Assembly Hall

This thread brought up AFK Cloaking.

To assume it is not tied into Local Chat is a glaring failure to recognize the cause and effect relationship they share.

Actually suggesting that the problem begins with the pilot using AFK Cloaking tactics, ignores enough to be considered mislead.

I shall try to explain a few details that are usually glossed over crudely, but hold the truth.

AFK Cloaking: This is done in response to Local Chat flawlessly reporting pilot presence. It dumbs down the interaction between pilots by outright telling all parties who is present. Without this crutch, use of sensors, strategy, and cooperation would be needed to fill the void.
What does it achieve?
It creates a flaw in the usual flow of cause and effect for life in many systems. Often, a neutral or hostile pilot is seen entering, and activity is suspended until they leave. There is trivial risk, as standard procedure often involves being ready to get safe in the time frame provided by this instant alarm. Hostile pilots who refuse to leave are subsequently hunted down.
When the "AFK Cloaking" pilot enters, he disrupts this process, by not leaving. Further, since this intel tool persistently shows him present, the default response of suspending activity is perpetually pushed as chosen reaction.
This devalues the intel tool, as it is now being used against the native PvE pilots instead of helping them.
If local were removed, sensors strategy and cooperation would be placed as valuable means of protecting PvE income assets.
It would also be pointless to AFK cloak, as noone would be aware of your presence while you were passive.
It is widely anticipated that any change to local which stopped free cloaking awareness would also include a means to hunt cloaked ships.

Summary: That free intel tool favored by so many can be used by the hunters too.

Hot Dropping: Bridging is intended to bypass reinforced blockades and travel time. Here, it has been fine tuned to avoid advertising the presence of a fleet to the free intel tool as well by delaying the easily recognizable population spike till the last possible moment. The intention is to deny the warning local provides, although it still reports the presence of the cyno boat enough to be associated with AFK Cloaking instead.
Quite simply, while PvE pilots would never resume regular activities with a hostile fleet present, they are sometimes willing to gamble over whether a cloaked vessel represents that level of threat at a given time.

Sorry about the length, but the mindless repetition of "AFK Cloaking is bad mmkay" sounds foolish.

But the OP is about AFKing, but yet again as that point didn't fit your argument, you ignored it.

Oh and just to make it clear. If you want to use the 100% safe argument, then it works both ways. But again, this fact doesn't fit your argument.

Why should you know if they are AFK? That would be yet more intel, on top of the already easy mode intel system called local. The fact that you dismissed options earlier in the thread, doesn't mean they don't exist.

Local IS the reason for people AFKing. Other space systems, are merely good barometers to the cause of your woes.

Oh and there is no benefit. No ISK or items gained. They HOPE that you stop doing activities, but that's not a guarantee. But even if you did stop it's your loss, not their gain.

You mentioned the removal of certain AFK activities before. I did respond post 81, but you ignored that too. (I'm seeing a pattern here)
Maybe answer that post?

Why should psychological warfare be removed? I'm not sure you understand what that term means.

Mag, I see you in alot of AFK Cloaking threads, and I disagree with almost 80% of what you say. However, I agree with this, for the most part. No free intel, no way to AFK cloak. A simple tradeoff.

I will try to outline my problem with AFK cloakers: 1. I run a mining barge, which can be destroyed by a cloaker before I even have a chance to align, either by hotdrop, or by bombs. 2. If the "AFK Cloaker" goes online when I am out mining, chances are that I will be dead before I have a chance to do anything about it. 3. So, I sit in station, because there is a cloaky in every system within 2 jumps.

I believe that local should simply not show cloaked characters, and it should not be available to them when cloaked. OR Give characters the option to shut off local if they please. If you shut it off, you can't be seen. In return for this, there would have to be a way to gather intel on cloaked ships. There would have to be a way to avoid certian death in my mining barge. While local is a very unbalanced mechanic, it's all I have to keep me from getting blown up without a chance.

I know I am in null-sec, and I have to expect some risk for my reward, but get rid of local without a balancer? I couldn't mine enough ore to replace all the ships I would lose.

EDIT: And stop saying that there is no reward for AFK cloaking, people. If there was no reward, people just wouldn't do it.

It's all a matter of perspective, lets look at 3 people, person A, B and C

Person A is a ganker, he or she hates big fleet pvp and sov space warfare and just loves flying a bomber (favorite ship), covert opps tengu or covert opps scouting ship. Person A's favorite activity is blowing up miners and complex runners, because he knows that upsets the person flying the mining ship or complex runner.

Person A believes that eve is a PvP game and anyone who thinks otherwise deserves to be blown up. Person A thinks that instant local is a broken part of the game and needs to be removed, so travels to system X and leaves his character online cloaked 23 and ½ hours to try to negate the effect of instant local intel.

Person A is a member of a “clocky camping corp” or NPC corp where it’s hard to trace him back to his home system. Though he is a member of a standing fleet of another corp who lives in system Y, the standing fleet are ready to hot drop 24 hours a day and have many cloaky campers set up in other systems with known enemies, ie miners and complex pilots.

