Of course alts are a limited resource.
Your veiw’s and posts are based on absolute nonsense on this point.
Really? I must have missed the patch where players were forbidden to start up new alt accounts. How exactly are they even monitoring that?
Alts trained to afk camp are slightly more rare, but now we are back to it not being any more onerous to train an alt to do that than to PvE in null, so that cost is a wash.
That does not make them unlimited. 
This is like saying there is nothing you stopping from playing EVE 23.5/7…nothing other than time is limited, you need to sleep, etc.
Just because I can make unlimited alts in some abstract theory, does not mean that I can unlimited alts in reality…especially alts with access to Omega skills. Do you have endless amounts of RL money? Oh…wait you can always work more right so your income stream is infinite right?
If you are camping 100% of the time with an account, your statements would be correct.
But this thread isn’t and has never been about that… it’s about camping done while you are AFK. It’s NOT a ATK and AFK cloaky camping combined into one activity thread.
What is the opportunity cost of camping while AFK?
It is whatever you could be doing during the period of time it takes to set yourself up to camp when you leave your keyboard.
If you remain camping while you are at the keyboard… those opportunity costs are for ATK camping. You’re CHOOSING to camp while at the keyboard instead of mining, missioning, trading, manufacturing, running PI doing reactions or exploring. Those are mutually exclusive alternatives for cloaky camping while at the keyboard.
None of those are mutually exclusive alternatives for camping after you leave your keyboard… because you cannot do any of those things while AFK. You can leave your account logged in and cloaked to camp someone else’s system.
If you play 3.5 hours a day actively on an account… this thread does not address the 3.5 hours you play actively. It addresses the other 20 hours. This SHOULD be pretty freaking obvious by the ‘AFK’ in the title.
That’s why the cost is capped at a Plex, and I’m not claiming the camp is free. I said the cost is not significantly higher than that paid by anyone else, and no one else gets to be safe by pushing a magic button.
Yes, you need that plex to get the account active. I don’t need access to lots of RL money to activate a single account to AFK Camp, only enough for one plex, which I can get in game.
The thing that started this entire leg of the argument was your claim that cloakers were somehow paying some huge price to cloak and that justified them having their effect from the ultimate safety of a cloak.
You can’t discount the manhours and effort involved in holding sov, securing the space and keeping local clear on one hand, and justify breaking all that effort by claiming some kind of huge overhead in opportunity cost on the other. You might have a bit of point if the cloak still required your attention to stay safe and you could not simply ignore it and play on an alt… but you don’t.
So if you can pay one plex to be safe, can the pve guy pay one plex to be safe as well? I mean if it’s good for one side it’s good for both, right?
OMG…no it isn’t and hasn’t been. Mike is here arguing in favor of nerfs for cloaks in all aspects of play, not just AFK. Others show up and whine about cynos…tell me has a cyno ever been lit in game by and AFK player? Let me help you here, the answer is “No.” Most suggestions to “fix cloaks” would impact ATK cloaking play.
Now…who is being obtuse? Me…or you who appears to be clueless about what this thread has been about for thousands and thousands of posts.
Oh for crying out loud…
Now this is not true. The first time I brought this up, back on the previous iteration of the forums, it was in response to the claim that AFK cloaking is “costless”. I am glad you and others have essentially abandoned that position.
As for the magnitude of the opportunity cost I have just said in my last 10-20 posts that the opportunity cost is subjective and depends on a number of factors such as the ISK making options for the alt in question. This point is simply untrue on every single point.
No I am not. In fact, you are discounting that effort. You pretend that that effort should not be on going. And on going effort to secure you space will result in cloaky camping being largely a nuisance. I already pointed to the Tactical Supremacy alliance as an alliance that “does it right”. I went into their pocket a few times and the response was swift and effective. Interdictors and fast locking/moving frigs and heavier ships as well. You have steadfastly whined about and misrepresented strategies to marginalize cloaky campers.
You can be as safe as you want by docking up. To be safe and earn ISK, gather resources, etc…no. No you can’t. That is a patently ridiculous request.
As a general point, no. Symmetry does not always have to apply. For example, do gankers face considerable risk? No. Does the gank target face considerable risk? Yes. Why? the latter took on lots of risk. That is the risk the gank target has taken on is due to his decisions and his actions. To impose more risk on gankers because another player made bad decisions and took risky actions is stupid and idiotic. Symmetry need not always apply.
Has the “dock” button magically disappeared?
1 Like
looks at thread title
sighs
walks away
Thank goodness, we really are getting tired of your deliberate obtuseness.
1 Like
You are truly incredible at moving goal posts.
You make arguments, discount the answers as if you didn’t make them, and then claim you said something else, and when that’s answered you go back to the first position again like it was the argument all along.
No I’m not discounting system defense. You and others have claimed that PvE aren’t doing anything to defend themselves. Except they are, and their alliance is, when it’s allowed to actually apply. Cloaks break that, and they do it at no significant cost or effort. Note that I said Significant cost, I didn’t say free.
Yes, I abandon positions when you say something that actually addresses it. You don’t do that often, but that’s how debate works. You have been known to accept a point or two as well, though I suspect your account was sold to someone else in the interim, because you don’t do that any more and you argue very differently now, far more dogmatic… as if you were paid to say only certain things.
