i was just thinking, sometimes when you're on late at night and there's hardly anyone on, it'd be great to know where all the action is concentrated. obviously this wouldn't involve exact locations of players, but perhaps something along the lines of a counter that tells you how many players are in the system you've just warped into?

thoughts people?

Might be neat for nation space, but I think greyspace should remain unknown in terms of who is currently there.

i really like this

I like this.
I was discussing a similar idea yesterday, like this:
Active Players List could be extended to show either the aggregate number of people in each System (not sector, aggregate to system level), or the top 5 / 6 Systems listed with player count.
Only aggregate level data is needed. Also, averaging over a period (say 15mins) would be acceptable.

I think this is more pressing while the community is small, c.40 players online at a time. When the community is bigger (say, 4,000 concurrent users) it's utility may perhaps fade. ((Unless the space expands and systems are still sparse like today)).

i think that's depressing.

who wants to read 4 people in system when they jump in?

besides, this doesn't take into account the number of npcs wich is as important (well, to some degree) to gameplay as real people. in either case, those few in the sector can be spread out over that 256 sector grid so it's really not useful.

statistics dont make up for the sparsity of the universe. 75% of people know that.

[quote]I like this.
I was discussing a similar idea yesterday, like this:
Active Players List could be extended to show either the aggregate number of people in each System (not sector, aggregate to system level), or the top 5 / 6 Systems listed with player count.
Only aggregate level data is needed. Also, averaging over a period (say 15mins) would be acceptable.

I think this is more pressing while the community is small, c.40 players online at a time. When the community is bigger (say, 4,000 concurrent users) it's utility may perhaps fade. ((Unless the space expands and systems are still sparse like today)).[/quote]

this is exactly what i mean. it would make the game a bit more exciting for those of us who (a) live on the opposite side of the world to the US and Europe, or (b), suffer from insomnia. it's a reatively simple modification that would improve the game immensely IMHO.

What's more, this could be an advantage for attaining high faction with a major nation. I could see why those who are and maintain POS might have access to who's been where for how many jellybeans, for example. Maybe respected would have slightly less detailed info, or something. In fact, I'ma link this thread in the discussion about Faction changes.

What would make more sense, and probably be easier to implement, is a station watch.

If you are Admired or better, you could listen in on a station activity channel, where players docking and undocking would show a trace, much like the 201/202 CtC channel. Every station could have its own channel.

Everyone knows that station activity will indicate where the action is.

Later you could have the stations charge a fee for every message sent, or a daily rate, and set it so that so that admired players can turn off this reporting of their activities. They are too valuable to the economy to risk against their will. Or have some type of hush fee available, so anyone can pay to not be noticed.

Well the first seems easy, but the second part gets more complex.

This would be cool for nation space, like ghost said. Perhaps as part of the nav map? It doesn't even have to be an exact count as much as a concentration per system.

Good idea.

If you really need to know where people are, just ask them in channel 100.

i've tried that, with little success.