4Game

I had a very unpleasant experience this afternoon of which I suspect others will wish to be aware.

I had just switched ships (from my exploration DBX to my Anaconda) and was fiddling with things in the station services menu (restock, contacts, et cetera). After a minute or so of this, I heard the dreaded "station loiter" warning buzz. I immediately closed the station services and saw that I had an airlock loitering violation and had 29 seconds to leave the station. Note that I was still "under the platform", having just switched ships. I immediately made to launch and leave the station (reopening station services in the process). Five or six nerve-wracking seconds of watching the platform slowly move to me and lift me to "launch level" later, I made one of the fastest (both in terms of time and in terms of velocity) exits I have ever done from a station, making it out with seven seconds left on the timer (apologies to the Orca that got rammed by a ship the size of an aircraft carrier moving at Mach 0.98).

I immediately submitted this as a bug report and have now been notified that this is known issue.

The good news: FDev is aware of this, and according to another reporter, apparently relogging (which given the 30s window may or may not include some Alt-F4 or Task Manager) while the timer is running can also clear it and avert disaster. It might also be tied to having just switched ships.

The bad news: If this happens while you are AFK, you die. So avoid AFKing in the dock. Log to the main menu (yes, I know, the ESC menu takes three minutes to load…) instead.

EDIT: Quoting part of my bug report in anticipation of some replies:

And before someone replies that I must have launched accidentally and forgot about it:

• I was in the station services menu. You cannot do that after choosing to launch, nor launch from the services window.
• I reopened services while the warning was displaying.
• After choosing launch, I was still underneath the launch platform, and had to waste precious seconds waiting for the animations.
• I got an airlock warning, not a pad loitering or station trespass.
• The warning disappeared and reappeared with a different time.