Forums » Suggestions
i agree with Celebrim's thead opener...
more toys for our S&L-PORTS...
they need to consume resources...
ability to turn them on and off...
cloak toys
radar toys
shield toys
extra batterys
damage should affect how they work...
and for the HUDs them self... get this... skin-able... let that rattle around...
-MorbidlyWrong[VC]
p.s. i know the devs are busy... we love what you've done... we'll love what your gonna do...
more toys for our S&L-PORTS...
they need to consume resources...
ability to turn them on and off...
cloak toys
radar toys
shield toys
extra batterys
damage should affect how they work...
and for the HUDs them self... get this... skin-able... let that rattle around...
-MorbidlyWrong[VC]
p.s. i know the devs are busy... we love what you've done... we'll love what your gonna do...
When I play in RPG's, somehow I always end up as the Thief (Rogue to you new kids). The fact is, I like skulldugery, cons, and stealthy assasination alot more than I like fair fights and pitched battles. Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at it.
The reason I think I like creeping around slitting the throats of the 'bad guys' rather than just walking up to them a cutting them down with my big sword and mighty imaginary muscles is that I think there is more tension involved. If you are playing a fighter, and you are good at it, then you can be pretty sure that you aren't going to meet anything that can go toe to toe with you - or at least you and the party. But if you are playing the Thief, lots of times you don't have party backup, and most of the time you can't go toe to toe with anything. You see, all the fighter has to insure is that he arranges to not get surrounded by enemies more powerful than himself, and success will follow. The when the rogue goes on a recon mission, he is arranging to go surrounded by his enemies, many of which are individually a match for him in a fight and for the most part all you have between you and a quick death is your wits and the cover of darkness. This in my opinion takes alot more caution, is alot more dangerous, and just ends up being more fun.
Vendetta is missing that. Sure, even in Vendetta I could ambush traders and rocket them to death before they realized they were under attack. I could typekill a few players. But its not the same thing. It doesn't depend on how good I am, or even on what sort of character I've chosen to be. It just depends on my target being asleep at the wheel and not watching his radar. (For example, a certain dev who I managed to kill without firing a shot at him, and prior to reading this sentence had no clue who did it.) You see, in Vendetta, you really can't play a good game of 'hide and seek'. And 'hide and seek' is my favorite game. Even more so than 'tag'. :)
BTW, you're it a1k0n. :)
The full range of thiefly qualities is beyond the scope of any single essay. Smuggling, theft, forgery, disguises and the like will have to wait for another day. I'd just like to focus on what is necessary for a good game of 'hide and seek'.
At present, Vendetta has no line of sight limitations. Radar can see through asteroids. Heck, you can see through asteroids too, it just happens that asteroids are painted on top of what is on the other side, but you are still basically 'seeing' it in that it gets rendered and if you view Vendetta wireframe you'll become aware of that. Explosions pass through solid objects as if they weren't there. The only time los becomes an issue is when you try to go through a solid object and the collision code kicks in. The very basic thing that Vendetta needs for a good game of hide and seek, is implementing line of sight rules. That means not detecting someone on radar if you don't have los. Not seeing someone displayed on the user screen ('u') unless you have radar contact with them. There might be other benifits as well like being able to hide behind something to avoid an Avalon, or maybe even slightly better performance for some people depending on whether or not rendering something took longer than deciding whether or not to render it. All that has been mentioned before, so I'll just say I will assume that 'future Vendetta' has los code.
Line of sight code lets you play hide and seek, but it doesn't necessarily make it a really interesting game. An interesting game of hide and seek would let you 'not move', 'stay quiet', 'sneak' and so forth. The following is a description of one way to do that.
There are two basic ways of detecting whether someone is there - passive and active. All human senses are basically passive. A passive sensors sits around quietly waiting for some energy released by the the thing which is 'seen' or 'heard' to reach it, and then uses this information to determine what if anything is out there. Passive sensors are actually pretty effective so long as the thing you are looking for is close, 'loud', or you know exactly where to look.
Active sensors on the other hand release energy into the environment and the wait for some of that energy to 'bounce' off the thing that is seen and return to the sensor. Active sensors are really effective. They can find things no matter how quiet they are, and without knowing where to look for them. They have two limitations. First, they are by definition 'loud'. This means that with an active sensor it is very difficult to know where something is without telling everyone else where you are. Second, because they have to release energy, they actually don't have as much range as a passive sensor. You can 'see' much futher with a telescope than a flashlight. What they can do is scan a larger region much more quickly than a passive sensor since they can look at the whole surroundings at the same time, without having to scan each area individually. You can actually see something further away with binoculars than most small radars, but with the radar you don't have to know where to look.
It's a pretty safe assumption that the radars we have now are weak 'active' sensors. If you can detect someone, they are certain to detect you. We know they are weak because they use so little energy it isn't deducted from our batteries. We know they are active because they work equally well in all directions all the time. We also know that the standard targeting computers are tied directly to the radar. You can't target someone that you don't have a radar lock on, even though it is often possible using passive sensors (the camera which feeds our HUD) to detect a target well beyond radar range and even using zoom to learn quite abit about the target at quite high distances. This is 'realistic' (even if the ranges involved aren't and can't be) and I like it, but we can take things much further.
First, we could give players the option of turning off thier radar. This would have two major effects. First, you couldn't
use the targeting computers. Gauss would be just as inaccurate as railguns. You couldn't track a target amongst all the other dots, and indeed you wouldn't get any dots on radar to track. However, since you aren't being 'loud' anymore, you'd get stealthier and other radars would have a harder time detecting you. I don't know what a good number would be, but for now lets say that if you turn off radar and stop being 'loud', then it reduces the range at which you can be detected to just 50% normal.
But what if you don't want to just stop being 'loud', but actually want to be 'quiet'. Well, we could give players the option of powering down. In powered down mode, you stop replenishing your battery (though you don't have to empty it). Your weapons and engines go off line (no manuevering, no turbo, but you can coast at sub-turbo speeds), and it takes a 3 second start up cycle to bring them back into service. So long as you aren't being 'loud' (meaning that your active sensors and other energy sources like shields or ECM are also off), powering down reduces the range at which you can be detected on radar to just 25% normal.
But what if you are literally being 'loud'? Radio is an energy source too and one designed to be detected over long distances. If you are powered down or have the radar off, shouting at everyone in the neighbor is equivalent to briefly turning things back on. It might take more work than its worth, but ideally, whenever you chat on any channel there should be a chance that you briefly light up on enemy radar. Messages on the other hand should be secure, but if you send a message to someone you don't have los on, then it should be the same as 'shouting' and even if they enemy doesn't get the message (in the same way they don't get team chat) the message still should potentially light you up since it wasn't a narrow beam signal.
That alone would make being sneaky interesting, but things really get fun when we start adding toys. The following is by no means a comprehensive list of the toys you can add to the above engine, but it should give you the idea.
A few toys should probably be added to every ship as part of thier standard package of sensors.
1) Early Warning Device: I personally think that every ship should sound a little siren or ping (a different one from the incoming missile alert) or flash a warning whenever a hostile ship comes within 300m. You could toggle this feature off if you like, for example when botting.
