EVE General Discussion

Yes and no.

The watchlist functionality is gone. CCP removed it for a specific reason and I don't think there is much chance they would bring it back unless it is severely limited.

The main reason being, if it is just bought back into the game based on a structure and applies cluster wide, instantly all the intel on super and titan pilots could be regained, merely by the lowsec and nullsec groups declaring war on each other after anchoring a structure.

In a basic, structure = watchlist proposal, it totally undoes the change that was recently made.

None and buckly's chance in my view.

So it either has to be range limited, or a different solution found to make the use of locator agents useful again.

I was previously in favour of bringing back the watchlist capabilty, but lately I'm kind of in favour of a new solution. Move forward, rather than back; but I have absolutely 0 idea about what a way to move forward would look like, not that my opinion carries any weight anyway.

A corporation that can field Titans should be able to blap a structure like that. Maybe limit such a structure to one per corporation/alliance and limit it to show only the online status of characters involved in an active war with the holding corporation. That way, a corp can have intel, as long as it can defend the structure, and once blapped it would take a couple days to redeploy.

Sure, this mechanic could still be played to a degree, by creating multiple alt-corps, declare war on the target with all of them and deploy the structure. However, that's a lot of work to establish and maintain, and thereby invalidates the criticism of "free intel", and the opposing force could tell how many spying posts there are by the number of one-man wardecs thay have.

I'd even be ok with this structure only working in empire space, thereby allowing known mom- and titan pilots to mask their online status if they so wish, with the side effect of encouraging alliances to stage their supers out of null as opposed to lowsec.

There surely is a way to make this work, but as far as I am concerned, there needs to be some way of telling whether the people you supposedly are playing against are even actually playing. And with a structure, that would give the opposing forces a nice target to shoot at as well as a means to take the intel away again.

Constellation would be too harsh of a limitation, I think. There are too many constellations, and it is too easy to just move to a different one. With a thousand guys fighting another thousand guys, those could realistically be used, but with a thousand war targets, the chance to run into some of them while they are online is high enough already.

The wars where knowing whether the targets are online is kind of crucial are the small ones. Twenty dudes chasing around another twenty dudes or so. But twenty dudes won't be able to maintain an empire wide network of structures with fuel requirements and all. If on the other hand the targets stick to just a constellation or three, then this structure wouldn't really be required, because it doesn't take a lot of time to just fan out, check all the systems in a constellation and see if the targets show up in local.

What this would do is give dramatic advantage to the largest, most active mercenary alliance and utterly screw over everyone else who lacks a huge continuous income to pay for upkeep and lacks the numbers to routinely defend large numbers of structures. Not just other mercenaries trying to compete with them, but the defenders in wars as well.

The ability to fight a war effectively is contingent on the ability to actually find the enemy, everyone involved in a war deserves to have that functionality available to them, not just the largest, wealthiest, dedicated mercenaries with the biggest fleets.

Because Vendetta Mercenary Group would blow up any of those structures that they could find that didn't belong to them. And if you happen to not be able to beat them in a fleet fight (IE you're literally anyone who lives in highsec) you lose your access to a vital functionality. Having them in a limited area wouldn't be useful because people frequently move long distances in highsec and in your suggestion the results are too infrequent to have any defensive value.

Moreover, realistically the average carebear just wouldn't even attempt to use them.

I appreciate that you're trying to come up with an idea that provides useful functionality while also having counterplay, but having to maintain a massive structure network in order to gain access to something as vital as the ability to find the people you're at war with would disproportionately benefit big, wealthy, powerful mercenary organizations and leave everyone else in the dust.

Not much.
IMHO the API's ability to write contracts would need to be removed if we were to bring it back though.
A part of the balance of the old system was the pain in the arse that was doing the contacts.
With the API as is , watchlists are just too easy to put together.

I know VMG are good, but they are not all powerful, not just hisec people operate in hisec, I saw one of their pipe camp fleets get smashed by Hard Knocks Citizens a while back. I do not think that VMG are omnipresent, these things will need to be probed down and blown up and they could become ten a penny.

The fifteen minute gap between sweeps may need adjustment and that is a decision that CCP would have to make in terms of impact on their servers, maybe every five minutes would be OK.

I would use them, but the most important thing is to give back this intel with something that will be a conflict driver, I noticed that a lot of people don't bother fighting because they think that they cannot do anything, and this is something that they can hit if they put their minds to it and it has real value. My focus is actually on pushing hisec players to fight back while giving back key intel but make it cost something to have.

I know this is not about VMG as such, but they are the top level benchmark, but when you say 50 BS is that combined with Public-Enemy and P I R A T? I will need to look up their last citadel kill, I know they picked up some new corps recently but had not checked their numbers which I should as I am at war with them which I instigated by deccing one of their known to me alt corps. EDIT: 20 Rattlessnakes plus logi on a Fortizer which is getting there, good to see such numbers.

I did say that while it is operating it can be blown up without a reinforcement timer for that very reason, it was to make it so people chance their arm so to speak. If it is not operating in other words giving data, it goes through a reinforcement stage. That was because of the very issue you mention.

In terms of infrastructure I also said that they should be fairly cheap throw away items say 30m to 60m in value, they should be able to be put down quickly and can be scooped like mobile depots in terms of the RF timer if RF'd when inert.

These things can be placed anywhere in a system and you put one anywhere in a Constellation to get that data, so they are not going to be easy to track down as they will need to be probed.

You are on the same wave length as me then in terms of how cheap and easy they should be, and the reasons for it, getting hisec players back from the defeatist give up attitude they have now is important for all of us, and having something that people can feel that they can have an impact with to impede those that war dec them is going to change attitudes, or at least I hope it will. Perhaps I am an idealist, but a lot of people like the idea of being able to resist in some way and if this means they go out in something even if its cheap to blap something like this it is creating some content.

Thanks for going through this as you have, you are one of the players who I respect and it helps in pushing others to at least give it an assessment. and think about the affects..

Are you a jedi...

No, the logical solution is to kill the agressors or employ somebody else to do so.