AFK Capital ship camping for free money

[Xodz]

I don't personally think it's that big of a deal (the way combat bonds are working), you don't really make much credits by doing it. You could easily make 5x as much by participating, if not a whole lot more.

I do however think they should probably make the capital ship explode when it is at 0% hull or retreat before it can reach 0%. Of course, instead of messing up combat bonds, they could simply make it so the darn thing moved a little bit...probaby make it a little hard to just afk hide inside it then...

 

[Morbad]

If AI battleship shooting down AI ships is what determines the outcomes of wars, then no thanks on player involvement.

That's generally my sentiment as well.

I don't personally think it's that big of a deal (the way combat bonds are working), you don't really make much credits by doing it. You could easily make 5x as much by participating, if not a whole lot more.

5x would be 4-8 million credits an hour...

Regardless, the downside of actually participating is that you actually have to participate. Anyone can actively participate till they are bored, and then take a break while their ship participates for them, quite possibly for a much longer period of time, with minimal supervision.

 

[Xodz]

Nah, you don't make much if you are properly hidden, to survive.

 

[Bigcheese]

Progressing while AFK is generally not a good thing, but I think the cap ships are really cool.

I have no easy solution.

 

[Morbad]

Nah, you don't make much if you are properly hidden, to survive.

You don't need to be hidden at all to survive as the only thing that can hurt even a smaller ship is your own weapons tagging your side too many times.

Rail Asp didn't even take a ring off my shields in the video I posted, and the Anaconda that attacked me did even less.

 

[Derath]

Really can't see why you'd have issue surviving i was scooping at the military intelligence CG yesterday I just ignored all the ships shooting at me while i scooped - other than the occasional reset where the feds started off with 2x the ships that crimson did I could have gone afk in every single one of them, even though I don't have turrets and I didn't really set my ship up for it.

 

[Xodz]

Progressing while AFK is generally not a good thing, but I think the cap ships are really cool.

I have no easy solution.

Already mentioned 2 pretty easy solutions (make the ships explode at 0% hull or retreat before then and make them move around a little bit (bouncing into their hulls probably wouldn't be very healthy)), but people wanna argue about credits and combat bonds instead of ways to fix it that would not only stop it, but make the game better...

 

[uberdude]

So i decided to test this farming out for myself in my Anaconda. Made just over 2.5 mill in an hour. I didn't go Afk. If i had gone AFK i would have come back to a rebuy screen. Having 8 turrets spamming away pulls so much agro that even with C7 shields and 8 Grade A shield boosters I still came close to losing shields. I did have every compartment stuffed with SCBs and had to pop several of them every 10 minutes or so depending on the density of the wave. The first time i attempted a timed run, half way through i managed to agro the fed side and had a rather large angry swarm shooting me with capital ship support. Not fun. Second time was better but at no point did i think i could go AFK and my ship would be fine.

I'm not sure how others are able to go AFK for hours on end and not have something go wrong. Either by ing off the feds through friendly fire or drawing to much fire from enemy ships and not being at the keyboard to pop a SCB.

But perhaps if you use fewer turrets so you dont agro as many ships? I don't know. Might have been my parking spot. I was nose to nose with the cap ship so i could get a clearer shot above and below it.

The limiting factor i noticed was the games RNG. I.E. Ships come in waves but what the waves consist of seems random. So if you get more big ships you make more creds and so on.

Is this game breaking from the standpoint of grinding credits? Not that i can see. Again I'm not sure how players are AFK farming these. I couldn't do it. And i wouldn't try to risk it again. Coming back to my comp and a 10.5 million insurance bill plus all those lost bonds would make for a bad day.

I have heard of this being used along side other illicit player made "upgrades" or hacks. Where your ships invulnerable anyway so you can park on the cap ship and walk away and not worry about being blown up. That's the only scenario I've heard of. I'm not posting links either, if you're curious google is your friend.

Should you be allowed to make ANY credits while AFK? I don't know. I suppose the current answer is no, since there really isn't anything within the realm of the game that lets you do this, I.E. crafting and selling things on an open market. But the players that are making lots of credits by AFK farming these sites are either lucky or using hacks to make their ships invulnerable. or they do get killed every now and then and just eat the insurance bill.

As far as the political side of it goes. I think it's asinine to think that a small group of rebel terrorists would stand a snowballschanceinhell against a galactic superpower. *queue starwars music!*.. Joking aside, the difference between Starwars and ED is the rebels in Starwars had capital ships backing them up.

 

[Xodz]

You don't need to be hidden at all to survive as the only thing that can hurt even a smaller ship is your own weapons tagging your side too many times.

Rail Asp didn't even take a ring off my shields in the video I posted, and the Anaconda that attacked me did even less.