2) Basic Passive Sensor: Every ship should have some minimal ability to acquire a targeting lock without having a functional radar. To obtain a passive targeting lock the target ship should be fairly close to the targeting reticule already, and should be at a rather close range, say 250m for the standard passive sensors. If the target ship gets too far away from your targeting reticule, it breaks these passive locks. Passive sensors easily miss things that aren't moving, reducing detection range to only 50% normal, if the target's speed is exactly 0. They are especially bad at miss things that are motionless againt the background of larger things. Reduce by another 50% if you are both not moving AND within half your ship's length of a larger object. On the other hand, they work 50% better against something that is employing turbo.
3) Hostile Lock Warning: Every ship should sound a little alert whenever a hostile ship locks on to them _with active sensors_. A warning message should appear stating 'X has acquired a targeting lock'.
4) Basic Scanner: Right now when we have a target lock on someone, the information we get hasn't got alot of ingame significance. Alot of people want the ability to tell how damaged a target is. Scanner's are how you do that. The basic one would have a very limited range, say 100m, and take some time to work. The idea is that if you have an active lock on the target, turn your scanner on, and keep the target in range and in your sights for a certain ammount of time, then you can get detailed information on what the ship is equiped with, what cargo it carries, and how much hull it has left. A little bar would appear below your sights detailing your scanning progress. The bar would reset if the target was no longer in range, in your forward arc, or if you ran out of power. Once the bar was filled a screen similar to the user screen would appear with the detailed info.
You could use the same device to scan 'roids to determine thier mineral content, or whatever else that might need to
be scanned.
A bunch of toys could be optional accessories. As always the idea here is that these toys would fit into an 'equipment' slot rather than a weapon slot, and that like weapon slots the equipment slots would also be limited to a few per ship (at least for small ships).
1) Stealth Suite: The most obvious toy is one that makes you sneakier. Stealth Suites could vary in quality and price, but in essence they all do the same thing - reduce the range at which active sensors will detect you. A good suite might reduce the dectection range to 1/3rd normal.
2) Better Radar: The converse toy is one that makes it easier for you to detect sneaks. These radars would consume a small ammount of continious power (say 1-20/s depending on quality) in exchange for increased range, up to 10x the normal radar range for the most powerful radars. That way, you could outfit your ship as a scout to protect your friends from ambush, at the cost of using up an equipment slot which might otherwise go to something that would make you a better fighter and a reduced ammount of energy for combat. Also, since radar is an active sensor, you would automatically be detected by anything that you would detect, so maybe you can see 30km, but everything up to 30km out can see you too.
3) 'Mass Detector': One of the great things about taking something from the players is it lets you create gizmos that give it back. I don't really know if mass detector is the best name, but in this case, the gizmo lets your radar see through solid
objects on a somewhat limited basis - for example up to 250m away for an expensive advanced model. Very handy for protecting yourself from ambush, and very handy against the next device.
4) Cloaking Device: The ultimate in stealth is to not appear at all. Several models have been suggested with pros and cons, but I still like my idea for being the most flexible. Basically, a cloaking device removes you from los, meaning that you can't be seen, and won't show up on either active or passive sensors (except for a mass detector). Because this is an extremely powerful ability, it has several big drawbacks:
a) You can't use turbo.
b) You can't fire a weapon.
c) You can't use active sensors.
d) You consume the same ammount of continious energy that you would turboing.
e) It takes some ammount of time (2 seconds?) to switch between cloaked and uncloaked states. During this time you can't fire a weapon.
5) Better Passive Sensors: The ultimate in ambush is to be able to lock your weapons onto a target without unstealthy active sensors giving away your presence. The best passive sensors would have wider 'locking arcs' (up to essentially everything on your forward screen) or much greater ranges (up to 1500m) or would auto-resolve targets (if you could make a lock using passive sensors the target appears on radar) or some combination thereof. Even good passive sensors would have the same problems as the basic sensors have with motionless targets.
6) Better scanners: Better scanners could have greater range, or quicker scanning time, or better accuracy or some combination of the above at the cost of usually taking some ammount of power to employ.
7) Superior HUDS: Right now almost everyone flies using visual (passive) sensors and there is no real reason why they shouldn't. All the sectors a bright and well lit with space like open views of the universe clear out to the skybox. But while space isn't normally foggy even in a nebula, space isn't normally bright everywhere either. Modern pilots fly airplanes in the dark using radar and other enhancements to keep track of where they are no matter how dark it is. Similarly, HUD enhancements should allow you to fly using active sensors even in a deep space sector with no significant light sources at all, without fearing that you are aboat to turbo into the side of a 1km wide roid. The easiest way to do this would be displaying 'wireframes' in place of solid objects when it was too dark to see them, perhaps automatically doing this for objects more than a certain distance away. Of course, the limit of this sort of vision would be the range limit of your active sensors.
Ok, that's long enough that most of you won't read the post anyway. If I make it any longer noone is going to read it, so I'll be content with asking for comments and suggestions for now.
The reason I think I like creeping around slitting the throats of the 'bad guys' rather than just walking up to them a cutting them down with my big sword and mighty imaginary muscles is that I think there is more tension involved. If you are playing a fighter, and you are good at it, then you can be pretty sure that you aren't going to meet anything that can go toe to toe with you - or at least you and the party. But if you are playing the Thief, lots of times you don't have party backup, and most of the time you can't go toe to toe with anything. You see, all the fighter has to insure is that he arranges to not get surrounded by enemies more powerful than himself, and success will follow. The when the rogue goes on a recon mission, he is arranging to go surrounded by his enemies, many of which are individually a match for him in a fight and for the most part all you have between you and a quick death is your wits and the cover of darkness. This in my opinion takes alot more caution, is alot more dangerous, and just ends up being more fun.
Vendetta is missing that. Sure, even in Vendetta I could ambush traders and rocket them to death before they realized they were under attack. I could typekill a few players. But its not the same thing. It doesn't depend on how good I am, or even on what sort of character I've chosen to be. It just depends on my target being asleep at the wheel and not watching his radar. (For example, a certain dev who I managed to kill without firing a shot at him, and prior to reading this sentence had no clue who did it.) You see, in Vendetta, you really can't play a good game of 'hide and seek'. And 'hide and seek' is my favorite game. Even more so than 'tag'. :)
BTW, you're it a1k0n. :)
The full range of thiefly qualities is beyond the scope of any single essay. Smuggling, theft, forgery, disguises and the like will have to wait for another day. I'd just like to focus on what is necessary for a good game of 'hide and seek'.
At present, Vendetta has no line of sight limitations. Radar can see through asteroids. Heck, you can see through asteroids too, it just happens that asteroids are painted on top of what is on the other side, but you are still basically 'seeing' it in that it gets rendered and if you view Vendetta wireframe you'll become aware of that. Explosions pass through solid objects as if they weren't there. The only time los becomes an issue is when you try to go through a solid object and the collision code kicks in. The very basic thing that Vendetta needs for a good game of hide and seek, is implementing line of sight rules. That means not detecting someone on radar if you don't have los. Not seeing someone displayed on the user screen ('u') unless you have radar contact with them. There might be other benifits as well like being able to hide behind something to avoid an Avalon, or maybe even slightly better performance for some people depending on whether or not rendering something took longer than deciding whether or not to render it. All that has been mentioned before, so I'll just say I will assume that 'future Vendetta' has los code.
