Then he isn’t AFK camping is he? He isn’t even ATK camping. This argument pretty much supports my point.
But then I am not AFK/ATK camping. You can’t AFK/ATK camp and make ISK. Thanks for supporting my point.
Sure, but you can’t use the characters on the same account at the same time. You cannot use an account to do invention while not giving up what one of the other accounts can do at the same time.
You have actually made the argument quite nicely though.
Not sure if you’re being intentionally obtuse or not with this.
The only cost to AFK activities… be they camping, station trading or invention… is the setup time. The ACTIVE play time needed to set up the activity.
The whole point is the AFK. If I’m ATK camping… then yes, I’m giving up income I could be making while playing the game actively. But if I’m AFK… I’m not giving anything up… because I’m not present to do active things to make isk and you don’t lose the ability to have invention jobs running, have active market orders. Those are still there… while you’re logged in cloaked and asleep on your couch.
I can’t mine or rat while asleep. I can AFK cloak. Those aren’t a cost for AFK cloaking.
You cannot log in two characters on the same account at the same time. This is a fact. Why are you having issues with this.
If I have Character A on a given account logged in I cannot log in Character B on the same account without logging out Character A. So I cannot AFK/ATK camp and use an alt to make ISK on the same account. I could log in an alt on another account, but even there I’m still forgoing ISK I could h ave earned from the AFK/ATK camping account.
So, since sometimes the player is ATK he is forgoing income to have AFK cloaking alts in position.
Thanks for once again supporting my position.
No, that’s not it at all. You, and the other anti-cloaking players, just keep proposing ideas that are either minimal-effort “remove the cloaker so I can go back to farming” buttons or completely ineffective. Risk of failure is acceptable. Certainty of failure so that you can farm at maximum ISK/hour without interruption is not.
And the afk cloaker group can just sit there and admit to themselves that they are so incredibly risk adverse that they quake at the mere thought that they might possibly one day face a change that would break their perfect safety bubble unless they actually do something to maintain it for themselves, just like everyone else.
No we don’t. Remove local so that cloaking for days at a time is not required and we can talk about risks of cloaking and actively defending a cloaked ship. Rejecting your stupid ideas is not the same as rejecting all possible risk.
And that cost is incredibly high. Remember, if we’re talking about AFK cloaking gaining you anything (as opposed to just scaring pathetic carebears into station with ships that don’t even have any weapons on them) then we’re talking about high-end PvP characters being dedicated to the task. It’s not as simple as training for a T1 cloak on a T1 frigate and then going AFK, because that accomplishes nothing. You need at least a stealth bomber and enough PvP skills to survive until backup can get in, and that’s only if you have black ops accounts on standby to provide the real PvP force once your AFK cloaker gets the initial tackle. For anything solo related you’re talking about a max-skill force recon at minimum, and probably a max-skill T3 cruiser. That is not a trivial investment to make.
LoL… ‘required’
Sure
Long-term cloaking is necessary to effectively catch farmers in a game where local gives effectively 100% safety. Without long-term cloaking you will only catch the absolute dumbest and most incompetent farmers, the ones with even less awareness and PvP skill than the bots.
So… not intentional I guess.
Read the thread title. It’s not “ATK cloaky”… it’s “AFK cloaky”.
If I have 4 accounts, each with 1 toon in a system I want to camp, I have all options open when I’m at the keyboard. I can play actively with one of the 2 toons I have on each account that is NOT set up for cloaky camping. I can do whatever I choose while I’m at the keyboard.
I can camp with my camper if I choose… or I can mine… or I can PvP.
But when I go AFK, I can always log the four camping toons on and AFK camp while cloaked.
Yes, you lose the ability to do stuff at the keyboard if you choose to camp… BUT NOBODY HAS AN ISSUE WITH ATK CAMPING. It it literally not the subject of this thread. The thread is about what happens when you are AFK.
And you there is no real cost to AFK camping because you can still do everything else you might do AFK in eve while camping. Your industry jobs still run. Your market orders still work. All AFK activity still functions exactly as it would if your camper were logged off.
Trying to talk about what you could do if you were playing is stupid. You’re not at your keyboard. Your asleep or at work or watching a movie. ATK options aren’t available… because you are AFK.
Getting it yet?
Not sure what you’re talking about. All you need is a ship with a cloak and a cyno… or a cov ops with the ability to launch a covert cyno if you want to use BLOPS. The time cost of moving a covops ship pretty much anywhere is minimal.
