Particularly given they are war targets, we pay for aggression rights, they get 24h notice of who we are and what we intend and for the expected duration of hostility.

Ok now you lost me I don't think it's your fault I think it just went over my head

I wonder if adding a corp or alliance to a watchlist would trigger thier idea of "mutual"?

both myself and the op are mercs , active hunting ones at that.

this change will reduce us to humping hubs and pipes

my point though was though the people that end up on our watch-lists are notified in advance they are going to war and thus what our intent is

no tactical tracking of the opponents, either of 0.0 supercapital pilots or your personal opponent, no matter whether you are the hunter or the prey

- no chance for determining login traps

- no chance to determine alts

- while hunting one can not determine if the opponent is lost or logged off, which lead to very frustating gameplay

Locator agents are desperately in need of an overhaul. And in my system, they would get a wide array of new buffs, both out of necessity, and because even without my proposed changes they need some changes. So here's how I would change them.

1:) All locator agents now have unlimited range. From level one to level four, all agents can now locate anyone anywhere. Let's be honest, the level one and two agents are near useless, three may be marginally useful, but I am fairly sure people only ever use level four agents. Since you had to grind standings anyway and you pay for distance of locate, it really doesn't make sense not to use level four agents. So, we'll give all agents a huge buff so they can all be useful. This also means you don't have to do tedious grinding with local NPC's just to be able to run basic locates.

2:) With all locator agents finding people at all ranges, what is left for the level two through four agents? We are going to revamp what intel is given at what level agent.
__A: Level one agents give you star system information only.
__B: Level two agents tell you whether the person is docked (at what station) or if they're in space.
__C: Level three agents tell you what ship the person is flying.
__D: Level four agents give you access to watch list functions. For a sum of 10 million isk, they will enable you to watch 1 person per transaction, for a period of 7 days. Only works in k-space, and while undocked. Further explanation on page 3, first post.

3:) Decreased search duration, decreased cooldown. Locates need to be more accessible, with how few and far between some locator agents can be. So, I'd make the search duration a mere 30 seconds, with no cooldown. If you want to toss a ton of isk at an agent finding out where every person of that 30-man industrial corp is, then you should be able to go for it.

4:) Cost. I'm not immediately familiar with how much each level of locator agent costs (again, I recall it is based on distance, I just don't remember what each level costs), but I believe the farthest current range costs 500,000 isk, am I correct? I would up the cost of the locator agents so level one agents start at that, then it doubles up from there. 1 million isk for a level two agent, 2 million isk for a level three agent, and 4 million isk for a level 4 agent.


(...)The lore: level 4 agents, being rather high up in the command chain of their respective companies, have contacts within Concord. Contacts willing to keep tabs on other players for you...for a price. Concord officers take the bribe and spread it to their friends, friends that use the stargate network to monitor your status.

Here's the catch:

All things in the game need counterplay. The counterplay for this watchlist is this: It no longer functions as a simple "online/offline" status. It functions as an "in k-space" status. Due to working through the Concord-monitored stargate network, it does not work in wormholes. And it does not work while a pilot is docked.

So is your target offline, or simply docked up? Hmm. Now the intel is incomplete, and it has to be. Streaming intel cannot be infallible, heck, streaming intel should not be possible at all. But I think this is an acceptable compromise.

__B: Level two agents tell you whether the person is docked (at what station) or if they're in space.


,,,

And it does not work while a pilot is docked.

So is your target offline, or simply docked up?

I'd like to bring up a system of changes I proposed a while back, including changes to the watch list and local.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=416522

I'd direct your attention to post #2, where I propose making watch lists a function of locator agents, as part of an overhaul both of watch lists and locator agents. It's best to get full context of the changes I proposed since they all are part of an integrated system, but I'll copy-paste the relevant section to this thread since this thread deals strictly with the discussion around watch lists.

I use the watchlist to track whether or not someone is multiboxing so we know if 4 War Targets are 1 person or 4 individals which assists in tactics.

Most Intel people can tell this without the watchlist but getting OOC eyes flagged to your corp usually requires some form of proof.

This will no longer be the case and so sucks balls imho.

Seeing a lot of talk about Supercaps, so looks like as usual CCP is pandering to the elite level and saying F%^& You to everyone else.

What's next CCP? Pandas and a F%^&ing Farming Option?

not frustrating for someone being chased.

this change is good and long overdue. You shouldnt be able to see someones online status just by adding them to a list.

you should be able to know if you are wasting your time looking for some one who has just quit playing

But honestly, if someone had proposed in F&I yesterday that "Hey guys, we should introduce a mechanic that lets me know the second a pilot comes online no matter how far away from me they are, so I can start hunting them instantly, and this mechanic will have no cost at all and can be done by a zero skill alt" they'd have been laughed off the forums and called a troll for proposing an idea that bad. The current Watchlist is a terrible mechanic.

For those care bears who now think AWESOME ..... you're wrong. Let me tell you what will happen if they implement this. It means I can no longer focus my wars as a mercenary on specific targets. Guess what I will do next.... exactly, War dec twice as many alliances/corps as I do now.

Want less wars ? Dont nerf but buff the watch lists, so we need less wars to operate.

I suspect that a lot of people will get on the Blocked list once this feature goes live, for the simple reason that you can just "Start Conversation" them to find out whether they are online or not. Not nearly as stealthy as the Watchlist should they be online and a lot more invasive should a lot of people chose to convo you, but that's that to it.

You know its a good change when you generate this kind of response.
All free intel should go from this game.

You should be required to take more effort than looking at a contact to see if your target is online.
Being able to do so has been OP for a long time.

....so their towers cannot be easily located.

Sounds like interesting and challenging gameplay.

A lot better than free-force fed intel.

That was a typo, should have read assets however the point remains.

Prey tell, how does one locate a logged off asset in a system? This should be good.

You see when you log off you're invisible, no trace, 100% completely unfindable, ever. So with power like that, why should there not be counterplay that allows people to even know that finding you is so much as possible?


I see you ducked the local question, thus I can only conclude you belong to the large crop of hypocrites.

That's (pretty much) flagged as an exploit, iirc. People used to spam convos at people to cripple their ability to use the UI was the reason.

To be fair, this was a while ago.

Not much of an exploit there if I convo you daily or every other hour ... or if many people do that.

While the asset is logged off it also can't affect a single thing, and unless I remember my locators wrong, if you know the asset exists at all, you can then use a locator agent to find which system it was in and if they logged off in space or in a station (& possibly even in a citadel). So yes you can't blow up someone's ship that they are actively piloting while they are logged off. And you should never be able to localise it and lie in wait to ambush them as soon as they log in either, because that's bad gameplay and denies them any chance to respond.

You want to locate it precisely, locate it before they log off. Or accept you only have a rough location.
But while you can't affect them logged off, they also can't affect you or find you. So fair is fair.

For those care bears who now think AWESOME ..... you're wrong. Let me tell you what will happen if they implement this. It means I can no longer focus my wars as a mercenary on specific targets. Guess what I will do next.... exactly, War dec twice as many alliances/corps as I do now.

Want less wars ? Dont nerf but buff the watch lists, so we need less wars to operate.