Line of sight code lets you play hide and seek, but it doesn't necessarily make it a really interesting game. An interesting game of hide and seek would let you 'not move', 'stay quiet', 'sneak' and so forth. The following is a description of one way to do that.
There are two basic ways of detecting whether someone is there - passive and active. All human senses are basically passive. A passive sensors sits around quietly waiting for some energy released by the the thing which is 'seen' or 'heard' to reach it, and then uses this information to determine what if anything is out there. Passive sensors are actually pretty effective so long as the thing you are looking for is close, 'loud', or you know exactly where to look.
Active sensors on the other hand release energy into the environment and the wait for some of that energy to 'bounce' off the thing that is seen and return to the sensor. Active sensors are really effective. They can find things no matter how quiet they are, and without knowing where to look for them. They have two limitations. First, they are by definition 'loud'. This means that with an active sensor it is very difficult to know where something is without telling everyone else where you are. Second, because they have to release energy, they actually don't have as much range as a passive sensor. You can 'see' much futher with a telescope than a flashlight. What they can do is scan a larger region much more quickly than a passive sensor since they can look at the whole surroundings at the same time, without having to scan each area individually. You can actually see something further away with binoculars than most small radars, but with the radar you don't have to know where to look.
It's a pretty safe assumption that the radars we have now are weak 'active' sensors. If you can detect someone, they are certain to detect you. We know they are weak because they use so little energy it isn't deducted from our batteries. We know they are active because they work equally well in all directions all the time. We also know that the standard targeting computers are tied directly to the radar. You can't target someone that you don't have a radar lock on, even though it is often possible using passive sensors (the camera which feeds our HUD) to detect a target well beyond radar range and even using zoom to learn quite abit about the target at quite high distances. This is 'realistic' (even if the ranges involved aren't and can't be) and I like it, but we can take things much further.
First, we could give players the option of turning off thier radar. This would have two major effects. First, you couldn't
use the targeting computers. Gauss would be just as inaccurate as railguns. You couldn't track a target amongst all the other dots, and indeed you wouldn't get any dots on radar to track. However, since you aren't being 'loud' anymore, you'd get stealthier and other radars would have a harder time detecting you. I don't know what a good number would be, but for now lets say that if you turn off radar and stop being 'loud', then it reduces the range at which you can be detected to just 50% normal.
But what if you don't want to just stop being 'loud', but actually want to be 'quiet'. Well, we could give players the option of powering down. In powered down mode, you stop replenishing your battery (though you don't have to empty it). Your weapons and engines go off line (no manuevering, no turbo, but you can coast at sub-turbo speeds), and it takes a 3 second start up cycle to bring them back into service. So long as you aren't being 'loud' (meaning that your active sensors and other energy sources like shields or ECM are also off), powering down reduces the range at which you can be detected on radar to just 25% normal.
But what if you are literally being 'loud'? Radio is an energy source too and one designed to be detected over long distances. If you are powered down or have the radar off, shouting at everyone in the neighbor is equivalent to briefly turning things back on. It might take more work than its worth, but ideally, whenever you chat on any channel there should be a chance that you briefly light up on enemy radar. Messages on the other hand should be secure, but if you send a message to someone you don't have los on, then it should be the same as 'shouting' and even if they enemy doesn't get the message (in the same way they don't get team chat) the message still should potentially light you up since it wasn't a narrow beam signal.
That alone would make being sneaky interesting, but things really get fun when we start adding toys. The following is by no means a comprehensive list of the toys you can add to the above engine, but it should give you the idea.
A few toys should probably be added to every ship as part of thier standard package of sensors.
1) Early Warning Device: I personally think that every ship should sound a little siren or ping (a different one from the incoming missile alert) or flash a warning whenever a hostile ship comes within 300m. You could toggle this feature off if you like, for example when botting.
2) Basic Passive Sensor: Every ship should have some minimal ability to acquire a targeting lock without having a functional radar. To obtain a passive targeting lock the target ship should be fairly close to the targeting reticule already, and should be at a rather close range, say 250m for the standard passive sensors. If the target ship gets too far away from your targeting reticule, it breaks these passive locks. Passive sensors easily miss things that aren't moving, reducing detection range to only 50% normal, if the target's speed is exactly 0. They are especially bad at miss things that are motionless againt the background of larger things. Reduce by another 50% if you are both not moving AND within half your ship's length of a larger object. On the other hand, they work 50% better against something that is employing turbo.
3) Hostile Lock Warning: Every ship should sound a little alert whenever a hostile ship locks on to them _with active sensors_. A warning message should appear stating 'X has acquired a targeting lock'.
4) Basic Scanner: Right now when we have a target lock on someone, the information we get hasn't got alot of ingame significance. Alot of people want the ability to tell how damaged a target is. Scanner's are how you do that. The basic one would have a very limited range, say 100m, and take some time to work. The idea is that if you have an active lock on the target, turn your scanner on, and keep the target in range and in your sights for a certain ammount of time, then you can get detailed information on what the ship is equiped with, what cargo it carries, and how much hull it has left. A little bar would appear below your sights detailing your scanning progress. The bar would reset if the target was no longer in range, in your forward arc, or if you ran out of power. Once the bar was filled a screen similar to the user screen would appear with the detailed info.
You could use the same device to scan 'roids to determine thier mineral content, or whatever else that might need to
be scanned.
A bunch of toys could be optional accessories. As always the idea here is that these toys would fit into an 'equipment' slot rather than a weapon slot, and that like weapon slots the equipment slots would also be limited to a few per ship (at least for small ships).
1) Stealth Suite: The most obvious toy is one that makes you sneakier. Stealth Suites could vary in quality and price, but in essence they all do the same thing - reduce the range at which active sensors will detect you. A good suite might reduce the dectection range to 1/3rd normal.
2) Better Radar: The converse toy is one that makes it easier for you to detect sneaks. These radars would consume a small ammount of continious power (say 1-20/s depending on quality) in exchange for increased range, up to 10x the normal radar range for the most powerful radars. That way, you could outfit your ship as a scout to protect your friends from ambush, at the cost of using up an equipment slot which might otherwise go to something that would make you a better fighter and a reduced ammount of energy for combat. Also, since radar is an active sensor, you would automatically be detected by anything that you would detect, so maybe you can see 30km, but everything up to 30km out can see you too.
3) 'Mass Detector': One of the great things about taking something from the players is it lets you create gizmos that give it back. I don't really know if mass detector is the best name, but in this case, the gizmo lets your radar see through solid
objects on a somewhat limited basis - for example up to 250m away for an expensive advanced model. Very handy for protecting yourself from ambush, and very handy against the next device.
