Local "Blackout" Content Features (Turn this desirable intel gathering tool into a feature to drive conflict)

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

NULL and LOCAL BLACKOUT

I think they should turn the black out feature, into a short term control point objective mechanic, based on the constellation.

With scaling from completely dark, to delay, to perfect. depending on control.
Lets use the hacking mini game to flip the points and determine how loudly the communications towers snitch.

Only one Alliance will have perfect control of the local in the given constellation at a time, everyone else will be delayed or completely dark.

You won’t know how accurate your local is, unless the hacking parties mess up on the hacking.

With delayed local groups could sneak through areas of space without being detected unless the groups that lived there were watching closely.

New control towers would spawn in a new system in the constellation, after being captured perhaps on some short delay. Where they could be controlled a second time. To shift local further to the side of the aggressing party. I envision a two timer, 10-30 min time investment to shift each node from defending to neutral, and then neutral to fully controlled, and a total of 3-5 nodes depending on the constellation size. (defending parties would see new towers in new systems and realize they were under attack, aggressing parties would rush to find the new node to secure more accurate intel.)

No entosis, just a hacking mini game, and some waiting around. Perhaps the hacking game scales in difficulty but reduces the time needed to wait. Perhaps hacking isn’t required, a coms tower could be taken over or blown up.

but not hacking, or failing a hack increases the risk of a snitching event.

With repeated successful hacks the local accuracy could be shifted in your favor much more quickly.

Same system could be placed in NPC null

Perhaps Sov modules could be made to effect parts of this game. Or count as control towers themselves, preventing a complete local lockout from the defending alliance.

The idea is to create content using a controversial and very desirable intel gathering tool

2

So, only one alliance, typically the sov holder, can know for sure who is where and attackers are most times at a massive disadvantage because they don’t know who’s where and what? Sounds like a really, really great idea. How about we leave Local chat alone and as the level, completely equal playing field for ALL participants? Every single suggestion for local changes always only makes this non-issue worse.

3

I think you are missing a key point here, and it’s that the coms towers are not static, allowing opportunities for groups to sneak in, and capture one or disrupt one to put the controlling alliances local on a delay without them realizing it, and with potentially no alert that this has happened given a good hacking job.

4

You assume that these towers aren’t perma hacked by the locals. They will have a cooldown of a few hours between hacks so that you cannot grief the locals by constantly showing up and start hacks.

5

The locals? You mean the defending alliance? You can’t hack a tower you already control, unless you are proposing disrupting the accuracy of local for your own alliance with an out of alliance alt, seems a little counter intuitive. As without full control neither party would have a perfectly accurate local.

That said I might be interested in a sov mod, that would count as an additional communications tower, perhaps making the constellation wide game require an additional tower to be disrupted before the defending alliance loses a perfect local, and preventing a complete blackout. Paying to have such a mod online would be a strategic decision. Perhaps limited to 1 or 2 per constellation.

The only way to determine how accurate your local was would be watching for gate flashes. The system wouldn’t snitch about disruptions unless someone failed a hack. Hell you could even elect to have an option to ignore the hacking game all together and just shoot a coms tower for the same effect, either objective capture decision or both could add interest to the system, but doing so would cause the system to snitch on you.

The towers I envision would exist perpetually in a controlled state until hacked and shifted to neutral by an entity other than the controlling alliance.
Once said tower is hacked it would disappear/explode. Reappearing shortly somewhere else as a neutral control point.
Where it could then be hacked by either part to shift the state of local to more accurate in the controlling parties favor.
There would be a set number of towers per constellation, effecting every local within the constellation.

Local would work in a number of stages, perfect intel, 10-30 second delay, 30-60 second delay, No local. Or whatever variations of accuracy the devs might fancy should this system be developed.

I would want to bill this as a fleet objective so perhaps the hacking process might be designed with NPC’s or some type of soloist discouragement feature. Something as simple as requiring a hack in a different location than a control point or plex type feature, might do the trick, but these are details that could be worked out at a later time.