Recognized by Council A modest Proposal regarding Scanners, Cloakers, and Jammers.

[JonasWalker]

Introduction ​

Hello. The current sensor/jamming/cloaking system is not one that many players nor Schine appear to be satisfied with at the moment for many reasons. Scanners are not very useful though there are plans to expand their utility while both cloaking and jamming have an entire litany of issues. One of the most glaring to me appears to be that both are a binary effect. There's no degree of play and counter play, which means if one is being used there's really nothing that can be done about it short of “kill it” and that's if they even get the chance. (I've personally seen Jammer equipped torpedo's that would prevent the AI from hitting them and are also too fast to hit manually for example). Hard absolutes such as these are very difficult to balance while also trying to encourage interesting game play.

As a result I've been thinking about how to potentially solve this for a bit and finally decided to put my two cents before the acid test of both the council and my fellow players. Within I will attempt to lay out the foundation of a system that I hope will fulfill the following four goals ranked in order of importance.

1. It must be fun for all players involved.
2. It must attempt to avoid win/lose scenario's that are impossible to counter under all circumstance. See goal one.
   
3. It must be both simple to learn yet offer enough depth that mastery keeps veteran players engaged. See goal one.
   
4. It must provide a solid foundation that can be expanded upon based on feedback and future additions.

Please note that all terms and numbers used in this post are purely for demonstration purposes and are not intended to represent final mechanics or names. ​

TLDR Summery
(This section actually kept up to date)
​

1. Things in StarMade space make noise. Could be EM radiation, could be fairydust. How much noise a thing makes is their Signature. This decreases with distance making it harder to detect the farther it is.
2. All else being equal including range, how much noise is made determines how easy something is to actually detect. This value can be negative for really sneaky stuff like Cloaks or when within a Jammers area of effect which can suppress a Signature score via the use of system+controller blocks akin to other ship systems. This is to still allow both Cloaks and Jammers to exist while also letting sufficiently powerful powerful sensor groups to see through their effects rather than an effect that is both absolute and unable to be countered. As a note Jammers suppress other signatures within their area of effect at the cost of raising the hosts own Signature by an equal measure.
3. Scanner Antenna's placed into a single group are a Sensor, with sensitivity in general proportion to size. All else being equal, the more sensitive it is the farther away a given noise can be detected. This is represented by their Resolution. This does mean a larger ship can mount a more sensitive array.
4. Sensors by default are passive entities which do not actively transmit. However they do have an optional Active ping that can be toggled to trade increased Resolution for temporarily raising ones Signature due to being quite noisy.
5. These two values interact so that a noise one array cannot detect at a given range may be picked up by having a more sensitive array and/or moving closer to the source. This result is the Return and is determined by adding a Sensors Resolution to an entities modified Signature (due to cloak/jamming/distance/etc). This value can be negative in which case the Return is negative and too weak for that Sensor to currently pick up.
6. If something is picked up and displayed on the Flight Hud as a Sensor Lock. The stronger the resulting Return (how well can a certain thing be seen) the more information you get, the quicker weapon lock-on times are, and the more accurate both Players (via improved target lead estimation) and AI/NPC's can target. Though even if no Sensor Lock occurs both are still free to "eyeball" things and attempt to land hits without those aids at reduced accuracy.

Key Terms​

Spoiler

• Active:
  • Sensor mode that transmits signals. Trades Stealth and increased power consumption for greater Resolution. Can be toggled using mechanics similar to Thruster calibration.
• Cloaking:
  • The ability to suppress a ship or stations Signature with an active effect.
• Contact:
  • A Signature bearing entity that can potentially be detected when within range of a Sensor.
• Drop Off:
  • How quickly does a Signature degrade when traveling.
• Jamming:
  • The ability to suppress the signature of other ships or stations within range at the cost of raising your own by an equal amount.
• Lock:
  • A contact that has been successfully Detected is considered to have a Sensor Lock upon it until its lost.
• Passive:
  • Sensor mode that only listens for ambient signals. Trades decreased Resolution for Stealth and less power consumption. Can be toggled using mechanics similar to Thruster calibration.
• Resolution:
  • A measure of a Sensors given sensitivity. This value CANNOT be negative.
• Return:
  • How strong the effective Signature of something is. The higher the return is over zero the stronger the resulting Sensor Lock.
• Sensor:
  • Scanner Antenna modules in one or more grouped arrays. Uses similar grouping mechanics Power Capacitors with rapidly increasing power usage. A a concession for ease of play assumed to be omnidirectional through directional detection could be interesting.
• Signature:
  • How much broad spectrum EM “noise” something emits. This value CAN go negative.

​

System Basics
​

Spoiler

The core of this suggestion is the assumption that all entities in StarMade, be they natural (planets/asteroids/Stars) or artificial(ships/stations), produce a varying amount of broad spectrum electromagnetic “noise” referred to henceforth in this post as a Signature. Each entity can only have one Signature value that represents the total sum of any system Signatures or effects they contain and is displayed (in the case for a player piloted entity either on the Flight Hud or in Build Mode) rounded up to the nearest Integer. Various things can effect this Signature, including Distance via Drop off, Energy usage/generation, use of Cloaking/Jamming Systems, Sensors, Weapons fire, FTL, etc. This Signature can potentially be detected by anything with a Sensor Group, henceforth shortened to Sensor, consisting of a contiguous group of one or more Scanner Antenna's linked to a Scanning Computer. However this is not automatic.

