Pulling cables is not combat logging, as you need to LOG to do that; and more over, they only included the non-menu option later and there is nothing they can do about it.
I think this might be were some of the disagreement comes from. For some reason FD has specifically defined "Combat Logging" as terminating the client process in some way OTHER than using the normal 15 second logout procedure. Yes, it makes no sense to call this "logging" as it's the opposite of "logging out" but for some reason this is the way they have decided to use this term.
Sandro Sammarco said:
For clarity’s sake, “combat logging” is when a Commander ungracefully exits the game (e.g. using ALT + F4 then shutting down the game process) to avoid defeat, destruction and damage.
The thread where they defined "Combat Logging" is located here:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/105778-“Combat-Logging”-Update Sandro clarifies that terminating the client process is considered an "exploit". He also explains why they can't just keep your ship in-game, which is a consequence of P2P connections:
Sandro Sammarco said:
Because we don’t have an all powerful server running the moment-to-moment game play simulation, there is no infallible arbiter to take control of a player’s ship when they ungracefully exit.
He also acknowledges that at present there is really no valid reason for a CMDR who is interdicted to say around for a fight, but they are thinking of changing this:
Sandro Sammarco said:
On a related, but separate track, we’re looking at introducing benefits to Commanders that persevere and stick it out through dangerous encounters, as well as general credit costs and rewards balancing.
In addition to being unable to "enforce" combat logging, FD can't even "monitor" it properly as their recording of "ungraceful" game exits is not accurate and they have apparently incorrectly flagged many players as "combat logging" when they infact did not do so. I would expect that the largest source of "false positives" for this likely arises from buggy interdiction mechanics where the interdiction mini-game freezes and requires that you terminate the client process, which they probably flag incorrectly as a "combat log" as you would have terminated the client process while your ship was "in danger". So apparently attempts to "identify" combat loggers are still quite unreliable, which is why FD has basically admitted that they will need to convince players to voluntarily NOT combat log.
So combat logging as it currently exists is unenforceable and they have admitted that they would really need to provide some incentive to stop players from using it given the risk/reward balance currently gives players no reason to NOT combat log. What's even worse is that they haven't even addressed the current state of the game, especially the issue of interdiction bugs, which makes this even more of a problem. In essence they first have to start from the existing imbalanced PVP and buggy game mechanics (very poor risk/reward balance for players), fix the OP heat meta (still poor risk/reward due to interdiction bugs), fix all the interdiction bugs (intended risk/reward balance) and finally give players further incentive to NOT combat log (improved risk/reward balance).
They have not done any of these things yet, however, so it looks like they have indirectly "approved" of combat logging by admitting that they need to adjust the risk-reward balance in the game to truly give players a proper incentive to avoid using it.