Person B is a miner, he has a few accounts and loves to mine and buy his or her game time with isk. He lives in system X, he thinks that local intel isn’t the best solution to keeping his ships safe, but it’s the only one he has at the moment. He just wants to log on to eve and do a bit of mining and socialize with his friends in the pocket where he or she lives.

Person C is a PvPer who does sov warfare, he isn’t interested in ganking and defends system X because it’s his alliance’s system and wants miners to mine so he can use the minerals to build ships, that he pays for by doing a bit of complex running when things are quiet, he also does a bit of mining himself when needed

Person A has his character camped in cloak in system X, he then leaves it online and goes to work for 8 hours.

An hour after person A goes to work person C logs on, sees a red in local, gathers his defence fleet and tries to bait person A out of cloak. After 30 minutes of this Person C gives up on this and looks for the home system of Person A to go pos bashing in that system. After failing this too, because Person A’s corp doesn’t hold sov, or appear to live in a sov system, Person C goes to work on something else.

6 hours from Person A going afk Person B logs on, sees a hostile in local and doesn’t undock, he looks for another system to mine in but sees they are all camped or too hot to mine in, so he stays docked and waits for Person A to leave system or be blown up, nether happens, so 2 hours later he goes mining anyway

Person A comes home, sees a mining fleet in system warps to the and hot drops successfully killing all the mining barges. For his 5 minutes at the keyboard he has killed 2 mining barges and an orca.

Person B has lost his 2 mining barges, and an orca, 2 hours of game time where he could be mining and knows because of this person A will stay in system to try for more kills

Person C cops the blame for not defending the system, but he too has wasted an hour trying to bait Person A out of cloak and punish his or her corp for cloaky camping

Person A, by going afk cloaked has evaded Person C’s system defence, frustrated Person B out of station. While still appearing AFK he has set things up for a instant gank of 3 ships, that he successfully pulled off, after this he goes out with his friends and watches a movie, still leaving his character online cloaked and afk.

For the next few hours the sov holders in system X treat him as active and try baiting all over again.

Where is the balance in this, person A blames local channel intel for the problem, knowing that taking away local channel will make ganking even easier.

Person B just doesn’t want to be ganked, he wants Person C to make it a safer system where he can happily mine. He hates that all his time has been wasted just for 5 minutes that the ganker has just had and knows he can’t do much about the problem other than help with the baiting.

Person C wishes he could do something about cloaky campers in his system, but knows nothing can be done when a person isn’t active.

Lets give Person C a scan probe that can scan down cloakers after they have been cloaked in one system continuously for 15 minutes.

Person C logs on to see that a hostile is cloaked in system X, he uses the probe to scan the person down and instructs all the friendlies in system to get into newbie ships, fleets them and warps to Person A bumping him out of cloak and killing Person As bomber and pod with a fleet of newbie ships. Person A no longer goes AFK cloaked in hostile space.

Person A logs off instead when he goes for extended afk giving the people in the system X some warning when he comes back online because they have him in watch list. He still gets some kills because people still make mistakes.

Person B is happy because he can mine again, but keeps his eyes on his watch list for Person A because Person A is a known troublemaker.

Person C knows when Person A or any other ganker is active in his or her systems because they no longer risk going for extended afks online and now can defend his sov space against him or any other ganker with baiting and gate camping.

Local intel is another issue, yes, it needs some work, but sov space or any other null sec system still needs ways for those who live in the systems to operate in those system without giving gankers easy mode kills. Local intel should be talked about in a separate thread as changes to it affect almost every aspect of null sec living.

I'm in them because people ask for change, without understanding the mechanics at work. Simply blaming cloaks in the regard of AFKing, is just plain wrong. I'll always fight for balance.

Your points.
1. Are you saying that you would mine alone with an enemy in local, without any protection, or without taking precautions? Sounds to me like you would deserve to lose your ship, if this is the case.

2. If you see him log in, then you could organise your alliance to protect and quite easily save your ship. If you mean him returning to his keyboard, then see 1.

3. There are options available to people who live in null, but most don't wish to use them. Or as in dal Rayl's case, dismiss them out of hand. If you decide to sit in the station, then that is your choice. It's not something the cloaker can force upon you.

But yes, local not showing cloaked pilots would remove the point of AFK cloaking. I could see the need for a way to locate cloaked ships, if this was the case. But it would need to be balanced in a way, that didn't mean cloaked ships became useless. But I hope you see that AFKing would still continue.

As far as reward is concerned, it's rather simple. People do it in the hope that pilots in local stop their activities. But it's in no way a guarantee.
The AFKer gains no ISK or items, so I guess you think someone's loss is a reward? That being able to affect someone's mind to the extent that they log off, or simply dock/POS up is a reward? The only reward I see, is to the pilot logging or docking. The reward to them, is loss of earnings for being bad at the game. But the cloaker gains nothing.