A Sensor has a Resolution based on its total group and is a measure of how sensitive a given array is. The higher its Resolution the farther it can potentially detect a Signature of a given strength. Sensors can be run in two modes, Active and Passive. Switching between each requires Calibration time similar to the mechanic currently used for Thrusters and until cool-down finishes they cannot detect anything nor be detected in turn while still consuming power.

When in Active mode a Sensor has its maximum Resolution at the cost of increased power consumption and actively transmitting which allows it to potentially be detected by other sensors by adding its own Resolution (in part or whole) to the entities overall Signature. Sensors in Passive mode suffer reduced Resolution due to only listening to ambient signal sources in exchange for reduced power consumption and lack of active transmission. While this means they are less acute it also means they are not transmitting any signals thus cannot be detected and do not increase an entities Signature.

In order to check if a Contact is actually detected a simple quick contest occurs between the Sensor or largest Sensor if an entity has multiple. Its Resolution is added to the modified Signature of the Contact as adjusted for Distance and other factors. The result found is the effective Return, or how strong a given Signature is detected, and if this value is greater than or equal to zero the Contact is picked up and displayed on the Player HUD as a Sensor Lock, hereafter called Lock. If the value is less than the Contact is not actually detected and thus not shown on the Player HUD. This allows a Signature of a given strength to be picked up at longer ranges by Sensors with higher Resolutions. Lock is assumed to remain until interrupted by a Return dropping below zero.

(If desired, one could potentially use the resulting margins of success and failure to determine the exact effects besides a simple Yes/No statement on if something is actually detected. Some potential examples would be basing missile lock on time on the level of Return or the exact level of detail given on a Contact that is successfully detected. Or even potentially the general direction of a Contacts FTL jump.)

Cloaking and Jamming are something that need their own paragraph to cover. Cloaking would be similar to what we have now and would serve to lower an entities Signature while active. However it would follow the current pattern of a controlling block linked to modules with the ratio of system size to overall mass would determine the strength of the overall effect. Cloaking may or may not also visually hide an entity using it and that is not discussed in this post. Jamming would work similarly and serve to reduce the Signature of all entities within its area of effect be they friend neutral or foe at the cost of raising the host entities Signature by the same amount. The ratio of system size to mass determining both how wide and strong the Jamming effect would be.

The reason I consider it critical that these two items be treated like other systems is that by doing so allows them to interact with Sensors without any of them being a certain win or loss like we have now. Any Sensor could potentially cut through any Cloak or Jamming given the right circumstances, but any Cloak or jamming could potentially still fool said Sensor in turn. All based purely on how a specific combination interacts along with player skill. This is the key element of dynamic interplay I feel is missing from the current system.

A few basic rules the system would potentially follow​

Spoiler

1. Sensors require a reasonable Line of Sight to a Contact before they can check to see if it is actually detected. Depending on the specifics this may or may not mean Signatures are attenuated by the total block mass between them and a sensor potentially effecting among other things ideal sensor placement. This could allow Locks to be broken.
2. Bigger Signature usually trumps smaller. If an Entity is hiding behind something with a significantly larger Signature, the smaller one cannot be detected until this is no longer the case. Conversely, a smaller Signature hiding in front of a larger one would treat the latter as if it were a jamming effect due to trying to pick out a dimmer object hiding in the middle of a floodlight. This could allow for Locks to be broken.
3. Bigger Resolution trumps smaller. In cases where an entity has multiple sensor groups only the highest Resolution sensor is used.
4. Both Cloaking and Jamming effects do not discriminate between Friend or Foe, and will effect all parties within range equally. This could allow Locks to be broken.

Worked Examples
​

For all worked examples, as stated previously, please keep in mind any listed value's are used purely for demonstration purposes and picked for simplicity. The math may also be slightly wrong since its not my strong suit.

Spoiler: Example 1

The Pirate ship MurderFace is attempting to stalk the Trade Guild freighter MoMoney. Lets assume Drop Off is a reduction of 1 for every 10 meters (Inverse Square Law, whats that? :D) and that Passive sensors have ½ their Active Resolution.

MurderFace's Captain orders the Sensor array to run passive and to engage cloak as the hunt begins. Their cloak reduces their base Signature of 30 by an impressive 50 points, giving them an effective Signature of -20. Their usually 100 Resolution Sensor starts to re-calibrate into Passive mode, which will reduce its Resolution to only 50.

Meanwhile MoMoney isn't yet aware of the danger and has no cloak to run since those cost money to run and to maximize profits operational costs have to stay low. They have a small navigational array that's currently operating in Active mode with a Resolution of 21. This gives them an overall Signature of 20.

MurderFace's Sensors finally reset and start passively listening for targets. With an effective Resolution of 50 they raise the Signature of MoMoney to 70. This means that even with Signatures decreasing by 1 point for every 10 meters traveled (or fraction there of) they are still able to establish a Lock up to 700 Meters away. Their captain orders preparations to prepare boarding as they creep closer.

MoMoney continues on their course to deliver Space-Ale to a nearby Trading Post. With an Active Sensor array working at maximum efficiency they have an effective Resolution of 21. However vs the -20 Signature of MurderFace they won't be able to establish a Lock until (due to rounding up) the Pirates get within 20 meters. While the crew of MoMoney at least gets some warning it comes only moments before their hull is swarming with Pirates. Things are going to be interesting.

