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AFK Stalkers

AFK cloaking is quite the issue for some people.  People sit in your system, cloaked, and you do not know if they are trying to kill you or not.  If you undock and kill things they might try to kill you.  This makes people not undock because they might lose their ships and don't want to be farmed.  They don't want to encourage the person by giving easy kills.  However, locking down the system is also appealing to many because many Eve players love inconveniencing other Eve players.

This is seen as a problem because it can not be directly confronted.  The unknown is possible ship loss.  People dock up and feel under siege  The solution of go out and do what you are doing anyway and risk losing your ship doesn't work for many.  Some do. Some get in trouble for it maybe.

But as an outside observer I never thought much about it other then wondering why they didn't just work with the situation.  I still wonder that but now I also understand how incredibly irritating it is as well.  While being AFK cloaky camped in my system does not stop me from going about the rest of my life it is a very irritating situation to be in.

The neighbors have decided to start leaving a cloaked alt in our home system.  At first I thought I was just paranoid.  But day after day has stretched into week after week. Its been a month now.  Maybe more? They even switch them out.  The alt is an out of corp scout but the killboard reflects ownership nicely.

My first thought is, am I/my corp really that interesting?  Why would someone put a character in system, cloaked somewhere, for hours every day.  Are they really watching us?  If I am to assume that they understand that we will continue to do whatever it is that we do regardless of them, what are they doing?  Did we make them mad by ignoring them because they already bring 2-4 guardians to the party? Are they so geared up for killing us that they are willing to wait for hours and hope that one of us undocks to do some PvE without paying attention?

What are they getting out of this?

I don't know.  It wasn't until they started showing up in Bosena as well, sitting AFK in space for hours that I decided my paranoia was founded.  My paranoia isn't "oh noes I can't do anything" but more along the lines of why?  Isn't it boring? It is not as if we undock legions of blinged, pimp ships.  They managed to tackle a drake in an anom.  Said drake killed them and bailed before the rest of the fleet (with guardians) landed.

Are we some kind of exotic prey because we ignore them now?  They don't talk to us.  They just seem to watch us and its weird because I don't think we are that interesting.  It is almost stroking my ego but mostly it is making me wonder why or what they are getting out of it.

They haven't shut us down.
They haven't been killing us.
They haven't been doing anything but watching and occasionally trying to jump someone.

They did incap Razor's POS mods but left the POS alone.

Fried commented on it as well last night. I'm glad that it is not just me noticing it.  They have followed us to Bosena and spend time watching us and trying to grab our individuals.

Whatever works for them I guess.  Attention is attention?

Comments

  1. The reason why they do it is because it usually works (nullsec PvE players are mostly bots who stayed docked), so they can believe that it works against you too. They are believing that "they can't farm because of us". They don't know the truth, so they go on with their beliefs.

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    Replies
    1. i'm sorry but i was out i met maybe 2 people stupid enough to bot, and they got caught the pod express back to where they belong. i went out with my orca fit with boosts and a cloak, and mined with my buddies, in a grav site. when we saw probe the fastest barges would safe up in diffrent spots and the others would stow them and pod back to station. after that i would cloak up and watch him give up. there may be more bots in safer spots like with the HBC and CFC. i don't know i was with BC-A for awhile, they couldn't hot drop any trespaser. so please spot confusing the crazies trying to hold sov without a gaint supercap fleet or those that hold sov at all, with those stupid enough to bot. i was told later that i scared the high command with it (which at that time was hard(not so much at the end)) :)

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    2. not related to the post but apparently you think scanning for an Orca takes a lot of time. But it takes no more than 4 seconds. No time to do all that stuff you said you are doing

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  2. Again, disregard about half of what Gevlon says. Igorance on his part is...standard operating procedure, I guess.

    The reason it works in null is that one never knows if that afk intruder really is afk or not and people don't want to risk their ratting ships or their industrials to potential hot drops if the number of people active in system spikes enough to attract the afker's attention.

    I never much followed the dock up mentality in null when we had afk folks. I just watched d-scan and the like and stayed aligned when I could.

    Gevlon is correct in one tiny aspect, though. Well, maybe two. They do it because it works, in the main. And the way to beat them is to just go about your business, but with a heightened state of alert.

    It's the same kind of "fun" people get camping gates, I guess, or ganking. It obviously works for them, though I don't understand why.

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    Replies
    1. When we were in null, we found that one way to mess with the roamers and AFK cloakers was to have someone sitting AFK (it was the narcoleptic guy we'd fleet warp to the POS and kick from fleet when he passed out again) at one of our POSes. They'd waste plenty of time trying to probe him down and try warping to him only to be foiled by the force field.

      Our experience is to waste the time of the folks trying to hunt us - so they go somewhere else.

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  3. Ahh but it hasn't stopped us from doing anything. That's why its so weird :P Sure I pay more attention just in case but I also pop over and check if they have people in system and go about my life.

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  4. If they could get into a plex while staying cloaked, and have the ability to activate a covert cyno in a plex, then you would have something to worry about. Especially if you are not in a cheap ship. As FW is mostly cheap ships though, and as the plex mechanic stops the above mentioned cyno hot drop, that is why you have minimal reason to worry.

    In 0.0 a small group of ships can cover a vast area with no real counter, hence the problem with AFK cloaking. It's actually a large part of the reason I left nullsec for FW.

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    Replies
    1. fyi.. can't pop a cyno inside a plex or a mission

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