Forums » Suggestions
different radar signatures
in game, hector blood just made an interesting suggestion:
[Fri Apr 2 10:09:30 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> it would be cool if you could be more stealthy by
[Fri Apr 2 10:10:16 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> creating a smaller energy "plume'
[Fri Apr 2 10:12:18 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> Terminus was like that. A tiny ship runnung on batteries would be harder to spot than a huge ship running a reactor
[Fri Apr 2 10:13:31 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> sorta like a submarine
Seems to make a lot of sense - no reason why an EC-89 should show up exactly like a trident, but it does!
[Fri Apr 2 10:09:30 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> it would be cool if you could be more stealthy by
[Fri Apr 2 10:10:16 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> creating a smaller energy "plume'
[Fri Apr 2 10:12:18 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> Terminus was like that. A tiny ship runnung on batteries would be harder to spot than a huge ship running a reactor
[Fri Apr 2 10:13:31 2010] [100] <Hector Blood> sorta like a submarine
Seems to make a lot of sense - no reason why an EC-89 should show up exactly like a trident, but it does!
I actually like this idea. Would also make sense for turrets to not look like ships on radar.
When it comes to "stealth" and "energy consumption" stuff... check out this suggestion.
When it comes to "stealth" and "energy consumption" stuff... check out this suggestion.
thats not how radar works...
Oh god, not another argument about how radar works...
I like the idea also. It might actually give a half way decent reason to use anything other than a fast charge battery.
I like the idea also. It might actually give a half way decent reason to use anything other than a fast charge battery.
Let's just get this straight: future-radar works however the hell future-radar wants to. Don't make me go all engineer on your film-major ass :p.
I've been thinking for years about making radar vis distance based on the size of the ship. Like capships visible from much greater distances than fighters. And also allowing fighters some sort of "power down" system to become nearly invisible, but with a delay to power back up again, and other repercussions.
Well....
Ping size on a real radar is based on the portion of the sweep that the ship blocks - Since most of the ships and stuff in VO are about the same size the radar would not be able to distiguish them....
Ping size on a real radar is based on the portion of the sweep that the ship blocks - Since most of the ships and stuff in VO are about the same size the radar would not be able to distiguish them....
Do you mean like.. ships vs asteroids? Or what? Also, let's not get too far into "in reality.. blah blah blah", but there's whole line of argument about the relative reflectivity of angled vs rounded surfaces and other components that make up stealth technology. But that also gets into the relative efficacies based on the wavelength of the radar and a bajillion other things. So let's just not go there. The OP was about "fun" and stealthy strategies and things, and we definitely could use more of that.. I don't care how "real" it is.
As for ships vs other ships, I think we can agree they're not all the same size, and would likely have differing visibility at various ranges:
As for ships vs other ships, I think we can agree they're not all the same size, and would likely have differing visibility at various ranges:
inc i think he meant all player pilotable ships are the same size, which has been proven in other threads.
In Inc's picture that Serco Vulture doesn't look anywhere near as big as that behemoth...
I suppose the detectable radar distance could be based on mass, making it easy to quantify but not necessarily realistic.
I suppose the detectable radar distance could be based on mass, making it easy to quantify but not necessarily realistic.
I've been asking for that 'ship length' number you see in ship info to actually have some ingame relevance for a while now.
It'd be nice for the Centurions to actually be half the size of a Centaur as their stats indicate they should be, but a meaningful sense of scale for the ships will likely require a hefty rebalancing of almost all of the other stats.
It'd be nice for the Centurions to actually be half the size of a Centaur as their stats indicate they should be, but a meaningful sense of scale for the ships will likely require a hefty rebalancing of almost all of the other stats.
I've been asking for that 'ship length' number you see in ship info to actually have some ingame relevance for a while now.
It does in terms of torque. However, I get what you're saying.
It does in terms of torque. However, I get what you're saying.
While A cappie would give a larger signature the differance between a vulture and a behemouth is simply not enough to show up on radar at 3000 km. They would both be just tiny specks...
Yes, my example was: "Like capships visible from much greater distances than fighters."
I didn't expect fighter signatures to vary greatly. But that doesn't remove the potential for different variants with different "stealth" properties or something.
Yes, the "length" thing is pretty fictional, that's a discussion for another post.
