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Cloak Fuel - A cure to afk cloaking
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Gerrick Palivorn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#141 - 2011-12-13 08:27:07 UTC
Inmei T'ko wrote:
Yes, pretty much every alliance. It's not a secret. You disobey their nullsec rules about avoiding losses, and you get kicked out. Simple. Not rocket science, even a loud, obnxious, idiot cap-typer like yourself should be able to figure that out.

AFK cloakers do just that - they sit AFk for hours. They may be playing the game on another client and occasionally hitting dscan on the other screen. They may be actually afk. They may be active. in any event, they are:

1. Totally safe as awesome Sci-Fi invincible cloaked people. Wow I am so sorry for messing with your scifi dreams by the way! You suck ass.

2. You should not ever be totally safe in EVE. The cloak makes you safe and allows you to disrupt operations in a system whether or not you are actively playing the game and this is the whole problem. It's not good for people to be safe in empire, but hypocritically, it's totally cool for a cloaker to sit there perfectly safe in nullsec? Bullsh1te.

3. The entire idea of this tactic is to cause disruptions in productivity by simply being there. We all get that. Combine it with a black ops or standard cyno however and you have a tactic that is basically impossible to counter. pvE fits cannot fight PvP fits we all know that. by the same token PvP fits can't survive PvE engagements. So the sov holder is always at a disadvantage. Always. This sucks. And it is not fun. It makes all the hard work and effort of bothering with 0.0 sov a waste of time and ultimately futile. knowing how to fly my ship or not has absolutely nothing to do with it, you miserable vomitous mass. It is game mechanics. Broken game mechanics.

4. Because the person carrying out this tactic has no risk, or very limited risk, versus the standard ratter's extremely high risk (1 billion isk PvE fit for instance) the tactic is not balanced. you know, balance? that thing that makes a game challenging interesting and fun to play? Awwww, you wanted to keep on ganking people with no recourse with your lazy ass tactic? Cry to your mommy when they either change it or when EVE folds because people get tired of this futile foolishness and go to another game.


First of all, I know of no alliances that kick players for losing a ship to an AFK Cloaker, but good for them for the ones that do.

As for your points that you make about Cloaking...

1 - They are not totally safe, they have to decloak to do anything besides watch, hmm maybe thats when you need to strike...and lets try to keep personal insults out of what up to this point has been a lively discussion.

2 - I have mined, ratted, plexed and even sat outside the pos shields afk while an AFK Cloaker was in system, I have never lost a ship to someone who isn't there. You simply have to act intellegently to think of creative solutions around the problem that you and your leadership are afraid of someone who isn't there.

3 - I have ratted for hours in a pvp fit ship, and I didn't lose one single precious isk/hour ratio.

4 - U mad bro?

I have seen personally dozens of effective ways to counter AFK Cloaking, and some of these methods are so simple that I cannot believe they aren't standard practice. I won't reveal anything because they are really annoying to deal with. But I will give you a hint...wait, no I won't. Twisted

MMOs come and go, but Eve remains.  -Garresh-
Mr Painless
Perkone
Caldari State
#142 - 2011-12-13 10:20:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Mr Painless
Inmei T'ko wrote:

AFK cloakers do just that - they sit AFk for hours. They may be playing the game on another client and occasionally hitting dscan on the other screen. They may be actually afk. They may be active. in any event, they are:

1. Totally safe as awesome Sci-Fi invincible cloaked people. Wow I am so sorry for messing with your scifi dreams by the way! You suck ass.


Well, as long as they're AFK, you're also totally safe and invincible with regards to them. So it's not AFK cloakers you're worried about, it's active cloakers.

Inmei T'ko wrote:
2. You should not ever be totally safe in EVE. The cloak makes you safe and allows you to disrupt operations in a system whether or not you are actively playing the game and this is the whole problem. It's not good for people to be safe in empire, but hypocritically, it's totally cool for a cloaker to sit there perfectly safe in nullsec? Bullsh1te.


So basically you claim that it's not about being safe, it's about feeling safe. Remove local, or remove cloaky ships from local and you removed their incentive to be AFK cloaked.

