This is something that has been requested for quite a long time, but I just want to put this thread out there for any final feedback.

Basically, the "u" display of "Nearby Ships", which currently displays everyone in the sector would instead only display those within radar range. Anyone outside of radar range would not be displayed at all, or appear on the list.

There are some obvious pros and cons to this. Pirates will find it easier to hide, but so will traders and miners looking to evade pirate notice. One obvious issue is the prospect of losing some "awareness" of other people being nearby, a bit of the more social aspect of seeing someone else in a sector and saying "hi". This is a tradeoff, of course.

I welcome feedback on this topic.

hmm. i say keep it. what if you are in a station?
for those who dont have AlertMachine or EnterLeave, they would have no clue if someone else is in there with them.
however, if it gets to the point where we have 100's of players online, then that might be something to consider.

I've always viewed "u" as a sort of long range sensor letting us know who is there but not where. For example, the other day I was in what I had thought was an empty sector but to my surprise I hit "u" and I was not alone...(it turned out that a newer player had camped there while he took a shower, I explained that stations were better for this)...I searched around for a while but could not find him, got bored and left.

At any rate, I don't think it would change much. Given how large a each sector is, if ship "A" is say, 10000m away from ship "B" and "A" want to find it...there is little chance of finding ship "B". Unless it is a worm hole sector.

I like the way it is now. I always want to see everyone in the system. If "u" only shows people that are in range i would like another button that would do what the "u" key does now. If not i guess i would use a plug in to get the same results.

I support this change 100%. Any small step towards immersion and away from our SpaceQuake roots gets my approval.

[stamp of approval]™

Nearby ships can be seen on radar (red and green dots).
Most players use "u" to see who else is in the sector.

VO griefers will worship the ground you walk on if you implement this.

How bout making the u function user configurable to display what the player wishes? a simple set of radio buttons on the bottom might do.

Not being able to know who all is in sector... thumbs down. U Dont play with U....

I fully support this change. This will make the fog and ion storms have a real point, it will introduce an element of surprise, and I think it will be awesome. I would assume that if they made this change then it would be IMPOSSIBLE to see who else was in the sector, out of range (even for plugins), and that's what I would like to see. You can make a case for station sectors, and perhaps for monitored areas, but in grey space, and especially in storms, there's no good in-context reason why we should be able to see who else is in the sector, outside of our range. And it would make grey-space more dangerous, which I like.

As regards griefers, I don't really see how they could abuse this all that much. The worst they could do would be to sit near ion storm exits and wait for people to come along, but they won't know when people are coming because they can't see them, either. And bots are often there as well, to both harry anyone sitting there and to provide the same "service." Are there worse ways for griefers to use this? I'm sure there probably are, that I can't think of, but in general they'll only be able to grief people who aren't paying attention, and flying around while not paying attention is liable to get you killed anyway. :)

Ugh, hell no.

I would be able to deal with this sort of change if, and only if:

- Radar remained as it is now in sectors with stations or other facilities (turrets, for example), with the possible caveat that you must have standing above some certain arbitrary point (say, neutral or respected and up).
- Radar remained as it is now in Border Skirmish and Hive Skirmish sectors as long as there are friendly capships present. They should be providing logistic support; giving you extra radar data would be part of that.

That is a fair enough compromise.

I agree that your idea is good.

BUT: The "action" is already focusing on very few sectors so people find each other.
Sometimes i fly from deneb to odia without seeing a single ship (non robot).
I fear that this change could make that to a permanent issue.

On the Other side: Pirates are one of the most important aspects of the Game (my opinion!). They make everything a bit emotional; traderuns get less boring and hunting them down seems fun too :-)

I suggest to display Ships which are out of range as "incomplete signatures" and add or substract a random number to the count.
Sensorechos etc :)))
If they are identified (got into the radar) then they should stay on the list.

Hiding behind roids would be VERY cool but i assume that this wouldnt be trivial to implement.
--

I like the idea and i would like to see that changed but pls dont make our space emptier as it is.

AgY

I'm with roguelazer and MSKanaka on this one. I think it's a great idea, and it makes sense that stations/large ships/battle groups would provide logistical radar support for you, if the appropriate faction standings were met.

Also cool would be if shared group radar were introduced along with this (i.e., anybody that a groupmate (or even guildmate?) could see, you could see).

I love this! It's called the Nearby Ships tab not the Ships in Sector tab after all. :P

An addon that doubles the radar range might be handy then though. That should satisfy evil traders. Anyone who can't react within 10km is afk anyway and most jumps have shorter distances.

Stations and caps could have one of those things builtin instead of showing everything. I'm not a fan of global on-off switches. Especially if multiple stations are ever added, showing that there's somebody sitting at a station 100km away would be kind of pointless.

Yes with a partial approval of MSKanaka's idea.

I could see infinite-range radar of group members (meaning you will always be able to find fellow group members on your radar). This is not shared radar, though; see below.

In general, cap ships acting as AWACs in-sector is a great idea as well and would provide the shared group radar mentioned by roguelazer (but only if grouped with a cap ship). This still allows for tactics which rely on evading radar as the cap ships are only aggregating everyone's radar, not making their range infinite. Activities like scouting and running point become much more important in this kind of tactical environment. (A way to "ping" one's position on the radar of group members would be enormously helpful here unless there are plans to make something like Targetless an official part of VO.)

yeah, Miharu makes a good point. There should be places where you can see everyone (or else it'll quickly become a bitch to find friends outside of groups) and stations would be the perfect place for that. I think that 'group radar' and all that other stuff is great, but it's probably not as readily accessible. Let's grab that low hanging fruit!

Can I get a hell yeah?

Changing "Nearby Ships" ("u") to only display those in10km wormhole range

So, basically, the big contention is the "awareness" tradeoff of the sector list vs radar range, correct? I anticipated this, but wasn't sure if I wanted to complicate the thread with debate on a broader subject.

Having Capships modify friendly radar (some sort of AWACS type usage) is also interesting, but more involved to implement. So let's leave that aside for now.

I've been considering (for a long time) generically extending radar range across the board, in non-storm / non-fog situations. Perhaps pushing it out to about 8000m when all is clear.

Would an 8000m "normal conditions" radar, along with "Nearby Ships" only being those in actual range, be a reasonable tradeoff?

This, of course, would make it more challenging for pirates to "sneak up" on people, but on the other hand they could actually "hide" at significant distances. Friendly/social awareness within a sector is still reduced, but probably not by that much in our common-case station sectors.

For fog and ion storm situations, Radar would still be reduced to somewhere around its current limits.

Thoughts?

That does not seem so bad.

[APPROVED]

Would an 8000m "normal conditions" radar, along with "Nearby Ships" only being those in actual range, be a reasonable tradeoff?

Absolutly not. If anything, all sensors must be restricted to the 3000m under normal conditions--the prox alarm is currently set for 5000m. The real benefit of this is to force more interaction, Inc. If you know where people are at 5000 or 8000 meters, and you only have to get 3000 meters out to jump . . . not a whole lot will happen.

Oh yeah, and is constantly the case now, whatever is done needs to be immune to circumventing by plugin.

I like the basic idea, though, that the radar dots kick in before the magic prox beep/that piece of shit magic sector list. I'd say whatever numbers are settled on, the radar screen should have twice the range of those crappy things.