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Directional Scanner Improvements as a Local Replacement

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Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 15:56:00 - [1] Plenty of people, CCP included, plan on eventually removing local chat as it currently exists due to it's use as an overpowered intelligence tool. However, CCP won't do so until there is a balanced replacement for it. I think that this replacement can come in the form of overhauling the current directional scanner. In it's current form, the directional scanner is useful but somewhat inconvenient to use. If you're scanning for incoming hostile ships, you have to constantly spam the button in order to get the most up-to-date information. This might not seem like a big deal if you're involved in a 30-second gank and making sure the unfortunate Raven pilot doesn't have buddies bearing down on you. However, if local was removed it would force any pilot spending time in 0.0 to constantly be scanning for targets or hostiles with it. Considering that this is a potential source of lag and a downright pain in the ass, I think that would be unacceptable. Spending any amount of time in 0.0 would destroy your mouse buttons and turn your hands into withered claws. This leads me to my suggestion, which hopefully is among my good ones. Also, sorry for the long intro. Directional Scanner Revision Several things need to happen in order for the directional scanner to become a good intelligence tool. 1 The Directional Scanner (DS) needs to scan constantly as long as the window is open. This removes the need to constantly spam the scan button when viewing it and generally makes it less of a pain in the ass to use. 2 The DS need to be easy to read and sort. In addition to the massive list of objects, the DS needs some better filtering options and a 2D display to represent the relative positions of signals much like a radar screen. 3 The DS needs to be integrated with sensor game mechanics. Currently, the directional scanner is completely independent of any other game mechanics. I think that this is both unrealistic and downright boring. More closely associating the directional scanner with ship attributes add more depth to the game and let users more easily gather intelligence if they sacrifice fittings to do so. 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength. A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. 3.2 Scan Effectiveness should depend on Scan Resolution. Battleships may be able to scan a wide area, but will have a hard time picking up anything smaller than their size Sensor Boosters would help this but also require them to sacrifice more slots. This also creates scenarios where smaller ships are better at intelligence-gathering due to their improved sensor resolution, and would be especially useful for Recon and Covert Ops ships, especially those that aren't quite as combat-effective as others. 4. User Skill Should be a Factor. Too many actions in EVE are based on random rolls of the dice or SP - I believe that effective use of the directional scanner should require player experience and skill, not just SP or T2 equipment. This part I'm not entirely sure how to implement, honestly, but I believe that it's important to keep this in mind. 5. Using the DS Should have Consequences. The constantly scanning should have its drawbacks, just like a submarine actively pinging can reveal its location to potential hostiles in range. One simple way to implement this is to have using the scanner increase your signature radius by a certain percentage when you have the scanner window open. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 15:56:00 - [2] I think that with the above changes, the directional scanner could become a much more interesting intelligence tool and a viable replacement for local. TL;DR Version: The directional scanner can replace local if it's easier to use, better integrated with sensor game mechanics, can be improved by system sovereignty, requires a certain degree of user skill, and should have some drawbacks when used. As I usually do, I'll close this post by saying that I am a horrible armchair game designer and that I haven't been to 0.0 in awhile, and haven't seriously used the directional scanner recently. Feel free to tell me what I'm doing wrong as long as it's constructive. And no, this isn't a whine post. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Xparky Federal Navy Academy	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:05:00 - [3] Originally by: Tarminic 2 The DS need to be easy to read and sort. In addition to the massive list of objects, the DS needs some better filtering options and a 2D display to represent the relative positions of signals much like a radar screen. How about a 3D radar combined with the map view set to solar system.
Malcanis R.E.C.O.N. Insurgency	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:06:00 - [4] "3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength. A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense." Even if the rest doesn't get implemented, which on the whole I think it should, I LOVE this idea. Give people a reason to fit ECCMs other than not being jammed. (I say this as a falcon pilot) CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Malcanis R.E.C.O.N. Insurgency	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:12:00 - [5] Originally by: Xparky Originally by: Tarminic 2 The DS need to be easy to read and sort. In addition to the massive list of objects, the DS needs some better filtering options and a 2D display to represent the relative positions of signals much like a radar screen. How about a 3D radar combined with the map view set to solar system. How about this? CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Fifth Horseman	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:13:00 - [6] Edited by: Fifth Horseman on 24/04/2008 16:18:19 Cloaked Ships. Recon prices. There will be no discernable reason to ever fly anything without a cloak ever again, and soon all that will be are Cloak Warpers. Since mixed race Recon gangs can do it all, that will end up the defacto standard, and ratting will become impossible, since you'll need that scanner open constantly looking for the 1.5 seconds blip of a recon entering your system. Making you easier to find by the people who are impossible to find. --- "Tsssssssssst." trained to level 5. 95% less desire to reply to posts by 15 year olds per level.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:21:00 - [7] Edited by: Tarminic on 24/04/2008 16:22:26 Originally by: Xparky Originally by: Tarminic 2 The DS need to be easy to read and sort. In addition to the massive list of objects, the DS needs some better filtering options and a 2D display to represent the relative positions of signals much like a radar screen. How about a 3D radar combined with the map view set to solar system. I thought about doing that, but I wanted to make sure that you could still use the directional scanner without having to switch to the system map. However! You could integrate the two so you can still use the 2D radar view normally but use the 3D view from the system map - this may be the best of both worlds. Originally by: Fifth Horseman Cloaked Ships. Recon prices. A good point. How I balance this with recons and cloaked ships depends almost entirely on what CCP choses to do regarding cloaked ships. A non Covert-ops cloak already hinders this process by reducing scan resolution (making it harder to detect ships in general), but this probably isn't enough. Until I know what they're planning I can't really say, honestly. A quick fix would be to have an active cloaking device reduce sensor strength by 90%, effectively blinding cloaked ships unless they cram absurd amounts of sensor upgrades on their ship, but I haven't thought deeply enough about this to say for sure. Originally by: Fifth Horseman Since mixed race Recon gangs can do it all, that will end up the defacto standard, and ratting will become impossible, since you'll need that scanner open constantly looking for the 1.5 seconds blip of a recon entering your system. Making you easier to find by the people who are impossible to find. I think the reduction in sensor strength (above) would help alleviate this issue, but I can't say whether it would be solved completely or would need something else as well. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Xparky Federal Navy Academy	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:21:00 - [8] Edited by: Xparky on 24/04/2008 16:23:30 nevermind.
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:21:00 - [9] This is a good reason why you are not done. Vote Goumindong for CSM
Kyra Felann Gallente Noctis Fleet Technologies	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:33:00 - [10] This overall sounds good, but I still like the idea of active vs passive sensors. Have the directional scanner be like a passive scanner that sees ships or whatever within a certain range if they're moving, shooting, etc. ie: it constantly listens and looks for heat, light, radiation signatures from ships, but doesn't actively scan. Then have a "active" or "ping" button where you send out an active scan that makes you show up on passive scanners around you, but gives you better range and better intel about what's around (even if they're sitting still and running "silent"). Kind of like submarines. But I think just about anything is better than local's "all-seeing eye".
Zaiyo Modi	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:37:00 - [11] Edited by: Zaiyo Modi on 24/04/2008 16:40:37 Originally by: Tarminic 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength. A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. 3au? Typo? Should it say 12au? I strongly disagree with having ECCM modules increase scanning range, it does not make sense. Also sensor boosting (scan res) modules on a ship exist already with the "signal amplifier" and "sensor booster" module. Besides, iirc, i can get 150 and more in gravimetrical sensor strength on a navy raven, so how far would the scan reach then?
Winterblink Body Count Inc. Mercenary Coalition	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:39:00 - [12] To add; Emissions should have an effect on this. Weapons fire for instance should light up like a christmas tree on the scanner. People fighting, ratting, would show up clearly. Your ship's scanners and pilot skills should play into how accurate the hits are. This would go for mining lasers as well, to a slightly lesser extent. Obviously needs refining, but you get the gist I think. ;)
Malcanis R.E.C.O.N. Insurgency	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:43:00 - [13] Originally by: Tarminic Edited by: Tarminic on 24/04/2008 16:22:26 Originally by: Xparky Originally by: Tarminic 2 The DS need to be easy to read and sort. In addition to the massive list of objects, the DS needs some better filtering options and a 2D display to represent the relative positions of signals much like a radar screen. How about a 3D radar combined with the map view set to solar system. I thought about doing that, but I wanted to make sure that you could still use the directional scanner without having to switch to the system map. However! You could integrate the two so you can still use the 2D radar view normally but use the 3D view from the system map - this may be the best of both worlds. Originally by: Fifth Horseman Cloaked Ships. Recon prices. A good point. How I balance this with recons and cloaked ships depends almost entirely on what CCP choses to do regarding cloaked ships. A non Covert-ops cloak already hinders this process by reducing scan resolution (making it harder to detect ships in general), but this probably isn't enough. Until I know what they're planning I can't really say, honestly. A quick fix would be to have an active cloaking device reduce sensor strength by 90%, effectively blinding cloaked ships unless they cram absurd amounts of sensor upgrades on their ship, but I haven't thought deeply enough about this to say for sure. Originally by: Fifth Horseman Since mixed race Recon gangs can do it all, that will end up the defacto standard, and ratting will become impossible, since you'll need that scanner open constantly looking for the 1.5 seconds blip of a recon entering your system. Making you easier to find by the people who are impossible to find. I think the reduction in sensor strength (above) would help alleviate this issue, but I can't say whether it would be solved completely or would need something else as well. With respect to cloaks: Set the sensor range penalty to be the same as the scan res penalty. A 40% reduction is fairly severe. (50% for the T1) Another option would be to make cloaks incompatible with ECCMs; if the ECCM is active, you can't cloak (your ship is putting out more sensor signals?); if your cloak is online, you can't online your ECCM.
Malcanis R.E.C.O.N. Insurgency	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:44:00 - [14] Originally by: Zaiyo Modi Edited by: Zaiyo Modi on 24/04/2008 16:40:37 Originally by: Tarminic 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength. A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. 3au? Typo? Should it say 12au? I strongly disagree with having ECCM modules increase scanning range, it does not make sense. Also sensor boosting (scan res) modules on a ship exist already with the "signal amplifier" and "sensor booster" module. Besides, iirc, i can get 150 and more in gravimetrical sensor strength on a navy raven, so how far would the scan reach then? Most systems are only 20-40 AU across. Having limited scan range would make things much more interesting. ECCMs increase sensor strength; would does having stronger sensors being able to scan further not make sense? It sounds perfectly obvious to me.
Hamfast Gallente	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:51:00 - [15] Originally by: Tarminic 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength. A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. If Scan range is dependent on sensor strength (that makes sense) then why would a ship with a sensor strength of 6 be as effective as a ship with a 24 sensor strength? It would seem to me that the more strength the farther you can scan... Originally by: Tarminic 3.2 Scan Effectiveness should depend on Scan Resolution. Battleships may be able to scan a wide area, but will have a hard time picking up anything smaller than their size Sensor Boosters would help this but also require them to sacrifice more slots. This also creates scenarios where smaller ships are better at intelligence-gathering due to their improved sensor resolution, and would be especially useful for Recon and Covert Ops ships, especially those that aren't quite as combat-effective as others. When combined with the sensor strength, you could modify results in that at some point, your scan could detect something, but not identify it... further scans may or may not identify the object as something of interest... As you close the distance, the sensor strength and Scan Resolution will eventually identify the object... in the case of cloaked ships, the identification may not be able to be done outside of the range that would disable the cloak... A BS (uncloaked) may show up at extreme range as an unknown object where a cloaked ship would not show up at all... a cloaked ship may start to show up as unknown at a range that is much less (Is that unknown a BS at extreme range or a cloaked ship that is within line of sight?)... --------*****-------- Learn and be informed, because a Politicians worst nightmare is an informed voter... So choose your CSM Candidates wisely
Ridjeck Thome The Older Gamers R0ADKILL	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:56:00 - [16] why not te the ship scanner into an enhanced tactical overlay? - giving constand readout of ship positions within a certain radius of your ship (ala homeworld somehwat?)
