Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Because no one reads the suggestions forums anyway...

The EvE Online Alliance Live Tactical Map

tl;dr: Add live enemy intel to the in-game EVE map, intel reported by alliance members. (also rawrnerflocal)



Many games feature a "tag" or "spot" function for alerting team members to enemy presence, such as Tribes: Ascend's "Left ALT" to "spot" an incoming enemy, placing a little tag on that enemy's position as well as audibly calling out his position on the field and his armor size. Now, imagine the following for EVE:

How it looks
The map is a flattened (or 3D depending on preferences) map of the current alliance territory. This could, I guess, be of the immediate area, region or constellation. In order to simplify it, it could simply use the current EVE Map and it’s filters. The idea is to display an easy "overviable" map of the immediate area of the alliance (or pilot's) nearby space. Preferrably, to a pilot in space, this would be his constellation, and perhaps the surrounding constellations. To an alliance tactical officer, this would be the region and the constellations surrounding the entrances and exists from that region. The map settings accessible only to those with the proper roles and the map itself would preferably be viable by anyone. But if you wanted to add strategic symbols (rendezvouz point, active POSes, staging points etc etc), you might want to add access filter roles to the map as well.

How it works
When an alliance member flies through space and encounters other pilots, he can right click them and choose “Report to Alliance”. This could possible also be called “Call in intel” to avoid the word “Report”, which is the client-based function for reporting players as bots :/.

What this does is place a “tag” on the live map with that enemy/neutral pilot’s ship type, name, corp or alliance and a timestamp. If there were more pilots there with him at that current time, those will be added with him as well. That way, any intel will be updated on the fly on a live map of the current area similar to an intel chat channel, without the hassle of scrolling a chat and reading shorthand. It’s also easier to spot and track gangs moving through your territory.

Intelligent behaviour built into the map would be that if the same pilot is reported in another place with a later time stamp, his earlier report is removed to reduce clutter. This could even be a setting by the alliance to keep maybe the last 5, 4, 3 or whatever reports on the map, graying them out as they grow older. This allows “bread crumbs” of a pilot or gang as he/they move through the territory. Do note that the map does not update automatically. It MUST have updates from alliance members, otherwise it would an omnipresent eye in space, and no one wants that.

No local?
This could be a powerful tool for an alliance to monitor their territory for incursions as alliance members report in intel as they go about their business. With local being "the all powerful intel tool" it is today, I see this being a good replacement as this puts the power in the hands of the players, and also gives the alliance ONE central place to gather all their intel. So preferrably, this system would be put in place as a replacement for local as an intel gathering tool. If local is put in the delayed W-space variant, or simply moved to region or constellation level is largely irrelevant as long as it's intel-gathering function is killed. Local is supposed to be a chat channel, not an intel tool. Bonus: This will get rid of all the whineposts about AFK-cloakers.

Access Filters
Naturally, this is also a good place to gain access to as a spy, but this is of course solvable by the aforementioned access filters. Higher ranking officers might get access to strategic layers, showing staging points, POSes, moons and other important information. Information that day-to-day members need not know about, and thus won't have access to.


To avoid it being way too powerful, it would be limited to adding the following to the map:

(if local is kept) Right click pilot in local: Name, alliance/corp, system, time only. No ship information.
Right click pilot on directional scan: System, time, Shiptype. No name, corp or alliance info (you can't see him, after all)
Right click pilot in station: Name, station name, time.
Right click the pilot on overview: Name, alliance/corp, location within system, shiptype, time.


Please, discuss and let me know what you think

Someone didn't read.

Ok so this will only work on grid...

They have this it is called the tactical overlay.

Derp - double post.

Aye, I'd really want to remove local for this to work, otherwise it'd probably be a little too useful. At least make local the same "hidden" form it is in W-space. If you don't want to be seen, you won't be.

As for the "free intel" part, you'll still have the option to spy on your enemy with the alliance-wide access filters to locate POSes and POI:s.

I'm sure a boffin or two could make their own EVE. So what's your point? It's funny how this argument always shows up when someone makes a suggestion. "Hey, here's an idea!"

"Make it yourself!"

Yes...because let's not benefit everyone. Hell no.

All automated intel should be removed from the game including jumps/kills/cynos for all systems/regions.
Eve should report nothing like this to the client/3rd party software.

Intel should not be force fed to players. Player skill and iniative should be the sources of intel.

OP I totally understand where your coming from and appreciate what your trying to accomplish.

However

I fundamentally disagree with the need for more Intel, I feel safer in null sec then i do in High sec, which is crazy backwards. This is because i have too much Intel, if i had less Intel i would get in more fights, and fights would be much more dynamic. Thats why some of the best (small gang) fights can be found in WH's

http://www.eve-manager.com/Intel.php

There you go. You are welcome.

This +1000



REMOVE LOCAL!