My suggestion is that each ship has a transponder that contains data about the ship like name (current not the name when it was spawned), Faction and Current Pilot. These transponders would always be active however they would only be read when the sector was scanned. This would mean that the scan data would contain not only players in range but also all empty ships in range. It would also display the ships location in addition to the transponder data. There would also be an option in the galaxy map to overlay the most recent scan data. It would allow you to chose what data about ships is displayed on the map. This list would include name, faction, pilot, direction/speed and how long ago the scan was. The location of the ship would be displayed automatically as a dot on the map and the direction/speed would be displayed as a line pointing in the direction and the size representing the speed. There could also be an option to extrapolate their current position from that data (this would fail if ether their speed or direction changes). The other data would be displayed as text. The transponder would always be on and be part of the core not a separate block.
There are 2 possibilities for disabling the transponder signal:
1. The transponder signal could be blocked by a radar jammer and use the current system for unjaming ships using a sufficiently powerful scanner.
2. There could be a transponder inhibitor block that has modules. This would disable the transponder on your ship. The mechanics to reveal the transponder would work like the jump drive and the jump inhibitor. If the transponder inhibitor has more modules then the scanner doesn't receive the signal but if the scanner has more modules then it dose. If they are very similar then the scanner might receive a partial signal that would contain some data but not all. if there are 6 possible data points that the transponder transmits and the scanner has the same number of modules as the inhibitor then the scanner receives a random 3 data points. If the scanner has say 3 more modules then it receives a random 4 data points. If it has 6 more modules it would receive 5 random data points and if it had 9more modules then it would receive all the data. The same is true in reverse for when the inhibitor has more modules.
This would be useful for finding lost ships and tracking people who are not in range of the navigation menu.
There are 2 possibilities for disabling the transponder signal:
1. The transponder signal could be blocked by a radar jammer and use the current system for unjaming ships using a sufficiently powerful scanner.
2. There could be a transponder inhibitor block that has modules. This would disable the transponder on your ship. The mechanics to reveal the transponder would work like the jump drive and the jump inhibitor. If the transponder inhibitor has more modules then the scanner doesn't receive the signal but if the scanner has more modules then it dose. If they are very similar then the scanner might receive a partial signal that would contain some data but not all. if there are 6 possible data points that the transponder transmits and the scanner has the same number of modules as the inhibitor then the scanner receives a random 3 data points. If the scanner has say 3 more modules then it receives a random 4 data points. If it has 6 more modules it would receive 5 random data points and if it had 9more modules then it would receive all the data. The same is true in reverse for when the inhibitor has more modules.
This would be useful for finding lost ships and tracking people who are not in range of the navigation menu.
