Recognized by Council A Way to Relate Jamming, Cloaking and Scanning With Modules.

[Jaaskinal]

Radar jamming and cloaking are probably overdue for re-works as they are the only computers in the game that do not require modules and do not link into the weapon combination system. I do not know how to tackle the later, but here is my suggestion for the former.

There should be a vision system for the nav. One where checks are made between your own vision value and the stealth values of the objects around you, and the distance between them. To increase vision, you would add scanners. To increase stealth, you would add jammers. Stealth would apply to jamming and cloaking, as would vision and scanners. Objects with jamming modules would be harder to detect, able to come closer before they would be detected. Objects with cloaking modules would be more difficult to spot, able to come closer before they would be rendered. Objects with more scanning modules would be able to detect jammed and cloaked ships from further.

Every ship would have an inherent vision value, and this should remain constant regardless of ship size. Scanners would have to be added to increase it.
Every ship would also have inherent stealth values, which would rapidly diminish with added size.

Jammers and cloakers would have to be turned on, as they have to be now, but scanning would be passive. Active scanning would work similarly to how it does now, momentarily granting your ship a massive vision boost.

 

[UndeadPotato]

I don't think they should be added in as secondary systems, but if they did, this would probably make sense:
Stealth would remove the graphical rendering of weapons, but missiles would still be able to be shot down by PD.
Jammer would reduce the potency of the entity's scanners, so as to not make missiles immune to PD.

Yeah, you can't really have them fit in the other spots and stay balanced. Basically make them effect modules, and have passive and tertiary abilities.

 

[Ithirahad]

This sounds really really complicated.

 

[Keptick]

This sounds really really complicated.

It really doesn't...

Basically, add jammer or cloaker modules to increase your stealth. Add scanner modules to increase your scanning ability. The closer an object is the more jammer/cloaker modules you need to hide from it.

Honestly it makes sense. The only thing I'm unsure of is if it should use block count or system ratios.

 

[hzzzln]

I like every suggestion that encourages players to build specialized ships. I want this.

 

[gamesaucer]

This makes sense to add to the game. That said, I'm not a fan, but what I personally think should not keep this feature from being added as it makes the game more consistent within itself which is always a good thing.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Going through this again I see three issues and have ideas for both of them.
1) How the game would cause lag if there are many entities, since it would constantly perform a 'skill check' with the ships vision, the other entities stealth and the distance between the two.

I don't think every entity should do the check for its own view. Only ships that are occupied or have active AI should need to check their view. It would still cause a bit of lag, but it would mitigate it a little.

2) How would docked entities handle the vision mechanic?

Docked entity chains shouldn't all do their own checks. The base ship should be the only thing doing the checks, and it should send it's own 'viewed' information up the chain. Docked entity chains shouldn't be checked for stealth either, only the base ship should matter. Having docked entities would increase the base ships size, so it could lose stealth that way.

3) How would AI handle the vision system?

AI as an individual ship should do it's own vision checks and fire only on what it can see on nav/actually see. If it beats the other ships cloak but not its jam it should have reduced accuracy. AI as turrets should use the information given to them by the mother-ship to determine what they can see.

 

[UndeadPotato]

If the vision value and the stealth value are equal, which gets priority?

 

[Jaaskinal]

If the vision value and the stealth value are equal, which gets priority?

That's awefully specific, but I'd lean towards vision. IMO the scanner should be stronger than the jammer and cloaker, because combat/interaction should be promoted.

 

[Master_Artificer]

so at a certain point, you will always decloak/they see you if you get to close to them? That could be something like within 50m, or when you bump another ship because you are careless.

 

[whooplaah]

I can't compare this to the current mechanics because I've never really bothered with jammers or scanners. I think the mechanics described here are interesting, though.

 

[Jaaskinal]

so at a certain point, you will always decloak/they see you if you get to close to them? That could be something like within 50m, or when you bump another ship because you are careless.

Possibly, I was suggesting a linear formula with distance vs view, an exponential decay would work though.

 

[jstenholt]

I had a similar idea last year, and it got a lot of support, but never noticed by a dev. Except Criss, who was still a lowly youtuber.

http://starmadedock.net/threads/convert-cloakers-and-jammers-to-effects.3458/

 

[Jaaskinal]

I had a similar idea last year, and it got a lot of support, but never noticed by a dev. Except Criss, who was still a lowly youtuber.

http://starmadedock.net/threads/convert-cloakers-and-jammers-to-effects.3458/

Our two ideas are similar, but I feel like implementing scale-ability is key. My current gripe with the system lies in the inconsistencies of the scanning, jamming and cloaking computers functionalities in relation to all other systems. Having the system run with a fixed percentage in mind would bring it closer to every other system in the game, but it would still be vastly different. Having a small amount of an effect doesn't net you much, but you still gain the benefit of that effect. I feel like the best way to implement that scale-ability is through checking vision vs stealth and distance.