4) Cloaking Device: The ultimate in stealth is to not appear at all. Several models have been suggested with pros and cons, but I still like my idea for being the most flexible. Basically, a cloaking device removes you from los, meaning that you can't be seen, and won't show up on either active or passive sensors (except for a mass detector). Because this is an extremely powerful ability, it has several big drawbacks:
a) You can't use turbo.
b) You can't fire a weapon.
c) You can't use active sensors.
d) You consume the same ammount of continious energy that you would turboing.
e) It takes some ammount of time (2 seconds?) to switch between cloaked and uncloaked states. During this time you can't fire a weapon.
5) Better Passive Sensors: The ultimate in ambush is to be able to lock your weapons onto a target without unstealthy active sensors giving away your presence. The best passive sensors would have wider 'locking arcs' (up to essentially everything on your forward screen) or much greater ranges (up to 1500m) or would auto-resolve targets (if you could make a lock using passive sensors the target appears on radar) or some combination thereof. Even good passive sensors would have the same problems as the basic sensors have with motionless targets.
6) Better scanners: Better scanners could have greater range, or quicker scanning time, or better accuracy or some combination of the above at the cost of usually taking some ammount of power to employ.
7) Superior HUDS: Right now almost everyone flies using visual (passive) sensors and there is no real reason why they shouldn't. All the sectors a bright and well lit with space like open views of the universe clear out to the skybox. But while space isn't normally foggy even in a nebula, space isn't normally bright everywhere either. Modern pilots fly airplanes in the dark using radar and other enhancements to keep track of where they are no matter how dark it is. Similarly, HUD enhancements should allow you to fly using active sensors even in a deep space sector with no significant light sources at all, without fearing that you are aboat to turbo into the side of a 1km wide roid. The easiest way to do this would be displaying 'wireframes' in place of solid objects when it was too dark to see them, perhaps automatically doing this for objects more than a certain distance away. Of course, the limit of this sort of vision would be the range limit of your active sensors.
Ok, that's long enough that most of you won't read the post anyway. If I make it any longer noone is going to read it, so I'll be content with asking for comments and suggestions for now.
I'm having this one published as a leather-bound 3 volume set for just 3 easy payments of $19.95. An abridged version will be out in the Summer of 2004, once the monkeys are done typing it. Operators are standing by.
Seriously, these are good, well thought-out suggestions. I like the stealth action too.
Seriously, these are good, well thought-out suggestions. I like the stealth action too.
I'm sure they are good well thought out suggestions. I just wish I had the time to read them. That's like a ream of paper up there.
I'm all for these.
Sounds great, my only problem is about the active and passive sensors, saying that without active sensors you can't target someone. You still have eyes. You should be able to visually aquire a target, i.e. push g for something in front of you and be able to target it. You wouldn't be given any information on the target, besides maybe their name, bounty and score. Without active radar, you don't know how far away they are, and if they pass beyond your screen, you lose targeting of it because you can no longer see it. So don't completley dismiss the ability to target someone simply because your active radar is off.
MY SENSOR IDEAS
There can be other detection systems besides radar too, the engines produce heat, and it can be assumed that the engines produce more heat the faster they are going. An entire suite of passive Infrared sensors could be created for soley detecting the engines. If you had one sensor on one side of a ship, and one on another, you'd be able to estimate the speed and distance of another ship and be able to track it passivley.
Another problem I have with current radar is, as Celebrim already sort of mentioned is about the radar detection. Radar works by sending signals out and having them bounce back...if a ship is on the other side of a roid, we shouldn't be able to detect them, except with say, tunneling neutrino microscopes...maybe engines also produce neutrinos, who knows? i.e. neutrinos can phase through solid matter, so if engines produced neutrinos in every direction but the ship itself (because the thrust is going out the ship, not through), a neutrino detector (which nowadays are the size of warehouses, but hopefully in the future they will be much smaller) could detect the neutrinos passing through the roid.
That's all I have to add for now.
MY SENSOR IDEAS
There can be other detection systems besides radar too, the engines produce heat, and it can be assumed that the engines produce more heat the faster they are going. An entire suite of passive Infrared sensors could be created for soley detecting the engines. If you had one sensor on one side of a ship, and one on another, you'd be able to estimate the speed and distance of another ship and be able to track it passivley.
Another problem I have with current radar is, as Celebrim already sort of mentioned is about the radar detection. Radar works by sending signals out and having them bounce back...if a ship is on the other side of a roid, we shouldn't be able to detect them, except with say, tunneling neutrino microscopes...maybe engines also produce neutrinos, who knows? i.e. neutrinos can phase through solid matter, so if engines produced neutrinos in every direction but the ship itself (because the thrust is going out the ship, not through), a neutrino detector (which nowadays are the size of warehouses, but hopefully in the future they will be much smaller) could detect the neutrinos passing through the roid.
That's all I have to add for now.
I say this game needs sniping for this "skullduggery" aspect.
(See: rail gun rants)
(See: rail gun rants)
Oh yeah, that reminds me, I thinkt he charged cannon should be changed to a hyper-fast lightning bolt, and have extreme sniper ability....(Ive said this before).
LordViking:
"Sounds great, my only problem is about the active and passive sensors, saying that without active sensors you can't target someone...So don't completley dismiss the ability to target someone simply because your active radar is off."
First of all, I didn't completely dismiss the ability to acquire something with passive sensors. Read the part about basic passive sensors again. You can still get your targeting computer to work in a more limited set of circumstances with just passive sensors. But as you said, without active sensors distance information can be very hard to get, which means that it ought to be harder to use passive sensors to acquire a target than active sensors. Not that you can't shoot at it, targeting computer or not.
But more importantly, there are balance issues at stake. Realisticly, you ought to be able to acquire targets in space at 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of kilometers. But gameplay is more important than realism, and in this case passive sensors need severe drawbacks otherwise they will be too much better than active sensors and no one will use the active sensors.
"There can be other detection systems besides radar too, the engines produce heat, and it can be assumed that the engines produce more heat the faster they are going. An entire suite of passive Infrared sensors could be created for soley detecting the engines."
I'd probably name some kind of passive sensor you could buy 'infrared sensors', but there wouldn't be any underlying code for infrared sensors. They'd just be another type of passive sensor with a few numbers that modified basic parameters. To make different kinds of passive sensors interesting you'd have to keep track of local EM activity to determine what sort of sensor worked best in what location. That sounds tedious and/or data intensive. And you'd probably have to start bundling sensors together in different packages, otherwise the classes of sensors would overwhelm what you could otherwise carry in your equipment slots.
"Sounds great, my only problem is about the active and passive sensors, saying that without active sensors you can't target someone...So don't completley dismiss the ability to target someone simply because your active radar is off."
First of all, I didn't completely dismiss the ability to acquire something with passive sensors. Read the part about basic passive sensors again. You can still get your targeting computer to work in a more limited set of circumstances with just passive sensors. But as you said, without active sensors distance information can be very hard to get, which means that it ought to be harder to use passive sensors to acquire a target than active sensors. Not that you can't shoot at it, targeting computer or not.
