I'm splitting this up into a few parts to explain what, why, how as well as a counter. If you don't like the wall of text skip to the bottom for a rough explanation. (tldr at the bottom)

What?
Currently local in null sec is like every where else in k-space. When someone enters system local updates to show them. This is partly a social aspect in most areas of k-space but in null sec and low sec it is an intelligence aspect.

To explain this to some of you that have never been to null: People rat in a system in relative safety. When a hostile enters, they all warp to safety (POS, station, cloaked in a safe spot, etc). Aside from removing part of the risk in null it does help bots. They can immediately react to a hostile entering and safe up. Players do occasionally miss a hostile entering system. I'll be upfront and say while it would put a damper on botting this is not in my list of concerns.

Why?
The game mechanic of local, as explained in the lore and a few dev/GM posts I'm too lazy to look up to link is that when people jump into a system the gate informs all players already in the system of this. Gates are neutral so they don't belong to any corporation or alliance, they simply exist. They share intel with everyone.

To a point this makes sense, but it would also make sense to be able to "hack" the gate and hide intel from your enemies when you own a system.

This has been requested numerous times, but it seems no one can agree because it does favor the defending alliance if sharing the intel, which is why I propose a counter later in the post. If hiding intel from everyone people will argue it makes the risk too great.

How?
My suggestion is to add an ihub upgrade that will disable local for all except the alliance holder. Standings would not apply so "blues" flying through the space would lack local as well. The upgrade should require a strategic index of 5.

When enabled it would be like w-space for all but the holding alliance. Names only displaying if someone talks, and then staying indefinitely. The holding alliance would see a delayed local, not an instant local. They can leave it alone and keep the instant local for all (no change).

I chose to withhold the information from standings blues to discourage the upgrade from being installed in every system. All the major alliances have blues that travel through their space, if major routes get this upgrade they will be forced to travel nearly blind. This should help encourage alliances to only install the upgrade in strategically important systems.

Counter?
In the ship tree rework where they are giving destroyers and battlecruisers their own racial skills. A dev mentioned that racial destroyer only unlocks 1 ship, where as all other racial skills unlock 3 or more. Makes it kind of a waste. My suggestion is to add a new tier 2 destroyer, of which the tech 1 is a standard upgraded destroyer and the tech 2 is a black ops gate hacker.

The blops gate hacking destroyer can interface with an enemy gate and obtain the current local list. The module used for this cycles automatically, as long as it is running the local list is updated at the start of each cycle. This information is shared with the entire fleet of the user. The skill required reduces cycle time to give a more real-time list.

If the module is interrupted (canceled or the ship is destroyed) the local list simply stops updating for the fleet.

This ship works for the alliance holding the system as well, so they can hack their own gate and get real time local.

Of course, it's "just" a destroyer so it's fairly fragile. You'll need a few if you want to actually make use of them long term. It's a low end ship and a(nother) reason for a new player to take racial destroyer to 5.

Seems to make ratting in null easier?
Yes and no. Delayed local is enough time to find and destroy someone. Sure you won't get multiple targets but intel channels still exist, when one dies the others will be informed anyway. It discourages "afk cloaky alts" that people seem to be into using lately as it would be more worthwhile to keep their presence out of system until they want to kill someone. I suspect all popular ratting systems will get this upgrade and that's the main reason for suggesting delayed local instead of real time.

tl;dr / Conclusion
Remove local from null via an ihub upgrade needing strategic index 5. Only people in the alliance can see a delayed local, all others have no local including standings blues (discourages upgrading all systems). Add a new ship (destroyer class) to counter it by targeting a gate and using a module, sharing the local list with his fleet as long as the module remains active.

--

I was bored and it was just a thought. Not sure if it's a good one but thought I'd share.

Living in null sec for a while, I dunno about this, seems like a double edge sword.

Sometimes, just me and my buds hanging out scanning sites, mining or gate camping, then all of the sudden local goes from 10 players to 60 in 5 seconds, thats when we either safespot or jump, or wait till they jump.

I do like wormholes with no local, I think if people actually used their directional scanner like they should, they would prefer this option, but i know some alliances that would cut you for even suggesting it.

Personally, im on the fence, in the end, doesnt matter, CCP makes the decision and w/e it is, gotta adapt.

