I think there should be some method to "hide" by powering down your ship.

For storyline purposes, it seems to me that if a trader is trying to lose a hunter, he might consider jamming himself in a nook or cranny of an asteroid. Or just hiding behind one. And this actually works to an extent. But you still show up on the sensor log. And if you're close enough, you can be targeted.

What I propose is this "shut down" mode turns your battery off. So you can't accelerate, change the attitude of your ship, or strafe. If you have some non-turbo velocity without flight assist, you can drift.

But, from the hunter's point of view, you're in the system, but unknown if docked or distant. You can be spotted visually, but your ship's engine glow is off. So you might look like space debris. And if you're flying a Goliath and go into "Shut Down" among a bunch of Hulks from NPCs, you might go unnoticed. To be targeted you have to be within 300 meters.

Once a ship is put in "Shut Down" to hide, the battery is off. The engine glow is off. Radar reflection is off other than a grey dot just like a roid. IFF is off.

If you want to fire up the battery and fly away, you have to wait for it to charge completely before the engine will ignite again. Normal charge rate of the battery, but those are precious seconds that you'll be visible on radar since IFF and engine glow are back on.

I can see this making for some interesting "hide and seek" games in some of the asteroid fields debris fields.

Radar should be disabled too

+1

When normal ships start having hulks as well, It would advantageous to hide among moth hulks.

I think there should be some method to "hide" by powering down your ship.

There is, it's called "logging off".

No place is safe. Playing the game requires risk.

I can see this making for some interesting "hide and seek" games in some of the asteroid fields debris fields.

Roids already occlude radar signature. Dense fields have existed for a long time and nobody bothers with them. Maybe because they are not in thoroughfares? Maybe we need a couple in more travelled systems?

Not sure we need a new "hide" feature when people are already painfully hard to come by.

Not sure we need a new "hide" feature when people are already painfully hard to come by.

Game has been pretty active lately. Though you would never know this because you never log in.

I think wally missed everything I was suggesting.

The power-down option might let you hide (i.e. among wreckage/hulks) but it also makes you very vulnerable.

This could be an option to hide from bots as well. Get into a bot sector, find a distant roid, power down far enough from the bots and then they go back to their original paths because they think you're gone. Power up, start mining; shut down before the bots find you; rinse; repeat.

So the option can provide new gameplay for miners, traders, pirates, bounty hunters, military, etc.

Sounds like something that wouldn’t be trivial to implement and wouldnt be used. -1

I think this might not go far enough. What I'd REALLY like to see is a completely revamped detection system. I'd like to see both active and passive sensors, as well as three power modes, full power, low power, and power down.

Active and passive sensors.

Active sensors detect any object out to maybe 7500m, but render your ship detectable out to 20KM (really the difference would be much larger, due to the inverse square law)

Passive sensors could detect ships running active out to 20km, but couldn't pickup on ships that are powered down. Ships in low power mode should be detectable, as un-targetable grey dots on passive sensors out to 1500m if they don't move or shoot. If they do, add 500m for moving, and 500m for shooting. Stationary full power ships, maybe 2500m, accelerating or firing weapons should probably add 1250m each (possible 5km range for moving firing ships). Passive sensors should NOT be able to see mines, but should be able to see missiles and rockets (rocket exhaust being kinda hot and bright)

Capitol ships should have their visibility doubled relative to fighters, and even powered down, should be visible out to 3km (the old radar limit) on passive sensors simply due to their enormous size.

Ships at full power act as normal.

Ships at 'Low Power' mode would have their power cells drained to 10%. They should still be able to maneuver, but have no turbo, and only a single shot available from any energy using weapons (capacitors still charged), and regular operation of rockets and mine launchers. Recovery from low power mode would take until the power cell charges back to full power. Low power ships should be target able, and identifiable on active sensors out to maybe 3.5km, so you can hide somewhat, but not fully.

Ships that are 'Powered Down' would have only turning ability (pitch, roll, yaw), NO weapons available at all. No sensors, completely vulnerable to ambush, with only the MK1 eyeball for detecting incoming ships, missiles, etc. The advantage would be that they would be REALLY hard to spot, only showing up as an un-targetable grey dot on Active sensors, and not showing up at all on passives. They would as Skinwalker suggested however, have to wait for full recharge to do anything. I'd even take away their HUD, and sector list, leaving only the chat available.

I'm not particularly hung up on the specific numbers. Generally what I'm trying to suggest is a RANGE of visibility and vision depending on what you and others around you do, with tradeoffs along the way.

Don't care about being seen, but want to see as much as possible, turbo around with your active sensors banging away.

Want to hide a little, go passive and give up some surveillance capability.

Want to sneak through, without being completely helpless, use low power mode, but your half blind and can only crawl along and only got one tooth.

If you REALLY want to hide, then snug up close on a roid or hulk, and shut down completely. You'll just about be a hole in space, but you won't see what's around you for hell, and won't be able to do much about it.

