Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I have given quite a bit of thought on the concept of local chat and how it effects game play. Local channel as a method of communication between parties in the same system is a great tool. As a null sec / low sec roamer nothing gives me greater satisfaction then linking funny photos after blops or wave hello to an old friend in local I haven’t seen online in awhile, however as an intel tool Local channel stinks.
In low and null sec local channel only tells you that a character is online in the system. It doesn’t tell you what they are flying or if they are afk cloaked, and it doesn’t tell you if they are docked. What the local channel does is give you a false sense of danger. This is why one neut shuttle flying between systems can shut down an entire null sec mining op. The original concept of local was an easy way for people to find each other when the population of eve was just a few thousand, its time for an upgrade.

Radar1

Radar 2

What I propose is first to upgrade d-scan to supply more information and ping automatically (no more mashing the scan button). Furthermore what I want to add is a new radar, resizable window that provides solar system information in a limited range. I took the time to shop some screenshots I found at work to hopefully give everybody a general idea of how it might look. The white dot represents your ship on the solar system map. The grey area around represents your radar range and also d-scan range. On the second picture you see a sample of new use for the scanning POS array essentially it adds 100au to your radar centered on the pos to any friendlies in system. A system with full coverage from scanning pos array would be provided better intel then d-scan and local combined yet still offer opposition a way to combat against it(Disable the POS scanning arrays). As a matter of balance any changes to the local channel would have to address cloaking.
Its been past time that eve players have a way to combat cloaking. What I propose to keep the balance is to say simply that any damage done to a cloaked ship decloaks it. Furthermore a new model of long range (40K+), low dps, long cycle time smart bombs provides a solution when you know a cloaked recon is sitting at your undock just waiting for you to undock that JF.


My 2 Cents

I like it, I believe CCP is looking for suggestions to upgrade the intel and not have it focused on local chat too much. I think this is a valid idea but would need some real discussion on how it worked in detail.

How many people would use a 40k smartbomb? You realize that you'd have to be 40k off the station to use it right?

Struggling against interface is not "effort". Wanna effort - ask CCP to stop feeding system intel via API. That's easily the most ******** thing in EVE atm.

Maybe the solution to your local-induced paranoia is to spend more time and effort scouting! If members of your mining op group were set up in adjacent systems in covops, you would know that the "random neutral in a shuttle" was, well, flying a shuttle. If you are crippled by your inability to tell whether people are docked or not, maybe you need to open your heart to enjoying a little risk (after getting eyes on everyone else that you could to minimize it!).

Seriously, this is EVE. You have no god-given right to safety, comfort, and security.

Empty Local until some one Write something into or get pinged by an automatic D-Scan that starts every 5 seconds.

Old D-Scan still remains but offers more Informations.

For the sake of it, the New D-Scan wont work in Wormholes or with reduced range.