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Your constant "htfu, adapt or die, etc" rhetoric is a waste of everyone's time, especially mine. I don't need some wormhole carebear giving me attitude pointers, thanks. How about you take your ultimate badass attitude and check it at the door. Some sort of reasonable argument would be much more compelling than a stream of ineptly-constructed platitudes.

Speaking of which, perhaps you could enlighten us all as to the scenario you've obviously constructed in that head of yours in which a full, minute-long timer is necessary to avoid "logoffskiing." I've already pointed out to you that the typical scenarios (in which someone logs off because they jumped unscouted into a camp, jumped unscouted to a beacon with a tackler on it, or logged while tackled by rats to avoid being gibbed by a gang) don't require a 60 second timer as a remedy under the proposed mechanics. If someone was fighting other players, ratting, or otherwise doing some form of "dangerous" or "risky" activity, they will not be able to logoffski successfully under the proposed changes.

With regard to your "why don't you sit in a POS or station" comment, well, not everyone has access to POSes or stations! It's as simple as that. If you're going to go ahead and say that anyone who doesn't have their own station or POS to cower in deserves to die for daring to log off of EVE without your permission, well, you're welcome to your own opinion I suppose but I'm pretty sure the devs don't share it with you.

You're the one claiming that you need a full minute to probe out and shoot at someone who logs out (manifestly untrue as I've done it myself on numerous occasions without even using a highly-specialized probing character). You're the one claiming that anyone who logs out in a system in which a hostile prober is present should be a free kill, whether their logout was voluntary or not. It's really on you to convince the rest of us that your attitude is warranted. So far you're doing a ****-poor job.

So, explain the scenario in which a 15 second vanishing timer causes you to be unable to kill someone that you deserve to be able to kill. I'm all ears.

I originally aggreed with Soon Shin here... 15 seconds, on the surface, feels far too short... If no probes are in the air, it takes 8 seconds to release 4 probes (2 seconds each), 5 seconds to position them, 5-10 seconds to scan, 10+ seconds to warp to the target, and 1 second to aggress them with aoe (longer for targetted aggresssion). While I'll admit 60 seconds is enough time to scan down a target, it is not an easy task unless you already have probes out and are waiting for the DC.... If you DC while cloaked in a safe, unless you are in a very big ship, I highly doubt you'll get scanned down within 60 seconds... At the same point in time, it is very possible to scan down a big ship and aggress them within 60 seconds, especially if you are ready for them...

Now, I honestly have the impression Ganthrithor is trying to keep a titan safe, because, unless you are fielding bling, people are not going to waste 12 hours to hunt down your precious ship... A titan can be easily scanned down and aggressed within 60 seconds.... And truthfully, if you are cloaked in a ship (be it a titan or impairor), without any flags, you should be able to DC safely....

I'd like to discuss three situations:

A.) Hazardous: If you have an enemy on grid, you are in a hazardous situation. You are in immediate danger (even if cloaked). The only way you should be able to "confidently" get safe, is to use in-game mechanics to get your ship out. For example: If you enter a system, and there is a hostile on grid, your options should be deal with / escape from that hostile by flying your ship, or die.... Logging off should be almost equivalent to self destructing in that scenario. If you truly do DC in this scenario.... sorry for your loss, **** happens, go save a kitten to up your karma... This type of situation is why we need the despawn timer to begin with. The despawn timer allows that hostile to aggress you, and ensure your righteous destruction! In reducing the despawn timer (to say 15 seconds), it's important that the despawn timer does not count down until your ship attempts its emergency warp. This means if you dc while warping a freighter across system, you won't disappear before landing on the gate. This means if you DC under gate cloak, you wont despawn before breaking cloak. I think this is extremely important to implement!

B.) Semi-Hazardous: I would define this as a situation, where you are in space, and have a timer. Essentially, when in this situation, you MUST use in-game mechanics to get your ship out of harms way. In-game mechanics would be warping to a POS, docking up in a station, warping around until your timers expire, cloaking up, etc... If you are currently (or recently) engaged in any in-space PvE or PvP activity, you should considered in a Semi-Hazardous situation, and should NOT be able to use log-off mechanics to risklessly get Safe. As such, I think NPC timers need to be extended to most Flying in Space PvE activities. If you activate mining lasers, gas harvesters, hacking/salvaging/analyzing modules, scan with a probe, or interacting with the PI system, you should receive the 5 minute NPC timer. (note: Activating a Jump Portal should also give you a timer).
-- Why? One of the major reasons ships have slow align times is to enhance the dangers in using that ship, and you should deal with that drawback in a manner that doesn't involve disconnecting. If you are ratting in an Archon with a 30s align time, then you should need to warp off to a safe spot, cloak up, etc, to avoid potential PvP. Disconnecting should NOT be a (good) option... I don't care if you are ratting, mining, etc... logging off should not be a tool to get your ship safe! To get save, you should first use in-game mechanics to avoid a fight, and wait out any timers you have, and ONLY then should you be able to DC safely!!