You’re working under the assumption that drops are frequent with AFK cloaky camps. They’re very infrequent. Sometimes as little as once a month per camping toon. Most of the time they don’t have ships in place to be able to drop you.
But you simply don’t know if they do or not. So it’s still effective.
Cynos are the only reason cloaky camping bothers anyone. If all we had to worry about was some guy in a T3C… nobody would care. That talk of solo camping is simply not important.
The issue is opportunity cost. You cannot do two things at the same time with an account.
Really, I don’t know why you don’t understand opportunity cost. It applies to literally everything you do where a choice is involved.
Edit.
Okay lets take the long road.
If I have three characters on an account who do PI and one can cloaky camp. If the one that can cloaky camp is used for cloaky camping I give up his PI income to do that. Instead of PI income from 3 characters I only have income from two characters.
Yes I could fly him out emptying and the planets, but then he is not cloaky camping is he.
And that is my point. You cannot cloaky camp AND make ISK at the same time. You must pick one or the other. If you pick cloaky camping you forgoe ISK making. Thus there is opportunity cost.
Don’t feel bad you don’t get this. Most people fail to grasp it. The idea has only been around for 160 years or so. It was first explained by Frederic Bastiat in his parable about the broken window.
It’s AFK camping.
The opportunity cost for an AFK activity is not ATK activities. It’s other AFK things doing that prevents.
A comparison would be investing. If I have a million dollars and invest it in something… the opportunity cost would be the return on whatever the most lucrative investment I passed on was.
But once I have invested all my money… I can’t say the opportunity cost for going for a walk is investing another million dollars. I don’t HAVE another million dollars. The opportunity cost would have to be whatever I could do without spending any money.
You have your active play time in eve. Once you use that up… you have the ability to leave your account logged in and cloaky camp a system while not at the keyboard. The opportunity cost for that isn’t playing actively… you’ve used that time up. You need to go to sleep. The opportunity cost is whatever other AFK activity you could engage in that is prevented by cloaky camping.
Saying “oh, you could still play” is stupid… it’s like saying “Oh, you could have another million dollars”. You CAN’T play… you’re sleeping. You DON’T have another million dollars… it’s already invested elsewhere. That’s not a realistic opportunity cost.
You still are not getting it.
To deploy that character into hostile NS and keep him there logged in 23.5/7 means giving up the PI income.
Or invention income. Or most other forms of income.
And it isn’t stupid it is opportunity cost. The very same reason then ore you mine is not free. AFK camping comes with opportunity cost. To say it is costless is wrong.
Opportunity cost must be reasonable. It’s not reasonable to think of the cost of an activity you can do while asleep would be something you must be awake to perform.
Also… I have an alt that spend the majority of his time travelling through red null-sec space who still manage to keep PI, manufacturing and invention jobs running with almost no downtime. I don’t camp with it… it’s an exploration alt. It’s not particularly difficult to get in and out of NS with a cov ops ship. Many of those can be reset while in space and cloaked.
The cloaky camper doesn’t need to camp 23.5/7. If you play actively 3.5 hours a day… you can cloaky camp the other 20/7 and play actively with other alts on that account. You lose no active income. You can also use an hour or two a week to keep all your passive income running on that toon. That still leaves you with 140 hours of camping at no cost aside from the time (from your 3.5 hours a day of active play time) you use to get in and out of the system you camp in for the week.
Is there a cost? Sure… the cost getting them into and out of null in order to keep other options in place. That cost is simply not particularly large unless you’re very deep in null sec. You may CHOOSE not to move that alt in an out of null sec to do those things… but that isn’t an opportunity cost for AFK camping. That’s a cost for whatever you’re choosing to do while ACTIVELY PLAYING that you chose to do instead of moving the cloaker in and out of null.
ATK activities have ATK costs.
AFK activities do not. If you went down that road, the Opportunity cost for everything you do actively in eve is actually whatever the most you could make in real life working during those hours would be… converted to isk.
This is a total non-sequitur. It does not even relate to what I have written.
If I have one of my cloaky camping capable alts deep in hostile NS…I cannot use that alt for PI. I cannot use him if I am AFK, nor can I use him when I am ATK…because he is deep in hostile NS cloaky camping. My alt cannot be in two systems at the same time.
Thus, the premise of this response is literally not related to anything I have written. You are just flat out wrong and responding to something that is not even a possibility.