Winterblink Body Count Inc. Mercenary Coalition	Posted - 2008.04.24 16:59:00 - [17] Well, the whole thing needs to be more tightly integrated into the system map view, in my opinion. You still have your overview open so you can deal with things in your local vicinity if need be, but turn the system view into a proper 3D scanner, completely with scanning distance and cone displays. warp drive active \| nature vraie
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:06:00 - [18] Originally by: Zaiyo Modi Edited by: Zaiyo Modi on 24/04/2008 16:40:37 Originally by: Tarminic 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength. A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. 3au? Typo? Should it say 12au? I strongly disagree with having ECCM modules increase scanning range, it does not make sense. Also sensor boosting (scan res) modules on a ship exist already with the "signal amplifier" and "sensor booster" module. Besides, iirc, i can get 150 and more in gravimetrical sensor strength on a navy raven, so how far would the scan reach then? Yeah, the second "3AU" is a typo. Fixed. Sensor strength only dictates the maximum range of the scan - the effectiveness (i.e. chance of catching something) depends on the scanning resolution of the ship as well. You may be able to get a ship to a scan range of 150AU, but in order for it to reliably detect ships smaller than capital ships you'd need to trade out slots for sensor boosters. I'd say that 8 mids slots should give you 15AU scanning range, OR ability to detect frigates reliably, but never both. Those abilities may still seem somewhat extreme for a battleship, but keep in mind that you're sacrificing a lot of slots to achieve that. Originally by: Winterblink To add; Emissions should have an effect on this. Weapons fire for instance should light up like a christmas tree on the scanner. People fighting, ratting, would show up clearly. Your ship's scanners and pilot skills should play into how accurate the hits are. This would go for mining lasers as well, to a slightly lesser extent. Obviously needs refining, but you get the gist I think. ;) Hrm, I like this idea. The strength needed to find it could even depend on the largest amount of damage done in a single hit, so ten frigates would be much less likely to show up than a few battleships. Originally by: Ridjeck Thome Edited by: Ridjeck Thome on 24/04/2008 16:56:49 why not tie the ship scanner into an enhanced tactical overlay? - giving a constant readout of ship positions within a certain radius of your ship (ala homeworld somehwat?) That's yet another way to improve the directional scanner. It would be awesome to have a fully integrated scanning system (tactical overlay, seperate UI window, or system map view. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:12:00 - [19] Originally by: Goumindong This is a good reason why you are not done. Assuming that CCP implements the changes you suggest, do you believe my ideas would still have merit? I believe that in the past you've spoken regarding how easy it is for an FC to make a decision regarding whether to engage or retreat due to the intel local provides (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). I suppose that if you distill my idea down to it's basic principles I want to give pilots the option to improve the quality of their intel at the expense of tanking/armament/e-war. FC's would have to make a judgment call regarding to what extent that tradeoff is worthwhile. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Trathen	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:14:00 - [20] Originally by: Malcanis Most systems are only 20-40 AU across. Having limited scan range would make things much more interesting. ECCMs increase sensor strength; would does having stronger sensors being able to scan further not make sense? It sounds perfectly obvious to me. I would think that sensor strength translates more roughly to "sensor integrity" rather than "sensor power" because it doesn't really make sense that Electronic Counter-Countermeasures would do anything but counter countermeasures. They could just as easily change the name of the mods though.
Malcanis R.E.C.O.N. Insurgency	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:26:00 - [21] Originally by: Trathen Originally by: Malcanis Most systems are only 20-40 AU across. Having limited scan range would make things much more interesting. ECCMs increase sensor strength; would does having stronger sensors being able to scan further not make sense? It sounds perfectly obvious to me. I would think that sensor strength translates more roughly to "sensor integrity" rather than "sensor power" because it doesn't really make sense that Electronic Counter-Countermeasures would do anything but counter countermeasures. They could just as easily change the name of the mods though. But as I said above, it would provide a very good reason to fit ECCM. Both the other EW counter modules are useful in and of themselves; sensor boosters and tracking computers/enhancers are something people fit even if they're not expecting to be EW'd. ECCM isn't, and that's part of the reason that many people feel that ECM is overpowered. Additionally, giving larger ships bigger scan range would be a (small) indirect nano-nerf. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Trathen	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:36:00 - [22] Originally by: Malcanis But as I said above, it would provide a very good reason to fit ECCM. Both the other EW counter modules are useful in and of themselves; sensor boosters and tracking computers/enhancers are something people fit even if they're not expecting to be EW'd. ECCM isn't, and that's part of the reason that many people feel that ECM is overpowered. Additionally, giving larger ships bigger scan range would be a (small) indirect nano-nerf. Yes I will be the first to say that making a connection from the name does not necessarily mean its a good idea (such as people's wild RL parallels with insurance). I am still sitting on my hands in hi-sec until I reach that magic 5 mil SP mark so I won't pretend to know how ECCM works - but I did have to point out that as I saw it, the concept that ECCM has always and should be activated and kept ready only in response to ECM is rather intuitive. Though if ECCM needs a boost, that's a new thread altogether.
Malcanis R.E.C.O.N. Insurgency	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:41:00 - [23] Originally by: Trathen Originally by: Malcanis But as I said above, it would provide a very good reason to fit ECCM. Both the other EW counter modules are useful in and of themselves; sensor boosters and tracking computers/enhancers are something people fit even if they're not expecting to be EW'd. ECCM isn't, and that's part of the reason that many people feel that ECM is overpowered. Additionally, giving larger ships bigger scan range would be a (small) indirect nano-nerf. Yes I will be the first to say that making a connection from the name does not necessarily mean its a good idea (such as people's wild RL parallels with insurance). I am still sitting on my hands in hi-sec until I reach that magic 5 mil SP mark so I won't pretend to know how ECCM works - but I did have to point out that as I saw it, the concept that ECCM has always and should be activated and kept ready only in response to ECM is rather intuitive. Though if ECCM needs a boost, that's a new thread altogether. On a tangent to your tangent: there is no "magic 5M SP mark" (unless you're wanting to join a specific corp or alliance that sets this as a requirement). Stop sitting on your hands and start dying! ECCM modules increase sensor strength by 80% (T1 basic) - 96% (T2), basically halving your chance of being ECM'd. That's all they do though. Sensor boosters improve locking range/speed, so they're the counter to sensor damps which do the exact opposite. But better range/lock speed is always useful anyway. Likewise Tracking Computers vs Targeting Disruptors. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:43:00 - [24] Originally by: Tarminic Assuming that CCP implements the changes you suggest, do you believe my ideas would still have merit? Part of the main problem with implementing a solution in the face of not having local is that you will either get too little information, too much information, or too cluttered information. E.G. in a system with a bunch of POS your scanner will pick up tonnes of ships sitting in the POS that you now need to filter out of your head. But if you only have piloted ships on the scanner then you both limit its function to scout and make it much too easy to find people. To start, you need, at the very least, some kind of friendly, neutral, and hostile count that is absolute within some reasonable range. The local window is good for this because it gives all that information and its hard to parse when it gets large. On the other hand, it also tells us exactly who is in local and via copious notes one can have a very good and fast indication of who an enemy is, what he likes to fly etc. For instance, i will often if i have time, click on a guy on local and add a list of known ships. That way if i see him pop up again, i can tell you that he is likely in a vagabond or a rapier. Now we have advance warning of what is coming in when we probably should have to rely on the scanner. In order to make that impossible you would have to simply count the numbers of hostiles, neutrals, war targets, and friendlies in system, and that makes assembling hostile counts a whole lot easier[No more having people scan 400 person long lists to figure out how large the enemy fleet is likely to be]. But lets say we use that and its system wide[if its not system wide and just x AU where x is some distance > 14.5 AU this creates problems with systems with far single celestials, but is possible] So we have a scanner, and right across the top is lists friendlies, hostiles, neutrals, and war targets[and say, nothing shows up here until its gate cloak deactivates] Now we need to find ships via the directional scanner and all problems are U.I. problems via the directional scanner being a clunky system with no hot keys and no on screen visual indicators of what you are looking at and not an overarching problem with how ships are found. A passive/active sonar type scanner might be interesting, but i don't think is the right direction. This is because active scanning is typically a mutual system where everyone knows that someone is searching. This increases the amount of time it takes to find and kill miners/ratters etc because once someone pings the miners and ratters are going to have a nice big visual indicator they probably can't miss[and well they shouldn't have missed the hostile/neut count increase so this might be a moot point] So then its just fixing the U.I. Making the mouse wheel change scan distance and/or scan angle instead so you can easily run between scan distances or angles.[a good way to do this might be a keyboard hotkey toggle so if its activated you chance with the angle and if its deactivated you run up or down in hundreds of thousands of kilometers]. Giving a visual cone on your heads-up of the area you are scanning[and better yet, a change in the color of celestials that are within that cone and its range] which can be turned on or off in the same manner as the tactical display[or simply make it active when the tactical display and scanner is active]. Adding a visual cone on your system map same as above. Adding a hotkey to scan, so that you can move scan angle and range with your mouse fast and then make scans quickly to find targets. So no i don't really believe that the scanning system needs a complete overhaul[though the one i see in my post i would very much like} and i don't believe that a single mechanic can produce the right results without some sort of functionality that is similar to local[due to the reasons explained in the linked post linked in post 9 of this thread] Vote Goumindong for CSM
Kazuo Ishiguro House of Marbles Zzz	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:45:00 - [25] Suggestion: active & passive modes The scanner is always active, either in passive or active mode. In active mode, you can see everything within range as per Tarminic's ideas. In passive mode, all you can see is other pilots who are scanning in active mode. This forces pilots to reveal themselves if they want to attack, but only to fairly vigilant defenders. If you want to hide, you can't see anyone else who's trying to hide. My research services Spreadsheets: Top speed calculation - Halo Implant stats
Aphoticus	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:47:00 - [26] I like the idea as well. How ever it is done, all relative skills, Sensor Variables, etc. should be concidered. To add to this, I would think that strength versus resolution should not be set in stone. If I want to see further, dial it up, but loose resolution, if I want to resolve in a smaller area, dial it down, increasing resolution (That is the inverse - I may have high or low resolution mixed up). Ultimately, with skills, equipment, Active system equipment (weapons, scanner devices, mining lazers, what ever) have different reolution modifiers, would allow for a very interresting configuration for specific tasks. It would be cool if you were mining, tucked between 3 asteroids, had things configured to detect incoming, and then shut all systems down, reducing your signiture, no energy emissions, etc. and maybe go unnoticed if not for the naked eye. Or maybe, they were configured in such a way that they reduce or trasnfer the sensor's functionality to a shorter range but be able to pick up the smallest of tell-tale signs that my ship is there. Maybe they just didn't have the skill, and move on to the next belt. Very interresting scenarios...all skill and player based manipulation.
Trathen	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:48:00 - [27] Edited by: Trathen on 24/04/2008 17:49:17 Originally by: Malcanis On a tangent to your tangent: there is no "magic 5M SP mark" (unless you're wanting to join a specific corp or alliance that sets this as a requirement). Stop sitting on your hands and start dying! ECCM modules increase sensor strength by 80% (T1 basic) - 96% (T2), basically halving your chance of being ECM'd. That's all they do though. Sensor boosters improve locking range/speed, so they're the counter to sensor damps which do the exact opposite. But better range/lock speed is always useful anyway. Likewise Tracking Computers vs Targeting Disruptors. Only halves? Yeah that doesn't sound like good ECCM anyway. I concur then, though now I just think it should work better. There should be no reason that replacing an ECM fitting with an ECCM fitting shouldn't nullify another for balance purposes. Continue tangent/derail: Yeah like R.E.C.O.N. and most actively-recruiting small-gang corps, but yeah I'd be more suicidal if losing a head full of implants didn't conflict with that goal.