Spoiler: Example 2

Fresh off their haul of Space-Ale (wimpy Trade Guild lackey's are no match for Laser Cutlasses) the Pirate ship MurderFace is out on the hunt once again. This time they feel cocky and decide to stalk the Outcast ship Voids Shadow with the same assumptions as before.

Once again MurderFace goes into silent running with an effective Signature of -20 and Passive Sensor Resolution of 50.

The Voids Shadow does possess a cloaking system but is currently not making use of it, leaving with with an effective Signature of 30. However unknown to anyone but their crew (and the wreck they “liberated” it from) packed into the hull is an absolutely massive 300 Resolution Sensor. Currently this is operated in Passive mode to ration power consumption giving it a still impressive Resolution of 150. This has the side effect of not raising their overall Signature even higher.

MurderFace can establish a lock onto the Voids Shadow with Passive Sensors at 800 meters or less. They continue to creep closer and once again prepare for boarding.

Voids Shadow however due to their highly sensitive array, at 150 Resolution, is able to establish a Lock on the tiny sensor Return of MurderFace at 1.3 Kilometers away. Their captain decides to let the Pirates continue to think they have remained undetected for the moment, letting them close to before unloading everything they have at point blank range once most of the Pirates are ready to board. Based on these readings the captain decides MurderFace has some nice weapons worth salvaging and its more efficient to target the meat instead of the metal. The crew of MurderFace won't know what hit them.

*Fixed some spelling.

 

[jstenholt]

This is way too complicated for a thread, not to mention a sandbox game with an already steep learning curve. It took me three tries to even read this train-explosion of a suggestion.

Yes the current system is not great, but that's because it's too complex as is, it's problem is implementation, not function.

 

[Jaaskinal]

This is way too complicated for a thread, not to mention a sandbox game with an already steep learning curve. It took me three tries to even read this train-explosion of a suggestion.

Yes the current system is not great, but that's because it's too complex as is, it's problem is implementation, not function.

Big bright ship = easy to see. Small dim ship = hard to see. Small sensor array with no power = fucking blind as a bat, but possibly not going to be seen either. Big sensor array with powaaaaa = bright as day, for you and everyone else.

While I agree that this suggestion is a bit complex, mechanics like this can be interesting in games, and introduce a lot of counter-plays in addition to the weapons meta. The core idea of a spotting mechanic is great though.



I've made a suggestion like this in the past, and there's always a few issues with this type of system, and I'd like to ask you some of them to find out your opinion.

1) For scanners, you say that their resolution should be determined by the total group [size], which would favor a high visibility meta with large ships. Do you think this should be changed to a system-proportional method, or should bigger ships just have more accurate scanners?

2) How would docked entities interact with this system? Would it be possible to lock on docked entities before the main ship? Or is everything lumped together into the mothership.

3) How would AI use this mechanic. Would fleets/bobby AI only engauge targets that are locked in, what about turrets? Would they need to get their own lock on or would they use the motherships lock on.



Anyways, another comment relating to stuff you said in specific,

• Sensors require a reasonable Line of Sight to a Contact before they can check to see if it is actually detected. Depending on the specifics this may or may not mean Signatures are attenuated by the total block mass between them and a sensor potentially effecting among other things ideal sensor placement. This could allow Locks to be broken.

This is really difficult for computers to do because of the required raytracing and would not be a very common mechanic to abuse.

 

[jstenholt]

Big bright ship = easy to see. Small dim ship = hard to see. Small sensor array with no power = fucking blind as a bat, but possibly not going to be seen either. Big sensor array with powaaaaa = bright as day, for you and everyone else.

I understand that, I understand what the OP is trying to say. The problem is that they didn't say that; instead they on for literally 2100 words that only the most hardcore, dedicated Starmakers would suffer through if it were a game feature. This entire thread could be nuked and replaced with your quote here and it would be 10 times the post it was originally.

 

[JNC]

I agree, your suggestion is quite long and complex :/ However, you did a good job keeping it all organized; i'll try to respond to some points as they were written. Try to focus on the suggestion istenholt, not necessarily how it was written.... you're missing the point of this forum otherwise.

Absolutely! The sensor/jamming/cloaking sys has been lacking for a while.

Does ship damage affect signature in real time and how does docking affect it?

Ehh, active and passive sensors... if your adding the sensor res to the ships signature (when active) why not make it like sonar and have active be a 'ping' because that's how it reads and im sure that's how it would be used, unless your in a ship that isnt concerned with its signature.

sensor lock - It feels odd to have a limited sensor range in space... why not have the lock be based on both the signature and the sensor resolution in that, with distance, the sensors effective resolution would become lower, thus only being able to detect larger and larger sigs.... it would be dumb to have the death star sitting 10m outside your max sensor range and not be able to pick it up. :P

Cloaking currently does not affect radar, it lowers the objects 'visible signature'. So a cloaked vehicle can be detected, just not seen.

"ideal sensor placement" hmm, as you mentioned, this is not currently a thing so how do you determine 'sensor placement'? Perhaps it could be oriented based on its longest axis? Also, if you introduce directional scanners, i think than, you'd also have to introduce radiation patterns... what's the sensors field of view, and can this be modified?