I'd be for it, but only if there is 'something', either a special type of probe, infra upgrade or deployable added, that allows you to also either detect cloaked ships, or someway of knowing that they're in system without them having to talk (of course, not without a little work, so a probe would be good for this. Alliances could have designated scanners to periodically scan the system for any pests)

If people don't like local, live in WH's, problem solved.

+1
my point exactly!

Removing local is NOT gonna stops bots by anymeans.
They will do it using othermeans like gate fire effect or sound of gate fire and i am sure there are many other ways. The only reason why they use local is cos its easier and not cos its the only way!

As a highly (un)productive member of this eve society I approve of said idea! I myself would love to see local removed in Nullsec and this is a great way to go about it. The defenders should have an advantage when defending or flying in their own space.

+1 I love this idea.

remove it in High Sec and Low Sec as well.
As it is now war-targets dock up when entering local.
Also, when a couple of -10 pirates enter local, the miner-bots tend to dock up.

remove it in High Sec and Low Sec as well.
As it is now war-targets dock up when entering local.
Also, when a couple of -10 pirates enter local, the miner-bots tend to dock up.

CCP supports griefing so much now, if it removed local the game would see fewer industrialists than ever, griefers get it all (including pathetically tanked hulks as targets) industrialists have practically nothin.

tl;dr Keep local.

To a point this makes sense, but it would also make sense to be able to "hack" the gate and hide intel from your enemies when you own a system.

NO NO NO AND NO. OP you clearly are an idiot and dont get the game at all.

OP, ignore the rest of the bullcrap this guy wrote, and read the sentence.

Local is necessary for Nullsec. It is how you teach new players to look out for themselves. Goonswarm has a thriving newplayer program, and one of the things we teach our new players (NewBees), is to be mindful of intel channels, and local.

You'd have to be at the gate then... so you'd just, you know, see them on your overview?

You'd have to be at the gate then... so you'd just, you know, see them on your overview?

It is possible to make things impossible. If the data isn't there it's not there. You can't magically know. If the server chooses not to send it then neither you nor bots will know about it. Period.

D-scan helps but oh wait, bombers. Get a bomber or a few with points, warp in cloaked, find target, uncloak, target, point. There you go. Got him. No counter other than having a scout inline between systems that don't have the upgrade. That is countered by logging out and waiting, log in after a while and grab a random target. It becomes a lot easier to catch bots as well as normal ratters.

But as I said, that is not the intended function, just a side effect. As for local and wormholes and everything. That's great if you wanna be fairly locked down to 1 system or want to be scanning all the time. My idea is about adding another feature, another tool, for alliances to play with. It's not forcing anything on anyone. The change is additive. An alliance need only use it if they wish to and a counter was provided for those wishing that alliance harm.

This suggestion adds more dynamic to eve and gets away from every system is the same. Null sec is null sec. You should have more control over systems you own -- within reason. I personally think it'd be cool to be able to use different tactics for different systems. This idea emphasizes scouting even more than it is now. It adds a new ship and role for people to aim for. And it keeps the sandbox fresh with another set of tools to bend the universe to your will. It's possible someone will come up with some crazy way to use this idea that had nothing to do with any of my original intentions, but that's what I love about eve.

OP, ignore the rest of the bullcrap this guy wrote, and read the sentence.

Local is necessary for Nullsec. It is how you teach new players to look out for themselves. Goonswarm has a thriving newplayer program, and one of the things we teach our new players (NewBees), is to be mindful of intel channels, and local.

You'd have to be at the gate then... so you'd just, you know, see them on your overview?

It is possible to make things impossible. If the data isn't there it's not there. You can't magically know. If the server chooses not to send it then neither you nor bots will know about it. Period.

D-scan helps but oh wait, bombers. Get a bomber or a few with points, warp in cloaked, find target, uncloak, target, point. There you go. Got him. No counter other than having a scout inline between systems that don't have the upgrade. That is countered by logging out and waiting, log in after a while and grab a random target. It becomes a lot easier to catch bots as well as normal ratters.