Inmei T'ko wrote:
3. The entire idea of this tactic is to cause disruptions in productivity by simply being there. We all get that. Combine it with a black ops or standard cyno however and you have a tactic that is basically impossible to counter. pvE fits cannot fight PvP fits we all know that. by the same token PvP fits can't survive PvE engagements. So the sov holder is always at a disadvantage. Always. This sucks. And it is not fun. It makes all the hard work and effort of bothering with 0.0 sov a waste of time and ultimately futile. knowing how to fly my ship or not has absolutely nothing to do with it, you miserable vomitous mass. It is game mechanics. Broken game mechanics.


Basically, you are having issues with hotdrop mechanics, not AFK cloaking. And with regards to sov holder being always at a disadvantage... you have to be kidding, right?

Inmei T'ko wrote:
4. Because the person carrying out this tactic has no risk, or very limited risk, versus the standard ratter's extremely high risk (1 billion isk PvE fit for instance) the tactic is not balanced. you know, balance? that thing that makes a game challenging interesting and fun to play? Awwww, you wanted to keep on ganking people with no recourse with your lazy ass tactic? Cry to your mommy when they either change it or when EVE folds because people get tired of this futile foolishness and go to another game.


He has very limited risk because you're not doing anything to make things riskier for him but rather whine instead. And if you need a billion ISK ship in order to rat efficiently, then you fail at EVE.

On a final note...
There were dozens of "solutions" to AFK cloaking proposed here, and all of them besides failing at the most fundamental level of fixing things that don't need to be fixed also fail at another one.
Most of the suggestions like probing, losing cloak if you sit long enough in one place or don't do this or that periodically are avoidable by using bots. Just think about it. If bots can rat, run missions and plexes and also monitor local and run to safety when needed, then they can surely be programmed to warp to different safespot every few minutes. All of these "solutions" will not solve what their promoters wish (which is basically, to make them feel safer) but will only put incentive to use bots for yet another role. I think bots are ruining EVE enough already.
But maybe there would be some poetic justice in it. Using bots to prevent other bots from doing their job. ;)
Soldarius
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#143 - 2011-12-13 10:34:25 UTC
Strangely, there seems to be a glut of these threads lately. So rather than rewriting my entire post, I'll simply link it.

Bombers with bombs in the cargo bay are already tight on cargo space. A bomber with a cyno is even tighter. This suggestion would kill cloaking of any kind, and make Black Ops absolutely worthless.

http://youtu.be/YVkUvmDQ3HY
Zawisza Black
Stop Exploding You Cowards
#144 - 2012-02-17 02:37:40 UTC
You should have to actively play the game and use teamwork to disrupt an Sov economy. It's time we stop rewarding people not playing the game 95% of the time (getting rewards from being afk sounds similar to a bot).

You want to disrupt someone's sov ecnonomy, fine get a gang together harass their ratting/mining and actually play the game.

Tired of the trolls whining that they won't be able to stop people from making isk with almost no effort on their part if afk cloaking is fixed.

The argument that afk cloaking is the only way to stop botters is ridiculous - "lets stop afk players by using more afk players." Leave the botting worry to the CCP programers who can build in algorithms to capture repetitive input - its doable and has been done in plenty of other games.
Alx Warlord
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#145 - 2012-02-17 02:51:28 UTC
There is nothing wrong on harassing a sov economy with a cloaked ship.... And there is no problem on a ship scouting all day long a system while cloaked.... The problem is being AFK the whole day in the system whille destroying the system economy with noone being able to do nothing about it...

That is why, the solution for this is not Covert ops fuel, (That is a lazy solution, since you would only need to wait for its fuel to run out) but a Cloak hunter Ship! As proposed by CCP in the last CSM meeting! With the help of this ship it would be able to probe and try to find the cloaked ship, what is way more interactive and fun...

Please read these!