C.) Safe: When you are in space, away from hostiles, and free of all PvP, NPC, Suspect, criminal, and Weapons timers, you should be able to disconnect from the game in a riskless fashion. The despawn timer should NOT put a player at risk when leaving the game under this situation. With this in mind, I'm actually going to aggree with Ganthrithor that a 15 second despawn timer is more-less appropriate. Much longer than that, and it becomes very possible for an organized enemy to scan and aggress you before you despawn... and while we all want titan killmails, if someone is cloaked, in a mid spot, with no timers... they should be able to disconnect safely!! I really can't see any good reason why logging off or disconnecting under this scenario should be risky, in any fashion! In truth, most losses in this game should primarily come from piloting error, not an uncontrollable ISP packet loss. As such, the 15 second despawn rate is reasonable, because it's long enough to aggress someone DC'ing when in a hazardous situation, but short enough that you are very unlikely to be aggressed when DC'ing in a Safe Situation.

p.s. I know this sounds contradictory to suggest a player legitimately dc'ing when they jump through a gate into an enemy deserves to die, yet advocate that most losses in game should primarily come from piloting error. The truth is, getting yourself into that hazardous situation IS a piloting error, even if your piloting skills / equipment typically allows you to get back out of that situation safely.

I've never had any situation where ejecting from a ship nets me anything different than having the ship blow up around me. In my experience (high, low, npc null and wormhole) I've never had a problem getting my pod out after ship loss so long as there is no bubble and I have a pod saver (planets, sun and gates only) tab on the overview to get me out of there. Is there some scenario where the pod actually lives longer if you eject? I have no TiDi experience, so maybe there's a difference there. But outside that, I don't see that it makes any difference in any ship other than a T3.

About this paranoid guy:
Question 1: How does he KNOW he has people probing him for 12hrs straight? What breed of terrible prober leaves combats on scan to their target for that long? (Read Penny's tutorial on combat scanning if you think I'm full of you-know-what about this.)
Question 2: Has he thought about the time it'd take a prober (at least 1 additional combat scanner pass in all but the smallest systems or >5-10s using D-scan) to acquire an initial fix on his position? The adversary has to do that as well as the 100% pass, the warp-in, and gaining aggression within the length of the logout timer...or is there something that keeps Mr. Paranoid from throwing the scanners off his tail long enough to make them re-acquire from scratch (which is what the "log off mid warp" trick does, basically)?

And that's where we differ, my friend. CCP needs to fix THAT problem, not cause a new one.

If you are in a titan, orca, or any capital, it takes 30-60s to ALIGN, which means they will not be able to enter warp prior to a tackler landing on grid with them. These ships are very easy to scan down, and don't require a lot of "focusing" with probes. Additionally, for supercap kills, people WILL spend 12 hours waiting for them to decloak...

With the new system, where they can gain a PvP timer after logging off, a determined alliance wil camp a system until DT to get that supercap killmail.

There really needs to be a balance on the despawn timer. It needs to be long enough that you can't log off to save yourself when you are in a hazardous situation (enemy on grid), but short enough that you can't be caught and ganked when you're in a mostly safe situation (like cloaked in a safe spot without aggresion, even IF people have probes out ready to scan and warp in).

While you do have a point there, Titans and capitals are ships that require a good deal of responsibility. What are you doing with a multibillion ship with no support?

The problem can easily be avoided by simply fleeting up with a cyno and then jumping out of a system, after all nothing can prevent you from jumping out a system.

I think if you have an enemy around waiting in to get your titan and you're worried about being aggressed after when logging, I don't think the logging mechanic is an issue compared to having an unprotected supercap.

Gizznitt, thanks for your well-considered reply. I wish everyone made use of reasoned explanation!



This is an extremely good point and something that I'd neglected to consider. You're absolutely right that the timer starting before an ewarp would have disastrous consequences as far as the intent of these changes is concerned.



