Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I LOVE your D-scan ideas. I would like to see it implemented pretty much exactly as you wrote it.

Needs it's own thread instead of being buried in the AFK cloaking thread. +1 million.

You should double post it here too, spam it until CCP does it.

1. Got you a +1 to your Post
2. Dscan could pull local items seen up to your overview, I don't really think that they should be merged though. The way the new filtering system works means I can look at my overview (PVP setup) and see who is on grid, all the while still scanning for wrecks using a different custom filter.

I feel as if Combat Recons will become little stealth Jesuses in all forms of space with Local removed entirely a more intuitive, lore friendly, and interesting intel "item" or ship would be interesting. As for the top down "rts" perspective isn't that something people already do by being zoomed out alll of the time with the tactical overlay set? Because I think it is.

Visually, I'd love to see the entire "up front" UI made redundant and then go away. All the critical elements should be migrated into the client as physical things rendered by the game engine. Doing it piecemeal would probably be more practical than doing it wholesale.

The overview is the big enchilada of course. Or maybe a series of delicious flautas, sopaipillas, and taquitoes.

I can picture a substitute emerging as an expansion of the "selected item" window, but migrated to hover over a set of active targets, or on the edge of the screen if they are not in FoV. Selecting it causes it to not move around, or even bring it up the pane based on user preference. Unselected target hovering reticules shrink back to a compact mode that shape-wise indicates hull class, and subtly indicates range by its size.

Ship-following reticules would show ship speed, distance , have a little angular velocity, sig size pop-out tabs for the purists. Numbers would have color change to indicate if they have been growing or shrinking since last read.

Squad leadership tools would be migrated to these reticules, like marking primaries, and they would keep the aura effects they have now. Individual piloting options, like orbit, keep distance, match speed, match vector or approach, would be wedded to this. No right click, just select option or hover, expand and select.

A key such as tab should cycle through available targets, and a variety of alt-tab options should be available to -select nearest-, -select broadcast-, -select custom list rank-, etc.

The fleet window should go into a compact mode that shows you just your squad mates, and those just above or below you. It should double as a functional watchlist with little ship icons and no words.

I'd like to see a d-scan with no user text in it. You expand it to set options, then collapse back to the console it to use it, with the results displayed by the same engine that supports exploration content. Only signals and signal strength, and a visual representation of the scanned area and signal locations. ie, a grey point (gravimetric) that says 10mn.

I have no use for local except as a common broadcast band for EVE Voice. I definitely would not mind being able to automatically talk to random people on the same grid. Modify other parameters of the game and we no longer really have any need for local tanking.

We don't really need a damage scroll feed. We have logs for that. I doubt many people will want numbers to flash in engine, because that looks cartoonish. Perhaps they could flash on the individual weapons, or they could have their own little set of flashing icons for misses or wrecking hits. Having less information isn't always a bad thing. I think the updates to ship effects status above the console was a pretty nice change. It's much nicer to know that we are sensor damped or warp scrambled before we attempt a warp. It would be nice to get numbers on those, however.

As for communications channel windows, I would like to free up a lot of real estate. It would be nice to "push them into the background" and call them up as needed. They can be collapsed entirely, but it's hard to see update flashes that way. Having them as a mostly transparent background object that blinks as needed might work. Having to graphically render text as a series of vectors will likely be a pain, but modern machines can handle it.

OP updated.

Time to remove local from EVE as an intel tool.

You only say that because Local has been the status-quo for 10+ years. It is a dumb game mechanic that prevents/hinders combat encounters from happening, and yes having no local would favor the aggressors, which is why I say buff d-scan significantly to replace local.

"New Idea", then proceeds to trot out commonly repeated ideas.

Getting rid of each modal window is a goal in itself.

To get rid of d-scan as a window would require expanding our set of existing tools, but hopefully in a familiar way. As we can now see site locations in space, and as they have auras indicating information states about them, it would be reasonable to expand upon these. We also have a visual radar sweep, and I find it hard to believe that someone at CCP isn't already thinking about this.

Imagine, kindly, a scenario in which we get a new set of icons for the radar sweep, and a new set of color auras behind them. The colors would be based on the type of signal, (ie magnetometric, gravimetric) and the size of the aura would be based on the intensity. The information would be extremely rarified, and limited to a single point of info per grid. A condor would represent a 1MN gravimetric signal, and if there were two condors on grid, your system would not be able to differentiate them.

Selecting one of the icons would give similar client response as when we select an unresolved signature. Type, size, and distance, and the unique scan ID you would see if you were probing. We can pretend unique signal IDs are a product of analysis of something like advanced Raman scattering, rather than location in space. That's it. No object name, no ship species.