Larger signatures covering smaller ones. Shouldnt this depend on the viewing sensors resolution? After all, that is what we're talking about, a low res sensor wouldnt be able to distinguish between a large blob and a nearby small blob... as it would all just be one big blob. Whereas a high res sensor could easily see them as separate.

Instead of only using strongest sensor, why not combine multiple sensor resolutions if they are all viewing the same object? They would even likely have different perspectives which could help to detect things, or maintain a target lock.

 

[alterintel]

This is way too complicated for a thread, not to mention a sandbox game with an already steep learning curve. It took me three tries to even read this train-explosion of a suggestion.

Normally I agree with jstenholt. This would be one of those very few occasions that I don't. JonasWalker, I thought your post was very well thought out, and it was easy for me to follow. But maybe I'm looking at it with fresher eyes? Who knows?

Anyways, there have been countless suggestions for a better cloak/jammer/scanner system, and I would consider this to be one of the better ones.

You did briefly mention that a ships signature should be based on not just sensors power output, but also on power and maybe thruster usage. I would have liked to see more talk about this. Maybe something like a signature increase of 1 for every 1000 power used or something like that. This way a ship may be able to go dark by turning off it's own reactor?

I really like this idea. Thanks for sharing

 

[jstenholt]

Normally I agree with jstenholt. This would be one of those very few occasions that I don't.

I like to think of myself as someone who is generally agreeable, so thanks!

And if the community at large really thinks that this suggestion is the best thing to add to Starmade's already hefty owner's manual, in addition to the ever evolving complexity that will be the fleet system, NPC and fauna implementation, and the crew system, by all means, I'll get my reading glasses.

In my opinion, the best way to rework cloak, jam, and scan is by turning them into effects. And what do you know, that's a suggestion made by me a year and a half ago. So here's my shameless plug. Convert Cloakers and Jammers to Effects

 

[Olxinos]

Basically, the core idea is that each ship have some kind of "stealth score" (which you negated and called "signature") and may have some kind of "detection score" (which you called "resolution"), and if Opponent_Stealth + some_increasing_function(distance) < Your_Detection you detect the opponent ship, right?

Simple enough, I kinda like it. It can't be worse than the current "all or nothing" cloaking/jamming system at least.

I have a few critics though:
- There's something which may be too understated: "why is detection actually useful? what can I do/can't I do to a detected/undetected ship? can I see it without my sensors detecting it? if so, should I be able to shoot it?", plus in your keyterms (under "Return") you told about "stronger sensor locks", does that mean there would be different levels of detection? how would that impact the game? are these different levels really necessary (simpler is better)?
- I'm not a fan of those active/passive sensor modes, I feel like your system doesn't need that to work and simpler is better.
- Jaaskinal already talked about the required line of sight being certainly uselessly performance-consuming, I feel the same way
- I think you tried to detail this a bit too much, you should have started with the core idea before anything else (especially before your terminology)

(btw, adding bonus stealth depending on the presence of stars, asteroids, or gas clouds could be an interesting way to add diversity to the game, but we're not here yet)

 

[Madman198237]

This thread is very similar to a thread from a while back. Very similar, so I'm just gonna also shamelessly plug it: FSM #35, one of my favorite threads, here: Recognized - Cloak, Jam, and Scan. System Revamp
I don't entirely agree with the OP on that thread, but throughout the thread (Look at the last page of comments for a good summary of the ideas) a different and, I think, relatively easy and SCIENTIFIC (Sometimes) method of working cloaking and scanning, based around modern sonar detection systems.

For those who don't really want to read through 3 pages of discussion:
The basic idea of the reworked idea (Yes, I did come up with most of it. I warned you it was a shameless plug) is, much like this OP's idea, that every action of a system onboard a ship generates some sort of EM emission, whether it be heat from electronics or radiation from thrusters, weapons fire, or the radar-esque waves I assume the scanner would rely on. Passive scanners "listen" for this EM noise, and active scanners generate huge amounts of it in order to find people.
Instead of a cloaking computer, I proposed computer-less modules that absorb this radiation to a degree, while active cloaking works by making your ship a complete, universe-matching color based on the majority of the skybox you happen to be in. Sitting still makes your ship exactly match the background...but a good scanner could still detect you if you're running anything else.
Jammers overwhelm space with EM radiation, but make it impossible for any scanners to function. Once you light up a jammer, you've consigned everyone in the area to fight blind for a while.
Every ship would end up with a value for the EM radiation it's emitting

 

[nightrune]

I understand that, I understand what the OP is trying to say. The problem is that they didn't say that; instead they on for literally 2100 words that only the most hardcore, dedicated Starmakers would suffer through if it were a game feature. This entire thread could be nuked and replaced with your quote here and it would be 10 times the post it was originally.

We aren't all crazy wordsmiths. Sometimes you have to put it all out there. He did, and I think Olxinos is right about the stealth score. It boils down to a single number per entity. I like this. Then we get to decide how we interact with that number and what it means.

I originally liked Madman198237 's idea when I read it, but I like this mechanic more. Simply because its a bit more intuitive and easier. It also becomes easier to develop because its just another bar on the ship like hp or armor. Then in the block config we can determine how it adds and subtracts from the ship score.

The other thing I like is how easy it would be for the environment to adjust this score. In a nebulae or close to a sun? Simply add/subtract (what ever the mechanic is) a number based on sector.

