Hm.

Could you elaborate on what you think players can do once they get access?

And is this meant for the system owning alliance, or an enemy player? Or both?

I kind of think an automatically updating d-scan on a 5s interval would be pretty cool, with all the results going on your sensor overlay using the ISIS icons for ship hull type, and perhaps additionally colors for the race (sensor str type).

[ibid]

I would also want the variations in ship class sizes to be more towards making bigger ships being easier to spot/ID, rather than making bigger ships less capable of doing the spotting/IDing. I don't want to make battleships blind.

Changes to the chat.

Local should be set to only show players in your alliance, chatting is also filtered to display the chatting of your alliance only.
New channel introduced for constellation. Like npc corp chat will show number of players in the chat (constellation), friend and foe, but will not show playerportrait unless player has typed in it.

Posibilities.

Local will show number of players in the system. This in regards to the gates tracking you traveling to and from
the system.

Ships entering or leaving through wormhole accesspoints will not be added to or subdracted from the number of people in the system, since they did not enter or leave via a gate.

[...] So only allow cloackies to gather passive intel (hey look, there is a ship).
And disallow the minigame while cloacked. From a lore perspective. The minigame requires actively using the sensors, which you can't, because you're cloacked.

If there is no local to indicate people jumping into system, I believe gate fire should be somewhat recognizable from afar. For example, said cloaky didn't show up in local - but the ratter's/miner's dscan still has chances to pick up gate-fire on xy-gate if he was actively looking in that direction or simply close enough to that gate.

With a bomber and it's whole hunting-specialization, it surely should have a formidable *passive sensor thingy*. Would be cool to suddenly see a green battleship-icon pinging in an anomaly on your system scanner!

To the submarine analogy, isn't dscanning itself the passive thing - and launching probes the active version?

I would suggest some aspects which evolved from past discussions. Here are the basics from a thread I made, for reference.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=112964&find=unread
[ibid]

This is interesting, could it be something like being able to see if people are actively d-scanning? hi-jacking their d-scan results, though at less accuracy, would be pretty cool.

Perhaps what's needed is a third state of local for NS? WHs have no local, but for various reasons pointed out elsewhere, that's no use in null.

Off the top of my head: make NS local a constellation wide channel. Gives more longterm warning (ie someone in the area), but less precise and less immediate warning (someone in your system).

This would further distinguish the three areas of space in terms of the dynamics of local: empire space, null and whs, all very different.

Do you envisage higher levels of access and would they hold older records or more information on the last 15 minutes?

Don't get me wrong, I love alot of the ideas in this thread. Just not convinced it is sufficient to keep people wanting to do PvE in null. Or to put it another way, the ideas in this thread would be welcome changes to the game (provided they don't impact server performance), but while they are good they might not go far enough.

local in null? get rid of it, hack it or make it like wormholes

local in losec? hack it, destroyable local transponders, discontinuous coverage.

local in hisec should be left as it is. thats why its hisec.

you want to operate in hisec then you have to work around the rules. dont like it move to losec.

I dont knoiw how somethign can be a boost to an activity with ZERO effect. Zero multiplyed by anythign is still zero.

The ideas you guys have come up with are pretty interesting, but there are still a few things you need to account for before you can reasonably replace local. It is very important to retain a balance between the different entities this will impact.

Local is an extreme mechanic, but it balances the risk created by other extreme mechanics by causing stagnation. Here are the ones i can think of.

Local - Cloaking - Cyno - Star Map Info

Local: Extreme Intel (immediate threats)
Cloaking: (More specifically Covert Ops Cloaking) Extreme impunity + free intel
Cyno: Extreme force projection
Star Map Info: Extreme Intel (target prospecting)

Without Local, the synergy between Cloaking and Hot dropping would be an unmitigatable threat. This would cause a major increase in risk. Also the risk generated by Star Map Info showing every pilot in the game at a glace where null sec residents are active would go unmitigated there by increasing risk at least slightly.

Of course on the other hand these other mechanics in unison balance Local by cause stagnation.
Without Cloaking, systems can be cleared of hostiles. Major decrease in risk.
Without Hot drops, the maximum force a cloaked pilot can project is 1 ship. Major decrease in risk.
Without Star Map Info, pilots would have to do a lot more ground work resulting in less frequent random hostilities. At least a slight decrease in risk.

To fix any of these things you need to fix the rest. All of these mechanics are too extreme to be healthy for this game. They all need to be altered (nerfed) in some way. And i personally believe that Local should be the last of these changes.

On the flip side though, how hard would it be to find targets without Star Map and Local? Do we really want to empower the meta-game? These are some tough issues for sure.

I would simply make it escalate with the security.


Time to update is 10 seconds divided by local security. So 1.0 -> 10 seconds. 0.5 -> 20 seconds 0.1 -> 200 seconds 0.0.. infinite seconds ....