 

[jstenholt]

I absolutely agree with you, there's probably a solution in the middle somewhere, just getting this idea out is the important thing. I say that because I think we all agree the current system for cloakers and jammers is broken as hell. Also I'm including shield and power beams because those also seem out of place to me. Your thoughts on those?

 

[Jaaskinal]

I absolutely agree with you, there's probably a solution in the middle somewhere, just getting this idea out is the important thing. I say that because I think we all agree the current system for cloakers and jammers is broken as hell. Also I'm including shield and power beams because those also seem out of place to me. Your thoughts on those?

In my opinion, shield drain, power drain and salvagers are all relatively balanced, and are mostly consistent with the system. Arguments have and can be made about making them effects, but that would interfere with the balancing choice of making them short ranged. As of now specialized ships are required to use these weapons effectively, typically these specializations come in the form of high twr's, and stop/pull effect weapons.

Maybe it's just me, but it would also impact my suspension of disbelief to have a weapon like a cannon give me power or shields, while it only shot from my ship to the enemies. Beams alleviate this by making a link between the ships where one sucks the resources from the other.

Power drain is also a little weird, not while switching to effects, but currently. Apparently capacitors and reactors can give your own ships power anywhere it needs, but if you try to drain that power, you have to do it from the reactors and capacitors themselves, or it becomes extremely inefficient.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Honestly it makes sense. The only thing I'm unsure of is if it should use block count or system ratios.

I totally missed this comment earlier, but it's a very good point. Both options make sense.
With block count, the interaction of the vision and stealth system would be like jump drives and inhibitors. If a small jump focused ship (or in this system, stealth focused) met with a large ship with a proportionally small inhibitor, (or scanner in this case) the small ship would be unable to jump (or would be spotted). This would promote larger stealth ships to overcome larger scanners, and larger scanners to overcome larger stealth elements.
With system ratios, if we had the same scenario, the small cloaking ship would instead be able to fly under the radar of the larger ship. This would make sense, except when you turn it on its head, what if there was a ship with the same amount of scanners as the large ship, but was significantly smaller. It would have an easier time detecting the cloaking ship compared to the large ship, this doesn't particularly make sense.
This suggestion is an idea on how to unify systems and make them behave similarly to each other, but in this scenario I feel as though a divide is necessary; stealth systems should be based on system ratios, and vision systems should be based on block count.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Yea this is getting necro'd. Seems people are antsy for automated scanning and cloaking, and I honestly think this is a far superior suggestion than logic.

 

[Nickizzy]

Necro noted, this is a good idea. Although lag shouldn't be too much of a problem.


Detection should also have some involvement with ship movement. A shooting star flying through the battle will be detected, but a still-sitting command center might. Perhaps a multiplier, with stealth being something you want as low as possible. Scanners should also be movement-influenced, a still-sitting scanning station/ship has a better chance of detecting something than a fast moving combat vessel.


I think they should both be block based, but take a ton of power. Large ships can afford massive scanner dishes, but a small ship probably shouldn't. Scanning/cloaking power cost could also be based on movement, so if a ship stops and waits and powers down a bit it could manage a heavier scan.

Only problem is that stations would be kinda OP with this, so stations have a base loss in stealth, and a negative multiplier in scan ability.


Numbers:
(Y is a number up to debate for balancing)
Movement-
Stealth/Scanning ability
X/(1+[% of max speed]*Y)
Power-
X*(1+[% of max speed]*Y)
Stealth based on size-
X/(surface area/Y) : Y=100?
Stealth and Scanning ability are numbers >0 that increase and decrease with added modules.

 

[Magrim]

I think jamming and cloaking should be simplified and combined into one stealth system, but that's just me. I can't think of any scenario where I would want to cloak and not radar jam. So with that in mind, as you add stealth modules to your ship your pip is the first to go from nav, keep adding modules and you will be able to cloak eventually.

Now that it's simplified, time to complicate it. What if ship signature was based off mass, momentum and distance? Obviously the faster, more massive, and or closer you are the stronger you ship sig becomes and the easier you are to detect. I couldn't comment on whether the calculations for this idea would be too harsh or not, I'll leave that for someone who knows more about it.

I agree that scanners should have a passive "always on" mode and a player activated "burst" scan, like what we have now. Both will increase the sig strength of an enemy ship, with the burst scan it increases it drastically. A stacking effect could be applied to the enemy ship if multiple ships in a fleet are running scanners.