Another reason I like this is, it could apply pretty easy to asteroids as well. You would have to be in active mode to actually find asteroids that weren't in your sector. Which makes you a target for pirates!

I like JonasWalker 's interpretation of cloak as well. I think it would be neat to have a threshold where you couldn't see a ship. The magic thing about the stealth score is we could add movement into the fray as well. I think there should be a set of thresholds for visibility. Gone, a slight shimmer, and partial shimmer, visible. I'm not sure how, but I imagine it as a shader similar to the shield effect.

Overall great idea and I'm looking forward to the answers on Jaaskinal 's questions.

 

[StarWars1981]

This is, basically, playing Submarines in Space. So, to sum it up and then put in some changes. I would, of course, invite the OP author to read FSM #35 cause it's similar and deals with the same thing.
So, on a modern submarine, it's not EM radiation "noise", it's straight-up noise. The hull and engines are designed (at a multimillion dollar cost, don't forget) to reduce noise to a minimum. They reflect SONAR waves, aka magic "sensor waves". We're basically using an EM radiation based sonar system in both this and FSM #35. Cloaking and Jamming reduce those, Jamming is AoE and cloak is single-ship. Active sonar bounces ultrasonic "pings" off other objects, passive listens for sounds OR the other guy's pings. Same with the scanners, but watching radiation. Various things affect this - including running systems, size of the object (reflects more radiation due to a larger surface - duh )
Now, I would propose some changes.
First, Cloaking eliminates both visual and EMR (electromagnetic radiation if you don't know, but I'm lazy and I do) pickup on a ship, possibly also on a station with the bonus of a reduced power cost cause it ain't moving (again, duh). But it's usually bigger. And ... also ... if you can't find it to dock with it and trade/save your poor ship ... it isn't much use. This means your scanner must A. be powerful enough to pierce the field and bounce something off the hull or B. sensitive enough to hear it or C. converted to thrusters cause you can't kill what you can't see. - works basically like it does now, but it will have thresholds and a continuum of function. There's Stationary, Mobile, and Combat grades of stealth. The upper two- moving and in combat - cannot be attained by reasonable large ships given huge power costs. Stationary cloaking means NOTHING can be operating - turrets cannot be tracking, thrusters or shield charge functioning, or power charging if you can avoid it. Mobile status means the cloak has enough power donated to it to keep the ship TOTALLY cloaked while mobile. In-combat means you can fire and operate everything on the ship and still be cloaked (practically impossible for power consumption reasons on anything larger than a small fighter). Now, there's a continuum. The cloak operates above a set amount of power given to it (the required power is based on mass/block count /dimensions /what-have-you), where it begins shielding EMR and visual images from others. As you increase this, it has a greater effect (similar to Jammers, but not AoE) until such time as you're absolutely invisible to all but the largest sensor sticks on a ship. This increases along those three tiers, which are just for player reference and don't actually change performance in-game.

Jammers have an area of effect. However, the way they work is to drown out individual noises or EMR hotspots you can see/hear. They broadcast a huge amount of information on all frequencies they can, drowning out signals or reflections from other ships at the COST of making it really dang obvious that Hey, There's a big ship here with a LOT of power. But you can't target it because the EMR it emits is going to coat a large region of space in radiation, meaning missiles would just fire through the cloud, and AI gunners would be spraying and praying. Players may try visual tracking - if they're not firing on cloaked ships.
TL;DR: You don't get one. Just skim it, it's basic. Go ahead and reply if you want me to reread and fix anything incomprehensible. Please, do.
Thanks for reading a Text Wall by StarWars1981. Again.
This is fun.

 

[JonasWalker]

-partial snip-

1) For scanners, you say that their resolution should be determined by the total group [size], which would favor a high visibility meta with large ships. Do you think this should be changed to a system-proportional method, or should bigger ships just have more accurate scanners?

2) How would docked entities interact with this system? Would it be possible to lock on docked entities before the main ship? Or is everything lumped together into the mothership.

3) How would AI use this mechanic. Would fleets/bobby AI only engauge targets that are locked in, what about turrets? Would they need to get their own lock on or would they use the motherships lock on.



Anyways, another comment relating to stuff you said in specific,



This is really difficult for computers to do because of the required raytracing and would not be a very common mechanic to abuse.

1. Depends entirely on what would be deemed the better mechanic. On one hand you can make a logical argument about bigger sensors = better sensors but then in order to prevent all seeing titans you'd need to counterbalance it with something. Diminishing bonus similar to reactors or even exponential power usage. To be fair it'd also depend on exactly how much Resolution a single Scanner Antenna module gave. If you get like one per block base its a whole different ballgame than say if that same base is 100.

On the other hand having it be proportional would better fit with the current system mechanics and allow for both a fighter and a titan to have equally sharp eyes. I'm not married to either and in fact is the exact reason why I posted this in the first place. I want it to be picked apart so perhaps in the end there may be some gem found in the otherwise pile of turds.

2. For simplicity sake I'd personally lean towards any active docked entities just contribute to their parents signature score but thats me. This would also help avoid the huge cloud of docked entity tags we currently have on the Flight Hud. However this would need work to prevent abuse with say docked Cloakers or Jammers. Perhaps Cloaking only goes from Mother>Child while the Signature bump from Jamming goes Child>Mother. This would mean if a ship cloaks its turrets won't still be 'floating' there in space while also not letting you use a docked Jammer for a free Signature decrease.