Malcanis R.E.C.O.N. Insurgency	Posted - 2008.04.24 17:54:00 - [28] Edited by: Malcanis on 24/04/2008 17:55:25 Originally by: Trathen Edited by: Trathen on 24/04/2008 17:49:17 Originally by: Malcanis On a tangent to your tangent: there is no "magic 5M SP mark" (unless you're wanting to join a specific corp or alliance that sets this as a requirement). Stop sitting on your hands and start dying! ECCM modules increase sensor strength by 80% (T1 basic) - 96% (T2), basically halving your chance of being ECM'd. That's all they do though. Sensor boosters improve locking range/speed, so they're the counter to sensor damps which do the exact opposite. But better range/lock speed is always useful anyway. Likewise Tracking Computers vs Targeting Disruptors. Only halves? Yeah that doesn't sound like good ECCM anyway. I concur then, though now I just think it should work better. There should be no reason that replacing an ECM fitting with an ECCM fitting shouldn't nullify another for balance purposes. Continue tangent/derail: Yeah like R.E.C.O.N. and most actively-recruiting small-gang corps, but yeah I'd be more suicidal if losing a head full of implants didn't conflict with that goal. I can tell you for a fact that people have joined R.E.C.O.N with less than 5M SP. I used to run a corp a bit like RECON, and I had no problem with recruiting people straight out of the trial period, as long as they had good attitude and were fun to talk to. EDT: As for your implants, there is no reason you should ever lose your implants outside of 0.0 except by smartbombing BS (rare). Try joining Red or Blue, or the Noob Mercs; they're both empire-based.
William Alex Viscosity	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:16:00 - [29] Edited by: William Alex on 24/04/2008 18:16:10 Originally by: Tarminic stuff Man I love this post on so many levels! <3 This would be very much a game change though so it'd have to be dribbled out slowly.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:17:00 - [30] Originally by: Goumindong A passive/active sonar type scanner might be interesting, but i don't think is the right direction. This is because active scanning is typically a mutual system where everyone knows that someone is searching. This increases the amount of time it takes to find and kill miners/ratters etc because once someone pings the miners and ratters are going to have a nice big visual indicator they probably can't miss[and well they shouldn't have missed the hostile/neut count increase so this might be a moot point] What about something between a purely passive and purely active system? I think that a good system would be one in which your ability to detect incoming hostiles is proportional to your chances of being detected by them, and I believe this is possible with the system I have in mind. You can be actively scanning constantly, which provides you with the best chance of detecting hostiles early, but it also make it much easier for hostiles to detect you as a result (Obviously this should be balanced somewhat towards the attackers; otherwise it's just a different form of local where everyone with a brain stem warps to safety as soon as hostiles come through the gate). Pilots should have to make a judgment call regarding how much they want to advertise their presence or have a designated scout keep an eye out for them.
Gone'Postal Minmatar Vengeance 8 Interceptors	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:25:00 - [31] Tarminic \0/ Seriously this would rock. V8I
Rawr Cristina Caldari Naqam	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:30:00 - [32] /signed As for having the scanner window open, it should also make you visible on scanner throughout the system. Even for cloaking ships. If you scan, you can be scanned ...
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:35:00 - [33] Originally by: Tarminic Originally by: Goumindong A passive/active sonar type scanner might be interesting, but i don't think is the right direction. This is because active scanning is typically a mutual system where everyone knows that someone is searching. This increases the amount of time it takes to find and kill miners/ratters etc because once someone pings the miners and ratters are going to have a nice big visual indicator they probably can't miss[and well they shouldn't have missed the hostile/neut count increase so this might be a moot point] What about something between a purely passive and purely active system? I think that a good system would be one in which your ability to detect incoming hostiles is proportional to your chances of being detected by them, and I believe this is possible with the system I have in mind. You can be actively scanning constantly, which provides you with the best chance of detecting hostiles early, but it also make it much easier for hostiles to detect you as a result (Obviously this should be balanced somewhat towards the attackers; otherwise it's just a different form of local where everyone with a brain stem warps to safety as soon as hostiles come through the gate). Pilots should have to make a judgment call regarding how much they want to advertise their presence or have a designated scout keep an eye out for them. What is the point in the passive scanner if local exists? If local doesn't exist then what do you do about cloaking ships and how do you deal with the passive scanner moving the detection time for all ships very high[reducing the frequency of combat], as well as making engagement time after detection very low[increasing the risk of system]. Such a system is either redundant[local, passive mechanic is just presence], increases the time it takes to find and kill people[local, with passive scan pinpointing] without broadcasting your location/presence[which a pointless penalty because they can see you in local anyway] while making probing ships less valuable[pinpoint possible] thus reducing combat in general and actually nerfing the hunting of production ships, or is utterly broken with regards to cloaking ships while representing a significant nerf to 0.0 production and a reduction in general combat due to the difficulty in finding targets[no local + any mechanic that doesn't let the target know a cloaked ship is within the area within a significant time frame] Vote Goumindong for CSM
Captain Falcord Gallente Reckless Corsairs	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:37:00 - [34] --I agree to the scanner strenght based on skills --I agree to the scan range based on them --However, I DON'T agree with hiding information for those who don't have the appropiate scanner, for example a battleship scanning a frigate. It should not hide it completely, maybe just a "Unknown ship" on scanner, but not 100% hidden, that would become confusing and frustrating. Good ideas tho ^^
Andargor theWise Collateral Damage Unlimited	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:47:00 - [35] I'm at work and in a bit of a hurry, so I didn't read everything posted. The gist I got was that player skill as well as character skill could contribute with more interesting local and scanner mechanics. Correct? Knowing a bit about radar and sonar, your display could show blobs of different sizes. Could be a BS or a group of frigs close together. Active scanning should light you up (like when you "ping" sonar, perhaps a default passive mode with manual "ping"?. Scan signatures should be interpreted as the type of ship if it is illuminated properly and your character has the skills. Perhaps ships that are active scanning should be easier to identify (type of scan used, LADAR, Radar, etc..) EW and dampening should affect your scanning abilities, range, masking signatures, duplicating signatures / making decoys, etc. A practiced eye should be able to interpret the resulting blobs on scan, hence player skills. My 0.02 ISK
Hugh Ruka Caldari Exploratio et Industria Morispatia	Posted - 2008.04.24 18:50:00 - [36] Originally by: Goumindong Originally by: Tarminic Originally by: Goumindong A passive/active sonar type scanner might be interesting, but i don't think is the right direction. This is because active scanning is typically a mutual system where everyone knows that someone is searching. This increases the amount of time it takes to find and kill miners/ratters etc because once someone pings the miners and ratters are going to have a nice big visual indicator they probably can't miss[and well they shouldn't have missed the hostile/neut count increase so this might be a moot point] What about something between a purely passive and purely active system? I think that a good system would be one in which your ability to detect incoming hostiles is proportional to your chances of being detected by them, and I believe this is possible with the system I have in mind. You can be actively scanning constantly, which provides you with the best chance of detecting hostiles early, but it also make it much easier for hostiles to detect you as a result (Obviously this should be balanced somewhat towards the attackers; otherwise it's just a different form of local where everyone with a brain stem warps to safety as soon as hostiles come through the gate). Pilots should have to make a judgment call regarding how much they want to advertise their presence or have a designated scout keep an eye out for them. What is the point in the passive scanner if local exists? If local doesn't exist then what do you do about cloaking ships and how do you deal with the passive scanner moving the detection time for all ships very high[reducing the frequency of combat], as well as making engagement time after detection very low[increasing the risk of system]. Such a system is either redundant[local, passive mechanic is just presence], increases the time it takes to find and kill people[local, with passive scan pinpointing] without broadcasting your location/presence[which a pointless penalty because they can see you in local anyway] while making probing ships less valuable[pinpoint possible] thus reducing combat in general and actually nerfing the hunting of production ships, or is utterly broken with regards to cloaking ships while representing a significant nerf to 0.0 production and a reduction in general combat due to the difficulty in finding targets[no local + any mechanic that doesn't let the target know a cloaked ship is within the area within a significant time frame] The problem with local is that it integrates more information about independent properties: 1. presence - ship property 2. player information - character property (sec status, standing etc.) We are too much used to this kind of aggregation. So people are not willing to give up anything from this even if the partial mechanic will be superior. Cloaking ships - should be detectable. If tracable that depends ... I am all for it IF it takes reasonable effort and player skill (not just character skill and ship/module stats). Tarminic - good start, but your proposal is only a partial solution.
Gimpb	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:00:00 - [37] Well, this is probably the 345674th version of this kind of idea to be posted, but does seem to be the most well thought out version to appear so far. So, thumbs-up
Face Lifter	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:10:00 - [38] Originally by: Tarminic 1 The Directional Scanner (DS) needs to scan constantly as long as the window is open. This removes the need to constantly spam the scan button when viewing it and generally makes it less of a pain in the ass to use. This is the main thing that needs to happen before local is removed. Everything else is just extra Originally by: Tarminic 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength. A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 12AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. That may sound cool in theory but will be horrible in practice. It is a great nerf to the scanner. It will be used as powerful argument against local nerf. Just think about this: frig sized ships are the main scouts in PvP. But frigs don't have enough mid slots to fit ECCMs and they have small sensor strengths. The result is that the ships most suitable for scouting role get the worst ability for scouting. Originally by: Tarminic 3.2 Scan Effectiveness should depend on Scan Resolution. Battleships may be able to scan a wide area, but will have a hard time picking up anything smaller than their size Sensor Boosters would help this but also require them to sacrifice more slots. This also creates scenarios where smaller ships are better at intelligence-gathering due to their improved sensor resolution, and would be especially useful for Recon and Covert Ops ships, especially those that aren't quite as combat-effective as others. This is also a great nerf to the scanner, absolutely not acceptable for real pvp situations. There must be no uncertainty over scan results, otherwise local nerf will never go thru. Originally by: Tarminic 4. User Skill Should be a Factor. Too many actions in EVE are based on random rolls of the dice or SP - I believe that effective use of the directional scanner should require player experience and skill, not just SP or T2 equipment. This part I'm not entirely sure how to implement, honestly, but I believe that it's important to keep this in mind. This is simply not necessary. Adding more fluff will only help those who oppose local nerf. Originally by: Tarminic 5. Using the DS Should have Consequences. The constantly scanning should have its drawbacks, just like a submarine actively pinging can reveal its location to potential hostiles in range. One simple way to implement this is to have using the scanner increase your signature radius by a certain percentage when you have the scanner window open. More nice sounding useless fluff
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:10:00 - [39] Originally by: Hugh Ruka The problem with local is that it integrates more information about independent properties: 1. presence - ship property 2. player information - character property (sec status, standing etc.) We are too much used to this kind of aggregation. So people are not willing to give up anything from this even if the partial mechanic will be superior. Cloaking ships - should be detectable. If tracable that depends ... I am all for it IF it takes reasonable effort and player skill (not just character skill and ship/module stats). The thing is, there needs to be a system that contains at least 1. Presence in system or within large area 2. Standings You don't really need anything else, which means you can get rid of local and get rid of all the extraneous info[player name, notes, etc] it provides, but you must at least have a universal presence in system/significant area that orders by standings. In my second post on the first page i go into a bit more depth about why that is and what the extraneous info is and what the benefits and costs of each way of doing it are. Presence in system alone does not cut it, because the player options change significantly whether that person is hostile or not. Vote Goumindong for CSM
Ephemeron Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:19:00 - [40] One new feature that can help minimize the pain of local nerf is this: *) Allies can choose to share scanner info automatically. For example, if your alliance/fleet member is sitting on a gate and sees some hostile guy enter local, then your scanner would also see it, even tho you may be way out of scan range. This scanner data sharing can be system-wide only and it serves as considerable improvement over current system, which helps offset loss of functionality due to local nerf.
Torik Tavitas	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:42:00 - [41] Originally by: Goumindong The thing is, there needs to be a system that contains at least 1. Presence in system or within large area 2. Standings You don't really need anything else, which means you can get rid of local and get rid of all the extraneous info[player name, notes, etc] it provides, but you must at least have a universal presence in system/significant area that orders by standings. In my second post on the first page i go into a bit more depth about why that is and what the extraneous info is and what the benefits and costs of each way of doing it are. Presence in system alone does not cut it, because the player options change significantly whether that person is hostile or not. Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information?
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:51:00 - [42] Originally by: Torik Tavitas Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? Because if they do not the game balance between hunter and hunted changes drastically and all the hunted go off to greener pastures[empire and noob corps] while all the hunters form up ever more massive gangs [many of which are likely to all be cloaked] because of the likelihood that the run into another massive gang has increased.