You would not be able to engage in PI and manufacturing if that alt stayed in red NS 23.5/7. If you can do this then you are cheating (and to be clear I don’t think you are cheating I think you are just not getting what I am saying).
No they don’t need to, but that is often what they do. And when players do this, then there is an opportunity cost.
Even when they don’t do it 23.5/7 there is still an opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost is present every single time you have a choice. If you have a choice in how to use that character…there is opportunity cost. Look here is the freaking definition:
In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost, also known as alternative cost, is the value (not a benefit) of the choice of a best alternative cost while making a decision. A choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives; assuming the best choice is made, it is the “cost” incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would have been had by taking the second best available choice.–wikipedia [emphasis added]
Opportunity cost refers to a benefit that a person could have received, but gave up, to take another course of action. Stated differently, an opportunity cost represents an alternative given up when a decision is made. This cost is, therefore, most relevant for two mutually exclusive events. In investing, it is the difference in return between a chosen investment and one that is necessarily passed up.–Investopedia
When economists refer to the “opportunity cost” of a resource, they mean the value of the next-highest-valued alternative use of that resource. If, for example, you spend time and money going to a movie, you cannot spend that time at home reading a book, and you cannot spend the money on something else. If your next-best alternative to seeing the movie is reading the book, then the opportunity cost of seeing the movie is the money spent plus the pleasure you forgo by not reading the book.–The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
And when people complain about AFK camping they complain about people doing it 23.5/7.
Actually…yes it is. The fact that it is a choice is exactly what makes it an opportunity cost.
And moving said alt in and out of hostile NS is itself at cost.
Look, you can let this point go, because you are quite simply wrong, and still oppose AFK cloaking. In fact, it is the intellectually honest thing to do. Does AFK cloaking come with a cost? Yes. Does that make AFK cloaking good? No it does not. In fact, I hold this view myself. I do not think AFK cloaking is good. I think it is boring sub-optimal game play…but it helps balance out the excessive power of local as an intel tool. Basically a necessary evil.
Jesus Christ…
Mutually exclusive.
Just think for a moment and keep that in your head.
The opportunity cost for cloaky camping while AFK is the cost of alternatives you passed on while moving your toon to and from the location you are camping.
The cost of cloaky camping while at the keyboard is everything else you’re trying to assign to AFK camping. It’s NOT the cost of AFK camping… because nothing done the keyboard is mutually exclusive for something where you are NOT at the keyboard.
YES, there is the cost of travel. That is ATK activity needed to set up your AFK camp. But that is it. The OC for AFK camping is only that plus anything else that would require you to log in and NOT BE AT YOUR KEYBOARD to perform.
Well no,
The camper is still camping whilst you’re at the keyboard as well.
The only way camping wouldn’t have any opportunity cost is if the camper can instantly start making isk at full efficiency at a whim. But since there is probably travel time and expenses associated with moving him away from camping to where he can make money, there is almost definitely opportunity cost.
Oh for God’s sake…
Yes. Mutually exclusive:
If you are AFK 23.5/7… then what other AFK activity is mutally exclusive?
Investments aren’t an opportunity cost for an activity if you don’t have the money to invest. ATK activity is not an opportunity cost for AFK activity if you are not able to be at the keyboard. You’re trying to use a resource (time) that is not in your possession to assign a cost for something that does not require your time.
Working as a doctor isn’t an opportunity cost for a person who is not able to work as a doctor. You have to use the income they could ACTUALLY earn.
The only piece of AFK cloaky camping that has an opportunity cost is the active playtime and isk needed to set it up (just like with manufacturing jobs) and end it.
The part that is… actually AFK… has no cost aside from using a different toon to camp a different system on the same account.
You really can’t be AFK 23.5/7. At the very least you have to be ATK to log in.
Further, most AFK cloakers probably have more ATK time than that as they check to see if there are kills available.
Note I said camping 23.5/7 not simply AfK camping.
And note the thread is about AFK cloaky ships… not ATK cloaky ships.
My only comment (which apparently set you off) is that your drastically overstating the cost to AFK camping. I never said it was without cost.
The ship costs something. The time getting to where you’re going to camp at costs something.
The time where you’re AFK? Yeah… there’s not an actual opportunity cost there that I can identify. Only for the time at your keyboard setting it up or ending it. Choosing to not exit and haul PI or reset reactions… you’re incurring a cost. But that is a cost for choosing to ATK camp. It’s not an opportunity cost for AFK camping… because if you’re AFK you can’t do those things either.