Dear CCP,
here is my proposal for adding a little more mystery and surprise to EVE without going into extreme like the local black-out we had:
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Change local chat so, that if you jump into a system without using the gates (e.g. via a wormhole, filament or black ops cyno or black ops jump bridge) your appearance/visibility in local is deferred by 6 minutes by default (means this number can be reduced, see below).
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Add a new deploy-able structure called “Monitoring Station”. In one system you should be able to deploy a maximum of 5 such monitoring stations. Per deployed station the local deferral time is reduced by 1 minute, if you jump in without using gates.
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A monitoring station needs to be deployed in deep space (to avoid interference). You have to keep a range of at least 1 AU from any celestial or station. Means you have to create a proper safe spot while warping and then deploy it there.
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Once deployed a monitoring station shows up as beacon on the overview for everybody. These stations can be engaged and they send a distress signal in local chat if they get shoot at. You should give them an ID so that everybody know where to warp to.
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A monitoring station should have similar defenses like mobile tractor unit or mobile bubble. It should also create a kill mail if destroyed. This should drive some small scale PVP.
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Deployment of a monitoring station should take 3 minutes and the station takes 5000m³, so you need a hauler. During deployment your hauler can’t move, warp or cloak. So it is useful to have some defense forces near by.
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Monitoring stations should be cheap to produce. They should just need a simple T1 blueprint (buyable at NPC stations) and some 10000m³ of ore, mainly cheap ores. So it is cheap to replace. However the production time should be like 24 hours. So you should build some stock to avoid to run out of monitoring stations in case they got shot down.
What do you think? I think this will drive some small scale PVP in low and 0.0. Furthermore, you can raise safety by investing into monitoring stations, while the monitoring stations themselves provide a target and a reason to fight over them on an ad-hoc basis.