Recently started playing in 0.0, I discovered a rather vicious and unfair way to play : ghost camping.
For those who don't know, it's just about staying online and cloaked in a system, for the sole purpose of making the other feel "unsafe".
Of course, to make sure they don't get used to it, you can scan down anomalies with onboard scanner, and try from time to time if you can get an easy kill.
How can we get rid of those people ? Is there any proper way to handle this kind of problem ?
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Owen Hughes
[ Editor ]
Bait them and pop them.
A baity ratting boat seems the obvious choice here. A plausible ratting BS with heavy neuts, tackle, big buffer would be the way I’d go.
Darina Smirayne
[ Moderator ]
The cloaker is employing psychological warfare, and (unfortunately) the only response is to do the same.
None of these options are very good, but the covert cloakers are powerful ships to use when the opposing force is unable to ignore them. To be honest, a single PVE battleship will have no trouble escaping from a frigate-sized cloaker (even a stealth bomber who gets a bomb and a few rounds of torps on target), and little trouble escaping from a cruiser-sized cloaker. The problem comes when his mates turn up in a battleship destruction fleet.
Matt
[ Editor ]
Sorry to Say, in general I agree with CCP's stance it is a legitimate use of Covert warfare.
As much as I don't like it, it is something that needs to be lived with, I myself have camped an enemy system in my covert ops.
Although my goals are more subtle then the general afk cloaker, I am there to recon the area, get hooks and tracks all over the system. Some times in the region of several hundred bookmarks to disseminate to Fleet commanders on upcoming ops. I may also be there to measure force sizes, disrupt economic operations or provide Intel on enemy formations. Either way I am there with purpose and never away from my keyboard for more than 10 – 15 mins at a time.
Personally only reasonable action I believe CCP could take to dissuade players to afk is to have an idle time, if you are out in space and provide no inputs to controls for a period of (let’s say 2hrs for arguments sake) then you have a message pop up saying “you appear to be inactive we will disconnect you from server in 5mins and 0 seconds” counting down to 0 at which point like a normal d/c you would emergency warp and disappear. This is fairly pointless though as people will either just use macro’s to get away with it (but at least they are now breaking a rule!) or as such you will just have people popping back to their pc every hour or so to move the mouse and click on the neo-com. Even so you will get rid of people who go to bed with EVE on, and you will put obstacles in the way of long term afk cloakers.
Recon and general camping I have absolutely no problems with, it’s a game mechanic, cloaking and the general ghost camping should not be changed in anyway, perhaps with exception of Black Ops being able to use a covert ops cloak (Even if it is a more expensive version). However I do have a problem with players that are not playing the game and are off doing other things in R/L just because they have the CPU cycles to spare. If you are connected to the server you should be playing... I’m down with periods of up to an hour; people may have to step out for a reason, maybe to eat etc and you need to be fair to peoples differing play styles. But much more than that and it’s not about playing anymore.
In terms of player actions well, Gate camps and attended bubbles work well for us, however something I would perscribe is don't let them take your military level down as they will see it as a victory.
So Fleet up, ratting gangs of up to 30 are not unheard of in our systems, they are there for mutual support, if you are in the rat fleet and someone screams you immediatley warp to them, no PVP cloaker fit can with stand 30 PVE fits, even if it's a Black Ops Battleship.
If your system is quiet it is harder, but best thing to do is read intel and don't do anything that makes you easy prey, just treat the system as a hostile system, local...scanner...probes if you are in sigs... stay aligned etc all the usual tricks you use to stay alive.
The only difference is you think you should be safe in your own back yard, just a quick change in mentality and you can carry on about your business as usual for the most part.
Something I used to do if an AFK cloaker used to really upset me is get a small gang together and go to their systems to run their signitures.... I then follow it up by posting all the cool loot we collect in local or send it to the afk cloaker in a mail with a title of what you could be doing ... If only you could include screenies lol.
+1 from me for legitimate use of Covert warfare.
One question, though: when you say it’s CCP’s stance, did they actually come out and definitively say that? I would be most interested to learn specifically where, if so. Thanks!
Topic isn’t about ghost camping being a legitimate tactic. It’s about how to deal with it given the weapons /tactics we currently have available in our arsenal :D
Aye…. and there is indeed 5 paragraphs at the bottom with suggestions on how to deal with it as it is ;o)
for mymind….to my knowledge CCP have not released a statement to this effect. I will of course have a look for one when I get home just encase. However this subject has been going around since late 2007 / early 2008. CCP has done nothing, it’s not on the CSM agenda, and I work within the industry and have a few contacts at CCP and although it would be a stretch to call them my friends the topic has cropped up as I play, and there personal opinions are as above. These things together give me the belief this is their stance. However as with everything it’s not nescessarily the company view.
D. Sneckner, J.D.
[ Editor ]
Heh-heh. I've started doing it back to them (or their pets), but as I only have the main and a brand new alt, it's kind of harder for me than it is for them, I think. I usually don't exceed a 24-hour cycle.
Yeah, it sucks though. I've heard people crying nerf cloaking, but I think that would be a horrible mistake. I would rather deal with the ghost camping than do that.
EDIT ADDITION:
We usually ignore afk cloakers with a heavy eye on directional with little disruption and do not speak or respond to them. Seems to have mostly worked.
Supposedly,you could attempt to set traps in belts, like a baitship fitted to tank and pin the cloaker down, if he engages. I've heard guys in alliance talk about it, but I've never seen it done, nor do I know if it's just talk or an actually valid tactic.
Doing it back to them, sound like a fair possibility. Requires to skill for stealth bomber though.
I am skilled for SB, but even if you just warp into system and quickly cloak up in a frigate…how do they know what you’re in, as long as you stay that way until you are ready to depart?
I meant going after them and kicking them in the butt… gate camping only is usefull if people start thinking “hell what if he shows up”.
Volley of torpedoes + bombe launcher = something they won’t forget.
After that, it’s just a matter of showing up in local… hence my question : is there a way to deal with this… setup traps maybe ?
redragon
There is nothing you can do about them. Till CCP gives us counter to AFK Cloakers. You can ether Keep playing eve and wait for them to make a move, wait them out from you POS or safespot, or move on.
If they’re afk, they cannot hurt you. If you want relatively risk free ISK grinding, you need to do it in Empire!
astronomix
[ Editor ]
You can bait them or trap them, as others have said, but it's going to take a lot of patience and may ultimately be a waste of time if they are just AFK.
Your best option is to find where the enemy rats and put your own AFK cloakers in their systems. Then it's just a war of attrition, but at least you are getting back at them.
This has been done to death on the EVE forum. Perhaps this should be a community wiki as it is more about opinions of CCP intended gameplay rather as opposed to delivering a fact based answer.
The only reason I didn’t suggest wikifying it is because I hadn’t yet read what I, too, know to be all over the Eve forums and wondered if there might be an objective answer to the question. I will thus second Rash’s suggestion in the absence of any other objective approaches besides mine, which is kind of a last resort anyway.
Well maybe my question wasn’t clear, I was looking for a way to deal with those guys. Since CCP consider it a legitimate use of game mechanics, how do I make sure it’s not worth it for them so that they quit doing that.
I wasn’t asking about how CCP should fix it (didn’t know it was broken to begin with, although I think it’s kinda lame way to play).
I think I know what alliance you’re in :)
WELCOME TO THE PARTY!
And which one would it be out of curiosity ? :D