But as I said, that is not the intended function, just a side effect. As for local and wormholes and everything. That's great if you wanna be fairly locked down to 1 system or want to be scanning all the time. My idea is about adding another feature, another tool, for alliances to play with. It's not forcing anything on anyone. The change is additive. An alliance need only use it if they wish to and a counter was provided for those wishing that alliance harm.

This suggestion adds more dynamic to eve and gets away from every system is the same. Null sec is null sec. You should have more control over systems you own -- within reason. I personally think it'd be cool to be able to use different tactics for different systems. This idea emphasizes scouting even more than it is now. It adds a new ship and role for people to aim for. And it keeps the sandbox fresh with another set of tools to bend the universe to your will. It's possible someone will come up with some crazy way to use this idea that had nothing to do with any of my original intentions, but that's what I love about eve.

Yes and no. It is very easy to put an alt at 300km facing gate, watch or listen for the jump effect and notify the bot to save up.
Most bots are in dead end system or systems with very little transit so it wont work.

The things that drives me most to not liking this change is that its a half fast job at best and it does not fixes the problem and possibly breaks another part of eve. Have you taken into concideration how "OP" its gonna be not to be able to see you cos there is no local, not to be able to dscan you cos you got a cloak and not to be able to probe you cos you got a cloak. It makes cloak way too powerfull. Now add to this black ops and its really really OP, specially if you are really good with them like BE. Hi BE o7

Also the idea of upgrading the system to get local, i belive is probably one of the worst. have you forgotten what CCP did regarding system upgrades in the past? Well alliances spend billions in upgrades and then CCP decided to nerf it to death with NO refunds. People cried and did warn that a huge percentage of eve players will leave 0.0 space. Goons were among the advocate for the nerf and were deniying that people would leave 0.0 space. Now look at us, I would estimate that at least 30% of eve left 0.0 space and it all happened in days. People including goons now days are screaming that 0.0 is empty. Whats worst, is people stopped logging in also. As you can imagine i do not want to see this happen all over again.

Also I like local. I like to smack talk in local to both, allies and enemies. I do not want this feature to be removed cos then how am i gonna talk to alies then?

I'm not sure how this change would benefit pve players at all in nullsec. Seems more like a recon/bomber/t3 gank improvement.

Here's how you do it:

1. open eve source code
2. find section of code regarding local in WHs
3. select it, hit crtl+c
4. find section of code regarding local in nullsec
5. select it, hit ctrl+v
6. ???
7. celebrate making nullsec PVP interesting.

Local turns 95% of pvp into blobbing, station games and POSing up.

okay, while we're at it we might as well remove

gates
jump drives
static belts

and require probing to do anything meaningful in nullsec

because if you want wormhole style local, why not move to a wormhole?

You upgrade the system to remove local, not to add it. The default is nothing changes, it adds the option to remove local if you choose to, not the other way around. The counter was added so it could be made to not be OP for the defender.

If whatever you are doing requires local, get someone in a blops destroyer to target the gate and give you local. You cover him and there you go. The counter to the counter is just blow up the ship. The counter to that is bring more ships.

Yes you can use a scout, but this requires 2 accounts for something 1 used to be able to do. More than likely bots will just move to less profitable systems that would not be upgraded. I never said it would stop bots and this was not even on the intentions of it, just a possible side effect. The intention of it is to give alliances another tool to use how they see fit.

The idea is alliances choose to remove local from a system, not choose to add local to systems. The goal behind it is they only remove local from important systems. The more I think about it the more I think it should be like a cyno jammer, requiring an upgrade and a POS module. This lets it be destructible without dealing with reinforcement timers. Destroy the module and regain real time local for everyone.

if you want to remove local, put it behind another channel/minimize it and disable flashing. Problem solved. Besides people bot with friendlies in local also. A few months ago someone did it in our alliance. He got caught, blown up and his pod was still warping from belt to belt. He got reported, the end! Removing local does nothing for bots. Besides goons have said it before - if you spot a friendly boting, dont report them, dont shoot them, we are not here to do ccp work for them, from mouth of th horse himself the Mittani.
I want to talk to both friendlies and enemies in local and this is a dumb (no offence ) way to fix stuff.

if you spot a friendly boting, dont report them, dont shoot them, we are not here to do ccp work for them, from mouth of th horse himself the Mittani.

we have no way of knowing who reported a botter, fyi

we have that rule because we just don't want to deal with ratting drama, because we have better things to do

You know removing local just means not automatically giving you the full local user list. You still get the local window and can talk in it. You just don't know who is there unless it's your alliance that holds it or you are hacking the gate (or they talk).