New POS system New SOV system
Zawisza Black
Stop Exploding You Cowards
#146 - 2012-02-17 03:05:45 UTC
I agree a cloak hunting ship is an excellent idea. Everything should have a counter... especially profiting from NOT actively playing the game. Make the cloak hunting ship a heron type fragile ship or cruiser type so that it's not too powerful a counter to legitimate active cloak gangs.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#147 - 2012-02-17 04:52:29 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Zawisza Black wrote:
You should have to actively play the game and use teamwork to disrupt an Sov economy. It's time we stop rewarding people not playing the game 95% of the time (getting rewards from being afk sounds similar to a bot).
Funnily enough, it's people's decision not to actively play the game and not use teamwork that disrupts their sov. If they chose to be active and use teamwork, the disruption would stop.

The simple fact of the matter is this: AFK cloakers don't disrupt anything.

Quote:
You want to disrupt someone's sov ecnonomy, fine get a gang together harass their ratting/mining and actually play the game.
You want to not get your economy disrupted? Fine. Get a gang together and har… no wait. You don't even need to do that. Simply choose not to get disrupted, and you won't be.

Quote:
Tired of the trolls whining
They'd have to accept that the AFKers don't actually do anything before they could stop trolling and whining. You are talking about the AFK whiners, I presume?

Alx Warlord wrote:
The problem is being AFK the whole day in the system whille destroying the system economy with noone being able to do nothing about it...
Good thing that there's plenty of things that can be done about it, then, and that AFK:ing doesn't actually destroy anything to begin with.

Zawisza Black wrote:
Everything should have a counter... especially profiting from NOT actively playing the game.
Why do you want to nerf trading? Also, what's the relevance here. This is a thread about AFK cloakers — people who don't actually make any profit at all.
Xorv
Questionable Acquisitions
#148 - 2012-02-17 09:45:58 UTC
For shame Zawisza Black for resurrecting the deservedly dead. I too am learned in the ways of Necromancy, don't tempt me to resurrect every Remove Local Chat thread.

Speaking of which...

Remove Local Chat Intel!
Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#149 - 2012-02-17 10:10:03 UTC
a terrible thread full of terrible ideas

everyone should be ashamed

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
Robert Caldera
Caldera Trading and Investment
#150 - 2012-02-17 11:23:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Robert Caldera
Zawisza Black wrote:
I agree a cloak hunting ship is an excellent idea. Everything should have a counter... especially profiting from NOT actively playing the game. Make the cloak hunting ship a heron type fragile ship or cruiser type so that it's not too powerful a counter to legitimate active cloak gangs.


omg, you still stick to your ret*rded view on profiting from "NOT actively playing the game".
I vote you for getting no SP anymore when afk or logged. And your trade slots, manufactoring and research slots should become inactive too when you arent logged in and at keyboard. You should not profit from not playing the game, no afk skilling, afk trading or afk researching for you.
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#151 - 2012-02-17 22:33:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Simi Kusoni
Zawisza Black wrote:
You should have to actively play the game and use teamwork to disrupt an Sov economy. It's time we stop rewarding people not playing the game 95% of the time (getting rewards from being afk sounds similar to a bot).

You want to disrupt someone's sov ecnonomy, fine get a gang together harass their ratting/mining and actually play the game.

Tired of the trolls whining that they won't be able to stop people from making isk with almost no effort on their part if afk cloaking is fixed.

Your idea of using a gang to disrupt ratting/mining is pretty special. Ever tried killing ratters/miners in a deep sov null sec pocket?

You jump in, they're either already docked because they saw you coming on intel or they dock when they see a neut in local. Your gang might be able to stop them from ratting in one or two systems, but you'd need to stay there, with a fully formed fleet, indefinitely in order to do it. On top of that you very likely won't get any kills, except the odd idiot not watching local.

This is why AFK cloaking is necessary, until some alternate method is thought up that allows players to attack an alliance, it will always be necessary. There is little enough risk in null as it is, lessening it even more is a horrendous idea. As much as I hate AFK cloaking it is a necessity, as such any suggestions made with the aim of removing it as a valid tactic should start by providing an alternative tactic to replace it with.

And if you're still going to argue that a roaming gang can catch ratters, this is an example* of an RA renter system I was in a few weeks back. If a neut is in local, they dock up or log off in space, there is no possible way to burn through those bubbles and reach a target before they align, warp and dock. Your argument to end AFK cloaking, since it proposes no alternative, is merely an argument to make null sec 100% safe.