But more importantly, there are balance issues at stake. Realisticly, you ought to be able to acquire targets in space at 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of kilometers. But gameplay is more important than realism, and in this case passive sensors need severe drawbacks otherwise they will be too much better than active sensors and no one will use the active sensors.
"There can be other detection systems besides radar too, the engines produce heat, and it can be assumed that the engines produce more heat the faster they are going. An entire suite of passive Infrared sensors could be created for soley detecting the engines."
I'd probably name some kind of passive sensor you could buy 'infrared sensors', but there wouldn't be any underlying code for infrared sensors. They'd just be another type of passive sensor with a few numbers that modified basic parameters. To make different kinds of passive sensors interesting you'd have to keep track of local EM activity to determine what sort of sensor worked best in what location. That sounds tedious and/or data intensive. And you'd probably have to start bundling sensors together in different packages, otherwise the classes of sensors would overwhelm what you could otherwise carry in your equipment slots.
Well since we can't turn to Celebrim to put in a critical word I'll give it a shot ; )
Joking aside, great post, solid well thought out ideas we've all come to expect from you. I'd really like to see such things implemented since I feel this is the root of the problem we have right now (too many "homicidal maniacs" too few pirates)
Active sensors are sending some signal out and waiting for it to hit an object and return. This means that the signal must be able to travel twice the distance of your max detection range. Which would mean that anyone within twice your active detection radius would be able to "hear" you. Now for game play this would be bad, but if people could hear you at 1.5x your detection radius that would work very well (This is similar to what you [cele] were saying about people without active sensors would be detectable only at half the radius except it's defined based on the active detection, so a much stronger active radar would be "audible" farther away).
When you 'hear' someone you have very little information on them, basically only the direction they are in. No Friend/Foe detection or distance. They would appear on radar as a white dot.
Weapons would should also be "audible" at long ranges, so when a weapon detonates it would send out a signal that people would passively be able to pick up.
Passive sensor radar display. Would only have white dots pointing towards people using active radar and brief flashes of white dots in the direction of fighting and players with running engines within 500m (no roids, no hidden wormholes, silent-mode players, other passive mode people over 500m etc). The white dots could vary in shade depending on the intensity of the signal, but this would not give the pilot consistent information since a stronger radar would be more intense further away, and a weaker one would be less intense even when you were actually within detection range. (NOTE: everyone would get passive radar, including people with active radar on)
Passive targeting. I've got to disagree with you here. Targeting computers should be able to work with just passive sensors, but would only be able to gather very limited information. Player name (from markings on the ship eventually the easiest thing to fake), distance within a 20% margin of error. But the only way to obtain this target would be if you were looking right at them, imagine a cone segment with an initial radius of your ships radius, and a wall angle of 1 degree, or what ever is easiest for the devs to program in (pointing in the direction your ship is facing not your camera if mlook is on). There should also only be a range restriction of 60km (the max distance things are rendered in this game). This would replace the command that is bound to 'g' by default. (NOTE: people using active sensing would also be able to use passive targeting) This would still be difficult for fighting, since any time someone went out of your sights you would need to get them back before firing.
Active radar display: radar as we know it now. (NOTE: you would still have passive sensors that put white dots on weapons fire, and far away active sensor ships)
Active targeting: As we know it now, maybe with the addition of hull and ship type (NOTE: 'x' works only with active targeting since passive knows neither how close targets are nor if they are hostile).
When running in silent mode (engines, guns, etc off; coasting) there is no reason that it should effect the range an active radar would pick you up. For both game play and realism (game play being the more important) active detection should sense silent targets at the normal distance, but there should never be anything that distinguishes them from any other random piece of floating debris, ie they should be grey dots. (yes they have the potential of being the only grey dot that is translating since roids only rotate, but that would be very hard for a pilot to notice unless they were sitting still, and hopefully in the future the devs will figure out how to incorporate moving roids).
This would basically make a silent mode ship unnoticeable unless you had visual conformation of the target.
Trinkets:
1. Early warning, should work all of the time if you're using active, but should only work on non-silent vessels if you are using passive, and shouldn't work at all if you're powered down.
2. Agree with the idea, suggested a different implementation above.
3. Allow people to disengage weapons so that locks with out any active weapons wouldn't give this alert (makes flying around in friendly 'safe' sectors less noisy), and have it take 1 second to activate weapons, at the beginning of which it pings anyone within 300m.
4. 50m no 'in-sight' requirement, but different information takes different amounts of time.
1. Unlike silent mode or passive, this would truly reduce the detection range by absorbing a certain amount of the radar 'strength' depending on the quality of the radar and stealth suit, as well as the range it might or might not have the strength to return.
2. No changes
3. This could be a non-los dependent detector, but I would increase the range to 1km (and it would be instead of other active systems, also could 'louder' than the 1km detection radius would imply)
4. No changes
5. not applicable with other changes I've suggested
6. No changes
7. No changes
Joking aside, great post, solid well thought out ideas we've all come to expect from you. I'd really like to see such things implemented since I feel this is the root of the problem we have right now (too many "homicidal maniacs" too few pirates)
Active sensors are sending some signal out and waiting for it to hit an object and return. This means that the signal must be able to travel twice the distance of your max detection range. Which would mean that anyone within twice your active detection radius would be able to "hear" you. Now for game play this would be bad, but if people could hear you at 1.5x your detection radius that would work very well (This is similar to what you [cele] were saying about people without active sensors would be detectable only at half the radius except it's defined based on the active detection, so a much stronger active radar would be "audible" farther away).
When you 'hear' someone you have very little information on them, basically only the direction they are in. No Friend/Foe detection or distance. They would appear on radar as a white dot.
Weapons would should also be "audible" at long ranges, so when a weapon detonates it would send out a signal that people would passively be able to pick up.
Passive sensor radar display. Would only have white dots pointing towards people using active radar and brief flashes of white dots in the direction of fighting and players with running engines within 500m (no roids, no hidden wormholes, silent-mode players, other passive mode people over 500m etc). The white dots could vary in shade depending on the intensity of the signal, but this would not give the pilot consistent information since a stronger radar would be more intense further away, and a weaker one would be less intense even when you were actually within detection range. (NOTE: everyone would get passive radar, including people with active radar on)
Passive targeting. I've got to disagree with you here. Targeting computers should be able to work with just passive sensors, but would only be able to gather very limited information. Player name (from markings on the ship eventually the easiest thing to fake), distance within a 20% margin of error. But the only way to obtain this target would be if you were looking right at them, imagine a cone segment with an initial radius of your ships radius, and a wall angle of 1 degree, or what ever is easiest for the devs to program in (pointing in the direction your ship is facing not your camera if mlook is on). There should also only be a range restriction of 60km (the max distance things are rendered in this game). This would replace the command that is bound to 'g' by default. (NOTE: people using active sensing would also be able to use passive targeting) This would still be difficult for fighting, since any time someone went out of your sights you would need to get them back before firing.
Active radar display: radar as we know it now. (NOTE: you would still have passive sensors that put white dots on weapons fire, and far away active sensor ships)
Active targeting: As we know it now, maybe with the addition of hull and ship type (NOTE: 'x' works only with active targeting since passive knows neither how close targets are nor if they are hostile).