If you think that someone dying as a result of not taking precautions before hand, is a reward? Then I disagree. That's an opportunity and the reward is given to the pilot that hands out that opportunity.

Not going to go into detail, but I have discussed mining fleet vs cloaker tactics with people in my alliance at length, and everything that is thought of is shot down with explanation. Now, as a miner, I would be happy to see cloaking nerfed, but I realise that there are a great many people who do not want that. If possible, I would like to find a solution that eliminates the possiblility of AFK cloaking, but does not affect active cloakers, at least not enough to make people not want to use cloaks. I also see it as a foregone conclusion that, for there to be any changes affecting cloaks, the issue with local chat has to be solved as well.

But, for any of this to be a possibility, people on both sides of the fence need to get together and think of a solution. A solution that would be fair, one that drives conflict, instead of discouraging conflict. A solution that encourages mining fleets with proper defences, and cloakers who can overcome those defences. No-one should be safe, but still get a tangible reward for their efforts.

Now what I just said is a tall order. No single person is going to come up with this solution. Take me for example. I am a null-sec miner, almost exclusively. I don't have the experience with the game to even suggest solutions. All I know is that this is an age old issue, where miners have tried different tactics to combat AFK cloakers time and time again, and failed. You will not convince me that there is no issue here, just as I won't convince many that local chat isn't an issue.

These are issues that people want solved, and they are not mutually exclusive. Many in this thread can agree on this.

I am getting tired of all these AFK cloaking threads, and all these Local chat threads, that just keep repeating all the same arguments.(And I have only been looking for the last 2 weeks. There are many people who can claim years of seeing this.) Let's stop arguing over whether this is an issue or not, and focus on getting what all these people want.

EDIT:

I have seen many posts regarding POS upgrades that combat cloaking. I agree with the general concept, as it limits effectiveness to the systems with such an upgrade, and to the people controlling it. (Also creating an ISK sink, possibly requiring fuel to operate?) However, most of these solutions are horribly unbalanced, encouraging pvp-safe pve activities in nullsec. Now, a POS solution that encourages nullbears to get out there, and hunt the cloakies, requiring time, isk, risk and effort to do so, is what I think is needed.

Yes, the more I read these threads, the more I am convinced that local has a huge part in this issue.

And it should be possible to hunt us miners. And it should be possible for those miners to have a way to fight back, or at least with the right equipment and skills, to hold out or have a means to escape. And I realise that right now we have an awesome way to escape. It's called Local, and it is so effective, that we don't even need to worry about PvP, as long as we dock up. This is not a good thing.

In that case, going by your example you still reference, the real problem is poor judgement.

I agree, the only way a hunter will catch a PvE ship in null is if the miners use bad decision making skills as you described.

As for ownership perspective, that's easy. You control what you own. If you control the gates, you own them. That is exclusive to effort, not sov.

Yes new players will be killed. But why should mechanics change, because old players don't want to use the tools currently provided? But it's OK to change it, because new players will still be there to die?

Yes local has been in the game a long time, but it was never intended to be the free intel tool is currently is. The standings in local came about, after a large alliance found ways to manipulate it to show that information. CCP reacted by handing that option to all. They have wanted for many many years, to remove the intel from local. But it's not that easy and so far, they cannot think of a way to do this.

You say everyone else gains, but fail to see local is the issue here. You want to remove uncertainty from your intel tool, but fail to see that any nerf to cloaking, wouldn't stop others using local against you.

The main issues I have with these threads are as follows.

• Not understanding the actual mechanics at play, yet wanting change.
• Wanting to stop AFKing, yet wanting to keep the reason for it.
• Not wishing to utilise current tools to play the game, but expecting new ones or nerfs.
• Wanting null to be even safer, when it could be argued it's already safer than high/low sec space.
• Claiming to talk about AFKing, yet constantly bemoaning active play and mechanics in their argument.

I'll make it simple.
As and until intel is removed from local and made an active mechanic. AFKing will continue. No amount of cloak nerf requests and ideas will change this.

But understand this.
If local was change in a way that meant you had to work for it. That it wasn't instant easy mode as it is now. We can all see that if this was to happen, cloaks would need to be changed.

But while ever local exists as is, people will continue to try to use it against you. You don't need a cloak to cause this psychological effect, just local in it's current form.

But at what point do we stop? I'd wager even with these changes, people will still complain that they can see people in the new intel mechanic, but (insert poor reason here) can't find them. Counters to counters to counters. At some point we have to stop being given counters.
We are at a point of balance, due to cloaks not being so covert and local being so powerful. Bad in some ways, but balanced all the same. I personally like the status quo. But if there are changes to be made, it has to involve local completely.

As I pointed out in the thread, if you are inside the shield of a POS you are disconnected from local's pilot list.

But, in a technique popular with carriers already, these POS using pilots can stick their craft juuuusst a little outside, till it is considered out of the shield.

See local, watch local, but duck back inside if feeling threatened.

Now, if something hits them while they are sticking out, it could possibly bounce them out of safety... and smaller ships bounce easy.
There is a little risk, for a little reward.