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:53:00 - [43] Originally by: Ephemeron One new feature that can help minimize the pain of local nerf is this: *) Allies can choose to share scanner info automatically. For example, if your alliance/fleet member is sitting on a gate and sees some hostile guy enter local, then your scanner would also see it, even tho you may be way out of scan range. This scanner data sharing can be system-wide only and it serves as considerable improvement over current system, which helps offset loss of functionality due to local nerf. That would only work in highly populated friendly systems. That type of mechanic does not support smaller roaming gangs and incursions since its harder for the to know what they are about to run into.
Ephemeron Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.04.24 19:54:00 - [44] Originally by: Torik Tavitas Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? And also because the game already has this function. Our main goal should be to make local nerf as painless as possible.
Togg Bott Minmatar	Posted - 2008.04.24 20:17:00 - [45] Edited by: Togg Bott on 24/04/2008 20:17:28 i like the direction of this idea... never understood why ccp allowed local after it was seen how badly it got abused. but oh well. this is something i could sign on to.
Kelsin Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2008.04.24 20:21:00 - [46] I too like where this idea is going. Inspired by the OP and the discussion, here's a revamp of the Scanner I imagined: A "Local-less" Scanner Revamp The Scanner can be adjusted along a Broad-Narrow spectrum, and does not require any button presses to activate - it is always running, just the way the Overview is always running. On the Broad end of the spectrum the scanner passively detects piloted ships within X AU of your ship, telling you their name and corp affiliation. (thus if you set your scanner all the way to Broad detection, you can detect the presence of piloted ships within, say, 14 AU and what corp they belong to - but no other information). Thus upon jumping into a system with your scanner set to the Broadest setting, you would be able to see how many ships were within (say) 14 AU of your position. As you adjust your scanner towards the Narrow or Focused end of the detection spectrum, the range of detection decreases. Let's say for example the possible settings look like this: Broadest: 14 AU radius, tells you how many Pilots are withing range and their Corp Tickers. Narrower: 8 AU radius, now the info includes ship types and distance. Even Narrower: 4 AU radius, now includes a position on the system map with a scan deviation of 1 AU (which you can warp to a la Exploration). Most Narrow: 2 AU radius, now includes position on system map with scan deviation of 100km, allowing you to warp on-grid with ships you detect at this setting. Thus if you jump into system with your Scanner set to Broad, you can immediately detect the presence of Players within 14 AU, exactly as if their names appeared in Local. But players on the other side of the system (more than 14 AU away) are not yet detected. Of course, any player that you can spot can also spot you. To get more information and hunt down a player, you can move about the system, tuning your Scanner to a tighter and tighter bandwidth. Probes Probes can then be changed to augment the ship-board scanner of the ship that dropped them, in a couple exciting ways. Note that these uses are not "click and wait for the scan to resolve" uses, but a "drop the probe and it automatically augments your scanner" type thing. 1. A ship dropping a probe can get increased range on their scanner, allowing the pilot's scanner to see out to beyond normal ranges, and to be tuned to greater accuracy than would normally be possible at longer ranges. For instance if the on board scanner normally needed to be tuned to 1 AU to pinpoint the location of a nearby ship, a dropped probe could instead allow you that level of accuracy at 5 AU - a nice advantage. 2. Probes could be dropped throughout a system and augment the coverage of a pilot's scanners - allowing them to see all ship movement across the whole system on their system map if the probes are arranged and tuned properly. Since probes expire after a duration, part of a battle would be quickly dropping your probes and establishing your "satellite network" to be ready to report enemy movements in the system and gain the upper hand, or to drop probes at the other gates in a system to spot incoming forces during a gatecamp. This also opens up a fantastic intelligence warfare element to combat, with Covert Ops frigates hunting down each other's probes and eliminating them in order to gain intel superiority for their side. That alone is worth the price of admission!
Kelsin Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2008.04.24 20:21:00 - [47] Edited by: Kelsin on 24/04/2008 20:24:41 Edited by: Kelsin on 24/04/2008 20:23:33 cont'd: Cloaks The question of how the removal of Local would make Cloaking ships harder to deal with has been brought up. To me there are several easy fixes that would ensure cloaking ships didn't become overpowered under this kind of system. 1. "There's a cloaked ship around!" As Jade mentioned in his post ( http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=755364 ) on Local and the CSM Candidates in EVE General, one fair and easy way to handle cloaks would be for the on-board scanner to be able to tell you "There is a cloaked ship within scan range" without revealing where exactly. Essentially Cloaked ships would be detected on the Scanner the same way non-Cloaked ships are at the Broadest setting, but no additional intel on them can be gained by tuning the Scanner to be more focused. 2. Perhaps while cloaked, your own on-board scanner is reduced in effectiveness. A simple intel drawback like that would be an easy way to balance cloaking in the battle for information superiority. Ships not designed for the use of cloaks could (and come to think of it, probably should) even have their on-board scanners completely deactivated while cloaked, making it possible to "go dark" at the expense of blinding yourself. The Overall Idea At core, the idea behind this sort of Scanner revamp would be to make detecting other Players in space a matter of Proximity, and to allow the gathering of more detailed intelligence by sacrificing the range of that Proximity Detection. At the broadest setting, the scanner approximates the current state of Local Chat - telling you who is within X AU. By reducing the range you gain new and better information about what is around you.
Shadow Joy	Posted - 2008.04.24 20:40:00 - [48] A thought on how to make user skill a factor: give people the ability to adjust the scan they are performing. Say, for instance, I am in a battleship and I know there is an enemy scout flying around in a frigate. My scanner is having a problem picking him up, so I reduce my scan range to improve my resolution. Conversely, say I am not worried about frigates, but am concerned about any ship big enough to suicide gank whatever I am flying. I decrease my resolution to increase my scanning range. The skill in these instances comes from knowing what the proper resolution to range ratio is for your particular situation.
Nielas	Posted - 2008.04.24 20:47:00 - [49] Edited by: Nielas on 24/04/2008 20:48:35 Originally by: Ephemeron Originally by: Torik Tavitas Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? And also because the game already has this function. Our main goal should be to make local nerf as painless as possible. I do not believe any relevant change that removes local as it is can be achieved without 'pain' to some group of players. It just will not happen. There is a very fine equilibrium built up around the way local functions now. Any change to it will severly shake up the status quo. Local right now gives near perfect information as fast as lag permits. Any change that reduces that amount of information will hurt some group of players. Any group of players that feel that local as it is now hurts their playstyle by giving too much information will welcome changes to it. Groups that like the current status quo will fight it tooth and nail since they rely on the information it gives them. Personally I do not care about the status quo so I am all for changing how this works and then seeing how things balance out on the other side. But that is just my opinion.
Ulstan	Posted - 2008.04.24 20:49:00 - [50] Excellent thread, Tarminic. I love the idea of having different ships with different directional scanner characteristics. I think that the two biggest issues with the directional scanner are 1) Not enough control over over what it displays It's absolutely ****** to have to wade through pages of secure cans and POS components if I want to see what probes people have out 2) Not updating automatically** I can update the scanner as fast as I want, so why not make it auto update every 30s or so? Having to click it myself is just busy tedious busy work. You could even put in skills that determine how fast it auto updates.
Ulstan	Posted - 2008.04.24 20:52:00 - [51] Quote: Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? It's science fiction, you figure it out. As long as people get into systems using jump gates, it would be trivially easy to simply query the jumpgate and see who just jumped into the system. All kinds of IFF transmitters or drive signatures or coded identity transmissions, etc, would work as justification for figuring out the standing of a ship you just scanned.
Nielas	Posted - 2008.04.24 21:07:00 - [52] Originally by: Ulstan Quote: Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? It's science fiction, you figure it out. As long as people get into systems using jump gates, it would be trivially easy to simply query the jumpgate and see who just jumped into the system. All kinds of IFF transmitters or drive signatures or coded identity transmissions, etc, would work as justification for figuring out the standing of a ship you just scanned. Well if you want to approach it from the sci fi side you also have to allow for id spoofing and masking. 'Sailing under a false flag' has been around forever. Any system that allows for friend-or-foe identification can be fooled or hacked.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 21:12:00 - [53] Originally by: Nielas Originally by: Ulstan Quote: Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? It's science fiction, you figure it out. As long as people get into systems using jump gates, it would be trivially easy to simply query the jumpgate and see who just jumped into the system. All kinds of IFF transmitters or drive signatures or coded identity transmissions, etc, would work as justification for figuring out the standing of a ship you just scanned. Well if you want to approach it from the sci fi side you also have to allow for id spoofing and masking. 'Sailing under a false flag' has been around forever. Any system that allows for friend-or-foe identification can be fooled or hacked. True, but realism takes a backseat to game balance. I'd still like to think that the system might work, but Goumindong brings up good points that will have to be solved first. ponders ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
TheEndofTheWorld Republic Military School	Posted - 2008.04.24 21:20:00 - [54] Complete removal of local 3 AU autoscanner, shows everything(even cloaked) on scanner. Alliances can move their poses to planets, that do not have belts or ban leaving empty ships in forcefield. This would work against the "too easy" passive defense for the defenders, and also make it harder to find ratters just by jumping into a system. Roamers would focus on high-end systems, and often ignoring low-end systems due to low probability of targets. This would encourage 0.0 alliances to spread out, rather than focus all the "carebear" power onto a few high-end systems. At the moment, -0.1 and -1.0 have the same risk, yet different reward...
Nielas	Posted - 2008.04.24 21:41:00 - [55] Originally by: Tarminic Originally by: Nielas Originally by: Ulstan Quote: Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? It's science fiction, you figure it out. As long as people get into systems using jump gates, it would be trivially easy to simply query the jumpgate and see who just jumped into the system. All kinds of IFF transmitters or drive signatures or coded identity transmissions, etc, would work as justification for figuring out the standing of a ship you just scanned. Well if you want to approach it from the sci fi side you also have to allow for id spoofing and masking. 'Sailing under a false flag' has been around forever. Any system that allows for friend-or-foe identification can be fooled or hacked. True, but realism takes a backseat to game balance. I'd still like to think that the system might work, but Goumindong brings up good points that will have to be solved first. ponders I was primarily trying to point out that using the 'realism' angle to justify one point of view exposes you to eqully justified 'realism' arguments that support the other point of view. At the same time any game mechanic that tries to maintain a balance cannot be too arbitrary or players will not buy it. That means that the game mechanic has to make some sense within the environmant of the game. Any game change that introduces a new level of interactivity or strategy to the game will upset the balance. Adding T2 items, POS, capital ships, jump gates, cloaks, invention all threw the game out of balance in one way or another but after a period of turmoil a new equilibrium was reached.
Roy Batty68 Caldari Immortal Dead	Posted - 2008.04.24 21:43:00 - [56] About the 3Au thing... it's way too small, regardless how you justify it (scan str for example). You have to keep in mind how fast most ships warp. Having 1 second or less to see any incoming isn't going to cut it when the scan itself currently takes about that long. And assuming they won't go for a design that's going to flood their network, I doubt the refresh rate on your "continuous scan" version would be any better. It basically kneecaps the scanner's useability as a heads up tool. And having to pack on upgrade mods, whatever they might be, just to get it back to a useable level would pretty much suck. I'd stick with the 15AU as the minimum range and work out. Sig removed, inappropriate content. If you would like further details please mail [email protected] ~Saint
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 22:01:00 - [57] Originally by: Roy Batty68 About the 3Au thing... it's way too small, regardless how you justify it (scan str for example). You have to keep in mind how fast most ships warp. Having 1 second or less to see any incoming isn't going to cut it when the scan itself currently takes about that long. And assuming they won't go for a design that's going to flood their network, I doubt the refresh rate on your "continuous scan" version would be any better. Don't forget that a lot of time in warp is accelerating and decellerating. Though a 3AU minimum range is pretty short notice, it's more than enough for a frigate to align and warp out. Regarding the server impact, the nature of warping in EVE makes it possible to cache some scanner data without revealing too much information to the client, so I believe that it would actually be better than a player spamming the "scan" button (because no caching of any kind takes place during that process). Quote: It basically kneecaps the scanner's useability as a heads up tool. And having to pack on upgrade mods, whatever they might be, just to get it back to a useable level would pretty much suck. I'd stick with the 15AU as the minimum range and work out. The 0.5AU per point of sensor strength is just a placeholder, really. The real distance would be decided by game designers more qualified than myself. The basic scanner on a ship, without any upgrades, should be able to detect threats moderately well. Improving it would make it much better but at the same time have the tradeoff of making you easier to detect and/or having to sacrifice slots you would normally use to tank or tackle with. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Drachma Golea Caldari hunter killers	Posted - 2008.04.24 22:01:00 - [58] I definitely like the idea, but If you look at (possibly) the communication transport and the data retrieval The way it works now: Enter System (local channel): - server pushes your (client) data into database - server get's all people in that system - server pushes your client data to all people just gathered Entering Grid - server pushes your location (client) data into database - server get's all people in that system with locations and such - server pushes all other people data to all your client which it just gathered The way it is proposed, Making a scanner rather seamless it all is like Entering Grid Even if the client is or would be rather smart, or would act as a node, it would create lag, because it has to handle more data continuesly Now the way the scanner works now, is indeed like information on demand (you press a button and the server starts doing it's thing...) If you look at submarines, it continues to send and receive information. just my 2 cents, and tbh I hope there will be such a solution...