When running in silent mode (engines, guns, etc off; coasting) there is no reason that it should effect the range an active radar would pick you up. For both game play and realism (game play being the more important) active detection should sense silent targets at the normal distance, but there should never be anything that distinguishes them from any other random piece of floating debris, ie they should be grey dots. (yes they have the potential of being the only grey dot that is translating since roids only rotate, but that would be very hard for a pilot to notice unless they were sitting still, and hopefully in the future the devs will figure out how to incorporate moving roids).
This would basically make a silent mode ship unnoticeable unless you had visual conformation of the target.
Trinkets:
1. Early warning, should work all of the time if you're using active, but should only work on non-silent vessels if you are using passive, and shouldn't work at all if you're powered down.
2. Agree with the idea, suggested a different implementation above.
3. Allow people to disengage weapons so that locks with out any active weapons wouldn't give this alert (makes flying around in friendly 'safe' sectors less noisy), and have it take 1 second to activate weapons, at the beginning of which it pings anyone within 300m.
4. 50m no 'in-sight' requirement, but different information takes different amounts of time.
1. Unlike silent mode or passive, this would truly reduce the detection range by absorbing a certain amount of the radar 'strength' depending on the quality of the radar and stealth suit, as well as the range it might or might not have the strength to return.
2. No changes
3. This could be a non-los dependent detector, but I would increase the range to 1km (and it would be instead of other active systems, also could 'louder' than the 1km detection radius would imply)
4. No changes
5. not applicable with other changes I've suggested
6. No changes
7. No changes
Well, at least I can rely on someone for good feedback. :)
"Active sensors are sending some signal out and waiting for it to hit an object and return. This means that the signal must be able to travel twice the distance of your max detection range."
Yes, I had been trying to ignore that.
"When you 'hear' someone you have very little information on them, basically only the direction they are in. No Friend/Foe detection or distance. They would appear on radar as a white dot."
Now that's a good idea! In fact it fits in perfectly since it lets me stop ignoring the above problem while still keeping the gameplay sane.
"Weapons would should also be "audible" at long ranges, so when a weapon detonates it would send out a signal that people would passively be able to pick up."
But weapons aren't normally displayed except for missiles/rockets. Perhaps we could have a yellow dot linger for a second or two after detonation? But that would be confusing because normal rocket contacts would continue to be displayed after they had ceased to become a threat, so maybe a red dot or some other symbol? I don't know. I understand the reasoning here, but I'm not entirely sure how best to display that information in a way that is useful.
I hadn't really considered having two sensor displays. I just figured that anything that showed up on passive would be displayed on your contacts screen with the explanation of where it was detected. And I don't know where people get the idea that passive sensors couldn't be used to target things. They can. They just have a more limited area of effect. Basically, you have to be facing the target and it has to be fairly close compared to active sensors (parallax or what not).
What I want to avoid is a situation where everyone always goes around with active sensors off because the disadvantages outway the advantages.
"When running in silent mode (engines, guns, etc off; coasting) there is no reason that it should effect the range an active radar would pick you up."
True, but I was for simplicities sake just assuming that even though it technically 'saw' you, it didn't consider you interesting enough to report.
More thoughts later when I get the chance.
"Active sensors are sending some signal out and waiting for it to hit an object and return. This means that the signal must be able to travel twice the distance of your max detection range."
Yes, I had been trying to ignore that.
"When you 'hear' someone you have very little information on them, basically only the direction they are in. No Friend/Foe detection or distance. They would appear on radar as a white dot."
Now that's a good idea! In fact it fits in perfectly since it lets me stop ignoring the above problem while still keeping the gameplay sane.
"Weapons would should also be "audible" at long ranges, so when a weapon detonates it would send out a signal that people would passively be able to pick up."
But weapons aren't normally displayed except for missiles/rockets. Perhaps we could have a yellow dot linger for a second or two after detonation? But that would be confusing because normal rocket contacts would continue to be displayed after they had ceased to become a threat, so maybe a red dot or some other symbol? I don't know. I understand the reasoning here, but I'm not entirely sure how best to display that information in a way that is useful.
I hadn't really considered having two sensor displays. I just figured that anything that showed up on passive would be displayed on your contacts screen with the explanation of where it was detected. And I don't know where people get the idea that passive sensors couldn't be used to target things. They can. They just have a more limited area of effect. Basically, you have to be facing the target and it has to be fairly close compared to active sensors (parallax or what not).
What I want to avoid is a situation where everyone always goes around with active sensors off because the disadvantages outway the advantages.
"When running in silent mode (engines, guns, etc off; coasting) there is no reason that it should effect the range an active radar would pick you up."
True, but I was for simplicities sake just assuming that even though it technically 'saw' you, it didn't consider you interesting enough to report.
More thoughts later when I get the chance.
"Weapons would should also be "audible" at long ranges, so when a weapon detonates it would send out a signal that people would passively be able to pick up."
This was actually supposed to be another bad thing about passive sensors. A white dot would flash on your radar (for less than a second)... was it an explosion, a cloaked ship, someone's active radar passing by you? It would generally just be annoying background static and noise that made information less reliable, some sectors could also have ambient random 'noises' that are picked up by the passive sensors. (NOTE: when both me and Cele say noise or hear we're not talking about actual audible things but rather releases of different types of energy waves, radio, heat, light etc.)
Also I didn't mention rockets or homers, but they would be like passive ships, they'd appear as white dots within 500m, and not at all past the (except when they explode in which case see weapons fire above)
As far as two different displays I was imagining one on top of the other, both within the same two circles (front/back). So someone with active sensors (3km radius) on would see a red dot for a hostile within 3km, but a white dot for any ship with active sensors who was more than 3km away. They would know that no white dots were urgent, but they would still have that information available. Some one with passive sensors only wouldn't know if the white dot behind them was someone with a normal active sensor 4.5km or an avalon torpedo .5km away (it'd make you a bit jumpy).
"True, but I was for simplicities sake just assuming that even though it technically 'saw' you, it didn't consider you interesting enough to report."
Since roids show up on active sensors why not? If you turn off your engines in a sector littered with roids you're not going to get spotted... but if the target you're sneaking up on isn't expecting anything to be floating near them your trick isn't going to work very well. (This is sort of based on the assumption that roids will eventually move, with either really large elliptical orbits, or some intelligent spawning system base on proximity to players)
Oh ya I forgot to mention that with the stealth suit even if they do detect you with active sensors it will appear that you are actually farther away than you actually are.
When the AI's better:
Busy 'civilized' sectors may require you to keep your active sensors on, not a huge offense if you don't (similar to head lights out at night) but the NPC police might 'pull you over' and scan your ship (hope you don't have anything illegal on it, like a stealth suit).
Passive sensors could also get confused by multiple objects in the same direction. Two active sensor ships at long range might only appear as one dot, or a stream of rockets, pack of swarms, pair of geminies, etc might all appear as one dot until they were at least 6 degrees apart.