*http://i.imgur.com/AjjLJ.jpg apparently "url=" BB code doesn't work for images What? Nice one CCP.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Ares Renton
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#152 - 2012-02-17 23:11:46 UTC
Nullsec is supposed to be the hardcore pvp warzone. Just go to empire if you want to PVE without risk...
Miss Whippy
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#153 - 2012-02-18 00:15:42 UTC
[insert 'cloaking is fine' comment here]

[insert 'carebears crying because they want zero danger in nullsec and be able to afk mine in nullsec, and rat without having to check their directional scanner'' comment here]

[URL="https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=82348"]UI Iteration isn't enough, we need to start from scratch[/URL]
Zawisza Black
Stop Exploding You Cowards
#154 - 2012-02-18 01:29:48 UTC
Here are some of your ridiculous one-sided arguments and my answers.

Argument- "Null sec shouldn't be 100% safe."
Completely hypocritical argument, you want it to be 100% safe for that lone idiot sitting cloaked in a system 23.5 hours a day. You want him to have every advantage - surprise, ability to choose all his fights, invulnerability whenever he wants.

Argument- "There would be no way to kill those indy's and easy targets if we didn't have every advantage." Sorry but that's the way eve works, people can evade you. If you want to suppress an alliance system you should have to put some time, effort, and teamwork into it, not park an alt there month after month with complete impunity.


Argument- "He's afk he can't do anything." Yes he can, he has every tactical advantage on his side. He can come back to keys at will, search for his easy cowardly kills, choose his fights 100% of the time, and go back to being invulnerable. All with almost no effort.


Argument- "Keep a standing fleet up, problem solved." Sorry but it shouldn't take the constant time and effort from several people of being at keys to stop one lone idiot who puts minimal effort in. This one-sidedness is just not a realistic expectation.

Argument- "He doesn't get any benefit from being there afk anyway." Yes he does, one person gets to suppress and harass an enemy's economy with almost no effort. Massive economic loss to an enemy is a benefit.
Ares Renton
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#155 - 2012-02-18 01:40:49 UTC
Zawisza Black wrote:
Here are some of your ridiculous one-sided arguments and my answers.

Argument- "Null sec shouldn't be 100% safe."
Completely hypocritical argument, you want it to be 100% safe for that lone idiot sitting cloaked in a system 23.5 hours a day. You want him to have every advantage - surprise, ability to choose all his fights, invulnerability whenever he wants.


How's it different from sitting in a station? People sitting in a station are completely invulnerable. They can't act unless they undock. A cloaker can't act unless he uncloaks.
Zawisza Black
Stop Exploding You Cowards
#156 - 2012-02-18 01:55:25 UTC
Ares Renton wrote:
Zawisza Black wrote:
Here are some of your ridiculous one-sided arguments and my answers.

Argument- "Null sec shouldn't be 100% safe."
Completely hypocritical argument, you want it to be 100% safe for that lone idiot sitting cloaked in a system 23.5 hours a day. You want him to have every advantage - surprise, ability to choose all his fights, invulnerability whenever he wants.


How's it different from sitting in a station? People sitting in a station are completely invulnerable. They can't act unless they undock. A cloaker can't act unless he uncloaks.



Wow another ridiculous unrealistic argument, way to cherry pick through my statements and completely fall on your face in the process. It's so different i'll give you several reasons:

1) Someone docked in a station is visible to people as being docked in station - so you know where they are.

2) Reds can't always dock in enemy stations in sov territory.

3) If you're in a station you're not potentially roaming around and being a threat

4) Undocking from station makes you extremely vulnerable. Someone wanting to effectively camp a system would never camp by docking - it would be suicide.

5) If someone undocks and people are waiting outside they have the upper hand.

6) combat makes it so you can't redock, re-cloaking doesn't have the same restrictions.

7) you can probe systems while cloaked, you can't probe systems while docked.

I could poke more holes in your argument but my fingers are getting tired.
Simi Kusoni
HelloKittyFanclub
#157 - 2012-02-18 02:19:03 UTC
Zawisza Black wrote:
Here are some of your ridiculous one-sided arguments and my answers.