Kelsin Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2008.04.24 22:07:00 - [59] Has there been any information from CCP about the viability of a continuously running long distance scanner (as in one that you don't have to manually refresh)? If that would be too stressful on the server that would indeed put a damper on the idea of revamping the scanner to replace local.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.24 22:24:00 - [60] Originally by: Kelsin Has there been any information from CCP about the viability of a continuously running long distance scanner (as in one that you don't have to manually refresh)? If that would be too stressful on the server that would indeed put a damper on the idea of revamping the scanner to replace local. I've theorized on it, but basically anything I come up with is just an educated guess. Due to the way that warping works (once you enter warp your destination has already been decided), a lot of scanner data can be cached once the client has initially detected someone. In addition, if the scan is run every 5 seconds you can cache additional data at the server level since the server knows that it would run at a set interval. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Ordo Lucius Soliders Of Eve	Posted - 2008.04.24 23:28:00 - [61] On realism, i think Winterblink hit a good point: Emissions. I mean, rather than having a straight forward "Sonar" basing its results purely on whats in range, why not focus it all on the concept of your sensors picking up energy signatures? ie. Frigate is in a belt, doing nothing. Your scanner displays nothing. Frigate is flying towards an asteroid at full speed. Your scanner displays a "contact", and a rough approximation on the location (derived by your ships scanner range and resolution) maybe over a few AUs area. You dont know what it is or where exactly it is (there may be multiple belts/planets near by). Frigate is firing on a rat. Your scanner displays "Light weapon discharge" and gives you a far narrower focus on where he/she may be. The scanner can tell you what type of weapon signature its picking up, but hey, it may be a battleship with one light pulse laser and seven heavies. This way, your ACTIONS determine what someone can see and what they cant. Just my thought on the subject, and it ties in with some realisim (dont start moaning about the speed of light etc. because i really dont care). :D Yikes! My sig is MELTING!!
Sergeant Spot Black Eclipse Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2008.04.25 00:11:00 - [62] The MINIMUM requirements for a scanner based replacement of Local: -- Must be able to sort out unmanned junk (cans and abandoned ships, etc) -- Must be able to sort out friendly stuff -- Must update every second (minimum) -- Must AUTO UPDATE, so you can just open the scanner window and keep an eye on it. -- Must be able to detect the PRESENSE of cloaked ships. To avoid over powering this function, make it strictly a 360 degree minimum 1000km range function (perhaps allow a specialty ship to use this fuction with directional scanner....) -- Must have an clear and distinct game sound that goes off when anything within the scanning criteria enters scan range. The effect of all this would be a scanner that was blank, even in highly cluttered system, until some unknown ship entered scan range. Play nice while you butcher each other.
Ulstan	Posted - 2008.04.25 01:05:00 - [63] Originally by: Sergeant Spot Edited by: Sergeant Spot on 25/04/2008 00:28:30 The MINIMUM requirements for a scanner based replacement of Local: -- Must be able to sort out unmanned junk (cans and abandoned ships, etc) (So, for example, when you jump into a new and cluttered system, you can set it so you see ONLY manned ships and maybe POS towers) -- Must be able to sort out friendly stuff -- Must update every second (minimum) -- Must AUTO UPDATE, so you can just open the scanner window and keep an eye on it. -- Must be able to detect the PRESENSE of cloaked ships. To avoid over powering this function, make it strictly a 360 degree minimum 1000km range function (perhaps allow a specialty ship to use this function with directional scanner....) -- Must have a clear and distinct game sound that goes off when anything within the defined scanning criteria enters scan range. The effect of all this would be a scanner that was blank, even in highly cluttered system, until some unknown ship entered scan range. All excellent points. I can't see any downside to cloaked ships showing up on the directional scanner, but not the overview.
Morfane The IMorral MAjority Imorral Dragons	Posted - 2008.04.25 01:23:00 - [64] This thread has win written all over it. I would add that I would really like to be able to warp to weapons fire/missile explosions if they are close enough. Wishful thinking, I know, but it would really add to the amount of pew pew without local to help.
Face Lifter	Posted - 2008.04.25 02:11:00 - [65] Originally by: Sergeant Spot The MINIMUM requirements for a scanner based replacement of Local: -- Must be able to sort out unmanned junk (cans and abandoned ships, etc) (So, for example, when you jump into a new and cluttered system, you can set it so you see ONLY manned ships and maybe POS towers) But that's not how it works now. This would be an additional feature that provides information currently not available with local chat. The minimum in that sense would be knowing how many people are in local without identifying who is flying what by long range scanner.
Kyra Felann Gallente Noctis Fleet Technologies	Posted - 2008.04.25 02:53:00 - [66] Originally by: Winterblink To add; Emissions should have an effect on this. Weapons fire for instance should light up like a christmas tree on the scanner. People fighting, ratting, would show up clearly. Your ship's scanners and pilot skills should play into how accurate the hits are. This would go for mining lasers as well, to a slightly lesser extent. Obviously needs refining, but you get the gist I think. ;) Exactly what I was getting at in my post above. I think this sort of thing would add to the gameplay a lot.
Kyra Felann Gallente Noctis Fleet Technologies	Posted - 2008.04.25 03:01:00 - [67] Originally by: Ordo Lucius I mean, rather than having a straight forward "Sonar" basing its results purely on whats in range, why not focus it all on the concept of your sensors picking up energy signatures? ie. Frigate is in a belt, doing nothing. Your scanner displays nothing. Frigate is flying towards an asteroid at full speed. Your scanner displays a "contact", and a rough approximation on the location (derived by your ships scanner range and resolution) maybe over a few AUs area. You dont know what it is or where exactly it is (there may be multiple belts/planets near by). Frigate is firing on a rat. Your scanner displays "Light weapon discharge" and gives you a far narrower focus on where he/she may be. The scanner can tell you what type of weapon signature its picking up, but hey, it may be a battleship with one light pulse laser and seven heavies. This way, your ACTIONS determine what someone can see and what they cant. This is pretty much what I was getting at, but if a ship is just moving, it should show up as what class at least, maybe even race if they use different types of drives (I know Minmatar use a more primitive drive system than the others) and thus a different heat/light/radiation signature. So maybe "contact - frigate class" Actively scanning would give away your position, but would give you much better intel, like exact ship type, better locational coordinates, longer detection range, etc.
Trathen	Posted - 2008.04.25 03:55:00 - [68] We might be taking it too far at this point. I think the task of replacing local with anything would be daunting enough, so some skeleton radar would be cool enough. I definitely think CCP could take a look at some sub sims to get some inspiration.
Kelsin Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2008.04.25 04:21:00 - [69] The feel of deep running subs pinging for enemies in the murky depths would be a very exciting thing. We should be so lucky if Local is revamped to be like that!
Jurgen Cartis Caldari Interstellar Corporation of Exploration Nex Eternus	Posted - 2008.04.25 05:46:00 - [70] Originally by: Kelsin The feel of deep running subs pinging for enemies in the murky depths would be a very exciting thing. We should be so lucky if Local is revamped to be like that! I remember SH3, that game was fun. Pity it doesn't run well on 1280x1024 monitors (****ing fixed 1024x768 resolution). -------------------- ICE Blueprint Sales FIRST!! -Yipsilanti Pfft. Never such a thing as a "last chance". ;) -Rauth
Sergeant Spot Black Eclipse Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2008.04.25 06:47:00 - [71] Originally by: Face Lifter Originally by: Sergeant Spot The MINIMUM requirements for a scanner based replacement of Local: -- Must be able to sort out unmanned junk (cans and abandoned ships, etc) (So, for example, when you jump into a new and cluttered system, you can set it so you see ONLY manned ships and maybe POS towers) But that's not how it works now. This would be an additional feature that provides information currently not available with local chat. The minimum in that sense would be knowing how many people are in local without identifying who is flying what by long range scanner. Sounds to me like you don't object to local on realism issues, but only because it works. Play nice while you butcher each other.
Terminus adacai Caldari	Posted - 2008.04.25 06:57:00 - [72] This is one of the best posts I have seen here in 2 years. A lot of GREAT ideas in here. I was one of those that did not wan't to see local go, but after reading a lot of ideas in here, I am ready to have one less chat window..... Opinions reflected on my posts are just that, my opinions. They do not reflect views held by my corp or alliance.
Terminus adacai Caldari	Posted - 2008.04.25 07:03:00 - [73] Originally by: Sergeant Spot Edited by: Sergeant Spot on 25/04/2008 00:28:30 The MINIMUM requirements for a scanner based replacement of Local: -- Must be able to sort out unmanned junk (cans and abandoned ships, etc) (So, for example, when you jump into a new and cluttered system, you can set it so you see ONLY manned ships and maybe POS towers) No, pos' should not light up your scanner. Surely that pretty blue aura bends waves and allows them to pass without a return to scanners :) Opinions reflected on my posts are just that, my opinions. They do not reflect views held by my corp or alliance.
Zaerlorth Maelkor	Posted - 2008.04.25 07:12:00 - [74] Some good ideas here, but. 3-12 AU range is very short. Would only give you a couple of seconds warning before someone is on top of you. Which isn't really enough. Beyond that there is the problem of Recons warping cloaked, against those there will be no defense. So I agree that these changes should be made, ie. removal of local and a more indepth, ingame intel gathering tool, but balancing is needed. ================================================== I should really get a sig.
Hugh Ruka Caldari Exploratio et Industria Morispatia	Posted - 2008.04.25 08:34:00 - [75] Edited by: Hugh Ruka on 25/04/2008 08:34:18 Originally by: Goumindong Originally by: Torik Tavitas Why exactly should a player know what standing a ship halfway across the system has and where would a scanner get that information? Because if they do not the game balance between hunter and hunted changes drastically and all the hunted go off to greener pastures[empire and noob corps] while all the hunters form up ever more massive gangs [many of which are likely to all be cloaked] because of the likelihood that the run into another massive gang has increased. This is my biggest hurdle I have to climb over. Once I can solve this in a satisfactory way, my proposal will be almost complete :-) I was thinking about IFF devices in PODs. This would accomplish 2 things (ok 4): 1. IFF will still be player bound (you can't exist without a pod) 2. You can sort out unmanned ships signatures based on active IFF signal 3. You only get standing/sec status but no player name - this is a step up in my oppinion from local as it leaves a certain error margin ... 4. Enables to create special ship classes that can manipulate their IFF signals (new depth) However 4. can become a large problem if abused or implemented incorrectly. Absence of player identification might pose a problem for many people. With player ID, this will preserve local functionality except the system wide and instant warning. --- SIG --- Goumindong for CSM.
El'Niaga Minmatar Republic Military School	Posted - 2008.04.25 09:04:00 - [76] They can't afford to remove Local. The last time it disappeared by 'accident' it caused a huge uproar. I find it amazing all the folks that come and whine about Local, yet when it is someone else complaining about something they tell that person adapt or die. Local helps pirates as much as it hurts them if not more so.