Then in 0.0 allow alliances to deploy structures that reduce the update time. But make these structures have somethign like 100 K ehp at most so they can be raided and ganked in prepartion for attacks.

Some people blitz anoms for bounties, yes, but those people are generally not affected by cloakers much, since they can move about and do that pretty much anywhere.

The PVE that would mainly be affected by local changes is mining and industry. Absolutely huge volumes of ore gets mined every single day in null. Now people think "bah who cares about miners, bring on the PVP!", but the problem is that null PVP wouldn't happen without the miners and industrialists. Titans and supers take an absolute mammoth amount of time and resources, way too much to simply ship things down from high sec. So even from just that point of view, you can understand why titans are core to null PVP, since they allow fleets to cover great distances. If everyone had to travel 40 jumps between battles, they soon wouldn't bother.
And it's not just limited to those. Huge volumes of modules and subcaps also get produced in null, since they get lost in the thousands, and much of the high end minerals and T2 mats get produced in null.

As much as people like to say that the guys with 10 miners chewing away at rocks all day are evil "nullbears" and should be cleansed from the game, the other part of null, the PVP that fills the news sites simply wouldn't happen without them. And many of the local changes I've seen suggested would allow a cloaker to sneak up on a miner in null with no ability for the miner to be forewarned. If that happens then they have essentially be chosen by the mechanics to die, given no opportunity to avoid it no matter how well they can play. And that's just not good game design.

People already have to spend 100% of their rime staring at local, all this would do is give them a different window to look at and some probes.

The questions I've put forward, which I'm yet to get an answer to, are these:
The removal/reduction of local is often presented in the form of solutions. But what is the actual problem that is trying to be solved? There's a lot of solutions, but no real description of the problem beyond "local is automatic" which is a statement of the current mechanic, not a description of a problem caused.

And if local were to be removed or reduced, what is the improvement? What is the benefit to the player for having developers spend time on building a new system?

These are the main questions you have to answer when looking at game design. You have to have a problem to warrant a solution, and you have to be able to clearly define what benefits the playerbase has. No matter how good a solution is, people resist change, so there will be people that are upset regardless of what changes are made. To balance that out, there has to be benefit as well, to stop it turning into a monument shooting protest from all sides.

Would this be any less automatic than local currently is though? With an audio indicator it just means people could turn their speakers up loud and pay much less attention.

We know the impacts, they've been discussed at length. But what's the problem?

But would it be sufficient to get rid of things like AFK cloaking? Or should AFK cloaking be allowed to remain in game?

A new local mechanic would be [...] adding clicks and sinks to the existing system. Now if that had some profound benefit, I'd be well on board, but it doesn't. At most it helps gankers and makes other forms of PVP harder to find. And I'd be pretty pissed off if CCP wastes a whole bunch of time developing things like this while SOV mechanics themselves are still shite, POS permissions are a true nightmare (especially in wormholes where a POS is mandatory) and the research and manufacturing clickfest is still in full swing.

A couple of nice ideas from my AFk cloaking collection thread:

Andy Landen: Various structures (gates, stations, POS, IHUBs, etc.) are designated as intel structures, if a cloaky (or any ship) shows up on grid with them they are listed in local. Avoid showing on grid with said structures you do not show in local. Also, a mobile intel structure (much like a mobile depot) if a cloaked ship (or any ship) shows on grid (i.e. is not cloaked) with said structure it is reported in local. How could one bypass this mechanic? Covert or regular cynos would suffice.

Lucas Kell: A ship jumping into a new system does not show in local until it drops the gate cloak.

Two ideas I liked from that thread (sadly now locked).

Thought I'd toss them out here as well.

Comment on them in any way you like.

Edit: I hope that by linking other people's ideas I find good/interesting puts to rest the notion that I'm just trolling people....

Yes it is, because anyone who has played this game for any amount of time knows that all the hand wringing over local and 'free intel' and immersion is really just looking for a buff to ganking soft targets.

Except plenty of people here have already pointed out the tactic of warping to places PvE'ers would be at, like belts and anoms. They complain that local lets the PvE'er warp out before the ganker has time to check all the belts/anoms.

I don't have to read between the lines in this thread when people have been very open about their desire to remove local having the result of keeping their targets ignorant of a threat, making the targets easier to catch. This is all about making it harder for the hunted to know they are being hunted.

Sure I have an imagination. And my imagination isn't enjoying the idea of spamming d-scan, or layering a hypothetical auto-scanner window on my already cluttered screen. Watching gates doesn't sound like fun, or maintaining any sort of check-point-log structure on the gates.

And gankers most certainly affect profitability. Either they keep you in the station, where you don't make the isk to pay off your PvE ship, or they kill your PvE ship before you make enough to pay it off. These mechanics of no gain or actual loss already exist, and they already get used every day.