I've got no idea if all this is realistically possible to implement, or how much work it is, or if Incarnate thinks it's the dumbest idea he's ever heard of, but it's what I'd say would be ideal.

It's okay, wally. I've been tempted to -1 your suggestions just because you make them too, but I usually just abstain.

I agree it might not be trivial to implement. But then it might also be inline with something the devs were already considering. Or it might be something they can sort out while sorting something else out. Or, it might just give them notions of their own that *are* easy to implement and have better gameplay.

At its simplest implementation:

Powered Down ship POV is Battery off; Engine glow off; powered down ship's radar off (local sensor list empty); and start with zero battery at power on; can't engage engine until battery at 100%.

Other ships in sector POV is ship disappears from sensor list but can be seen visually; if spotted it has no engine glow; radar signature is grey like an asteroid or large hulk debris; when the ship powers up the radar turns green or red like it normally would be; ship is vulnerable while the battery charges to 100% because it's stuck (similar to when the ship jumps in from a wormhole and you can't control it yet).

Maybe it's hard to implement. Maybe not. I'll leave that to the devs. In the mean time, maybe this gives rise to other ideas. I think cool content and unique ways of using existing content with tweaks like this might be fun. You remember fun right? Or were you too busy just logging off?

It's okay, wally. I've been tempted to -1 your suggestions just because you make them too, but I usually just abstain.

Seems like you are making a new unrelated suggestion, perhaps you should open a new thread. Though it does seem against forum rules... so... maybe not?

It is my opinion that the game does not need to provide more methods / opportunities to hide than are already present. Pretty simple.

+0

This feels interesting, but I really can't see a lot of gameplay being associated with it currently.

I can always turn off my bg and search for hulks, if I know they were in the sector, since they must have powered down only after I entered the sector. Their immobility actually makes them easier targets. If they were able to power down and drift away at 200 m/s, it might make this more interesting. Might give them a better chance.

Aryko:

Currently when you jump into a sector, every thing gets a box around it. Green box means friendly, red box means baddie.





But hulks don't have any box



Powering down your ship would potentially give your ship a dead hulk signature. Yes, a hostile can use Mk I eyeball to find the ship, but if the ship is adrift, maybe it gets to jump distance and powers up before the pirates locates it. And away it goes to safety. That sounds fun and interesting to me. This is a suggestion for future game-play. Something new.

Yes, I understood what the suggestion meant, thank you for re-explaining.

You can only float away at some 60 m/s(in an unladen trade behemoth). Capital ships would probably be slower. This gives you a small window of worst case 50s(to get to the 3k mark). At turbo, you can get to that mark in < 20s. The 30s is a fair amount to catch an adrift ship using the MK1 eyeballs. You can catch up to them, and pop them while they are trying to power back.

This is just one scenario where it doesn't work. My point was the scenarios where it does work do not provide much gameplay when compared to adding a feature of this kind.

Also notice I didn't -1 the OP, as I do like the suggestion.

I also added that ships could drift at their original turbo speed(when powered down), as it works in real life. This might make the feature a bit better, maybe even a bit broken. Balance this with powering down being a costly method.

I like the suggestion, especially the mechanics of "look... no hands." If his specific mechanics are too complicated, they can certainly be simplified.

The effect of full power, low power, and power-down modes on the ship could be simple:
- full power is full powercell capacity and recharge and ship thrust
- low power is 10% of the same
- power_down is 0% of the same

An implementation could be simpler still and enable the full, low, and no power modes without worrying about active and passive sensors yet. Instead:

- Ships at full power appear as normal within the radar limit (5km).
- Ships at low power appear as grey dots ala asteroids, hulks until they are at 33% of the 5km radar limit (1.67km), unless they are moving or firing, which could either some visible distance or makes them fully visible.
- Ships powered down appear as grey dots until they are at 10% of the 5km radar limit (500m). All these being numbers adjustable for balance, of course.

We already have a little stealth-play with asteroids occluding radar - fleshing that out further creates more dynamic gameplay. Whether it be by my simplified mechanics, LNH's description, or any other implementation, it's a +1 from me.

+1 This is by far the most interesting suggestion I've seen in some time. I think it's a brilliant addition to the game and really deserves consideration. This would add some really fantastic dynamics to the best parts of the game like PvP and general combat!

I'm bumping this because it is still one of my favorite suggestions..

Yes, this is something I've thought about for a very long time. Since the origins of the game.

It's still on the long-term TODO, although it's more likely to become relevant with other potential changes.

Anyway, yes, very familiar with the idea.

The ramifications aren't just on PvP, they're also on evasion of border patrols, smuggling, crossing into adversarial space.. or simply exploring highly dangerous areas that are "far" from home, guarded by NPCs with greater persistancy of aggression. There are a lot of interesting tradeoffs.

I haven't prioritized it, because there have been too many pervasively "flawed" things to try and fix first. But, we'll get there.