Kazuo Ishiguro House of Marbles Zzz	Posted - 2008.04.25 09:15:00 - [77] I've elaborated at some length on a passive/active approach in this thread. Feedback & constructive criticism would be appreciated. It involves making some tradeoffs to avoid an overly powerful scanner that combines all the information from local and the directional scanner, and I'd like to know whether people think I've got the right sort of balance. My research services Spreadsheets: Top speed calculation - Halo Implant stats
Rawr Cristina Caldari Naqam	Posted - 2008.04.25 11:26:00 - [78] Originally by: Kelsin The feel of deep running subs pinging for enemies in the murky depths would be a very exciting thing. We should be so lucky if Local is revamped to be like that! ^^ On the note of IFF - It's currently broken. Currently people NPCing/Mining/whatever know you're there the second you enter local (a problem emphasised by standings in local, even more so by BACON) and if they want to completely avoid all forms of PvP, they just dock up/cloak/ctrl-q. It stinks of consensual PvP, IMO. ...
Sergeant Spot Black Eclipse Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2008.04.25 11:34:00 - [79] Currently it is pure 100% suicide to not watch local all the time in 0.0. 0.0 MUST be survivable for small groups and even individuals who are careful. Any change that does not allow this is incorrect. Play nice while you butcher each other.
WillageGirl	Posted - 2008.04.25 11:56:00 - [80] Every argument against removing or nerfing local in this thread assumes that the target is alone and there are a gang of recons coming at him. Simple solution, dont fly alone if you think you cant handle what ever might be coming for you. Its up to the pilot if its worth the risk to go somewhere with less people sharing local assets. If you can see a stealth ship when ever it gets in scan range then its really not a stealth ship anymore is it? Would kinda make the whole ship pointless. As for not geting advance warning untill stealth ships are ganking someone. WRONG! Every single time a ship, cloaker or not, goess through stargate, it is NOT cloaked. You can see the gate fire, you can see the ship and you can even see the ship type. Its only a matter of aranging your defence so that you can control the gates. What a shock it would be if large alliance would actually need to start defending their entire space instead of sending a blob against every small roaming gang showing up on someones local. No more mega alliances controlling half of know map when they need to cover about every system in their space (as it should be), resulting more space in 0.0 without adding new regions. Fighting for Our right to Cloak since 2004
Fifth Horseman	Posted - 2008.04.25 12:47:00 - [81] Edited by: Fifth Horseman on 25/04/2008 12:48:01 tbh, the whole idea sounds like a chance/skill based local with player names swapped out for ship types. I'm not seeing any advantages for the vast majority of players, though it would nicely pander to the vocal few. I can see the new eve ad banners. "Death, quite literally, can come from nowhere, sign up, it's loads of fun being constantly smashed by entire Veteran fleets you have no hope of detecting" The more ideas I hear about replacing local, the more I find that I quite like local, despite it being a pit of crap, it's the best crap suggested so far. With maybe the exception of 0.0 sovereign territory holders get to Select where local is on, or off. Perhaps CCP can run a test, and answer a lot of those assumptions. Switch local off for two weeks. Then switch it back on, and discuss.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.25 13:01:00 - [82] Originally by: Fifth Horseman tbh, the whole idea sounds like a chance/skill based local with player names swapped out for ship types. While that's a bit of an oversimplification...yeah, that does sum it up. Quote: I'm not seeing any advantages for the vast majority of players, though it would nicely pander to the vocal few. Balancing the advantages and disadvantages is the hardest part. Perfect intel discourages combat because a FC can clearly see if he's likely to lose or not - the disadvantaged side will simply retreat instead of engage. Intel that is too poor will reduce combat because FCs are less willing to charge into situations where they have no accurate intelligence. This is also true of miners/NPCers. Quote: I can see the new eve ad banners. "Death, quite literally, can come from nowhere, sign up, it's loads of fun being constantly smashed by entire Veteran fleets you have no hope of detecting" This is the case already, honestly. It it any worse than being a victim of a logon trap, or being destroyed by ships you can't even see due to lag? And the system shouldn't ever allow people to move about completely undetected, cloaks or not. The problem is balancing this detectability - how much should the attackers sacrifice to remain undetected? How much should the defenders sacrifice to maintain the ability to detect the enemy? I believe that if these two aspects can be balanced we'd end up with a system that is far more interesting and promotes combat more than local currently does (with smaller gangs, anyway). Quote: Perhaps CCP can run a test, and answer a lot of those assumptions. Switch local off for two weeks. Then switch it back on, and discuss. Not too long ago, one of CCP's patches broke the chat in a way that made it so you couldn't see who was in a channel, including local. Based on the forums (massive grain of salt required, of course), it seemed like half of the players wanted it back and the other half wanted it to stay gone. Personally I thought it was great fun to roam low-sec in an anti-pirate gang without local. However, this is too short a period to really gauge how the removal of local would affect things like POS operations, large fleet battles, or how well an alliance can defend its industrial base. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Andargor theWise Collateral Damage Unlimited	Posted - 2008.04.25 13:05:00 - [83] Originally by: Fifth Horseman Perhaps CCP can run a test, and answer a lot of those assumptions. Switch local off for two weeks. Then switch it back on, and discuss. I disagree with your opinion, but it is however representative of the non-vocal majority opposed to remove local, and thanks for putting it concisely. Removing local without an alternative is precisely the mistake that this thread is trying to avoid. For the record, I was against removing local before reading it, but the alternatives proposed preserve balance and are far more fun at the same time. To continue with the brainstorming, I'd like to see AWACS-like modules for some ships that can see into neighboring systems. Also Wild Weasel functionality that allows a ship properly equipped to really mess up other ship's scanners. A whole new level of EW. - Stop the Feature Glut: Take the API to the Next Level
Hugh Ruka Caldari Exploratio et Industria Morispatia	Posted - 2008.04.25 14:46:00 - [84] Originally by: Fifth Horseman Edited by: Fifth Horseman on 25/04/2008 12:48:01 tbh, the whole idea sounds like a chance/skill based local with player names swapped out for ship types. I'm not seeing any advantages for the vast majority of players, though it would nicely pander to the vocal few. I can see the new eve ad banners. "Death, quite literally, can come from nowhere, sign up, it's loads of fun being constantly smashed by entire Veteran fleets you have no hope of detecting" The more ideas I hear about replacing local, the more I find that I quite like local, despite it being a pit of crap, it's the best crap suggested so far. With maybe the exception of 0.0 sovereign territory holders get to Select where local is on, or off. Perhaps CCP can run a test, and answer a lot of those assumptions. Switch local off for two weeks. Then switch it back on, and discuss. Do tell me about any other PvP MMO that has something similar to local ... Any fantasy MMO has only a minimap of limited reach if at all ...
Kelsin Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2008.04.25 16:28:00 - [85] Originally by: Andargor theWise Removing local without an alternative is precisely the mistake that this thread is trying to avoid. This. For all the pitfalls of removing local, there is something that could be put in its place that would introduce the proper amount of uncertainty and fun without being unbalancing. Coming up with that 'something' is what should really concern anyone addressing the question.
Izzy Lizzy Minmatar Sebiestor tribe	Posted - 2008.04.25 16:31:00 - [86] Originally by: Tarminic 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength.A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 12AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. If different ships scan out to different max ranges then I think this would bring about the need to rework how SS are made. Wouldn't this make a lot of SS useless for scanning and force you to remake new SS for your ships with smaller range? Would it be viable to rework that by allowing ships to enter their own value for warping to a celestial object if they want to? Say I'm in a ship with a max scan of 6 A.U. It would be nice if I could warp to within 6 A.U. of a celestial cluster I'd like to scan. And if you were allowed to manually input the warp value then it might cut back the need to make a lot of SS in the first place since it would still be hard to warp directly to someone unless you got lucky and manually input the same value they did. Does this make sense or am I missing something? Quote: The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.25 16:37:00 - [87] Originally by: Izzy Lizzy Originally by: Tarminic 3.1 Scan range should depend entirely on sensor strength.A ship with a sensor strength of 6 would be able to scan up to 3AU's away, while a ship with a sensor strength of 24 would be able to scan up to 12AU's away. This would also give ECCMs a use outside of pure ECM defense. If different ships scan out to different max ranges then I think this would bring about the need to rework how SS are made. Wouldn't this make a lot of SS useless for scanning and force you to remake new SS for your ships with smaller range? Isn't the maximum scanning range something like 5AU now? If you're scanning in a frigate, you can do things to boost your scan range significantly like fitting a few ECCMs - even with two mid-slots you could get your scanning range out to 9+ AU and be able to reliably detect just about anything. Also keep in mind that the numbers I used for the Sensor Strength / Scan Range relationship are pretty much placeholders. Quote: Would it be viable to rework that by allowing ships to enter their own value for warping to a celestial object if they want to? Say I'm in a ship with a max scan of 6 A.U. It would be nice if I could warp to within 6 A.U. of a celestial cluster I'd like to scan. And if you were allowed to manually input the warp value then it might cut back the need to make a lot of SS in the first place since it would still be hard to warp directly to someone unless you got lucky and manually input the same value they did. Does this make sense or am I missing something? That seems fine as long as the distance is smaller than the current distance from the ship to the object. People can already do this, it just requires setting a bookmark mid-warp. Allowing people to warp to objects at a certain number of AUs wouldn't d anything other than making this process more convenient. ---------------- Tarminic - 35 Million SP in Forum Warfare Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.81 (Updated 4/8)
Andargor theWise Collateral Damage Unlimited	Posted - 2008.04.25 18:16:00 - [88] Edited by: Andargor theWise on 25/04/2008 18:17:02 Originally by: Tarminic Originally by: Izzy Lizzy Would it be viable to rework that by allowing ships to enter their own value for warping to a celestial object if they want to? (...) That seems fine as long as the distance is smaller than the current distance from the ship to the object. People can already do this, it just requires setting a bookmark mid-warp. Allowing people to warp to objects at a certain number of AUs wouldn't d anything other than making this process more convenient. A step further, I think being able to enter or exit warp at will meshes very well with the submarine-like scanning being proposed in here. It reinforces the cat-and-mouse game. EDIT: enter and exit warp at will = freely warp in the direction you are pointing until you decide to drop out
Stratten	Posted - 2008.04.25 19:42:00 - [89] no no and no. :) removing local only really benefits certain play-styles at the expense of others. Why after 5 years this seems to be such an issue I don't understand, It is how eve is, why break it since it works and everyone already accepts it daily.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.25 19:44:00 - [90] Originally by: Stratten no no and no. :) removing local only really benefits certain play-styles at the expense of others. Could you expand on this? What play-styles do you believe it benefits, and harms, and how does my proposal fail in addressing those issues?
Face Lifter	Posted - 2008.04.25 19:57:00 - [91] Originally by: Sergeant Spot Originally by: Face Lifter Originally by: Sergeant Spot The MINIMUM requirements for a scanner based replacement of Local: -- Must be able to sort out unmanned junk (cans and abandoned ships, etc) (So, for example, when you jump into a new and cluttered system, you can set it so you see ONLY manned ships and maybe POS towers) But that's not how it works now. This would be an additional feature that provides information currently not available with local chat. The minimum in that sense would be knowing how many people are in local without identifying who is flying what by long range scanner. Sounds to me like you don't object to local on realism issues, but only because it works. I definitely wasn't thinking of realism. But now that I do, I don't see how manned and unmanned ships can be distinguished by long range scanners. My main objection to local chat is that it provides valuable intel instantly. I want intelligence gathering to be a little more player skill oriented
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.25 20:12:00 - [92] Originally by: Tarminic Originally by: Stratten no no and no. :) removing local only really benefits certain play-styles at the expense of others. Could you expand on this? What play-styles do you believe it benefits, and harms, and how does my proposal fail in addressing those issues? It benefits play styles that emphasize 1. Not Producing in 0.0 2. Traveling in large gangs 2. Blobbing 3. Cloaking 4. Any and all low risk combat types The best way to explain this is by explaining a two player game with perfect intelligence and a two player game with no intelligence. With perfect intelligence you know two things: 1. You know what your enemy is flying 2. You know your enemy knows what you are flying Such. If you enemy brings a gang of 2 cruisers you would be hesitant to send 2 battleships after them, or 4 cruisers since they would see this and retreat. As such, you are more likely to bring something closer to their gang size. With no intelligence you know three things 1. You know what you are flying 2. You know your enemy doesn't know what you are flying 2. You know you don't know what your enemy is flying. Such. If you want to win, you want to bring the largest force possible. Your enemy, who doesn't know how many folks you have is thinking the same thing. "He doesn't know i have 100 cloaked sniping BS, on this gate he is going to jump in and get toasted!" And so you get an ever increasing blob of ships. Perfect intelligence however is bad, because it removes mystery from the game and makes some actions not risky enough[producing/hauling etc]. But we can see that if we want more fights and smaller engagement sizes, we need to be closer towards the "more intelligence" system than the "less intelligence" system. Vote Goumindong for CSM
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.25 20:26:00 - [93] Originally by: Goumindong Such. If you want to win, you want to bring the largest force possible. Your enemy, who doesn't know how many folks you have is thinking the same thing. "He doesn't know i have 100 cloaked sniping BS, on this gate he is going to jump in and get toasted!" And so you get an ever increasing blob of ships. Perfect intelligence however is bad, because it removes mystery from the game and makes some actions not risky enough[producing/hauling etc]. But we can see that if we want more fights and smaller engagement sizes, we need to be closer towards the "more intelligence" system than the "less intelligence" system. Exactly. The problem I'm running into with my proposal is exactly where this system should fall between Perfect Intel and No Intel. If that issue is solved, I then need to determine how to keep supplementary modules and ship classes (cloaking, sensor boosters and ECCM) from skewing it too far in either direction for either side. Unfortunately I have little 0.0 experience since the advent or recons and the popularity of nano-ships, so I'm not sure how viable it is or how to do so. Goumindong, I like the suggestion you made regarding replacing local with a friendly/neutral/hostile count but I'm not sure it goes far enough to reduce intel accuracy. Maybe that could be implemented alongside my idea? Then again, perhaps I'm just too attached to this suggestion.
