Completely Rework Scanning/Jamming/Cloaking

[Blaza612]

As we all know, the system isn't very customizable and quite frankly shit. So, why not make it similar to the jump drive vs inhibitor system?

Scanning
Scanning will be a passive module which consumes significantly less power and will provide signatures to the navigation panel. You can toggle it on or off, so as to save power. The range in which you can see signatures in the navigation panel will be significantly reduced, as the scanner modules will add to the scanning range.

The scanner modules will also provide scan strength, which will be used to counter radar jamming/cloaking.

Jamming
Jamming will be changed so that there are radar jamming modules. These modules will determine the strength of the radar jam, and if the jamming strength to radar strength is greater, then the radar will be successfully jammed. Example; 20:15 = radar jammed

The jamming range will also be determined by the jamming modules, but at a significantly less inclination. It will add to the range in a simple formula: current rage * 1.15 (subject to change balance). The jamming module can be toggled on or off, as to allow a player to do other things while jamming.

Cloaking
Cloaking is similar to jamming, but more trying to hide that you're there. Cloaking will also have cloaking modules, which will eat up MUCH LESS power than they currently do (the amount power they use is fucked) and will determine the strength of the cloak. There will be a required strength of cloak in order to successfully cloak the ship, which will be determined via exterior surface area (not interior, that's not meant to be cloaked) and if it is equal to or greater than the required strength, and enough power is supplied, then cloaking is successful.

In order to decloak someone, then you need to have an equal or greater scan strength than the cloaking strength of the cloak ship, which'll work in the same way as jamming, with a simple ration of scan strength to cloak strength. For example; 150:150 = decloak, 150:160 != decloak.

That's my suggestion to make scanning, jamming and cloaking vastly better, hopefully I got the ideas across properly.

 

[Jaaskinal]

I had an idea like this once :p
Based on my own finding issues with this system, I'd like to ask a few questions.
2) How would ai handle this? Would turrets be able to 'see' what the main ship can see?
3) What about drones, could they use scanners?
4) If they can, can they use jammers and cloakers?
5) Would distance factor into the calculation, or is stealth the same at any distance?
6) If the scanning and jamming/cloaking value are the same, which gets priority?
7) How would this scale? Linearly? Would it diminish in returns?
EDIT; because I forgot another interesting question
8) How would firing affect a ships jamming and cloaking values? What about moving? What about its scanning value?

 

[Blaza612]

I had an idea like this once :p
Based on my own finding issues with this system, I'd like to ask a few questions.
2) How would ai handle this? Would turrets be able to 'see' what the main ship can see?
3) What about drones, could they use scanners?
4) If they can, can they use jammers and cloakers?
5) Would distance factor into the calculation, or is stealth the same at any distance?
6) If the scanning and jamming/cloaking value are the same, which gets priority?
7) How would this scale? Linearly? Would it diminish in returns?
EDIT; because I forgot another interesting question
8) How would firing affect a ships jamming and cloaking values? What about moving? What about its scanning value?

1. I would expect the turrets to be able to see what the main ship sees.
2. I don't see why drones couldn't
3. Again, why not
4. Cloaking would be the same at any distance
5. The scanning, the jamming value needs to be greater in order to beat the scanning value
6. Each module would simply add 1 to the strength of that module. Range would be a bit more complicated, but would most likely just be current range * 1.15 or something similar
7. Firing I'm not sure how, but it would affect the cloak. Moving wouldn't affect any of them.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Suddenly Battlecruisers can stealth...

 

[Blaza612]

Suddenly Battlecruisers can stealth...

:D

 

[alterintel]

Here's my two cents:
We have a Radar Jammer module but we don't have an actual Radar module.
Why not have Radar Modules.

Radar Computer, and Modules:
Radar modules would be responsible for putting the targets on the screen, and being able to select them.
The Radar would have a range so the stronger the Radar the farther you can detect targets.
A really powerful Radar might be able to select targets hundreds of Km away.
Cannot be used while cloaking.

Radar Jammer Computer, and Modules:
act to reduce the detect-ability range of your ship.
Has no effect on Scanners.
So instead of somebody being able to target you at 5 Km away. They can't target you until they are only 2 Km away from you.
So a really strong Radar Jamming system, they wouldn't be able to target you until they're right on top of you.

