fuel suggestion. Sorry…I don’t know how long you’ve been playing, but that idea (and variations on it) is as old as AFK cloaking.

Besides, what if I AFK cloak with…no liquid ozone? It doesn’t even really address the main issue.

You’re reading ‘fuel’ and don’t even read the suggestion. This is not the common cloaking fuel suggestion you see every other post. This is not cloaking fuel, it’s cyno fuel.

(I get how you feel, those cloak fuel suggestions are terrible and break most non-afk cloaking strategies).

[Teckos_Pech]

@Gerard_Amatin

You’re reading ‘fuel’ and don’t even read the suggestion. This is not the common cloaking fuel suggestion you see every other post. This is not cloaking fuel, it’s cyno fuel.

Yes, I know your suggestion is actually a nerf to cynos which are often paired with cloaks. But, as I noted it doesn’t address the issue and as you noted it can impair non-afk cloakers too.

Example: The M2- structure timer. Goons et. al. got into system and set up for the fight literally 3 hours before the timer came out. Were there combat recons in system with cynos sitting around? Probably would be my guess. Were they AFK…probably not (or not much…i.e. taking a bio, getting a drink, etc.).

I think the best route is via some sort of structure. One hunters can subvert. And one krabbers can use to feel at least to some degree safe(ish). But like I said this discussion was had at least twice that I recall.

[Teckos_Pech]

I recall even suggesting that a pilot flying over to the OA and “plugging in” could give even more intel. That is maybe even let you “see” into systems within the constellation. Possibly other stuff. The down side is you have to be plugged into a structure that could be one a hunters overview and you are far less able to defend or attack.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Teckos_Pech

Yes, I know your suggestion is actually a nerf to cynos which are often paired with cloaks. But, as I noted it doesn’t address the issue and as you noted it can impair non-afk cloakers too.

It’s indeed a nerf, but it’s a small nerf and for an active player easily circumvented. The only people getting hit hard by this are people who leave cloaked cyno ships in space for the large part of a day or more.

That means your example recon in M2- has no issues lighting a cyno after 3 hours. After 13 hours, yes, he’ll need to refuel somewhere in the mean time.

I think that’s fair, considering it makes cloaky camping a lot more engaging and interactive.

[Teckos_Pech]

@Gerard_Amatin

That means your example recon in M2- has no issues lighting a cyno after 3 hours. After 13 hours, yes, he’ll need to refuel somewhere in the mean time.

Have you ever tried to refuel in heavy tidi? And besides another obvious “fix” - park a fuel truck nearby. Oh no, now AFK cloaking just got 2x as bad.

[Teckos_Pech]

Oh and the M2- structure timer fight went from whenever it started till pretty much downtime. The huge fights…they are loooong affairs (but maybe you know this…IDK).

Ha…You are in Brave…so you know.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Teckos_Pech

Have you ever tried to refuel in heavy tidi? And besides another obvious “fix” park a fuel truck nearby. Oh no, now AFK cloaking just got 2x as bad.

Yep, that’s a fair fix! And one I anticipated as well.
The afk camper will need to uncloak to refuel from the fuel truck, giving a signal that they’re no longer afk and that’s all I want. If a ratter is too lazy to check dscan for refueling campers, it’s his own fault for getting dropped on.

Alternatively, the afk camper could put the cyno on the fuel truck to last longer, but that makes the cyno on grid more vulnerable, and regardless of the larger hold, doesn’t last forever either.

An easier option is for the afk cloaky to put a container with spare fuel in space, but that allows counterplay as this container can be found with enough effort.