When you target a player, you see their ship type and health. Add total mass. This would let pirates know when a moth is empty, or that a valk is armed with triflares, etc.

Agreed. This would be excellent.

Yes.
Moar Telemetry information!

Sure , just as soon as tractor trailers start posting a bill of lading on thier sides....

yes, this makes total sense because radar consists of giant space-scales.

*stamp of fail*

Sheesh, why all the negative comments? Could you atleast give a legitimate, game-related reason not to do this instead of just yelling?

Any input from the devs on how difficult something like this would be to implement?

I'm sure it would be pretty easy to implement.

Since Atice and PaKettle don't seem able to string thoughts together coherently, I'll mention that determining the mass of an arbitrary object in space isn't very easy unless you can apply a known force to it and measure its acceleration.

However, our radar should be able to list the acceleration of a given targeted ship. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to have the shipboard computer (or a Lua plugin) make an estimated guess about the mass based on known figures for the thrust generated by a given ship class's engines, and the calculated acceleration given by the radar.

Plus, we all know the volume of any given ship model, and a density scanner isn't that hard to imagine. I think even Atice can see what reliable mass and volume figures give you.

I can see a short range scanner but as a general output from the radar... NO. It is enough you get the ship type and owner

As ladron has pointed out, it is already possible to get an upper range by programming in LUA. If an empty moth moves at full turbo, simple calculations will tell you that it is empty.

It would be sad to limit certain telemetry to a select few. I am a programmer by trade, and while I don't bother to create plugins, or even binds more complex than a turbo toggle, I have, and can. I made a chain fire bind that could support a large selection of weapons, and number of weapons, and remembered where it left off, so as to load balance ammo based weapons like flares. You will find it listed in the binds thread. For a while it was popular for charged cannons and flare rags.

This game has moved past the point of artificial limitation of information, and such tactics will only disadvantage the new players. If I detect that abilities, information, or telemetry is being restricted to a secretive LUA crowd, I may consider a response.

I have yet to hear an argument that answers to the issue that this can already be accomplished with a plugin.

following ladron's missive:

Regarding the feasibility of detecting mass, in the case of turbo-ing you have all the variables to theoretically back out the ships mass. The targeting computer can determine the acceleration of the vessel targeted, and the observation of the thruster can determine if/when force is being applied to the mass. The turbo always applies the same force through the ships forward pointing axis, m=F/a

I can see a short range scanner but as a general output from the radar... NO. It is enough you get the ship type and owner

It shouldn't be possible to determine the owner via radar unless they are broadcasting a public IFF signal or are in your group/guild. However, it should be possible to get an estimate of the mass. This suggestion thread is about mass, not IFF.

Hm, would it then be possible to deliberately fly slower (keeping acceleration low that is) to fool those sensors?
As in, ingame, not theoretically.

if a pirate is chasing you, do you want to fly slow to trick his sensors?

edit: sure. but i have to question the merit of it.

Well the first problem is there is no way to know the actual speed of a ship even in lua nor can simple observation determine acceleration unless you are standing still. Any plug-in is not going to give an accurate figure. Even so, such information is useless to non Pirate players so why should VO once again pander to the pirates? You also forget that simply knowing the mass will only determine IF the player has cargo - Not its value. You still wont know if its Sedina chocolates or aquean ore.

If you really want to get technical and correct then the only things you should get from the radar system is bearing, relative speed and size. Determination of type and owner would be limited to short range inspection only. And you wont get anything from objects behind large bodies either so you would be blind to anything on the other side of a roid field. A group of roids would simply look like a massive wall to radar. Any additional information (IFF/Etc)is always guarded and restricted to those who are friendly and civilians never send telemetry to anyone.

Someone that knows lua can answer these questions for me.

yes/no: Lua can tell me:
my speed,
my distance to a target,
the current time in milliseconds.

if the answer to all three is yes, then i could write a plugin to do this.

anyone out there know any lua?

actually an opposing players/npcs speed would be valuable to both the serco and itani military as well as anti pirates and people fighting the hive.

can people take their heads out of their asses and keep their personal feelings towards each other out of suggestion posts

Easy technobabble reasoning for a mass scanner:

We use gravitic pulse technology to propel our ships. With the limitations that your own ship's engine be shut off to reduce noise (this would probably require a 'kill engine' and a 'coasting' option), a pulse detector would be used to measure the amplitude of what is almost definitely going to be directly proportionate to the ship's mass.

There you go, gimmick, complete with balancing.

roda that'd only give you accel in one direction, if someone was moving perpendicular you get 0.
And, yes, you can do that currently.
It'd be pretty useless.

This is an issue of convergent relevance. The calculations are simple for the situations where it was most valuable, and edge cases take more complicated calculations, and more time, but in those cases, you have more time. Even a relativity simple implimentation will give you meaningful results in most of the situations that you want those results. If I am a pirate camping a wh, in the center of the wh, and a trader shows up and hits turbo, and I point my ship at him and hit turbo, the calculations will be done in a blink. If the trader does something strange like hold his brake while holding turbo, it could mess up the calculations, in which case the pirate would have to manually unwrap the cargo from the trade ship and put it on a weight scale. But seriously...