Scanner Computer, and Modules:
Like the Radar Module, except it is passive only.
Scanners are un-affected by Radar Jammers.
A scanner can detect targets, but you can't select or "target" them. So you can detect other ships, you just can't select them.
Since you can't select the target, you wouldn't be able to see target information window either.
The more sensitive the scanner(determined by the number of modules), the better able it is to detect small signals
(this is because radar is the only thing that can give you detailed information.)
Scanners are more sensitive than Radar, so they are more capable of detected cloaked ships and anomalies
Scanners work better when your Radar is turned off
Can be used while cloaked.

Cloaking Computer and Modules:
Cloak is like Radar Jamming, but it also makes you invisible to the eye and scanners as well.
But this also works by range so the closer you are to a target, the more likely they are to able to see you either with radar or scanners.
The stronger the cloak the closer you need to be, to detect it. Or the stronger the cloak, the more sensitive your scanner needs to be to detect it.
Or the stronger the cloak the stronger your radar needs to be to detect it.

Edit: Balancing issues: Instead of the strength of the systems being purely determined by the size of the system, it should probably be based on ship module percentage ratios or something to make it fair for smaller ships as well.

 

[lilheartless]

As we all know, the system isn't very customizable and quite frankly shit. So, why not make it similar to the jump drive vs inhibitor system?

Scanning
Scanning will be a passive module which consumes significantly less power and will provide signatures to the navigation panel. You can toggle it on or off, so as to save power. The range in which you can see signatures in the navigation panel will be significantly reduced, as the scanner modules will add to the scanning range.

The scanner modules will also provide scan strength, which will be used to counter radar jamming/cloaking.

Jamming
Jamming will be changed so that there are radar jamming modules. These modules will determine the strength of the radar jam, and if the jamming strength to radar strength is greater, then the radar will be successfully jammed. Example; 20:15 = radar jammed

The jamming range will also be determined by the jamming modules, but at a significantly less inclination. It will add to the range in a simple formula: current rage * 1.15 (subject to change balance). The jamming module can be toggled on or off, as to allow a player to do other things while jamming.

Cloaking
Cloaking is similar to jamming, but more trying to hide that you're there. Cloaking will also have cloaking modules, which will eat up MUCH LESS power than they currently do (the amount power they use is fucked) and will determine the strength of the cloak. There will be a required strength of cloak in order to successfully cloak the ship, which will be determined via exterior surface area (not interior, that's not meant to be cloaked) and if it is equal to or greater than the required strength, and enough power is supplied, then cloaking is successful.

In order to decloak someone, then you need to have an equal or greater scan strength than the cloaking strength of the cloak ship, which'll work in the same way as jamming, with a simple ration of scan strength to cloak strength. For example; 150:150 = decloak, 150:160 != decloak.

That's my suggestion to make scanning, jamming and cloaking vastly better, hopefully I got the ideas across properly.

unfortunately your system completely negates what would be considered a "regular" stealth craft aka something small something light something fast

as a matter of fact your system completely negates stealth In almost every conceivable situation except for 1v1 ship vs ship battles of equal size

you wanna spy on a station.... to bad they have a crew member active in a ship docked to the main station or at a console on the main station attatched to a 100k block scanner good luck stealthing in in anything smaller than your 2kk block titan trying to fly around in ur 200 block scout ship? won't happen every 10k block and above ship will decimate ur stealth with their 75 block passive scanner pulses.

wanna radar jam ur fighter to be missile resistant in a big fleet battle? too bad their flagship has 40k scanner blocks more blocks in fact than ur entire ship guess these systems are completely worthless might as well not even have them.

 

[Blaza612]

unfortunately your system completely negates what would be considered a "regular" stealth craft aka something small something light something fast

as a matter of fact your system completely negates stealth In almost every conceivable situation except for 1v1 ship vs ship battles of equal size

you wanna spy on a station.... to bad they have a crew member active in a ship docked to the main station or at a console on the main station attatched to a 100k block scanner good luck stealthing in in anything smaller than your 2kk block titan trying to fly around in ur 200 block scout ship? won't happen every 10k block and above ship will decimate ur stealth with their 75 block passive scanner pulses.

wanna radar jam ur fighter to be missile resistant in a big fleet battle? too bad their flagship has 40k scanner blocks more blocks in fact than ur entire ship guess these systems are completely worthless might as well not even have them.