3. Thats a tricky one. If AI and NPC's in general can only fire on targets they get a Lock on it'd mean you have the same problem we currently have of AI dumbly staring out in space as they get blown apart because 'nothing' is there. On the other hand if they can fire on things they don't have a Lock on anyway then instead you potentially have the issue like we do right now where AI entirely ignores Jamming effects. To add more fun to the pile it'd also heavily depend on how things were eventually balanced as mentioned in #1' In particular how bright of a Signature 'flare' weapons fire is. Assuming that weapons fire would light up even a hardcore cloaker like a Christmas Tree I'd lean more towards primarily them favoring Lock targeting as their primary method but perhaps also letting them 'blind fire' at their best guess where something is after being initially detected. Perhaps some sort of mechanic where Signatures don't change immediately but instead per 'tick' so you'd have both a ramp up when firing and a ramp down afterwards extending the potential contact time?

4. I figured the ray-tracing bit was a bit iffy, but I'd rather include it in the initial pile then discard than vice versa. the whole point of this exercise after all is to pick through the rubbish for potential Gems the Dev's can possibly use even if only as inspiration.

I understand that, I understand what the OP is trying to say. The problem is that they didn't say that; instead they on for literally 2100 words that only the most hardcore, dedicated Starmakers would suffer through if it were a game feature. This entire thread could be nuked and replaced with your quote here and it would be 10 times the post it was originally.

My apologies about that. Originally I had planned a basic summary but it must have gotten lost somewhere between the fatigue induced vertigo and four cups of tea. Added in a TLDR summery as per your suggestion.

I agree, your suggestion is quite long and complex :/ However, you did a good job keeping it all organized; i'll try to respond to some points as they were written. Try to focus on the suggestion istenholt, not necessarily how it was written.... you're missing the point of this forum otherwise.

Absolutely! The sensor/jamming/cloaking sys has been lacking for a while.

(1)Does ship damage affect signature in real time and how does docking affect it?

(2)Ehh, active and passive sensors... if your adding the sensor res to the ships signature (when active) why not make it like sonar and have active be a 'ping' because that's how it reads and im sure that's how it would be used, unless your in a ship that isnt concerned with its signature.

(3)sensor lock - It feels odd to have a limited sensor range in space... why not have the lock be based on both the signature and the sensor resolution in that, with distance, the sensors effective resolution would become lower, thus only being able to detect larger and larger sigs.... it would be dumb to have the death star sitting 10m outside your max sensor range and not be able to pick it up. :p

(4)Cloaking currently does not affect radar, it lowers the objects 'visible signature'. So a cloaked vehicle can be detected, just not seen.

(5)"ideal sensor placement" hmm, as you mentioned, this is not currently a thing so how do you determine 'sensor placement'? Perhaps it could be oriented based on its longest axis? Also, if you introduce directional scanners, i think than, you'd also have to introduce radiation patterns... what's the sensors field of view, and can this be modified?

(6)Larger signatures covering smaller ones. Shouldnt this depend on the viewing sensors resolution? After all, that is what we're talking about, a low res sensor wouldnt be able to distinguish between a large blob and a nearby small blob... as it would all just be one big blob. Whereas a high res sensor could easily see them as separate.

(7)Instead of only using strongest sensor, why not combine multiple sensor resolutions if they are all viewing the same object? They would even likely have different perspectives which could help to detect things, or maintain a target lock.

1. As mentioned to Jaaskinal I'd personally lean towards active docked entities adding their signature to the mother for simplicity reasons. As for ship damage I'm honestly not sure as that thought didn't occur to me. Perhaps its assumed that most ships have inherent dampening thats below the game resolution and when hurt get a signature boost based on some proportion of their current/max System HP to represent disruption to these measures? So even after reboot tear a ship up enough and it may still glow like a small sun until repairs are made? Not sure just throwing idea's at the wall Cave Johnson style and seeing what sticks.

2. I like your idea of sensors defaulting to passive mode with an optional Active Ping to boost Resolution in exchange for going Here I Am to anything nearby. Its honestly a bit simpler than what I had considered.

3. In theory it should already work similar to that. I probably conveyed it poorly but the only real 'range' of a Sensor is based on both its Resolution and the Signature (how noisy) the object your trying to detect. The Sensors Resolution score is added to a Signature after the latter is modified for any influencing factors. Thus in theory even a weak sensor could detect stuff in another galaxy if it was sufficiently noisy. The specific formula I used for the examples was Return = (Resolution+Base Signature)+((-Distance/Drop Off)+(Cloaking+Jamming)).

4. Fair point. The main reason I wasn't concerned with visual stealth is its already difficult to pick things out without the navigation menu and I don't expect it to get any easier. So if a Cloaking system still visually hides someone along with suppressing their Signature I'd consider that more of a side bonus than anything else.

5. Sensor placement was a potential idea and while I would personally find it interesting it may be better to just hand wave it for ease of play reasons in hindsight. Though it would make a decent mod I think. If it was vanilla instead I'd fully be for adjustable 'sight cones' so to speak but I'm not sure how to do this. Could be determined mechanically by its actual construction or maybe a slider requiring recalibration time?

