Othe Noc
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Posted - 2008.08.01 07:03:00 -
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I think that to implement this would require a complete overhaul of the scanner. Which would probably include a feature to scan for active ships in the system . . . which would result in the same information anyways.
And I don't think the presence of local chat has a particularly detrimental affect on cloakers, either. Knowing that someone is in system doesn't tell you anything other than that someone may have noticed YOU enter. They could be cloaked off a gate, they could be ratting in a belt, they could be docked in a station, or they could be sitting at another gate or a planet or a moon or a POS. You can try scanning them out, but you won't find them, and you'll assume they're somewhere else. You can try probing them out, but you'll get the same results. You know SOMEBODY is SOMEWHERE, but you don't know anything more until they uncloak.
The idea of using a chat channel for intel does bug me a little. But I feel that it would be redundant to scrap it in favor of an ultimately identical feature in the scanner. If we want to overhaul the scanner and find cooler things to do with it, then having that new functionality replace Local Chat might be interesting. But I think any changes to this system should originate with discussion about the Scanner and only affect changes to Local Chat incidentally.
And if you need an RP reason to justify it: each ship has a comm system capable of making links and communicating instantaneously across the cluster. There's actually a funny little article on it here. Since all of the ship's individual communications are ultimately networked together (sort of like the Internet, cough cough), it's clearly possible to scan for all connections originating in the same starsystem (Sort of like pinning down the location of someone's internet connection). In order to cut one's self off from the link and render one's self invisible to the chat channel, one would have to close off all connection to the communications net. This would involve severing connections to the chat channels, fleet coms, the market, the map, the Assets tab, the wallet . . . even IFF tags on ships, and the identifier signals of scanned ships and stations.
We can call this maneuver "Logging off." Since a ship severed from the communications network is useless for nearly anything besides hiding, this maneuver is nearly always accompanied by the pilot shutting down the ship's power systems, rendering it effectively invisible.
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