I'm kind of sick of people dreaming up ways of making the space I live in less livable or more of a chore to use, just to buff one very narrow play style. After all, these ideas almost always exclude highsec and lowsec from local removal. If you want to make changes to my backyard then you better get use to me giving you and earful on what the likely outcome would be.

I have read through the majority of this and i am smiling my ass off.

i would like to maybe add a little thing to the "constellation" local idea.

I think its a good idea, however i do see a little bit of a failing.

Would it not be better idea to have a "so many jumps depending on your skills" local. I mean if you are in a constellation, and you think its pretty quiet. You are in a party of 3 or something in low sec. You jump into another constellation and all of a sudden there is 100 people in your local, 30 are gate camping where you are. YOU WILL BE SCREWED :P which is nice. but a skilled pilot wouldnt want to be forced to make this mistake. I think it would be a good idea to have a skill.

Something like "vacinity radius" or something. Level 1, you can see in your system and up to 1 jump from where you are in any direction, all the way to level 5 where you can see up to 5 systems in either direction of the system that you are. Of course, there has to be gates. so, if you are in a dead end system, you will only see the systems linked to that 1 gate.

I think this would be a better way of having a nice dynamic local. The people who dont train they vacinity skill will be the ones who get a nasty surprised, and the one that do, deserve to plot their course well.

I hope i have explained that properly. I would like to have gone into more detail but im at work :P

thoughts on this?

[...] if they can't receive perfect intel, clicking a button or not, they are FORCED TO DIE mechanically.

The only reason a lot of people survive is because a lot of people have mastered their play style around the mechanic.

Seriously though, PVE is PVE mate. Stop trying to force people to have to PVP just because that's what you want. Just go play in wormholes or something.

Which I didn't at any point state. So you read it, exaggerated it in your mind, then decided to call it a straw man.

If the intel is perfect, then no, they won't, which I stated before, thanks for reading. If the intel is imperfect they will be.

They might right now make the human error of not opening up the local window, or not looking at it. You are simply drawing your arbitrary line in the sand slightly further up. It's a pointless change to make people have more mundane repetitive tasks to undertake just to play, which is pretty much the opposite of what CCP has been developing for years.

See the problem still remains that you think all they have to do is undock and somehow the "local shield" protects them. So who's the one exaggerating here?

Seriously though, are you just gonna start doing that thing you did before where you simply ignore half of what people say, badly interpret the rest, then respond with ridiculous nonsense based on your bad interpretation of half of what was said?

Not sure I have the time for another 200 pages of that.

I'm sorry, but am I the one misinterpreting things, by suggesting that the quality of intel would be less than was needed?

No.
The concept of imperfect intel came from you. The suggestion that your imperfect intel would then cause forced deaths followed.
All I did was point out that people should need to make a more significant in game effort to access the intel, as the bar is too low to be considered an effort at all currently.

Ok, then am I the one suggesting that any effort beyond being alert enough to read a list of names, would be too much effort?

No.
You continually point out that if they get the same intel, then making additional effort is a waste.
But, in so doing, you have been glossing over the established awareness of human error, (and screwing up in general), that local intel goes to great lengths suppressing currently. Players who never considered fitting for defense, and intel gathering in general, are handed the results no differently than the ones who paid close attention, and prepared wisely.
It could be pointed out that paying close attention and preparing wisely are devalued by this mechanic, given the uniformity of results available either way.

And you can call anything you like 'ridiculous nonsense'. You are entitled to your own opinion.
Just keep in mind, the loudest voice in a room is not necessarily worth listening to.

[...]avoidance is an absolute necessity to maintain PVE efficiency and to stop PVE players simply getting bored of getting ganked every day by someone too risk averse to fight someone with guns.

Read here for an explanation from someone else:
http://themittani.com/features/dont-touch-local

The portion you are looking for is:

Well, you're wrong. It's not my problem if you are unable to comprehend why the inability to see a player in any way until he is on grid with you would force PVP on a PVE player, but it would.

which would do exactly that.

Oh so out of sight, out of mind eh?
You realise of course that doesn't mean it was never suggested.

Even fully concentrating like I do, if I take all possible actions to stay alive, and either a) don't make more isk than high sec or b) can't ensure my safety to at least 99%, then I won't be doing any PVE at all, because it simply won;t be worth it. Even if I could make a butt of isk then get killed, rinse/repeat and make more than high sec, I don't want to be some gankers easy chow.
(NB. quote taken from the comments section of Lucas' blogThe Indecisive Noob)

What you imagine, being the hackable gates?
would local be removed, and would you need to be on grid with the ihub/gate to get its Intel?
if a player entered system, how quickly would it update?
and how would you overcome the intel advantage the defending alliance would have over an aggressor?