@The Dunning Kruger
You are well named. Bravo. The thread covered ages ago why your point is idiotic. Try to follow along despite your severe hardship. Being docked is meant to be safe by design of the game to give players a place to store assets and make it possible to achieve goals. Despite being the designated safety in the game, cloaks are actually much safer, especially in null, as it is impossible to know where the cloaked ship will become vulnerable and thus can’t be bubbled and camped, nor can they be taken by enemy forces.
Where have I said this. I have noted that you have dismissed every strategy suggested to protect PvE activities. In fact, you grossly misrepresent what people have written. When somebody says, get into a standing fleet, get on comms, rat in a group you usually start belly aching about having to keep some board response fleet in PvP ships waiting for nothing…which was not the suggestion in the first place.
Bravo Sierra. See the above. Responding to a cloaky camper can marginalize said camper.
Nope, never sold.
According to you Mike that is never. It is a magic safety button right? So never vulnerable.
Never until they choose otherwise.
Non-consent is only for everyone else.
Right, keep a tight hold on this lie.
So, jump clones disappeared as well now? You said the only magic safety button in the game is a cloak, Mike. That obviously isn’t the case. There’s also POS forcefields and citadel tethers, both of which provide invulnerability from being attacked and, unlike with cloaking, you don’t even need to fly a inferior ship and have to give up a high slot for it.
The thread is a trashcan for whining people like you. If cloaking was actually even remotely a problem, CCP would have done something about it over a decade ago. But it isn’t. It’s only a “problem” to those that should have never set foot into nullsec in the first place, those that simply fail to grasp that EVE is a full-time PvP sandbox environment.
Now, that you claim you can’t bubble or camp a cloaker is just you showing off your ignorance again. Move to another system. If he truly is afk, you have nothing to fear either way and if he isn’t, he’s going to follow you and run into your little gatecamp on the other side. Also, defensive bubbles in anomalies can be used to trap, decloak and engage them when they’re looking around.
The tools are available. You deliberately ignoring them because they don’t support your case doesn’t change that.
1 Like
Jump clones let you move from station to station (designated safety area), you could still be located and camped, not as safe as a cloak.
POS and Citadels can be destroyed, taken, and the undock bubbled and camped as they are known locations. Not as safe as a cloak. It does take unreasonable time, but even that’s not an option with a cloaked ship.
You can’t bubble camp a cloak because you can’t find it. You can bubble a gate, but that only matters if the cloaked ship decides to allow it to matter. Non-consent is only for other people.
Tools are available to raise the bar for the cloaker to attack. No tool is available to actually force interaction on the cloaker, which is the problem.
A cloak only allows to move freely within the system. Want to move somewhere else? Decloak. Want to interact with the game world? Decloak. Want to blow up Mike Voidstar? Decloak.
POS and citadels can also shoot back while the player inside is at perfect safety (you can’t just warp in and blow up the structure. It takes days). You have the same chance to combat probe the cloaker when he logs in.
You can set a trap and watch the mouse run straight for the cheese when it is dumb enough. But I guess setting up the trap is effort and that’s the real problem you have.
The entire game is about non-consensual PvP. This isn’t limited to cloaking. When you’re mining in a belt and an interceptor warps in and tackles you, that is non-consensual PvP, is it not? And guess what, he doesn’t have a cloak.
Um yeah, that is the main point behind the entire idea of cloaking. To have the choice of surprise attacks. That’s literally what covert warfare means. So you want to remove the entire play style of cloaking because you deem it unfair that they choose to trade ship strength in favor for the ability of surprise attacks. Guess what, the stag also doesn’t get to decide when the hunt is on, the wolf does.
2 Likes
Yet there is no way whatsoever to force that cloak to move. Its at his own discretion. This is OK in the case of stations, as that’s what they are for. It’s not ok when you are using it out of stations because when you leave a station you are supposed to be at risk of non-consensual PvP. Non-consensual PvP is never a risk that a cloaked ship takes.
LOL, you can probe the cloaker when he comes online? By the time you move your hand to a button to start the scan he will have cloaked. That is utter BS and you know it. 99% of the more reasonable suggestions have been for cloaks to need to be reactivated once in a while to give this exact chance of finding them, and the whiney gankbears cry rivers talking about how a minute of vulnerability once an hour would break everything everywhere.
You can set a trap, but you can’t make him bite. You can’t force any interaction on him at all. He can choose to move and increase his risk, but until he does he is in no danger. Remember, Non-Consent is supposed to be for everyone, but it’s not a factor for a cloaked ship.
There is a world of difference between enabling stealth play and making the ship invulnerable to everything for the rest of time. The ask is for a way to force a cloaked ship to protect it’s own safety with action, not just passively sit there in defiance of an entire alliances effort to dislodge him.
Non-consensual is also a one-way street. Non-consensual PvP means one side is not consenting.
I don’t care how many probes you have out or how fast you are, you will never be able to scan down a cloaker that doesn’t want to be found. Even if there is a cooldown timer of a minute or even ten minutes, it doesn’t matter. All the cloaker has to do is warp back and forth between however many safe spots they’ve bookmarked, then hit the cloak again once the timer is up, and you’re back to square one…
Yes, but short of botting, which is a whole different conversation and problem, they would have to be present to do that. Their safety would be guaranteed by their own actions, not a default condition set simply by activating a trivial module.