EVE General Discussion

There's been a lot of threads (or were before the Inventory Patch) calling for the removal of Local.

The question whether or not local should or shouldn't be removed isn't the real question. Removing local is merely one facet of a larger problem.

That problem is the balance between Predator and Prey.

Bonuses to the Prey side:
- Local: an instant intel tool that shows who is in the system
- D-scan: easy to use (if annoying) intel tool that is free with every ship you purchase

Bonuses to Predator side:
- Ships: strong, cheap, easy to train, and easy to replace
- cloaking devices: a module that costs no cap, that can be active forever, and effectively halts activity by prudent Prey
- default warp in points at asteroid belts: predators are given free warp to points making searching for prey a near mindless task

Prey are given a *huge* advantage with Local, knowing instantly when a potential hostile enters a system. It makes it virtually certain that if someone arrives in local, that the attentive Prey will escape harm, making it very difficult and frustrating for the Predator to hunt. This also negates some of the benfits of cloaking devices.

On the other hand, Predators also have several advantages. The ability to kill a ship that costs (at the time of this writing) 1600% more than the Preys with a fraction of the training time. Free warp to points so Predators have to do virtually no work in hunting for their prey. Cloaking devices that allow someone to grief for long periods of time with no risk.

(As an aside, I find it amusing that Predators scorn Prey for supposedly wanting to play a game virtually AFK with no risk of harm, then advocate the ability for one person to grief an entire star system for hours if not days at a time...while AFK, at no risk. But I digress.)

Prey is given an enormous initial advantage, but once that advantage is removed, it all shifts to the Predator.

What do you replace local with? What is put in place to create a more balanced system between Predator and Prey? This can be addressed in a few different ways:

1) Remove Local.

2) Change D-scan. Spamming D-scan for 4 hours is not fun.
- Replace it with a mid slot module called 'Active Proximity Scanner' or something. The basic theory is that any ship passing within a certain range (dependant on skill) would give a warning to the pilot. This gives the attentive Prey a chance to escape while not requiring him to constatly spam D-Scan. It also gives a swift Predator a chance to catch said Prey. Or something to that effect.

3) Cloaking devices requrire charges of some sort.
- It would allow covops pilots the ability to stay cloaked for decent periods of time, but not make it overpowered. It would also allow covops to create combat fits, as opposed to something like requiring it to use cap, which would force covops to fit solely for cap regen. It also forces the pilot to choose between combat flexibility vs. stealth operations and harassment (ammo vs. cloak charges), or something in between.

4) Remove default warp to points in asteroid belts
- Make asteroid belts scanable via probes and your system scanner. Both Predator and Prey now have to work for their money.

Obviously the suggestions above are not a be-all, end-all list, nor are the ideas final. This is merely my attempt to answer the balance of Prey vs. Predator if Local were removed.

The ONLY defence against cov ops for the prey is local, no "scanner module" would even pick out a cov ops, without local, cov ops take over the game, and your idea would break the game, thanks for coming and back to the drawing board

Posting in remove local thread 7,453,029

No thanks, move to wormhole for your play style concerning local and just forget about the rest of the nonsense.

Actually, it would pick out covops, but it would do so at a shorter distance than a ship without a covops ship. The effect could be modified for the relevant skills needed to operate the respective modules.

To illustrate, a non-covops frigate would be detected at 10 AUs while a covops would be detected at 5 AUs all skills being equal. If the Covops pilot had a skill of 4 and the other pilot had a [insert needed skill here] skill of 2, that would get shortened to say 3 AUs. These aren't actual numbers but just to illustrate the point.

An array of different mods/rigs could be created to really fill out a covops vs. counter-covops role, and make things much more interesting than "Hurr...me have cloak...me win..."

Thank you for reminding me about that little loophole...I remember thinking of that as I was writing the post, but it fell through the cracks. :P

That was another idea a friend and I had. If you're using probes while cloaked, you're absorbing and emitting radiation in order control those drones. That should (supposedly) be detectable and tracable back to the point of origin.

Not saying that something like that would be easy, mind you, but that's the point. Things should be *hard*, but not impossible.

I loath thinking what roams would look like without local.

Soon people would abandon cheap hulls in space and put large numbers of ships inside POS shields and you would spend five minutes per system trying to figure out if any target is nearby.
No more "system is clear" - "jump and warp outgate" or "free burn unless scout says otherwise".

Yeah but then covops is totally useless, its not covops any more, its just "coveops-as-long-as-your-not-within-5AU-of-an-Awesome-Scanner".

Don't remove local, its too ballsy and CCP would never dare do it.

I'd like to see them break local again though, so it gives a list of everyone in local but this list was devalued by random false entries of people not in local. That way with a bit of work, you can find out who is there, and you'd see a new person entering, but some people would grow complacent and ignore it.

This is all based off of perception. What you seem to think removing local will break others think it will fix. Lets go through your examples.

High-sec Local:
This is highly used as a intel source for people in wars. A defender can look at a system and see many war targets, which means they will dock up. Risk Aversion =Bad

Station Dwellers:

This goes both ways. Someone in station sees local spike they will either dock up or stay docked. This is again risk aversion. For the hunter the use of alts is highly common already, having a cloaky alt at gates to see who is entering, so really in this situation it only really effects the prey.

Defenders:
Corps/Alliances will already try and increase their numbers irregardless. This is a common human ideology where safety is in numbers. So removing local will not increase or decrease the amount of people corporations try and recruit. It is however used probably more so from the preys aspect on when to engage and when not to. Many time have I seen "Local spike in system X 50+" then "We don't have enough to counter everyone safe up".

This is what many see as a failure of the current local and its ability to provide easy intel that is used to avoid fights. While removing local can cause a reduction in possible fights in certain situations, however in more cases then not it will still improve the possibly of fights.

Make no mistake that a blanket removal of local would be a bad idea for all involved. However removing local while improving on other aspects(directional, probing, sov upgrades, etc) would be needed to balance things out. This is what this thread is about.

removing Local gives a massive advantage to older players while crippling newer ones...

just stop it! local is part of eve, if you don't like it get in a hole!