For fucks sake, not these kinds of arguments again...

The fact that someone can counter it by adding more modules is an INVALID reason ass to why the suggestion shouldn't be implemented. If they want to dedicate their lives to detecting cloaked ships, then why the fuck not? Why should they not be able to detect cloaked ships if they've put the time/resources into it?

Here's my two cents:
We have a Radar Jammer module but we don't have an actual Radar module.
Why not have Radar Modules.

Radar Computer, and Modules:
Radar modules would be responsible for putting the targets on the screen, and being able to select them.
The Radar would have a range so the stronger the Radar the farther you can detect targets.
A really powerful Radar might be able to select targets hundreds of Km away.
Cannot be used while cloaking.

Radar Jammer Computer, and Modules:
act to reduce the detect-ability range of your ship.
Has no effect on Scanners.
So instead of somebody being able to target you at 5 Km away. They can't target you until they are only 2 Km away from you.
So a really strong Radar Jamming system, they wouldn't be able to target you until they're right on top of you.

Scanner Computer, and Modules:
Like the Radar Module, except it is passive only.
Scanners are un-affected by Radar Jammers.
A scanner can detect targets, but you can't select or "target" them. So you can detect other ships, you just can't select them.
Since you can't select the target, you wouldn't be able to see target information window either.
The more sensitive the scanner(determined by the number of modules), the better able it is to detect small signals
(this is because radar is the only thing that can give you detailed information.)
Scanners are more sensitive than Radar, so they are more capable of detected cloaked ships and anomalies
Scanners work better when your Radar is turned off
Can be used while cloaked.

Cloaking Computer and Modules:
Cloak is like Radar Jamming, but it also makes you invisible to the eye and scanners as well.
But this also works by range so the closer you are to a target, the more likely they are to able to see you either with radar or scanners.
The stronger the cloak the closer you need to be, to detect it. Or the stronger the cloak, the more sensitive your scanner needs to be to detect it.
Or the stronger the cloak the stronger your radar needs to be to detect it.

Edit: Balancing issues: Instead of the strength of the systems being purely determined by the size of the system, it should probably be based on ship module percentage ratios or something to make it fair for smaller ships as well.

So you wish to add another type of computer/module for what reason exactly, and make everything based on ranges as well as have hard coded/not customizable scanning/radar? Personally, I don't like your idea, the point of the suggestion was to create a system based on the strengths, using a similar system to the jump inhibitors, and to allow more customization of the ship, as you can dedicate large chunks of it to scanning/seeing things on navigation from further away. You've decided to make it almost identical to the current changes, with some slight changes that add an interesting yet pointless mechanic. Jamming at the moment makes you invisible from navigation, but since it's called jamming it's meant to jam their scanning, and prevent them from using their scanning. You've come up with a system to improve that uses it's babby cloak roots which are not only the current system but aren't very good either. :p

 

[lilheartless]

For fucks sake, not these kinds of arguments again...

The fact that someone can counter it by adding more modules is an INVALID reason ass to why the suggestion shouldn't be implemented. If they want to dedicate their lives to detecting cloaked ships, then why the fuck not? Why should they not be able to detect cloaked ships if they've put the time/resources into it?

Because it literally keeps the systems literally as worthless as they are now it is actually more or less a direct nerf to both stealth and jamming because as of right now people already have more than 1 antennae because it lowers the cooldown it doesn't actually matter how many antennae you have but people already have lots of them for the cooldown.

In your new system it would take the crappy jammer that already doesn't actually do anything cause lol turrets and the stealth that is already really crappier and makes them require more block space to be able to use and then they are followed up by being completely useless.

I love how you didn't actually counter any of my arguments. THE ONLY SHIPS THAT WILL REALISTICALLY WANT CLOAK as a primary defensive or offensive system are scouts and fighters.