Kelsin Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2008.04.25 20:39:00 - [94] Originally by: Goumindong Such. If you want to win, you want to bring the largest force possible. Your enemy, who doesn't know how many folks you have is thinking the same thing. "He doesn't know i have 100 cloaked sniping BS, on this gate he is going to jump in and get toasted!" And so you get an ever increasing blob of ships. This argument is neither here nor there. If you're supposing that more ships make you more likely to win, it doesn't matter what you know about your enemy - you will always bring as many ships as you can. Removing Local and replacing it with a scanning/scouting system benefits those that employ scanning and scouts over those who do not. In fact I would go so far as to say that if Local were replaced by some kind of scanner/scouting system, blobbing would be DISadvantageous, because your fleet's sensing apparatus would be concentrated in one spot instead of spread out to provide more coverage.
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.25 20:54:00 - [95] Originally by: Kelsin This argument is neither here nor there. If you're supposing that more ships make you more likely to win, it doesn't matter what you know about your enemy - you will always bring as many ships as you can. "as many ships as you can" changes based on what you know about your enemy. If you know that he knows what you have then you know that if you bring overwhelming force there will not be combat as he will run away. Such bringing more forces will let you "win" the fight, because you hold the field and he has won. But strategic victories like this mean very little in eve unless you are disrupting operations[and if you are you are likely close to your enemies home port and they can get forces together to combat you]. But bringing more forces will decrease the likelihood of an engagement since the enemy will just run away. And its the engagement that everyone has fun from. E.G. if am flying solo and you know i am flying solo you are more likely to engage me with any number of forces. But if i also know what you are flying, i am likely to run away if you bring something overwhelming. And since you know that I know what you are flying, actually bringing overwhelming force will mean that I disengage. So if you bring overwhelming forces you are choosing to not fight and i can clearly not choose the glass in front of me. fake edit: Actually the Vizzini joke and point doesn't hold true, its in there entirely because its funny. In this situation, the meta-game play is actually important, where in many cases it is not(which the joke emphasizes). This has been your "Goumindong ruins the joke and the fun" moment of the day, thank you for reading. Quote: In fact I would go so far as to say that if Local were replaced by some kind of scanner/scouting system, blobbing would be DISadvantageous, because your fleet's sensing apparatus would be concentrated in one spot instead of spread out to provide more coverage. No, has has been explained to Jade, the more people you have the more information you have, not less(unless its impossible to gather information). All you do is add more cov-ops to your fleet ratio and have them constantly scanning. Now you have an information advantage and a fleet size advantage. These severely benefits blobbing and other low risk activities like nano-cruisers, cloaking, and the many combinations of the two. Low-risk activities = less combat and less "good" combat.
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.25 21:13:00 - [96] Edited by: Goumindong on 25/04/2008 21:13:16 Originally by: Tarminic Goumindong, I like the suggestion you made regarding replacing local with a friendly/neutral/hostile count but I'm not sure it goes far enough to reduce intel accuracy. Maybe that could be implemented alongside my idea? I am not sure intel accuracy needs to be reduced. If anything, players need to be able to find and warp to enemies easier[so that on-gate combat is more rare, and this is a feature that is 'more info and more accurate info']. And in knowing enemy ship types easier they are more likely to be get a proper challenge together that the opponent wont run away from. However. It also means there is less guess work in the game, specific ship counters are less able to be used and killing production is near impossible. And these are things we probably ought to be encouraging. Its not so simple to say that we should have a scanning system as you say and really needs more fleshing out with regards to how quickly you can get on top of producers once they know you are in system. For pvp fit vs pvp fit it doesn't matter much, since they are much more likely to be on gates and small tweaks to local functionality[don't appear on standings scan until you de-cloak from jump in(and/or possibly undock)] will have large and likely desired effects on pvp fit vs pvp fit. The rest is just figuring out how easy it ought to be to kill the non-coms. edit: stupid quote marks inside bracket bug.
Kelsin Jericho Fraction The Star Fraction	Posted - 2008.04.25 21:26:00 - [97] Originally by: Goumindong If you know that he knows what you have then you know that if you bring overwhelming force there will not be combat as he will run away. (...) But bringing more forces will decrease the likelihood of an engagement since the enemy will just run away. And its the engagement that everyone has fun from. This is precisely the point of arguing to remove Local - as it stands the lesser force can always see when a greater force enters the system because they just watch Local for hostiles. Originally by: Goumindong No, has has been explained to Jade, the more people you have the more information you have, not less(unless its impossible to gather information). All you do is add more cov-ops to your fleet ratio and have them constantly scanning. Now you have an information advantage and a fleet size advantage. You have more information only if you spread out to gain scanning coverage. But that's not blobbing. If you blob your fleet can only see what the unit with the most coverage can see. On top of which, all of those assumptions are based on one imagined scanning system - we could easily think of a scanning system that does not have those flaws. Originally by: Goumindong These severely benefits blobbing and other low risk activities like nano-cruisers, cloaking, and the many combinations of the two. Low-risk activities = less combat and less "good" combat. Again, this doesn't follow - nano-cruisers have no more to do with the existance of Local chat than anything else in the game. What you're saying is that removing local will make space more dangerous, and therefore players would gravitate towards lower-risk methods of travel and combat. By that logic we should push for CCP to implement full insurance on all ships and modules so that combat losses cost you nothing, and then there will be "more good combat" because no one will avoid combat for fear of loss.
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.25 21:42:00 - [98] Edited by: Goumindong on 25/04/2008 21:42:19 Originally by: Kelsin This is precisely the point of arguing to remove Local - as it stands the lesser force can always see when a greater force enters the system because they just watch Local for hostiles. And you want a system where they cannot and so will die to the larger force. How can you not see what this produced? Quote: You have more information only if you spread out to gain scanning coverage. But that's not blobbing. If you blob your fleet can only see what the unit with the most coverage can see. On top of which, all of those assumptions are based on one imagined scanning system - we could easily think of a scanning system that does not have those flaws. No, you network the scanning and you keep the main force together. The same way you do it today with scouts in surrounding systems with cloaks. Quote: Again, this doesn't follow - nano-cruisers have no more to do with the existance of Local chat than anything else in the game. What you're saying is that removing local will make space more dangerous, and therefore players would gravitate towards lower-risk methods of travel and combat. By that logic we should push for CCP to implement full insurance on all ships and modules so that combat losses cost you nothing, and then there will be "more good combat" because no one will avoid combat for fear of loss. 1. Good god no. Fast ships that can disengage very easy are chosen specifically because if they get caught by larger forces they can run away instead of die. Increasing the chance that ships get caught by larger forces simply means that players must either bring more forces of their own or must move towards the lowest risk options. 2. Yes 3. I am arguing that if you do these things, then this other thing will happen. I am not arguing [i]we should do these things so that these other things will happen. You are straw-manning me. Furthermore you completely ignore anything regarding the over-arching goal of combat. Think of it this way: In a system with more information, if you reduce your risk, you reduce your rewards because people will be less likely to engage you and they are the source of mods. In a system with less information when you reduce your risk you increase your rewards. Because there is no correlation between the risks you take and the likelyhood of combat[that will produce loot by killing enemies]
WillageGirl	Posted - 2008.04.25 22:04:00 - [99] Edited by: WillageGirl on 25/04/2008 22:09:27 Originally by: Goumindong No, has has been explained to Jade, the more people you have the more information you have, not less(unless its impossible to gather information). All you do is add more cov-ops to your fleet ratio and have them constantly scanning. Now you have an information advantage and a fleet size advantage. These severely benefits blobbing and other low risk activities like nano-cruisers, cloaking, and the many combinations of the two. Low-risk activities = less combat and less "good" combat. What you fail to realize here, even though you say it yourself is that while gang size might be still large you have a lot more covert op's and scout and less heavy ships in your gang. This means you have less of actual combatships on the field and the rest of your gang spread around gathering intel == less people on the field == smaller blob's or less blobs. (how ever you like to put it.) About favoring blob's ... these days you bring more to the field than your enemy and you dont engage unless you think you can win (or atleast not many do). So its nothing to say that removing local would somehow make the situation any worse. Infact it gives a lot more options for small more maneuverable gangs that can run around large blobs when they cant be so easily followed just by looking at local anymore. Originally by: Goumindong 1. Good god no. Fast ships that can disengage very easy are chosen specifically because if they get caught by larger forces they can run away instead of die. Increasing the chance that ships get caught by larger forces simply means that players must either bring more forces of their own or must move towards the lowest risk options. You do realize that you can go the other way too and start using smaller gangs, traps, baits, etc. You know the conventional strategic thinking that doesnt only involve adding more nombers to your gang. This would be good for game, dont you think? I cant imagine anyone enjoying those huge blobs that cause huge lag. Unfortunately, thats what the game design we have right now with local and all forces you to do. One thing that I think everyone agrees is that if local is removed / nerfed it requires some kind of advanced scanning system. For example something similar EvE already had long time ago. Picture for those that were not around or do not remember. Just a suggestion to get the thred on track again Fighting for Our right to Cloak since 2004
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.25 23:40:00 - [100] Originally by: WillageGirl What you fail to realize here, even though you say it yourself is that while gang size might be still large you have a lot more covert op's and scout and less heavy ships in your gang. This means you have less of actual combatships on the field and the rest of your gang spread around gathering intel == less people on the field == smaller blob's or less blobs. (how ever you like to put it.) No, you don't have less combat ships and less heavy combat ships because you are incented to bring more ships in total Where-as a 3-4 person gang might be viable when you can see what you can an can't fight. It is not viable when you need 20 before you start to feel safe. Even if half the gang were cov-ops that is still twice as many combat ships. As well, so many intelligence based ships is simply unlikely to be fun for most people. Quote: So its nothing to say that removing local would somehow make the situation any worse. Infact it gives a lot more options for small more maneuverable gangs that can run around large blobs when they cant be so easily followed just by looking at local anymore. Yes, nothing besides economics, common sense, sociology, et all will tell you that the change would likely make it worse. Those things are totally worthless! [/sarcasm] It does not give more options for maneuverable gangs because the big gang is just has hard to follow. Which means the maneuverable gang is more likely to run into the big gang and get wasted Quote: You do realize that you can go the other way too and start using smaller gangs, traps, baits, etc. You know the conventional strategic thinking that doesnt only involve adding more nombers to your gang. This would be good for game, dont you think? I cant imagine anyone enjoying those huge blobs that cause huge lag. Unfortunately, thats what the game design we have right now with local and all forces you to do. No, because these tactics require you to have more information and more information than your enemy. And who has the more information again? The big gang does!