Completely not true. Maybe you got lucky for an hour or I am completey unlucky, but if I don't hide I do get aggro'd and I will die.

I see why you didn't die, you had several other players in the instance with you.

 

[Derath]

@uberdude, I think it's asinine to assume that the federation would use any real military might on a single (probably) irrelevant system, the fact a capital ship is there in the first place is pretty daft, especially when you consider we aren't allowed to destroy it. I don't remember luke getting to the deathstar and then it warping out for 5 minutes before returning to laser everything.

Thanks for testing though - I'm not entirely convinced but at least I feel like its not easy though I do find 2.5mil/hr combat bonds to be rather alarming as thats more than I get by actually playing

 

[Morbad]

So i decided to test this farming out for myself in my Anaconda. Made just over 2.5 mill in an hour. I didn't go Afk. If i had gone AFK i would have come back to a rebuy screen. Having 8 turrets spamming away pulls so much agro that even with C7 shields and 8 Grade A shield boosters I still came close to losing shields. I did have every compartment stuffed with SCBs and had to pop several of them every 10 minutes or so depending on the density of the wave. The first time i attempted a timed run, half way through i managed to agro the fed side and had a rather large angry swarm shooting me with capital ship support. Not fun. Second time was better but at no point did i think i could go AFK and my ship would be fine.

I'm not sure how others are able to go AFK for hours on end and not have something go wrong. Either by ing off the feds through friendly fire or drawing to much fire from enemy ships and not being at the keyboard to pop a SCB.

But perhaps if you use fewer turrets so you dont agro as many ships? I don't know. Might have been my parking spot. I was nose to nose with the cap ship so i could get a clearer shot above and below it.

The limiting factor i noticed was the games RNG. I.E. Ships come in waves but what the waves consist of seems random. So if you get more big ships you make more creds and so on.

I used two class 1 pulse laser turrets. They occasionally hit friendlies, but it's rare for them to hit a friendly enough to cause them to go hostile. I does occasionally happen, but I had time in every instance to get back to my computer and get the ship out safely.

Your biggest problem was probably using the Anaconda. It's too big. Ship has dozens of times the surface area, but only double or triple the shields, of a Vulture.

Completely not true. Maybe you got lucky for an hour or I am completey unlucky, but if I don't hide I do get aggro'd and I will die.

Just because you don't know what you are doing doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm doing.

I used a Vulture. One of the smallest profile to shield strength ratios in the game. Most NPCs miss the ship, and the ones that hit have a very hard time getting through the fourth strongest shields amongst playable ships with 4 pips in SYS. I placed the ship where my own turrets, and the bulk of the cap ships turrets, had a clear shot at anything attacking, without being excessively exposed.

If every ship that spawned after the first few waves, immediately ran to my ship and ignored everyone else, I probably would never have lost shields.

Also, because I was doing so little damage, 'aggro' was intermittent. You don't need damage, the cap ship and twenty allied fighters have plenty.

 

[uberdude]

I think it's asinine to assume that the federation would use any real military might on a single (probably) irrelevant system, the fact a capital ship is there in the first place is pretty daft, especially when you consider we aren't allowed to destroy it. I don't remember luke getting to the deathstar and then it warping out for 5 minutes before returning to laser everything.

You really think the Federation wouldn't use military might in a system trying to break free that is only 52ly away from SOL? Especially with all the other systems that have been attempting or successfully attempting to break away from the Federation. Seems the Feds have decided it's time to make a point. Sorry it had to be made in Lugh.

You remember the U.S. decided to roll over Iraq for lulz. uh, I mean WMDs. Not sure why it would surprise anyone that the Federation would send a cap ship to Lugh.

 

[Daedelous]

This is actually pretty funny, ships sitting about with turreted hardpoints and raking up silly ammounts of money AFK... Just under 2 weeks time is going to be interesting.

 

[uberdude]

Your biggest problem was probably using the Anaconda. It's too big. Ship has dozens of times the surface area, but only double or triple the shields, of a Vulture.

Ah, that makes sense.


It is a bit silly to be able to sit there not doing anything and make credits even if i am sitting at the computer. It's lazier than trading even if it doesn't make as much. I'm sure FDev will come up with something. Or possibly remove enemy NPCs from cap ship locations. Or maybe not? it's no where near as bad as seeking luxuries was.

As far as the necessity of a cap ship in Lugh. All things considered it is insult to injury but this game is supposed to be "realistic" and what's realistic is usually far from fair or right. That said, it isn't unheard of for Navy's to send in their aircraft carriers and supporting fleets to parts of the world that are either having a conflict or have a high possibility of a conflict.

So the fact that the federation didn't send in a capital ship well before the outbreak of war is what surprises me the most.

 

[DemolitionSquid]

I like the capital ships and I like the fact that the Federation has an advantage...

