Friend or Foe

[JNC]

Hi guys!

So here's the issue; in order for another person to be "friendly" towards you they have to be part of your faction, or you both have to adjust your faction standings toward one another, in order for your ships not to shoot at eachother... right?

Why not make a FoF (Friend or Foe) computer to allow for a more adjustable 'on the fly' setting? Fighter planes have this sort of thing and it's called IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) It could just be a computer like block that stores a password, if two ships have the same password they are friendly towards eachother! The password could be changed in weapons menu so people can more quickly join eachother in fleet ops.

OR this ability could be given to the ship core, than no new block has to be made. :D

 

[Megacrafter127]

in order for another person to be "friendly" towards you they have to be part of your faction, or you both have to adjust your faction standings toward one another, in order for your ships not to shoot at eachother

If no relation was set, it is neutral, meaning, that AI will not attack them, unless your faction is set on war with all neutrals(faction setting; disabled by default). You can still hit them(and with the 'declare war on hostile action' setting this causes them to be seens as enemies), which is why I never use heatseekers, since I cannot choose their target.

 

[JNC]

Yea, those heatseekers are really annoying... i suppose, if nothing else, it would help everyone to be friendly in their eyes =P

 

[Malacodor]

Why not make a FoF (Friend or Foe) computer to allow for a more adjustable 'on the fly' setting? Fighter planes have this sort of thing and it's called IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) It could just be a computer like block that stores a password, if two ships have the same password they are friendly towards eachother!

Isn't this the exact idea behind faction blocks? But heat-seeking missilies difinitely need IFF.

 

[Viridis00]

You know, I like the idea of an IFF simply because if you can obtain an enemy IFF in multiplayer, you'd be able to screw with them. Which might give more incentive for players to capture ships for recon or whatever, and force factions to use new IFFs regularly to prevent enemies from masquerading around as friendlies.

If that were the case, currently entered IFFs should be parsed out like passwords on accessed IFF computers, so that way, one captured ship doesn't compromise an entire faction's code.

I also think that if you belong to a faction, the faction's leader should enter the IFF on the faction page, and all other lower ranking faction members (determined by the faction leader) can autocomplete their faction's code into the computer, parsed out by asterisks. Which would eliminate the need for having to give everyone a code, and stop easy spying.

 

[Malacodor]

You know, I like the idea of an IFF simply because if you can obtain an enemy IFF in multiplayer, you'd be able to screw with them. Which might give more incentive for players to capture ships for recon or whatever, and force factions to use new IFFs regularly to prevent enemies from masquerading around as friendlies.

It would be more clever and realistic to give everyone a different code, so if a ship gets lost its code must be invalidated, but all other ships aren't affected. Furthermore, activating an IFF should require a password only the pilot knows, and if the pilot dies the IFF self-destructs.

 

[JNC]

Yes, its the same idea as a faction module except no HP bonus, not crazy expensive (comparatively) and it's meant to be a separate means of target identification to that of 'faction' so you can have neutrals or whatever still be friendly while not needing to be in your specific faction or having to adjust faction settings.

For simplicity sake i was thinking of a user made password for the IFF code (fleet commander makes it and passes to rest of fleet members, or it could automatically be assigned to the commanders faction, or a subgroup within that faction...?) cause if you were just guessing, the odds of getting anything over a few characters long right are quite low. Maybe down the road a codebreaker (ship scanning) module or something could be made that might find the code over time (or parts of the code?) or some hand held device that scans the IFF computer of wrecked enemy ships or for boarding parties; I was thinking of it as more of a friendly co-op device rather than a potential undermining mid combat type device as the password would likely be different when the next fleet is made and co-op fleets would probably only be made for a specific purpose lasting no more than a few hours max?? <- lots of assumptions

All of this really just came up due to the lack of easy co-op options in-game and lack of intelligent targeting systems.