6. You do have a point. Could treat it as a jamming effect which means while its harder for a Sensor to tell them apart its sill possible. Was originally suggested for ease of play reasons.

7. That suggestion was in attempt to prevent similar abuse like we see with docked Scanners currently along with once again ease of play so players only had to worry about a single group on a ship. Though letting multiple groups pool their overall Resolution would match the same mechanics that has an entity pull multiple on board Signatures into one overall score.

Normally I agree with jstenholt. This would be one of those very few occasions that I don't. JonasWalker, I thought your post was very well thought out, and it was easy for me to follow. But maybe I'm looking at it with fresher eyes? Who knows?

Anyways, there have been countless suggestions for a better cloak/jammer/scanner system, and I would consider this to be one of the better ones.

You did briefly mention that a ships signature should be based on not just sensors power output, but also on power and maybe thruster usage. I would have liked to see more talk about this. Maybe something like a signature increase of 1 for every 1000 power used or something like that. This way a ship may be able to go dark by turning off it's own reactor?

I really like this idea. Thanks for sharing

That was entirely what I was hoping to convey and the sort of flexibility I'd eventually love to see. Being able to reduce power usage to a bare minimum and drift through a sensor net with as small of a signature as possible is exactly the sort of dynamic interplay I wanted to make possible. Where as actual battles should be quite loud and easy to detect since you have gobs of thrust, weapons fire, and shields being thrown everywhere.

Basically, the core idea is that each ship have some kind of "stealth score" (which you negated and called "signature") and may have some kind of "detection score" (which you called "resolution"), and if Opponent_Stealth + some_increasing_function(distance) < Your_Detection you detect the opponent ship, right?

Simple enough, I kinda like it. It can't be worse than the current "all or nothing" cloaking/jamming system at least.

I have a few critics though:
(1)- There's something which may be too understated: "why is detection actually useful? what can I do/can't I do to a detected/undetected ship? can I see it without my sensors detecting it? if so, should I be able to shoot it?", plus in your keyterms (under "Return") you told about "stronger sensor locks", does that mean there would be different levels of detection? how would that impact the game? are these different levels really necessary (simpler is better)?
(2)- I'm not a fan of those active/passive sensor modes, I feel like your system doesn't need that to work and simpler is better.
(3)- Jaaskinal already talked about the required line of sight being certainly uselessly performance-consuming, I feel the same way
(4)- I think you tried to detail this a bit too much, you should have started with the core idea before anything else (especially before your terminology)

(btw, adding bonus stealth depending on the presence of stars, asteroids, or gas clouds could be an interesting way to add diversity to the game, but we're not here yet)

1. Considering you can fire now using nothing but the Mk1 eyeball that would remain unchanged. Sensor detection would just make it easier to target and give more information that "here be target". Return strength depends entirely on if that level of detail would be desired. If yes then it would influence information given, lock on times for missiles etc. If not then anything over zero just means that entity is highlighted on your Flight Hud like how it currently is. Even if it didn't matter in vanilla having it as a potential hook for modders to play with is something I'd consider valuable.

2. I see your point and is why I ended up liking JNC's suggestion where all sensors by default are passive and have an optional active ping for increased Resolution at the cost of potentially giving away your position. Though as said I'm not exactly married to any of this.

3. Agreed. As said it was a feature I was a bit iffy on to start with and Jaaskinal's case made an excellent point as to why.

4. I likely did. I have a bad habit of skipping over the TLDR portion and diving right into the deep end without usually realizing it. At least until I can't feel the pools bottom and I'm trying to breath water.

This thread is very similar to a thread from a while back. Very similar, so I'm just gonna also shamelessly plug it: FSM #35, one of my favorite threads, here: Recognized - Cloak, Jam, and Scan. System Revamp
I don't entirely agree with the OP on that thread, but throughout the thread (Look at the last page of comments for a good summary of the ideas) a different and, I think, relatively easy and SCIENTIFIC (Sometimes) method of working cloaking and scanning, based around modern sonar detection systems.

For those who don't really want to read through 3 pages of discussion:
The basic idea of the reworked idea (Yes, I did come up with most of it. I warned you it was a shameless plug) is, much like this OP's idea, that every action of a system onboard a ship generates some sort of EM emission, whether it be heat from electronics or radiation from thrusters, weapons fire, or the radar-esque waves I assume the scanner would rely on. Passive scanners "listen" for this EM noise, and active scanners generate huge amounts of it in order to find people.
Instead of a cloaking computer, I proposed computer-less modules that absorb this radiation to a degree, while active cloaking works by making your ship a complete, universe-matching color based on the majority of the skybox you happen to be in. Sitting still makes your ship exactly match the background...but a good scanner could still detect you if you're running anything else.
Jammers overwhelm space with EM radiation, but make it impossible for any scanners to function. Once you light up a jammer, you've consigned everyone in the area to fight blind for a while.
Every ship would end up with a value for the EM radiation it's emitting

Heh, now I'm wondering if I had read that in the past and was unconsciously recalling it when mulling over similar issues. Hard to tell since I only rarely frequented the forums until quite recently. Either way is a nice suggestion and came to a number of similar conclusions. :D

This is, basically, playing Submarines in Space. So, to sum it up and then put in some changes. I would, of course, invite the OP author to read FSM #35 cause it's similar and deals with the same thing.

-Content snip-

Thanks for reading a Text Wall by StarWars1981. Again.
This is fun.