BUT

I think having them be these untouchable, unbreakable assets is a big mistake. They are supposed to be these huge deals that can't be everywhere at once, but they are across countless instances and the fact they are meant to be so huge means that the defenders should be doing everything they can to focus fire them down. That obviously can't happen for the technical reason that you can only have 32 players in an instance and 2000+ people are participating in the community event.

This makes the capital ship a huge simulation-breaker for me. If they're going to have the capital ship and gain a huge advantage from it, I want to be able to (theoretically) organize as many players as necessary to take it out once and for all! Making it literally untouchable - which I think they have to do because of the aforementioned technical limitations - is a real pity. It just makes it pointless to engage with it at all.

Really, there should be a community goal on the CSG side - rout the Capital Ship X number of times to clear it away from the system for X number of hours at a time - do it enough and the ship explodes, or is so badly damaged it has to be taken back to a Fed holding for repairs at least.

Unfortunately, this would require a lot more real-time patching to handle driving it away/bringing it back, AND solo/private grouping would make it too easy to achieve the goal. Right now seems like the worst possible implementation of the system, though. If we're supposed to be the Elite who can work together to change the universe, having these points of untouchable invulnerability (I also dislike that stations are entirely immune to damage right now too) is a real downer.

 

[Daedelous]

I like the capital ships and I like the fact that the Federation has an advantage... BUT I think having them be these untouchable, unbreakable assets is a big mistake. They are supposed to be these huge deals that can't be everywhere at once, but they are across countless instances and the fact they are meant to be so huge means that the defenders should be doing everything they can to focus fire them down. That obviously can't happen for the technical reason that you can only have 32 players in an instance and 2000+ people are participating in the community event. This makes the capital ship a huge simulation-breaker for me. If they're going to have the capital ship and gain a huge advantage from it, I want to be able to (theoretically) organize as many players as necessary to take it out once and for all! Making it literally untouchable - which I think they have to do because of the aforementioned technical limitations - is a real pity. It just makes it pointless to engage with it at all. Really, there should be a community goal on the CSG side - rout the Capital Ship X number of times to clear it away from the system for X number of hours at a time - do it enough and the ship explodes, or is so badly damaged it has to be taken back to a Fed holding for repairs at least. Unfortunately, this would require a lot more real-time patching to handle driving it away/bringing it back, AND solo/private grouping would make it too easy to achieve the goal. Right now seems like the worst possible implementation of the system, though. If we're supposed to be the Elite who can work together to change the universe, having these points of untouchable invulnerability (I also dislike that stations are entirely immune to damage right now too) is a real downer.

Maybe when players can pilot their own generatable capital ships.

 

[FredTA]

You can sit AFK at the Lugh capital ship and rack up 15 million+ in a couple hours. I wouldn't mind if there wasn't a community goal opposing the federation but right now there is literally no way the crimson state will win.

Is this sort of behavior intended? Is it Frontier's way of railroading the storyline?

Wait what? how does that work? I know you can grind on the capital ship itself and just keep returning to the zone to keep getting the 50K bounty for it...

 

[Quineloe]

uberdude you actually need to play for a few minutes to clear out the entire instance, once you're down to just respawn ships you're good to go AFK.

 

[Daedelous]

Wait what? how does that work? I know you can grind on the capital ship itself and just keep returning to the zone to keep getting the 50K bounty for it...

People sit on top of the capital ship for it's protection, set their laser turrets to fire at will, and wait with high shields. The game just plays for them and ships are nuked by the capital ship with the turrets allowing kill credit to go to the CMDR.

 

[uberdude]

uberdude you actually need to play for a few minutes to clear out the entire instance, once you're down to just respawn ships you're good to go AFK.

Well, I did say I sat there for an hour and made 2.5 million but, okay. Thanks for the advice.

I'm curious if the types of ships chosen for each respawn wave are decided by what the player is flying. Probably not but I'm not sure.

I was also in Solo mode. And I would get randomly sized respawn waves sometimes 3 ships sometimes 12. Sometimes 4 pythons and smaller ships sometimes 2 condas and 2 pythons and vipers. There wasn't a pattern to it that i noticed.

There also wasn't enough of a gap between waves for my shields to recharge on there own. So having 2 pythons and a conda shooting my shields for 5 minutes tended to drain them just a bit. and it was compounded if the next wave had more pythons and condas. So I had to pop SCBs or risk losing shields. Either way, I couldn't have gone AFK and come back to an intact ship.

Again this was 1 hour of farming in an Anaconda purposely loaded for this task. I had 8 class 1 pulse turrets. I would very quickly agro every ship that was an enemy.

Maybe that was a mistake? Maybe i should have parked just on top of the cap ship instead of at its nose so I'd only shoot half of the ships that spawned in and not all of them?