I don't know that its necessary to extend timer application quite this far. I don't think there's a need to extend it to activities like probing or other passive activities that don't affect players or NPCs. Miners are reasonably likely (maybe especially so with the new AI?) to be affected by NPC timers (assuming I understand it right-- being engaged by NPCs yields a timer). I don't think its necessary to make any in-space activity cause NPC flagging.



Totally agree.




For the record, I used to fly a supercap. In fact, I used to to profoundly risky things with my supercap. I'll leave it to you to figure out the details if you want, but let's just say there are capital wrecks with my name on them everywhere from Period Basis to Cobalt Edge. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Zungen (which probably explains why I sold my Nyx instead of buying replacements), but I'm not exactly risk-averse either.

However, my concerns here aren't based on my experience flying supers. In fact, with a 60-second timer, the vast majority of ships in EVE become targets-- anything either very large (with an align time of 30+ seconds-- so, carriers, dreads, armor supers, etc) or relatively small (anything from frigates to nano-battleships) would suffer from the same basic problem; anything with a long or short align time is vulnerable to being probed out and aggroed before they can vanish. With small or otherwise agile ships this is the case because their align time is low, meaning they spend the majority of their 60 second timer sitting stopped after completing their e-warp. For very large ships, the risk is that they can be probed and warped to before their e-warp even begins, since 30 seconds is more than enough time to run probes and warp to a result. Actually, something like an armor tanked battleship probably has the "best" chance of not being probed down under the 60-second timer, since it spends just long enough entering ewarp to burn a significant portion of the 60 seconds, but doesn't give a prober enough time to do their work...

I'm not paranoid, I've just spent enough time living in hostile space and using probes and the d-scanner to know that its easily possible to probe people out. If you don't believe that people will keep scanner probes out all day long, talk to Flashrain from IRC or eirnee (I think that's his name) from NCdot. Ask me about the time I moved my Nyx to Cobalt Edge and, once people realized who and what I was, regularly had people TAKING SHIFTS probing the system I had my supercarrier parked in. As it happens, I chose a very large system for this reason (although supers are still extremely easy to probe with large-radius probe setups due to their enormous sig size), only cynoed in when local was free of hostiles (so they could never get an approximation of my safe location), and back then you could generate deep safes that would put you in very... unexpected locations, but still. There would be people with probes out for hours and hours on end. If I hadn't been in such a ridiculous safespot, I would have been extremely concerned. Even with that safe I always tried to keep my logon/offs to an absolute minimum in order to minimize their chances of finding me-- if I logged on I would stay online cloaked until DT if I could. I have a pretty good internet connection so *usually* this was possible. Other people I know came very close to losing supercaps out there due to their log on / off spots being probed and camped. It's a very real problem.

Also worth noting-- its really not that hard to predict where people's safes are when you can see them warp off of a grid towards them and know how to use your d-scanner. It's easily possible to estimate where their safe is, at which point all you need to do is put probes out in that approximate area. I'll grant you that this is much more difficult in a large system, but the game can't be designed to work fairly in systems that are 40-60+ au across when plenty of systems have all celestials within d-scan range of each other. You have to design for the worst (from the DCer's perspective-- best for the prober) possible scenario.

I've done most of this stuff before myself (including scanning people out on log-off and landing on them in time to shoot them-- afaik under current mechanics this gives them an aggro timer if they log back in, thus preventing them from logging off again without dying (which people do sometimes to "check" local to see if the hostiles have gone yet)). I'm actually not sure if this is still a thing (EVE mechanics frequently undergo undocumented changes) but figure its always worth doing when I can (which is more often than you'd think). It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you :3

The question remains is why are you flying a nyx which is generally an alliance asset without alliance support?

And if there are guys in local are wanting to get you, why not just simply cyno to another system?

I can see your reasons why you would want this, but you put yourself in this situation which you did not find favorable. There were plenty of ways you could have done to make it less so, but simply rely on closing the client to solve your problems is not the way things should be done. Not only is it silly, it does not work. People will know you logged off in that system and will keep coming back, keeping the problem existent for you.

When you fly a super, of course you can expect people to come after your ass and the long align times are an intented mechanic put in by CCP.

Big ships come with big responsibility, I'm sure you've learned that.


If one minute is too long fine, but 10-15 seconds just so you can logoffski your caps rather than warp/jump them is not.

10-15 seconds is far too short, it needs to be longer than that, so it gives a clear message that logoff is completely unviable, not just maybe.