If I leave my Goliath or Trident in Latos N-2 and chase some Disney poser pretending to pirate folks outta FAMYspace, my capship should provide sensor data to me even if that rascal runs all the way back to Initros and I'm several jumps away.

+1

A capship is loaded with sensors. It should be able to relay sensor data to the owner.

Agreed. The ship has some sort of sensors. Instantaneous communications sure seem to exist in VO. Relaying the data is a trifling matter compared to building interstellar star ships.

+1 to general premise, however it’s a poor example scenario since FAMYspace doesn’t exist

What are you asking for, exactly? Like, what specific implementation of shared sensor data?

Well, I figure if I have a ship, it should be able to transmit sensor data it would normally see to my other ship if both are undocked. So yeah. The sensor log showing the nearby ships to my distant cap ship in another sector.

I think I see where you are going, perhaps a second toplist? Maybe a tab in that screen or some such? I guess the distances shown there should be from the Trident's perspective.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm asking.

Sorry if I was unclear before incarnate. I hadn't fully formed the idea at the time.

At present if you hit "u" you get from left to right;

Help Nearby Ships Stations Killed List PVP

I would suggest adding another tab before "Nearby Ships" maybe call it Trident/Goliath sensors (whichever may be applicable). This would appear basically the same as "Nearby Ships" except you could not select any of the listed contacts, just like if they were out of range.

Thanks. I get what you're suggesting, and I look forward to hearing feedback from Skinwalker and others.

The devil is in the details. Like having a general "list" with no selectable contacts, versus confusion of adding selections or notifications or other features people might consider part of the system as a whole.

I don't have any problem with the general idea of "my capship has sensors", but some aspects of implementation can be tricky. Honestly, any version of this may be a bit of "new ground" from a development standpoint, as this kind of data is usually sector-specific at the moment.

Plus, there's also the case of the remote sector being online vs offline. Transmitting the capship's informational awareness is fine, but it should be "limited" by radar range and visibility (contacts not obstructed by asteroids, for instance). So online vs offline would have to "seem" identical to the capship owner, to avoid giving away the presence of another user in the capship sector who happened to be outside your radar range, or was utilizing some other stealth mechanics.

I like this idea, being able to know when others use a sector your cap can see is lovely. +1

" it should be "limited" by radar range and visibility"

That's part of what I meant, although reading back I did not specify that. It would ideally be able to 'see' only what you could if you were actually at the helm.

I think a separate tab that provides exactly what you would expect to see if you were sitting in the Trident or Goliath would be perfect.

I'd also be happy if it only listed the ship and pilot entering radar range (either NPC or real person) on a separate channel that I could subscribe to. The advantage this way might be an easier decision for the individual to choose whether or not to get the info and it might be easier for the Devs to implement versus an entire tab that I would think might require more coding and potentially more resources of the client.

The channel thing makes sense to me because it just seems logical that you'd be in some sort of communication with your ship (you do, after all, get notified if it's attacked).

Okay. I'm not against the intended usage of the feature, but the implementation may be a bit complex.. at least to avoid creating other un-intended "features".

Basically, the sector-online vs sector-offline thing may present some challenges, because we don't want to "leak" information about whether the sector is offline (which inherently means there are no players present, and is therefore valuable information, especially if the capship were located strategically). It creates a problem where we would need to potentially simulate NPC behaviour very convincingly. Like if a sector went offline, and then you could look at your display to see the NPCs were all not-moving, you might know from that that the sector was offline and no players were present. Or something along those lines.

So, I'm not against the intended goal, but this may not be super-fast to implement, due to other issues around it.

My temptation is, for the moment, to use a F2P toon on a phone that just sits in my Dent or Goli. Would this not also keep the sector active?

It might. I know I can usually tell when I'm jumping if a sector is already awake or not. There seems to be a slightly longer loading time when a sector is asleep. I've not measured it, so it could just be in my head.

SkinWalker: The issue isn't whether the sector is being "kept alive". That is bothersome, from a server standpoint, but doesn't relate to the "information leak" issue I would describing, because it would leave your F2P "toon" on equal informational footing with any approaching player.

As opposed to something written into the server, that could (depending on implementation) allow you to actively guarantee when someone wasn't in that location.