Warp Scrammed

OK, I’ve been pondering the question of local as an intel source versus a chat source, and I’ve come up with an idea I’d like to share.

I’ve thought that the intel functions of local represent quite a bit of work to do manually – that is to have someone watch a gate and record who comes and goes and enter it into an intel channel somewhere. Any kind of surge of activity would overwhelm such a manual process very quickly. But players seem to want some way to limit the pervasiveness of local channel intel, especially in lower security systems. At the same time, local channel intel is quite useful to carebear types in high sec, and they’d not want to lose that ability. So here’s a proposal that gives some cake to everyone, I think.

First, local reverts to being  just a chat channel – you only show up in it if you start talking in it.

Next, a new intel probe is created, and this probe can be deployed in space and it will record the pilot info of anyone entering it’s range, and publish that info in a selected channel.

In high sec, CONCORD runs these and puts them in sentry guns at gates and stations, and the intel is published to a common system intel channel. The probes don’t give their location, only what they see (so you don’t know which gate/station someone is at, just that they are in space somewhere in the system. All CONCORD probes record in one common intel channel. If you jump out, the probe at that gate would record that and remove you from the intel channel. Stations could have jump clone monitoring to record in/out clone jumps in the intel channel, too. So in high sec, you have the equivalent of the current local intel but in a different channel.

In null sec there are no CONCORD intel probes, so no auto local intel. But players can launch their own intel probes and configure them to report to a private intel channel, which can be open to their fleet/corp/alliance, as they so choose. Multiple probes can report to a single intel channel, or each probe to it’s own channel. Probes can be placed anywhere – by a gate, POS, jump bridge, anywhere. Since each probe can have it’s own channel, you not only can learn who is in the system, but also where they are at (if they are in range of an intel probe). Private intel probes would be vulnerable to attack and destruction, but might be hard to find, if placed carefully. Private probes might have a limited lifetime, or be tied to the one who launched them – so if they leave, log off, or are killed, someone else will have to put up a replacement. But the idea here is that you can have as much or more intel than local gives you, but you have to put some effort into getting it. But not the onerous effort of having someone sit there and try to manually pass on the info of who is coming and going.

In low sec there’d be some middle ground between high sec and null sec. Perhaps station and gate probes but not inside sentry guns, possibly attackable (if you can tank the sentry guns). Private probes would be available, but maybe only to common intel channels, so if you put up a private probe everyone in the system can see it’s intel – or maybe just the local residents.

So there’s my idea. What do you think?

The latest blog banter has posed the question of what mechanic should be removed from the game. So far there have been two suggestions to nerf Local. In this post I argue against nerfing local in high sec space.

Eve, to the game’s credit, offers a wide spectrum of activities for players to participate in. A number of these are generally non combative, but still enjoyable to a large number of players. Eve doesn’t give these players a risk-free environment, rather they are still open to being war decced and attacked by other players, even when they choose not to follow a PVP path. High Sec space is there to reduce their risk, but not eliminate it. Local channel is an important tool for High Sec/carebear  residents. It gives them a way to see who is in the system with them and helps them identify risks quickly and easily.

Taking Local away from the carebears will require them to spend more of their time trying to find out which of  the players in the system might be a risk to them. This will cut into their time to pursue their preferred carebear activities, and when you only have an hour after the kids go to bed, you want to spend it productively.  If your game experience deteriorates because Local is removed, you might stop playing. I think Eve would lose carebear players if they had to do without local. Don’t say “who cares”. In Prisen’s series in the Tribune, he wrote “Sad as it may seem (especially to a pirate!), but carebears make EVE a viable gaming world. Miners, mission runners, and industrialists provide the momentum in the economy.”  So making the game less attractive to carebears could impact the game economy, if enough quit.

Frankly, I’ve never really been bothered by Local. Eve is a high tech universe and the Local mechanic is in keeping with that technology. You enter and leave a system through a star gate or a clone vat, it makes perfect sense that your arrival and departure are automatically recorded and updated in an open data base or broadcast. It also makes sense that your ship’s computer can highlight the list in Local to show you who’s friend and who’s foe – that’s what computer’s are for, high, low, or null sec. In a busy high sec system (or even low sec), no one has time to go through the list in Local to check corps and alliances manually. If you’re a small corp (say under 25) whose been decced by a large corp (hundreds), do you really want to manualy check everyone, and everyone entering system to see if they’re a war target or not? Not me – that’s what computers are for.

(There’s one time I think that your arrival should be shielded from Local – if you enter a system by jumping to a cyno, then you haven’t been “seen” by stations or gates, so you shouldn’t appear in local until you get on-grid with a station or gate or other NPC entity, or engage someone. Same for jump bridges. But cynos and jump bridges aren’t in high sec, so that’s not really relevant to the Local in Hig Sec discussion.)

I can’t see much benefit to High Sec residents from removing Local, and I can see some detriments that could impact the game beyond just the mechanics of navigating without Local, so I favour keeping Local as is, at lest in High Sec space.

OK, so it’s been a while since my initial post, but I haven’t been entirely idle since. I have made some progress up the learning curve, and I’ve got a start on the set of things I mentioned I wanted to do next. I’ve defined a set of categories, and a few tags (these two seem quite redundant to me), installed some plugins, and configured the widgets the way I want them for the moment. I also updated the About page and moved some Wordpress links to their own page. For plugins, I’ve got a blog roll set up with a number of my favourite Eve blogs in it. Also an OpenId plugin to make it easier for other bloggers to visit and comment, and for me to visit them.

But there’s no point in any of that if I don’t have anything to say, right? So what am I planning to talk about here? Well I find Eve a fascinating game with so much to do and to learn that I want to put out my thoughts and opinions on various aspects of the game. Some of that will be based on what I’m doing with my characters in the game, and some about what is happening elsewhere in the game, and some will be my thoughts on what others may be writing about (when I want to get into the subject beyond a simple comment on their post). While I will provide updates on what I’m doing with my characters, I don’t plan on using this as a daily journal. I’m also not much of a fiction writer, so I doubt you’ll see any fiction written here – at least not by me.

I’ve been following a number of blogs over the last few months, most of which are in the blog roll in the sidebar. These blogs all give me a sense of Eve that goes beyond my direct experience in the game, and several motivate me to try out new avenues in the game. You’ll see number of pirate blogs in the blog roll, but I’m not a pirate – I just find that these blogs open a window into that part of the game for me. I hope I can be a similar kind of window for others. We’ll see.

I hope to do a post or two a week, maybe more depending on what else is happening in my life. I’m not going to be challenging Kirith in his quest for Eve Blog Domination.  (The man must be Mr. Data – a wife, year-old twins, a job, and he still posts 2 to 3 times a day, writes articles for the Tribune and others, mines the forums, and keeps 2 toons busy in game too. And now he’s talking about running for the CSM. Did I mention he has twins? How does he do it?) But I’d like to contribute to the exchange of information and ideas about this great game, and make some new friends along the way.