This was actually supposed to be another bad thing about passive sensors. A white dot would flash on your radar (for less than a second)... was it an explosion, a cloaked ship, someone's active radar passing by you? It would generally just be annoying background static and noise that made information less reliable, some sectors could also have ambient random 'noises' that are picked up by the passive sensors. (NOTE: when both me and Cele say noise or hear we're not talking about actual audible things but rather releases of different types of energy waves, radio, heat, light etc.)
Also I didn't mention rockets or homers, but they would be like passive ships, they'd appear as white dots within 500m, and not at all past the (except when they explode in which case see weapons fire above)
As far as two different displays I was imagining one on top of the other, both within the same two circles (front/back). So someone with active sensors (3km radius) on would see a red dot for a hostile within 3km, but a white dot for any ship with active sensors who was more than 3km away. They would know that no white dots were urgent, but they would still have that information available. Some one with passive sensors only wouldn't know if the white dot behind them was someone with a normal active sensor 4.5km or an avalon torpedo .5km away (it'd make you a bit jumpy).
"True, but I was for simplicities sake just assuming that even though it technically 'saw' you, it didn't consider you interesting enough to report."
Since roids show up on active sensors why not? If you turn off your engines in a sector littered with roids you're not going to get spotted... but if the target you're sneaking up on isn't expecting anything to be floating near them your trick isn't going to work very well. (This is sort of based on the assumption that roids will eventually move, with either really large elliptical orbits, or some intelligent spawning system base on proximity to players)
Oh ya I forgot to mention that with the stealth suit even if they do detect you with active sensors it will appear that you are actually farther away than you actually are.
When the AI's better:
Busy 'civilized' sectors may require you to keep your active sensors on, not a huge offense if you don't (similar to head lights out at night) but the NPC police might 'pull you over' and scan your ship (hope you don't have anything illegal on it, like a stealth suit).
Passive sensors could also get confused by multiple objects in the same direction. Two active sensor ships at long range might only appear as one dot, or a stream of rockets, pack of swarms, pair of geminies, etc might all appear as one dot until they were at least 6 degrees apart.
Eldrad: Well, I know where you are headed with this, but while its coherent and realistic its also not a fighter sim. In particular, before all this realism you are talking about gets really as interesting as you want it to be you have to move the engagement distances out to realistic levels. For example, all this talk of energy weapons being loud on passive sensors gets destroyed by the fact that at the engagement distances we are talking about, what is 'seen' is most easily understood by the most important passive sensor of all - the viewscreen itself. I mean, just how far away is a sunflare blast actually visible anyway? 9km? 12km? Far enough at least to make the fuzz on your radar irrelevant. And, if you are going to treat passive sensors as 360 vision like current radar, then well it almost completely defeats the point of the active sensors because the passive ones are superior in every way. They go from being a sensor to a transponder.
Move to far in the direction you are heading and pretty soon I think you'll lose your audience because the game will be more like a submarine simulation than a fighter simulation. Realistic though that may be, its just not what most people are looking for, niether do most people have the patience for it.
So while alot of what you say is justifiable in a certain since, I'm not convinced all of it helps the gameplay.
Take for example having passive sensors make inaccurate guesses about distance. That's realistic to a certain point (at least until the passive sensor is able to resolve what sort of object its looking at, for example a Vulture, and then base its distance off apparant size based on the fact that it knows absolutely how big a Vulture is), but I think it would just annoy the average game player and eat up CPU cycles generating random numbers.
And again, remember that even if the sensors aren't doing it, the player is going to be doing it over the ranges involved. Maximum zoom lets you see relevant detail over an enormous area. So the idea of not knowing whether something is an Avalon or or a Ship seems unlikely.
"Some one with passive sensors only wouldn't know if the white dot behind them was someone with a normal active sensor 4.5km or an avalon torpedo .5km away"
And aren't you forgetting that passive sensors are supposed to be directional? Yes, it is realistic that passive sensors would be periscope like and rotate (that's how I'd mount them at least) but that brings us back to the earlier problem. Most players want to fly thier ship, not spend thier time scanning the heavens. The only way I can think to get that to works is if you had a sweeping passive sensor, sort of like a rotating radar (itself an active sensor but the situation is the same) only picks up things in the direction its facing. (Which does I admit bring up the possibility of at least one new toy for the toys thread.)
"Since roids show up on active sensors why not?"
No particular reason I suppose. I just err on the side of simple when I haven't thought out what the code requirements would be completely, but now that I think about it deciding to show the object as a pale white dot is no more complex than deciding not to show it at all. As long as the code stays clean and the number of CPU cycles small I've no problem with it. The gameplay would be fine.
"Early warning, should work all of the time if you're using active, but should only work on non-silent vessels if you are using passive, and shouldn't work at all if you're powered down."
Obviously, you shouldn't get the warning if you can't detect (or resolve) the object, but I disagree about not getting warnings when powered down. Passive sensors shouldn't use enough energy to really make a fuss over (no more than life support for example) so you should be able to both lie low and quite and 'see'. If your passive sensors 'sees' something you should get the warning whether powered up or not.
"Allow people to disengage weapons so that locks with out any active weapons wouldn't give this alert."
I've got a couple of problems with this. First that its unnecessarily complex. Second, that it wouldn't be logical to design a defensive system that didn't warn you when someone was sweeping you with sensors whether guns were powered up or not. And thirdly, that I have a problem envisioning how you'd know whether the other ships weapons were active unless you were yourself 'hard scanning' the target.
"This could be a non-los dependent detector, but I would increase the range to 1km."
I'm afraid that that range it becomes pretty much a god sensor though effectively neutralizing all this stealth and sensor stuff we've been so cleverly designing. Also, 'cloak hunting' is the one submarine-like aspect that I think would translate, and with that sort of range it puts the advantage squarely in the hands of the hounds instead of the fox.
Move to far in the direction you are heading and pretty soon I think you'll lose your audience because the game will be more like a submarine simulation than a fighter simulation. Realistic though that may be, its just not what most people are looking for, niether do most people have the patience for it.
So while alot of what you say is justifiable in a certain since, I'm not convinced all of it helps the gameplay.
Take for example having passive sensors make inaccurate guesses about distance. That's realistic to a certain point (at least until the passive sensor is able to resolve what sort of object its looking at, for example a Vulture, and then base its distance off apparant size based on the fact that it knows absolutely how big a Vulture is), but I think it would just annoy the average game player and eat up CPU cycles generating random numbers.
And again, remember that even if the sensors aren't doing it, the player is going to be doing it over the ranges involved. Maximum zoom lets you see relevant detail over an enormous area. So the idea of not knowing whether something is an Avalon or or a Ship seems unlikely.
"Some one with passive sensors only wouldn't know if the white dot behind them was someone with a normal active sensor 4.5km or an avalon torpedo .5km away"
And aren't you forgetting that passive sensors are supposed to be directional? Yes, it is realistic that passive sensors would be periscope like and rotate (that's how I'd mount them at least) but that brings us back to the earlier problem. Most players want to fly thier ship, not spend thier time scanning the heavens. The only way I can think to get that to works is if you had a sweeping passive sensor, sort of like a rotating radar (itself an active sensor but the situation is the same) only picks up things in the direction its facing. (Which does I admit bring up the possibility of at least one new toy for the toys thread.)