The radar sweep would be the next component that the user can adjust to their needs. Instead of an angle control, they would instead only have a range control. The range and speed of the sweep would be inversely related, meaning the longer the range, the shorter the update frequency. Ideally, different hulls would have different modifiers for this ability, as well as maximum range. Range is currently not a feature regarding site signatures, as they all show up regardless.

Though straying into the sphere of the too technical or too ambitious, it would be nice if there was a Limit of Detection or Limit of Quantification threshold on signal analysis. In normal signal analysis, whether by remote sensing or in a spectrometer, you have a ground floor governed by signal noise. In the real world, this can be heat in spaceborne cameras which are reduced by onboard coolant systems, or just stray radiance in spectrometers, or delayed Stokes shift effects in very sensitive detectors that focus on secondary emission. In any case, there is a kind of random, low level signal generated constantly. If a target signal is not a certain statistical magnitude greater than the noise, it has to be discarded. For our remote sensing applications, this effectively parallel to signals which are out of range. Stronger, larger signals can be detected from farther away, whereas weaker signals are more likely to blend into the background signals even at closer range.

Actually adding ephemeral false positives would be an interesting experience, relying on the natural human capabilities of pattern recognition to detect persistent or semi-persistent signals. These could perhaps be characterized by fuzzier auras to represent their indeterminate status, and players that fall below a certain signal threshold could be thus represented by the system. This might be helpful in defeating automated client-side scripts by saturating them with data.

Making the radar signal strength based, rather than range based, or solely range based I should say, gives more options, and gets around the problem of seeing signature sites at infinite range. Again getting ambitious, the formula for the relationship between signal decay and distance is at least a pretty simple one. The modifier for detected intensity is simply the reciprocal of the square of distance. If we give ourselves a ground figure of an average unmodified ship being able to reliably differentiate a 1mn signal at 1AU, we can build (and tweak) a model from there, using a New Eden suitable logistic curve if need be. We'll assume signals propagate at superluminal speeds because of quantum entanglement, non-locality, tachyons, evanescent wave coupling, or some other acceptable phenomenon. We can also assume detectors use something like advanced multispectral fourier analysis to get statistically large data samples, thus giving us near instant results rather than sharpening them over repeated yet temporally dislocated scanner sweep passes.

Another gameplay mechanic could be noise generation. Activities like warping, locking targets, weapons fire, MWD activation, EWAR activation, simply having other objects on grid, or being near large massy objects or high emitters like stars might contribute to impairing signal and noise differentiation. The latter could perhaps also have useful effects on masking the signature of a target. Another concept like passive and active radar might be familiar to students of the use of sound based navigation and ranging (SONAR) in maritime activities, but is beyond the scope of this document.

The net gameplay effects of such a system would be one less open modal window in the UI, a predictable limit on d-scan queries, an intuitive 3D representation of remote objects (signals) in space, and a last minute warning system that favors the engagement-generating characteristics of small ships. If we also significantly differentiate the capabilities of ships, such as by severely suppressing the capabilities of escape pods, shuttles and free ships, we can emphasize roles more easily. Likewise, we could consider allowing larger ships to have more situational awareness than more agile members of the ecosystem. We may also want to differentiate existing specialist ships based on their need for situational awareness as a systems tradeoff for their chosen specialty. Exploration ships might have extend sensor capabilities, while hardened or speed oriented ships would have discarded the mass of such equipment in favor of more armor or a lightened chassis.

New "hard" idea. As in the exact bullet points I made.

Of course "removing local" as a concept people have talked about forever. And changes/buffs to D-scan have been talked about before sure. I mean't new for me and this thread.

Troll success, I'm annoyed by your pointless post.

I really like this, and it makes me happy to see that someone else is at least wishing for, and envisioning an EVE without (or with less) spreadsheets.

I think this proposal is pretty solid, but I think a change like mine would be the FIRST step towards an endgoal similar to this.

Just START with removing local, and DIRECTLY replacing it with a very powerful D-scan:
- 34 AU
- Automatic re-cycle,
- More filter options

and then D-scan is the new long range, intra-system intel tool. It's the exact same as local except you don't see WHO is in system, you see WHAT is in system, and it's not INSTANT or system-wide. If something get's within 34 AU, you'll see it within a few seconds. But there is NO reason you should be able to just see a list of every pilot currently in the same solar system as you. What possible lore reasoning could be behind that? What possible thing could that ADD to the game?

Bittervet level: 9000+

Please remove local.