I thought it was more policy/a guideline than a rule.

My suggestion is to add an ihub upgrade that will disable local for all except the alliance holder.

we have no way of knowing who reported a botter, fyi

we have that rule because we just don't want to deal with ratting drama, because we have better things to do

my point is, if you are never gonna enforce no botting within your organization, why would you support a change thats not gonna fix the issue specially when your own alliance refuses to take matters in their own hand! Its ridiculous.

because changing game mechanics in some hamfisted attempt to fix botting is stupid

banning bots fixes botting

while I am for bans, 2 times = permaban
so now its ok to ban other people but not "your" people. double standards anyone??

we discourage botting and anybody who talks about botting, encourages botting or anything of the sort gets banned from our services

allowing people to report/shoot bots opens a can of worms of stupid ratting drama that we simply don't want to put up in a 4000 man alliance surrounded by a significantly larger coalition

So how can you still call for baning and not eenforce it in your own alliance? STOP the hypocracy (again, no offence)

Halfway through the original post my first thought was "what a terrible ******* idea?". Soon after that my second thought was, "Oh, the OP is from TEST. Why am I not surprised?".

because the task of enforcing the EULA comes with a paycheck, not a monthly subscription, and the people who find bots and mete out the appropriate punishments are actually equipped to do so

again, the same thing can be said for your alliance! We are going in circles. You cant enforce something that "your" alliance is happy to do so. You are exaclty like them the only difference is you want them banned and not yours!

you're from "School of Applied Knowledge" lol

wow it's almost like you don't get the point

we can't stop anybody from reporting bots, but if they choose to beat their chests about it they're gone

hint: we don't care if idiots get banned for botting, goons or otherwise

excuse me but you just said your alliance did care a few posts ago cos otherwise the whole drama thing with 4000 people and your enemies next door.
As i said, you cant enforce something when you dont enforce it yourselves like we did and blew up the guy boting in our own alliance followed by a kick and report. I guess you guys are not so keen about removing bots just other peoples bots! ALL BOTS DEAD. NO EXCEPTIONS

no, you selectively drew whatever conclusion best suits your argument

when I said "allowing people to report/shoot bots opens a can of worms of stupid ratting drama that we simply don't want to put up in a 4000 man alliance surrounded by a significantly larger coalition" I meant that we don't want to deal with situations where it's one person's word versus another's

believe it or not, not everybody that rats in 0.0 is botting

ofcource not.
i was not selective at all. I read exactly what it says. Its not my fault you did not word it right. But once again, somebody in another alliance does not wants to "deal with situations where it's one person's word versus another's" as you just mentioned, so again how can you still argue for ban for boting and not enforce it within your alliance?

we don't pay to enforce CCP's rules

simple as that

The rest of eve dont pay to enforce CCP's rules either but they also understand, wrong is wrong and right is right.
The rest of eve also dont pay to have your views imposed to them specially when it does not apply to your alliance simply cos you dont want to. It is simple as that!

you seem to think that bots need to be reported for CCP to do anything about them

okay, while we're at it we might as well remove

gates
jump drives
static belts

and require probing to do anything meaningful in nullsec

because if you want wormhole style local, why not move to a wormhole?

I do live in a WH.
the reason I do so is local makes nullsec useless.
it needs to be at the very least 5-10min delayed.

i do not feel this is a good idea.
I personally wouldnt like that someone could shoot the upgrade and now i am left without local.
There are far more things that need fixing like sov, pos and faction warfare. Not to mention that this makes the attacker always have the upper hand. This is specially true when your enemy is far more bigger than your alliance. We have enough upgrades to worry about to add more.

Maybe make 'local' an upgradeable asset.

a system thats held by sov wont have local channel, at first.

allow alliances to upgrade systems, (at a cost), to implement an 'Active Transmitter Relay Network'
or better yet, make it a costly POS module, like an entire POS to run the thing.
therefor it will become a developable asset, but will also be vulnerable to destruction.

pop the ATRN module at an enemies POS, covert-cyno in a fleet later while local is down

=

PROFIT!!!!