You are absolutely correct, and for a good reason. Most sci-fi tends to follow the trope of Space is an Ocean and treats Cloaking as just a renamed Submarine. They end up doing many of the same things including usually becoming briefly visible when firing weapons and taking time to cloak/decloak (submerge/surface). So if its not broke and is a fairly nice working model that potentially fits with the rest of the overall theme...why try fixing it?

 

[Madman198237]

I hate the idea of a system-ship proportion because it then says that a five-kilometer long antenna is less effective on a 500000000 mass vessel than on a 2 mass ship attached to the same antenna. Larger vessels invariably have better antennae. However: The "noisier" a vessel, the worse its scanners' detection ability. If you're washing your scanner in EM radiation, it is never going to detect the stealth ship a sector away.


As for the AI problems, institute a system of decreasing accuracy based on the accuracy of AI firing data. If the ship is jamming, the AI uses visual sensors to target...which means average accuracy. The better the lock, the longer the AI's range gets for accurate and effective fire. A vessel emitting a signature the size of a small nova one sector away is going to be shot accurately, but the stealth ship 100 meters off the bow is going to get missed. A lot.

EDIT: Perhaps work this into the crew system, whenever we get it. BOBBY AI will lose targets if they're appropriately concealed (Low signature, effectively jammed), but NPC crewers can continue to fire with reduced accuracy.
Also, just making sure that this is mentioned: Jamming is only effective against weaker scanners. You need to have a powerful jamming array set up (Large antenna connected to your jamming computer, combined with some sort of power-selection system like the thrust menu, which allows you to choose the amount of power [And therefore the strength of the jamming] that you feed to the jamming system) A stronger scanner can "hear" signals through the jamming, because it's more sensitive.

Perhaps later we can get some sort of triangulation system, by which two or more vessels, in communication, can use received signals to determine the location of the signal-sending object.
Otherwise, we should just get a line indicating where the signal came from (Since direction is all you can tell with one receiver)

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

There are so many other (and more important) combat imbalances that need to be fixed first before this even becomes worth the devs' time to change.

Jammer equipped torpedo's

What?
What possible utility do torpedoes have over regular missiles? The explosive blocks are completely useless.

This suggestion is also very complicated and convoluted for a game that is quickly becoming bloated with unnecessary over-complication that is driving away new players.

 

[Jaaskinal]

There are so many other (and more important) combat imbalances that need to be fixed first before this even becomes worth the devs' time to change.



What?
What possible utility do torpedoes have over regular missiles? The explosive blocks are completely useless.

This suggestion is also very complicated and convoluted for a game that is quickly becoming bloated with unnecessary over-complication that is driving away new players.

Warheads bypass shields.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

Warheads bypass shields.

and?
Their damage output is pathetic.

plus a single scanner hit is enough to "uncloak" any torpedo
The funny thing is, turrets couldn't hit the torpedoes either way because AI aim is pretty terrible without massively changing the server config

 

[JonasWalker]

-Partial Snip-
This suggestion is also very complicated and convoluted for a game that is quickly becoming bloated with unnecessary over-complication that is driving away new players.

You do realize that the games still in Alpha and regardless of if this suggestion is accepted or not will continue to grow in complexity as new features are added? Frankly I trust the Devs to decide what is and is not an area that needs greater depth since most of the player base, myself included, know very little about game design and will instead confuse personal likes for decisions good for the game as a whole. Even if nothing in this suggestion is ever used the mere fact it has generated conversation on the topic is enough.

That aside, the entire point of this forum much less thread is not to go "this is bad" but instead "I think this could use work and here's why". So with that in mind what do you feel is overly complex about it? In what ways could it be improved? What could stand to be cut out? Criticism is pointless unless your willing to also add what needs improvement and how it could be done.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

Frankly I trust the Devs to decide what is and is not an area that needs greater depth since most of the player base, myself included,

Mostly I just think that old players like you and I often lack the perspective of how complicated the game is to a new player because we've been around for so long.

I wasn't trying to take a knock at you or your suggestion personally; just to point out that more complication in every last corner of the game is not a good idea.

 

[JonasWalker]

Mostly I just think that old players like you and I often lack the perspective of how complicated the game is to a new player because we've been around for so long.

I wasn't trying to take a knock at you or your suggestion personally; just to point out that more complication in every last corner of the game is not a good idea.

That is a fair criticism actually and one I do agree with. We need a balance between "Gee Wizz this is awesome!" and "The old ways were best" to both avoid going down the route of "Cubeatoms" and "Who needs these fancy rails" respectively. Its for that very reason I posted this in the first place so I could get the input of others because what to me may seem like an amazing idea might seem like the worst thing to another. I just hope that between the two some sort of middle ground can be found that if you squint just right maybe looks like the Devs could sort of make use of it. :D

 

[Lukwan]

One logical effect of the EM wars might be prolonged time to get missile-lock for 'blinded/jammed' ships. A ship that is generating a lot of EM-noise or that is very large should be easy to get a lock on.

My main issue is that jamming is inherently a non-stealth activity. How can you be actively jamming the air-waves and not be announcing yourself to the galaxy? Sensors and scanners are not synonymous. I like the OP ideas; they do not have to add much complexity if handled right.
Target location and acquisition are fundamental mechanics of modern warfare so they deserve to be well thought out in Alpha.