Argument- "Null sec shouldn't be 100% safe."
Completely hypocritical argument, you want it to be 100% safe for that lone idiot sitting cloaked in a system 23.5 hours a day. You want him to have every advantage - surprise, ability to choose all his fights, invulnerability whenever he wants.

Argument- "There would be no way to kill those indy's and easy targets if we didn't have every advantage." Sorry but that's the way eve works, people can evade you. If you want to suppress an alliance system you should have to put some time, effort, and teamwork into it, not park an alt there month after month with complete impunity.

Quit using a bunch of straw man arguments, try actually responding to the genuine issue of null sec being too safe instead.

Quote:
Your idea of using a gang to disrupt ratting/mining is pretty special. Ever tried killing ratters/miners in a deep sov null sec pocket?

You jump in, they're either already docked because they saw you coming on intel or they dock when they see a neut in local. Your gang might be able to stop them from ratting in one or two systems, but you'd need to stay there, with a fully formed fleet, indefinitely in order to do it. On top of that you very likely won't get any kills, except the odd idiot not watching local.

This is why AFK cloaking is necessary, until some alternate method is thought up that allows players to attack an alliance, it will always be necessary. There is little enough risk in null as it is, lessening it even more is a horrendous idea. As much as I hate AFK cloaking it is a necessity, as such any suggestions made with the aim of removing it as a valid tactic should start by providing an alternative tactic to replace it with.

And if you're still going to argue that a roaming gang can catch ratters, this is an example* of an RA renter system I was in a few weeks back. If a neut is in local, they dock up or log off in space, there is no possible way to burn through those bubbles and reach a target before they align, warp and dock. Your argument to end AFK cloaking, since it proposes no alternative, is merely an argument to make null sec 100% safe.

*http://i.imgur.com/AjjLJ.jpg apparently "url=" BB code doesn't work for images What? Nice one CCP.

[center]"I don't troll, I just give overly blunt responses that annoy people who are wrong but don't want to admit it. It's not my fault that people have sensitive feelings"  -MXZF[/center]
Ares Renton
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#158 - 2012-02-18 02:26:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Ares Renton
Zawisza Black wrote:


I could poke more holes in your argument but my fingers are getting tired.


I'll poke one hole in your argument:

You could always go to high sec.

The developers constantly put the best stuff in nullsec because it's supposed to be a dangerous area.

If you want to just farm all the good stuff without being in any danger, you don't belong in nullsec.
Zawisza Black
Stop Exploding You Cowards
#159 - 2012-02-18 03:34:04 UTC
Quote:
Quit using a bunch of straw man arguments, try actually responding to the genuine issue of null sec being too safe instead.


Those aren't straw man arguments they are the actual arguments i've compiled by all the trolls advocating for no change to the way afk cloak camping works.

Quote:
This is why AFK cloaking is necessary, until some alternate method is thought up that allows players to attack an alliance, it will always be necessary.


What a shallow argument. You're saying that you should be able to single-handedly, without the help of others, effectively wage economic war on an alliance.
Quote:
until some alternate method is thought up that allows players to attack an alliance
....Ummm its an entire alliance you're talking about, it should take... maybe an entire alliance or a gang of people to attack an alliance not some twit with a cloaking device.

Quote:
You jump in, they're either already docked because they saw you coming on intel or they dock when they see a neut in local. Your gang might be able to stop them from ratting in one or two systems, but you'd need to stay there, with a fully formed fleet, indefinitely in order to do it. On top of that you very likely won't get any kills, except the odd idiot not watching local.

Waaahh, you're whining about an entire alliance coordinating effectively with intel, fleets, and smart playing. Join a big blob alliance and take over that sov if you want to destroy the economy so badly. To have it your way one person can safely diminish the efforts of an entire alliance - where's the logic in that?
Zawisza Black
Stop Exploding You Cowards
#160 - 2012-02-18 03:39:51 UTC
Quote:
try actually responding to the genuine issue of null sec being too safe instead.


Yes, null sec in the hands of an organized intelligent and prepared alliance should be safe from lone goon pirate twits like you. An entire alliance is safe from one person, HEAVEN FORBID!!! However, null sec is not safe, nor should it be, from big pirate alliances who actually coordinate and steal sov space from others.