"Since roids show up on active sensors why not?"
No particular reason I suppose. I just err on the side of simple when I haven't thought out what the code requirements would be completely, but now that I think about it deciding to show the object as a pale white dot is no more complex than deciding not to show it at all. As long as the code stays clean and the number of CPU cycles small I've no problem with it. The gameplay would be fine.
"Early warning, should work all of the time if you're using active, but should only work on non-silent vessels if you are using passive, and shouldn't work at all if you're powered down."
Obviously, you shouldn't get the warning if you can't detect (or resolve) the object, but I disagree about not getting warnings when powered down. Passive sensors shouldn't use enough energy to really make a fuss over (no more than life support for example) so you should be able to both lie low and quite and 'see'. If your passive sensors 'sees' something you should get the warning whether powered up or not.
"Allow people to disengage weapons so that locks with out any active weapons wouldn't give this alert."
I've got a couple of problems with this. First that its unnecessarily complex. Second, that it wouldn't be logical to design a defensive system that didn't warn you when someone was sweeping you with sensors whether guns were powered up or not. And thirdly, that I have a problem envisioning how you'd know whether the other ships weapons were active unless you were yourself 'hard scanning' the target.
"This could be a non-los dependent detector, but I would increase the range to 1km."
I'm afraid that that range it becomes pretty much a god sensor though effectively neutralizing all this stealth and sensor stuff we've been so cleverly designing. Also, 'cloak hunting' is the one submarine-like aspect that I think would translate, and with that sort of range it puts the advantage squarely in the hands of the hounds instead of the fox.
First off, just for the record I don't care about realism, just add those arguments in for people who do, and since they're easier to explain than game play arguments.
Yes my description of passive sensor display is 360, but it's no where near as good or useful as active radar (NOTE: my targeting suggestion is directional). The way I was suggesting the display would be of anything picked up in any direction. It would only pick up things that were creating 'noise'. 500m for engine noise was arbitrary and probably too big give the range of fighting in the game, but remember in my suggestion a passive ship that comes within 500m (or less if you'd like) is no different on the display than an active sensor using ship 4.5km away, so the player would actually have to turn and get visual confirmation on every white dot to be sure it wasn't someone turboing at with a stream of rockets.
Inaccurate distance:
This wasn't a point of realism but a down side of passive targeting over active targeting. It would only calculate the random number once each time you got a target, so the effect on performance would be completely unnoticeable. Yes it would be annoying to think a target you was 2040m away when it's really 1700m that's the point (again the percentage was arbitrary and might want to be more drastic say 50%, so a 200m away target might appear to be 300m).
As I suggested the passive sensor display, everything that shows up would be white dots all equal intensity (it could vary for realism but I think that's worse for game play) so any new dot might be a ship with its active sensors on at extreme ranges (4.5km), or a rocket/passive ship at very close range (500m less might be better).
Max zoom? There is no max zoom other than the fact that things aren't rendered past 60km.
Not sure if the game play would be better allowing powered down ships to get the effects of passive sensors or not, I guess they could, wouldn't be able to target though since they can't turn.
"Allow people to disengage weapons so that locks with out any active weapons wouldn't give this alert."
The purpose of this is to prevent the early warning system from being annoying. Eventually there will be heavily travelled quite peaceful sectors in which it would be annoying if you just had a buzzer going of constantly when people were trying to see who you were (eventually it could even be NPC enforced that people couldn't fly around 'armed' in certain places). One second is plenty of time to avoid trouble if someone arms themselves.
"This could be a non-los dependent detector, but I would increase the range to 1km."
This would be the ultimate for combat vessels, but it would be impossible to find a target which did not want to be found, with it. Remember this is based on the assumption you stated that the 'sector list' was based only on those you vessels you are aware of. So for example if someone was hunting a pirate this sensor would be useless the pirate (regardless of his sensor set up) would get warning that hunter was around long before the hunter had a clue that they were in the same sector as their prey.
As for its range I was also assuming that it would be the most expencive sensor outfit, and that there would be other ones with the free one having a detection radius of 3km.
Yes my description of passive sensor display is 360, but it's no where near as good or useful as active radar (NOTE: my targeting suggestion is directional). The way I was suggesting the display would be of anything picked up in any direction. It would only pick up things that were creating 'noise'. 500m for engine noise was arbitrary and probably too big give the range of fighting in the game, but remember in my suggestion a passive ship that comes within 500m (or less if you'd like) is no different on the display than an active sensor using ship 4.5km away, so the player would actually have to turn and get visual confirmation on every white dot to be sure it wasn't someone turboing at with a stream of rockets.
Inaccurate distance:
This wasn't a point of realism but a down side of passive targeting over active targeting. It would only calculate the random number once each time you got a target, so the effect on performance would be completely unnoticeable. Yes it would be annoying to think a target you was 2040m away when it's really 1700m that's the point (again the percentage was arbitrary and might want to be more drastic say 50%, so a 200m away target might appear to be 300m).
As I suggested the passive sensor display, everything that shows up would be white dots all equal intensity (it could vary for realism but I think that's worse for game play) so any new dot might be a ship with its active sensors on at extreme ranges (4.5km), or a rocket/passive ship at very close range (500m less might be better).
Max zoom? There is no max zoom other than the fact that things aren't rendered past 60km.
Not sure if the game play would be better allowing powered down ships to get the effects of passive sensors or not, I guess they could, wouldn't be able to target though since they can't turn.
"Allow people to disengage weapons so that locks with out any active weapons wouldn't give this alert."
The purpose of this is to prevent the early warning system from being annoying. Eventually there will be heavily travelled quite peaceful sectors in which it would be annoying if you just had a buzzer going of constantly when people were trying to see who you were (eventually it could even be NPC enforced that people couldn't fly around 'armed' in certain places). One second is plenty of time to avoid trouble if someone arms themselves.
"This could be a non-los dependent detector, but I would increase the range to 1km."
This would be the ultimate for combat vessels, but it would be impossible to find a target which did not want to be found, with it. Remember this is based on the assumption you stated that the 'sector list' was based only on those you vessels you are aware of. So for example if someone was hunting a pirate this sensor would be useless the pirate (regardless of his sensor set up) would get warning that hunter was around long before the hunter had a clue that they were in the same sector as their prey.
As for its range I was also assuming that it would be the most expencive sensor outfit, and that there would be other ones with the free one having a detection radius of 3km.
Cele you should sign on to IRC or something so that we can hash out our ideas and write a consise proposal to the devs.
Hmm... LOS /msging...
Ya that's another thing I forgot to mention. Chat should not be restricted by realism at all. Explain it away with advanced tech if you have to, but let people do what ever talking they want, with limits only based around stopping clutter and spam.
I think LOS msging would be cool as a stealth function. Similar to Star Wars in that respect.
ow, my head hurts
I'd like to restrict 'unlimited' chat to in stations. For one thing, as you mention, that would cut down on the spam. Otherwise, you should just be able to communicate with at most neighboring sectors, unless you purchased a gizmo that had longer range.