Didn't read the proposal.

What?
Currently local in null sec is like every where else in k-space. When someone enters system local updates to show them. This is partly a social aspect in most areas of k-space but in null sec and low sec it is an intelligence aspect.

To explain this to some of you that have never been to null: People rat in a system in relative safety. When a hostile enters, they all warp to safety (POS, station, cloaked in a safe spot, etc). Aside from removing part of the risk in null it does help bots. They can immediately react to a hostile entering and safe up. Players do occasionally miss a hostile entering system. I'll be upfront and say while it would put a damper on botting this is not in my list of concerns.

The above clearly say that you intend to remove local. My point is simple and remains the same. It is too easy for a much bigger alliance to move in, reinforce or destroy the upgrade and move out. A small entity would never have a hope in hell. Now you got no local until 5/6 weeks down the line and thats provided that it doesnt get attacked meanwhile or destroyed again.

It's almost as if you believe having local would stop a "much bigger alliance" from moving in, reinforce/destroy anything/something/everything and move out.

This is a fallacy.

The intel. Is the key here. Now you got no local until another upgrade lvl 5 in 5/6 weeks down the line. Its totally ridiculous! You should have a "home advantage" and intel across blues! Otherwise, whats the use?

What do you think you'd be able to do with "guys, 400 reds are in our system, what do we do?" with a few seconds more of warning?

you are missing the point. its not about the seconds. its about intel. seeing you, saying where you are going. picking up one or two straglers using intel. All that good stuff which has made eve, eve.

Good scouts would do this, too.

i could also say the same for you. Keep local and a good interceptor with dscan skills can trap anyone.
The difference is, you got to have home advantage. A module for local removes that compltelly for over a month,

So if a good interceptor with good dscan skills can trap anyone, then you don't need any other crutches. vOv

we see all the time frigates and other ships catching anything from a frigate to a freighter to a super capital. This should be nothing new to you.

Yes, and this isn't dependent on local.

yes it is. you dont hunt someone if he is not in local. unless you happen to se himn log off, in which case you hope he logged agressed.

Sounds like you're not blessed with interceptor pilots with good dscan skills. vOv

I dont se how you put that and the rest in context together.
If you think thats a hit under the belt, then you are sadly mistaken.

Hey, you're the one who seems to think you need local to catch stragglers off of a fleet. vOv

And you are the on that seems to think that you need to make sure noone has local in order for you to catch someone and win the day . Not to mention that you failed at the argument so now you lower yourself to scounduring the person behind the counter argument. Which in itself is a sign of weakness behind the personality.

Why would I need no local to catch anyone, or "scounduring" (whatever that means) anyone because I'm pointing out the fact that what you're "counterarguing" with, isn't dependent on local? Setup a proper scout network and you'll see where who are going.

We have good covert ops scouts, thank you very much.

What do you need local for, then?

cos i am a social guy and i want to smack talk to the enemy. I also want to see all the blues in local.
you can still catch anyone even when they see you in local. so working as intended.

If you want local to be a social arena, then I guess we can make it a regional thing, this way you can smacktalk him long after he's left your system, and you can see the sea of blues you've surrounded yourself with. Win-win.

no its not a win win. Its a win win for you maybe, not for me. There should be a home system advantage. Your idea, removes that.

So you have a good scout network which keeps track of enemy fleets so you can catch stragglers, you can smacktalk them for as long as they're in your region, you can see all your blues to get that social bond thing going, and this is still not enough?

you can still catch anyone with local with the present system. I like it just the way it is and i like it even more now with the improvemnts of the ui and compact mode. I see my friends where they are rather than they are "somewhere" and i have home advantage, I am happy. And it works as intended.

In other words, even though you have a "good scout network" and "good covops pilots", you still need local to track enemy fleets who are going for your space?

What's this about "catching anyone" or "not see you in local"?

shush, you are getting in the way of me watching the romania renegades promo video!

That's okay, I'll wait. I mean, I assume there's a point there, somewhere.

well the point is self explnetory. You dont want to be seen in local as if this prevents you from getting kills.
I must continue this discussion later. I got to get ready for squash. Will be back in 3 hours or so.
GL HF