NO ONE WANTS to make their fighter out of ALL cloak and jam blocks to be able to resist the bare bones minimum level scanner systems that EVERY ship would have. Likewise no one wants their Exploration / spy vessel to be so huge it takes up a whole damn sector just so that it can be cloaked next to the station that its trying to spy on.

Likewise realistically small ships give off smaller signals which would make cloaking and jamming more effective.

you also don't account at all for the already stupid deficiency both cloaking and jamming suffer from in that 2 systems are directly countered by 1 system aka scanning kills both cloaking and jamming which actually means currently in your system each scanner block is worth effectively 2 blocks worth of system countering.

ALL of these things make your system just as bad / if not worse than the currently stupid and broken system we have now where both cloak and jam are extremely underpowered and the only reason cloaking is even a thing at all is because you cannot auto scan on stations, with the addition of crew being able to operate computers this will no longer (I'm assuming) be the case which will then completely nullify ANY use for cloaking (your system does nothing to address this because on a station you can dump as many scanner blocks as you damn well please) and just because someone can take an empty 50x50 room and dump antennae in it does not mean they should get to automatically be immune to other systems in the game.


In closing IF THERE IS GOING TO BE A CHANGE to the incredibly deficient and utterly shitty cloak and jam system we currently have it cannot be a hur dur my ship is bigger so it has more blocks so you automatically can't use 2 of ur systems ha ha.

 

[Blaza612]

Because it literally keeps the systems literally as worthless as they are now it is actually more or less a direct nerf to both stealth and jamming because as of right now people already have more than 1 antennae because it lowers the cooldown it doesn't actually matter how many antennae you have but people already have lots of them for the cooldown.

In your new system it would take the crappy jammer that already doesn't actually do anything cause lol turrets and the stealth that is already really crappier and makes them require more block space to be able to use and then they are followed up by being completely useless.

I love how you didn't actually counter any of my arguments. THE ONLY SHIPS THAT WILL REALISTICALLY WANT CLOAK as a primary defensive or offensive system are scouts and fighters.

NO ONE WANTS to make their fighter out of ALL cloak and jam blocks to be able to resist the bare bones minimum level scanner systems that EVERY ship would have. Likewise no one wants their Exploration / spy vessel to be so huge it takes up a whole damn sector just so that it can be cloaked next to the station that its trying to spy on.

Likewise realistically small ships give off smaller signals which would make cloaking and jamming more effective.

you also don't account at all for the already stupid deficiency both cloaking and jamming suffer from in that 2 systems are directly countered by 1 system aka scanning kills both cloaking and jamming which actually means currently in your system each scanner block is worth effectively 2 blocks worth of system countering.

ALL of these things make your system just as bad / if not worse than the currently stupid and broken system we have now where both cloak and jam are extremely underpowered and the only reason cloaking is even a thing at all is because you cannot auto scan on stations, with the addition of crew being able to operate computers this will no longer (I'm assuming) be the case which will then completely nullify ANY use for cloaking (your system does nothing to address this because on a station you can dump as many scanner blocks as you damn well please) and just because someone can take an empty 50x50 room and dump antennae in it does not mean they should get to automatically be immune to other systems in the game.


In closing IF THERE IS GOING TO BE A CHANGE to the incredibly deficient and utterly shitty cloak and jam system we currently have it cannot be a hur dur my ship is bigger so it has more blocks so you automatically can't use 2 of ur systems ha ha.

My previous point still stands, problems in the game should be able to be countered via building, or in this case, investing in 50k scanner modules in order to prevent stealth, which is realistically stupid. If someone has a far bigger ship than yours then there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't be able to invest in enough scanners to counter your cloaking. You're using the reasoning that big ships are bad, and we need to get rid of them to make way for smaller ships as a reason to why this suggestion is shit. Without any proper reasoning as to why they're bad for the game, your argument becomes completely and utterly invalid.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

Lil is kind of right... there would need to be some serious balancing involved, scaling the amounts of modules each ship has to have in order to be cloaked or decloaked. If radar blocks scaled up linearly in power same as cloaking modules, it would be nice and simple.

Example:
Ship A is a scout, 1000 blocks, 50 of which are devoted to cloak - Ratio of 1/20 or 5%
Ship B is a Battleship, 500.000 blocks, 10000 of which are devoted to radar - Ratio of 1/50 or 2%
Ship B cannot see ship A.