Mudrat	Posted - 2008.04.25 23:43:00 - [101] Edited by: Mudrat on 25/04/2008 23:45:19 you people need to be reading other mmorpg sites for more CURRENT news about this game. you wont be getting it on these boards. from massively.com, today, as told by CCP as a con in NYC: "For years the war waged between the empires of EVE Online has been a cold war. Well, now it is time to break out the Clausewitz ladies and gentlemen. The long awaited clash of the titans is coming and there is nowhere to hide. Corporation warfare has nothing on what is about to occur. Systems will change hands, empires will fall, and the galaxy as we know it will change forever. To hell with putting blasters on stun, this will be a fight to the finish. With the launch of EVE's expansion Empyrean Age sometime in the future, the entire universe, players and NPCs, will be duking it out in the name of their empire in an epic struggle for galactic domination. The war is not going to be easy and players may participate alone, running missions for their empire of choice, or they may bring their entire corporation into the fray. You thought piracy was a problem, imagine finding yourself in the middle of an Amarr fleet bent on your merciless destruction! Kick in the afterburners and train up those tanking skills, there is going to be a torrent of destruction hellbent on finding your ship. So what about you carebears? All is not lost for the industrialist at heart! In addition to an EVE proximity alert to keep you safe, all of the fighting will provide plenty of scrap metal. The empires and players need resources for the larger conflict and the usual struggles between corporations. Someone needs to make sure everyone in EVE is supplied with guns and ammunition. This means plenty of trading and market watching for players eager to make a few isk as gun runners. Stock up on Quafe and void ammo while you are browsing the market, you are going to need it!" note the 'proximity alert' part. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?FEATURE=1909&GAME=14&bhcp=1 with pvp being pretty much forced on everyone, do expect ship and module prices to skyrocket something fierce. and all you miners out there had better start working on your tanking and drone skills - right now - or start working on a second account that can fly cover for your miners. this game is slowly devolving into a f2p korean thing.
Frug Repo Industries R.E.P.O.	Posted - 2008.04.25 23:50:00 - [102] I really love the idea of turning off all your ships systems to remain 'hidden' from any counts at all. (ie I forfeit my local count to also appear hidden) Not for fleets, but for soloing. It might not be so detrimental to fleets if you had to wait a few minutes between session changes to enter said cloaked mode, and you couldn't do it while in a fleet. We pretty much do this with logging off anyway. - - - - - - - - - Do not use dotted lines - - - - - - - If you think I'm awesome, say BOOO BOOO!! - Ductoris Neat look what I found - Kreul Hey, my marbles
Goumindong Amarr Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.04.25 23:57:00 - [103] Originally by: Frug I really love the idea of turning off all your ships systems to remain 'hidden' from any counts at all. (ie I forfeit my local count to also appear hidden) Not for fleets, but for soloing. It might not be so detrimental to fleets if you had to wait a few minutes between session changes to enter said cloaked mode, and you couldn't do it while in a fleet. We pretty much do this with logging off anyway. This function already exists. Its called logging off.
Tarminic Black Flame Industries	Posted - 2008.04.25 23:58:00 - [104] Originally by: Frug I really love the idea of turning off all your ships systems to remain 'hidden' from any counts at all. (ie I forfeit my local count to also appear hidden) Not for fleets, but for soloing. It might not be so detrimental to fleets if you had to wait a few minutes between session changes to enter said cloaked mode, and you couldn't do it while in a fleet. We pretty much do this with logging off anyway. Doing that wouldn't help, people would always find ways around it, such as creating "informal" fleets or having scouts operate outside the normal fleet. I don't think that theyre needed, however, fleets are much more likely to be detected even if they employ the same measures to evade detection. If I scan an area that has 1 ship that has a 1% chance of being detected, I'd need to scan (on average) 50 or more times in order to detect that ship. If I scan an area that has 200 ships in it, I'm likely to get 3 or 4 hits each time. It'd be clear after a few scans that I'm dealing with a large force.
Frug Repo Industries R.E.P.O.	Posted - 2008.04.26 00:30:00 - [105] Originally by: Goumindong This function already exists. Its called logging off. I totally said that at the end of my post. The difference would be a miner could keep mining. Yes, at increased risk, because he forfeits his own intel, but in a system that looks empty the risk of someone checking all the belts is pretty negligible. If he employs an alt with intel the system will no longer appear empty and people will start belt scanning and will find him as normal. Also, making it so people don't have to logoff to mimic this effect is a good thing imo. Mostly because logging off in itself is lame.
Professor Perplex	Posted - 2008.04.26 02:09:00 - [106] good ideas. to replace local though we will need an option to warp 1, 2, 3,... au towards an object.
Cailais Amarr VITOC Chain of Chaos	Posted - 2008.04.26 02:42:00 - [107] I think if we're going to address how the intel system works it needs to have a sense of in built balance to it. i.e the narrower your field of vision the more precise you can be and the more detailed information you can gain. The wider your field of vision and that information is less precise and less detailed. Its a telescope effect; look through a telescope and you can see further away, or close object in high detail but your field of vision is reduced so you cant see things outside of that very narrow view - even if theyre actually quite close to you. C. A new look at Local - IDEA
Kyra Felann Gallente Noctis Fleet Technologies	Posted - 2008.04.26 03:23:00 - [108] Edited by: Kyra Felann on 26/04/2008 03:24:32 I still think the "submarine" model would be the most tactically interesting and useful. Eve ships move like submarines anyway, so why not? I think it would make sense, also. Submarines can't just see other submarines, so they have to use sonar. Spaceships can't really see other spaceships unless they're very close, so they'd have to use whatever type of "ping" they would use (radar/ladar/gravometric/whatever) or just sit silently listening and looking for energy signatures from ships in the void of space. One gives you good intel at a long range at the cost of giving away your position, while the other gives you less intel, but you're difficult to detect. Have different types of modules have a certain level of "noise" that they produce when active (things like passive targeters would have very a very low signature, while lasers or missiles would have a strong signature) that passive sensors can pick up. Then maybe add modules that dampen your signature ("stealth dampening field" or whatever) so you're harder to detect but completely different from being cloaked, as you're not completely invisible, just giving off a smaller signature. You could still be probed or detected by a ship that's close enough. Sounds realistic, tactically interesting, and fun to me.
Cordran Li Gallente The Really Awesome Players Privateer Alliance	Posted - 2008.04.26 06:26:00 - [109] Edited by: Cordran Li on 26/04/2008 06:26:12 What if the scanning window showed all of the system and a 360 sphere that showed you everything in your area (not the entire system) kind of like the "fog of war" style scanning that exists in homeworld 2. Ships would appears as "blips" on the radar if they were in your area, and you could increase the size of the ring/sphere with skills. In order to make more accurate scans you would need to use the directional scanner, but that would increase your likelihood of being scanned down. You would also be able to warp to those blips that you scanned with the directional scanner. That would make space seem more open and scanning more accessible. It would be nice if on the scanning window there was a number that showed total people in the system...after all this is a game and I wouldn't want to spend most of my time hoping there were people in the system I'm trying to scan.
The Icefox Gallente Under the Wings of Fury Atrocitas	Posted - 2008.04.26 06:29:00 - [110] Originally by: Tarminic 5. Using the DS Should have Consequences. The constantly scanning should have its drawbacks, just like a submarine actively pinging can reveal its location to potential hostiles in range. One simple way to implement this is to have using the scanner increase your signature radius by a certain percentage when you have the scanner window open. Since you mentioned submarines like passive and active sonar you could incorporate this into your idea. What you would want to do and this could be incorporated into number 4 is to have one scanner window with two modes. One active and one passive. Your active scanner would essentially ping the space around you for hulls. Your passive would only listen for anything that was not the dead emptiness of space. The active scanner while pinging would have a range based on your suggestion and would be capable of finding targets based on sensor strength with the draw back of giving away your position. It could do this within so many KM/100KM/AU depending on your enemies sig radius, your sensor strength and other factors. It would have the ability to determine via an active ping what targets were and what bearing to target and range to target were. The passive scanner on the other hand simply listens for noise. Ships of different types would give off different noise and since space is relatively noisy with all that background radiation unless you were VERY close to a target that was running quiet you wouldn't pick them up. However a target that was actively pinging away would make noise over that background smaller ships with low sig radius might be able to hide from larger ships in this manner as it would take longer to detect them while larger ships would be able to flee. Combining these two uses you can create varied tactics within the game for both hunting and evading combat providing a balance without using local. I leave the details up to you and CCP however to sort out as conventional sub warfare would probably not be ideal for eve but a variation there of might. Bored during down time? Try this.
The Icefox Gallente Under the Wings of Fury Atrocitas	Posted - 2008.04.26 06:46:00 - [111] Edited by: The Icefox on 26/04/2008 06:51:51 Edited by: The Icefox on 26/04/2008 06:46:59 Originally by: Fifth Horseman Since mixed race Recon gangs can do it all, that will end up the defacto standard, and ratting will become impossible, since you'll need that scanner open constantly looking for the 1.5 seconds blip of a recon entering your system. Making you easier to find by the people who are impossible to find. I think the reduction in sensor strength (above) would help alleviate this issue, but I can't say whether it would be solved completely or would need something else as well. Expanding on my active vs passive scanning. Given the assumption that the new scanner would be tied into sensor strength we should also assume that its not 100% accurate either. Also given the fact that a passive scan would have considerably limited range as it can only listen for activity over the general background noise of space you then have two options as a cloaker gang. 1. Actively scan giving away your location and the fact that you are hunting to anyone who is listening on passive. Hope they are afk and kill them when you arive or curse when you arrive and they have already warped off. OR 2. Use the passive scanner or have some one use scan probes (which should also show up on the passive) and try to conceal your numbers and intentions. The point being that cloaking should be for stealth surprise and escape, you can not expect to surprise some one or be stealthy while actively pinging away. As tarminic pointed out with submarines, and from my own personal experience working on a sub, you don't use active sonar unless you don't care about being seen. Bored during down time? Try this.
Sergeant Spot Black Eclipse Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2008.04.26 19:10:00 - [112] Originally by: Goumindong Originally by: Tarminic Originally by: Stratten no no and no. :) removing local only really benefits certain play-styles at the expense of others. Could you expand on this? What play-styles do you believe it benefits, and harms, and how does my proposal fail in addressing those issues? It benefits play styles that emphasize 1. Not Producing in 0.0 2. Traveling in large gangs 2. Blobbing 3. Cloaking 4. Any and all low risk combat types THAT is why I am rabidly against ANY change that does not REPLACE local with an even MORE EFFECTIVE AND EASY TO USE intel tool. Play nice while you butcher each other.
Soporo Caldari	Posted - 2008.04.26 19:36:00 - [113] Just a reminder, as almost no-one else has even mentioned Miners: All I know is, if you make Mining harder and more dangerous to do (which is most local change suggestions I see here) you are screwing everyone in the end. Gank and Mobility owns Stationary and Defense. Particularly with the idiotic state of affairs with the various Mining ships speed/slots/grid/tank/etc. Make it harder for Miners and LowSec will forever be screwed, 0.0 Mining will see more blobbing and it will encourage even more Empire hugging. Whatever ideas you cupcakes come up with it needs to be practical for all ships. Good luck with that.
Sergeant Spot Black Eclipse Corp Band of Brothers	Posted - 2008.04.26 20:25:00 - [114] Originally by: Soporo Gank and Mobility owns Stationary and Defense. Quoted for Truth Some folks are just whiny lazy bastards and want more suicide monkeys. Play nice while you butcher each other.
Zorok LEGI0N	Posted - 2008.04.28 21:04:00 - [115] Originally by: Sergeant Spot Originally by: Soporo Gank and Mobility owns Stationary and Defense. Quoted for Truth Some folks are just whiny lazy bastards and want more suicide monkeys. Amen to all that...This is what I have been trying to say in the forums about CCP's silly decision to get rid of local. Those fitted for PvP will always have the upper hand and their tactics already nullify their risk while outweighing the rewards. Getting rid of local only tips that balance more in their favor.
Xaen Caldari Caritas.	Posted - 2008.04.28 21:28:00 - [116] Let's not forget that it needs to measure in AU. Also, if it's going to replace local all that crap about limiting range and resolution has to go out the window. Either that or nobody would fly small ships in lowsec or 0.0 since they'd be basically blind. Recons would be even more godlike. - Support fixing the UI\|Suggest Jita fixes\|Compact logs

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