I didn't expect fighter signatures to vary greatly. But that doesn't remove the potential for different variants with different "stealth" properties or something.
Yes, the "length" thing is pretty fictional, that's a discussion for another post.
I would say have active and passive radar.
Active radar broadcasts out, and can find things better, but it lights you up like a damn beacon.
Passive radar is just that, passive, it looks for heat signatures, any sudden bright lights, like weapons fire. It also would likely have a hard time finding asteroids at much distance given how close they normally are to absolute 0 anyway. Hot rocks, well they should be fairly easy, this would add some interesting things to mining, you might only want to mine a little to keep your rocks from being found and boiled on you.
This would also mean having certain detectability values for various activities.
Sitting dead still, on minimal power, just off the surface of something big (rock, cappy, etc) would make you near impossible to spot. Small fighters should even be able to use behemoths as cover. This would also hamper active radar, to some extent.
Drifting also shouldn't make you terribly visible (allowing you to slowly sneak up on somebody). But you wouldn't have the advantage of cover and you're also more prone to being visually spotted by players.
Mining might make you just a bit more visible, and make the asteroids visible further out too on radar. Maybe every 100kalvin adds X distance they can be seen at (or whatever, I'm not a miner).
Turbo, weapons fire, hard maneuvering, and using active radar should make you pretty damn obvious. Though some kind of anti radiation missile, that tracks the active radar and doesn't give off the exact location of the shooter would be cool. Maybe have rails only give off a very slight signature, so you have stealthy people hunting stealth people with them.
I think something like that, which greatly improves the stealth aspect of things would also add to the sense of danger in the game, as you never know, somebody could be hiding, training their rail guns on you this very moment.
I'm sure I've missed a whole hell of a lot of things, but I think you get the idea.
Active radar broadcasts out, and can find things better, but it lights you up like a damn beacon.
Passive radar is just that, passive, it looks for heat signatures, any sudden bright lights, like weapons fire. It also would likely have a hard time finding asteroids at much distance given how close they normally are to absolute 0 anyway. Hot rocks, well they should be fairly easy, this would add some interesting things to mining, you might only want to mine a little to keep your rocks from being found and boiled on you.
This would also mean having certain detectability values for various activities.
Sitting dead still, on minimal power, just off the surface of something big (rock, cappy, etc) would make you near impossible to spot. Small fighters should even be able to use behemoths as cover. This would also hamper active radar, to some extent.
Drifting also shouldn't make you terribly visible (allowing you to slowly sneak up on somebody). But you wouldn't have the advantage of cover and you're also more prone to being visually spotted by players.
Mining might make you just a bit more visible, and make the asteroids visible further out too on radar. Maybe every 100kalvin adds X distance they can be seen at (or whatever, I'm not a miner).
Turbo, weapons fire, hard maneuvering, and using active radar should make you pretty damn obvious. Though some kind of anti radiation missile, that tracks the active radar and doesn't give off the exact location of the shooter would be cool. Maybe have rails only give off a very slight signature, so you have stealthy people hunting stealth people with them.
I think something like that, which greatly improves the stealth aspect of things would also add to the sense of danger in the game, as you never know, somebody could be hiding, training their rail guns on you this very moment.
I'm sure I've missed a whole hell of a lot of things, but I think you get the idea.
Some good ideas lnh.
Hector Blood: My idea was actually very similar to the "active-passive radar" comment. I would assume the different power devices would operate differently, one might be a nuke shooting out neutrons (or whatever the heck nukes leak) and another might be some ultra-stealthy bio-mechanical cybernetic yatta yatta generator. Weapons would also have their signatures, big energy weaps would "glow" more than a rail-gun. A big capital ship would just light everything up with active, they know they've been spotted anyway, but a little fighter would sneak around, listening. Then you could even get into after market add-ons, stealth coatings, shielding etc, and stealth-specific missions (sneaking up on a capitol ship to plant a bug, or a mine...)
Essentially, every piece of equip would have an emission value assigned to it affecting the radius of the ship's "detection threshold", active radar from an opposing ship would decrease that radius, but expand it's own enormously. Convoys would have to choose between using smaller ships and "Blacking-out" or using big heavily armored boats and fighters banging-out active signals to avoid getting jumped. Of course FTL transit would be immune from any detection.