Example 2 - if radars have a higher strength than cloaks:
Ship A is a scout with a cloak ratio of 1/20
Ship B is a battleship with a radar of 10k mass and strength of n+(n*1.5) (where n is the nominal amount of radar blocks) = 10k+15k=25k
25k/500k = 1/20
Ship A cannot cloak against ship B anymore.

Just basing the cloaked vs spotted mechanism on amount of blocks wouldn't be fair or effective - remember you are trying to hide ships of different sizes. By scaling scan requirements we could balance out the differences between ship sizes vs sizes of their arrays. And the larger each array is, the more power it will consume and thus be more costly to run. You don't want to make it too easy to find all your enemies with a tiny radar but you also don't want everyone to run cloaked all the time like it's nothing.

That's just my opinion. Game is in pretty heavy development though so who's to say these systems won't get an update sooner or later

 

[lilheartless]

Lil is kind of right... there would need to be some serious balancing involved, scaling the amounts of modules each ship has to have in order to be cloaked or decloaked. If radar blocks scaled up linearly in power same as cloaking modules, it would be nice and simple.

Example:
Ship A is a scout, 1000 blocks, 50 of which are devoted to cloak - Ratio of 1/20 or 5%
Ship B is a Battleship, 500.000 blocks, 10000 of which are devoted to radar - Ratio of 1/50 or 2%
Ship B cannot see ship A.

Example 2 - if radars have a higher strength than cloaks:
Ship A is a scout with a cloak ratio of 1/20
Ship B is a battleship with a radar of 10k mass and strength of n+(n*1.5) (where n is the nominal amount of radar blocks) = 10k+15k=25k
25k/500k = 1/20
Ship A cannot cloak against ship B anymore.

Just basing the cloaked vs spotted mechanism on amount of blocks wouldn't be fair or effective - remember you are trying to hide ships of different sizes. By scaling scan requirements we could balance out the differences between ship sizes vs sizes of their arrays. And the larger each array is, the more power it will consume and thus be more costly to run. You don't want to make it too easy to find all your enemies with a tiny radar but you also don't want everyone to run cloaked all the time like it's nothing.

That's just my opinion. Game is in pretty heavy development though so who's to say these systems won't get an update sooner or later

This is also not very fun ... a giant scanning array is not going to be less effective just because its on a larger ship this is counter intuitive the problem comes mostly from the fact that the smaller something is the harder it is to detect there needs to be some kind of non linear falloff for the effectiveness of cloaking and to a more limited effect jamming as the size of your ship increases.

Aka a small 30 block ship should be able to literally sit next to you cloaked with only 2 cloaking blocks even though you have 20k scanner blocks but a 50k block ship with 3700 cloaking blocks should be detected instantly

 

[Lord Daro]

This is also not very fun ... a giant scanning array is not going to be less effective just because its on a larger ship this is counter intuitive the problem comes mostly from the fact that the smaller something is the harder it is to detect there needs to be some kind of non linear falloff for the effectiveness of cloaking and to a more limited effect jamming as the size of your ship increases.

Aka a small 30 block ship should be able to literally sit next to you cloaked with only 2 cloaking blocks even though you have 20k scanner blocks but a 50k block ship with 3700 cloaking blocks should be detected instantly

I agree with so far. I would just like to add some of my thoughts:

While with the above cloacking would be already connected to the ships size, i think the same can go for the singature of entities in generall. Like an permanent cloack value based on size. That way smaller ships automatically only show up on the radar when they are a bit closer, wich i think most people would expect from them.
Also i think the cloacking effects should remain a two-part system similar to now.
Becoming invisible only makes sense when in visual range, but ships that don't need to be hidden when close up could go with the cheaper version and only install modules that reduce their signature. This could be called something like "signature Masker" or so, while the jammer then can do what the name suggests. Only that it basically blinds everyone in range. (Also i would love for some natural objects like solar flares or nebulare to have such an effect)

And lastly: If jammers and scanners are based on sole block count, it could serve as encouragement to design stations and ships dedicated towards these functions. Especially for factions.