Well here's an idea. Instead of weaponizing the scanner, make it more useful and more needed. This unfortunately, requires a redesign of some current elements such as navigation filters.
The scanner array should be the ship's sensors array. This means that a ship without a scanner array could have only limited information of its surroundings, only relying on basic sensors. This means the detection of heat signatures or gravitational fields, but for example, no lifesigns, ship status info (shield, armor and system hp), asteroid mass and ore info, or faction identifier.
Scanners on ships would have 3 operating modes:
- Passive scanner: unless the scanner is activated, it is in passive mode, consuming a small amount of power per antenna block(just like rail mass enhancers). This would display lifesigns, serve as IFF, display shield amount, power, armor and system HP.
- Combat scanner ping(left click): an active scanner ping would consume a larger amount of power, send the scanner into cooldown and reveal cloaked ships in a rather large radius depending on the amount of scanner blocks in the system (and NOT the ratio to ship mass. Why would the same size of antenna be more effective on a corvette than on a destroyer?) The area cap wouldbe matching a 100% missile/beam weapon system's for consistency.
- Recon scanner ping(right click): sends out a differently tuned long-range scanner ping that returns the location of every active (moving, attacking, mining) ship, player or AI controlled alike, in a radius scaling with the amount of blocks in the scanner array but IT DOES NOT reveal cloaked vessels. Max scanned area is the entire current system. Has the same power usage and cooldown, isn't affected by being in own, neutral or hostile system.
Scanners could be connected to logic, but a logic-activated scanner array could ONLY give the combat scan ping, in order to avoid spamming all nearby players with scan reports.
Cloaking/jamming would also require a rework. A cloaker module would be the have-it-all, being able to be switched between 2 modes:
- Active cloaking(left click): 1500 energy/mass/sec, full cloak+jam, deactivates upon firing or getting hit by a weapon or combat scan
- Signature masking(right click): 50 energy/mass/sec, old jammer's function, doesn't make the ship disappear, but masks the navigation and HUD icon. Does not get interrupted by firing, or getting hit by, a weapon, unless the ship takes block damage.
The jammer would have a completely different function, and serve as an ECM (electronic countermeasures) suite. Its main function wouldn't be hiding your ship, but instead to make targeting you a near impossible task. Instead of masking the HUD signal as it does now, the jammer would make it shake, jump, blur or multiply, giving away your ship's general direction but making targeting it the most annoying task ever, especially for AI turrets and making it plain impossible for guided missiles (heatseekers too). Getting hit by a combat scanner would turn the jammer off, but for half as long as the cloaker. It also wouldn't be turned off by taking block damage, but a power failure would affect it normally.
Fleets could also peruse the scanner, if the order "Recon scan" and "Combat scan" would be available in the fleet manager if any ship in the fleet has a scanner array installed.
"Hulk smash puny blocks!"
