Mass-based radar signatures

[BDLS]

Didn't think of an exact formula, but if a ship is larger you should be able to see it on your HUD before a smaller ship is detected.

Like, you wouldn't detect a 100 mass ship at 2km, but could see a 500,000 mass ship at 5km on your HUD.

 

[Effane]

Good starting idea. TBH it needs more. There is an entire Scanner, Passive Radar, Cloaker/Jammer dynamic there that needs work. Figure out how to make that trinity of things work as a rock paper scissors game with strong and fun results and you might have a winner.

Like how does size affect signature, or is it just mass? Would the drop off be by ratio (100k mass/500k mass + C) = 1:5 or 20% range?) or by exponential scale (100k mass^C / 500k mass^C + C), or a hybrid?

How would scanners work in this? Boost, override, still masked?

How would this function with Jammers and Cloakers? Could you target a cloaked ship that shows on passive radar?

 

[BDLS]

Stick with mass only. If dimensions are accounted in the formula, it helps doomcubes out.

Scanners: boost range temporarily

Cloak/jam: If it's only cloaked you should be able to hit it.

 

[EricBlank]

I feel this is an pretty sound suggestion, actually, if we assume the active scanner array boosts either your effective detection range and/or minimum mass at range and the radar jammer is replaced with an inverse computer+module system that makes your ship seem to be x% smaller on radar. So a 100% effectiveness jammer array grants you total invisibility on radar, but requires 20% of your mass dedicated to the jammer or something. Or did you Have something completely different in mind? :P

I agree with leaving out dimensions from the calculations as well. it does end up restricting your design down to a cube, and I prefer being able to make pretty ships that don't lose too much of significance when compared to metagaming hyper-efficient ships.

 

[Effane]

How would Jammers be reduced by this? Could they act as an extra multiplier by power/mass of ship for example.

Would a scanner counter the mass since its an active scan?

Also, would we drop this silly faction based scanning system? Personally I don't like it, I just want the ability to put scanners on my bases that give information worth having back.

So Scanners make Ship A more likely for their duration to find ship B (but they should also become more visible). Then Jammers would counter that process by their power on ship B.

Formula for a linear comparison. I like numbers... I know. Everyone can roll their eyes now. Some of this could be condensed, I am leaving it open to improve understanding of the Nomials.
( PassiveConstant * ShipBMass / ShipAMass ) + ( ScannerConstant * ScannerAPower / ShipAMass ) + ( ScannerConstant * ScannerBPower / ShipBMass ) - ( JammerConstant * ShipAMass / JammerBPower ) = DetectionRangeShipAtoShipB

• So as ShipA increases in mass its passive sensors, active scanner become weaker in relation to ShipB
• As ShipB increases in mass its ability to hide decreases
• As Scanner on Ship A becomes more powerful it increases shipA detection range
• As scanner on ShipB is active and more powerful it increases ShipA detection range
• As Jammer increases in power on ShipB versus ShipA mass it reduces ShipA Detection range.
• Constants can be fed from the config files for mod purposes. 0 for any constant means that item is turned off.
• A high passive constant increases overall range of passive scans
• A high Scanner constant increases range of active scan boost as well as increases range an active scanning ship can be detected from
• A high jammer constant reduces range of scans against a ship with a jammer.

Some extra stuff. I wish Jammers and Cloakers had modules + computer to keep them in line with every other system. Jammer + Module would be something they should consider for a system like this and maybe jamming should become global against all enemies while not harming friendlies. I actually used to work with military jammers so I can't tell you specifics but they have a method to allow friendlies to function while ruining the bad guys days.

 

[EricBlank]

So to be clear, in your example the scanner computer on a ship trying to hide only affects its radar signature when (for some period after...) the scan computer has been activated and performed a scan, and is based on how large the scan array used was? The scan computer on the seeking ship likewise makes its radar more sensitive for a time, right?

Makes sense to me.
How do turrets fit in, though? If they have their own passive sensors, a tiny turret can detect craft the parent juggernaught can't. If they can feed that to the parent so it sees what they see and vice versa, it nullifies the point of larger craft having extra difficulty in detecting smaller craft. But if turrets don't have their own sensors, and the parent ship doesn't dedicate enough mass to sensors, the tiny turrets on your planet-sized whatsit can't defend from tiny fighters, because they can't see anything the parent can't see.

Which might be okay, because on the other hand, that creates some value in battle groups being composed of craft of multiple sizes; you need a craft available that is small enough it can pick up on the finer details, and perhaps a linking system to share radar data with fleet members. And that would be a really cool mechanic.

That could get annoying though for someone who has no friends online to play the tiny scout ship. Lets say we allow you to launch a drone that feeds you anything the drone can see. The drone has to be launched further from the parents core than the parents longest axis, however, so you can't dump it inside the hangar or something equally exploitative. As long as the drone remains alive, you get the scan bonus, but if the drone is destroyed, youre back to relying on your own sensors. Of course if anyone fires, they become obvious on radar for a time, and you can always launch several drones.

 

[Effane]

Spoiler: Eric Blank Quote

So to be clear, in your example the scanner computer on a ship trying to hide only affects its radar signature when (for some period after...) the scan computer has been activated and performed a scan, and is based on how large the scan array used was? The scan computer on the seeking ship likewise makes its radar more sensitive for a time, right?

Makes sense to me.
How do turrets fit in, though? If they have their own passive sensors, a tiny turret can detect craft the parent juggernaught can't. If they can feed that to the parent so it sees what they see and vice versa, it nullifies the point of larger craft having extra difficulty in detecting smaller craft. But if turrets don't have their own sensors, and the parent ship doesn't dedicate enough mass to sensors, the tiny turrets on your planet-sized whatsit can't defend from tiny fighters, because they can't see anything the parent can't see.

Which might be okay, because on the other hand, that creates some value in battle groups being composed of craft of multiple sizes; you need a craft available that is small enough it can pick up on the finer details, and perhaps a linking system to share radar data with fleet members. And that would be a really cool mechanic.

That could get annoying though for someone who has no friends online to play the tiny scout ship. Lets say we allow you to launch a drone that feeds you anything the drone can see. The drone has to be launched further from the parents core than the parents longest axis, however, so you can't dump it inside the hangar or something equally exploitative. As long as the drone remains alive, you get the scan bonus, but if the drone is destroyed, youre back to relying on your own sensors. Of course if anyone fires, they become obvious on radar for a time, and you can always launch several drones.

Eric, I think turrets would gain targeting from the base platform they are on. They technically don't have their own scanning arrays of any high caliber. Being hit by something should override this though IMO. When something hits you it should pop up on radar no matter how well jammed. Maybe it just wont give full data, just location. This way we don't have sweet spot perma jammers cutting turrets off a ship without risk, there should be no form of invulnerability in this game.

But yes a lone drone would be able to detect large objects, then again you think it should be able to. For target sharing maybe they can introduce a Block combo for computer with transmitter. Not sure on the dynamics of this but it would be pretty cool. I think this would be another thread though, or a good topic when this thread gets a bit stale.

Some of the good things about this system is that a small fighter can close distance and lock on to a turret closer up where the advantage is the fighters. Its risky but they can do it. And large ships need smaller destroyer size ships to provide protection from those smaller ships that can out maneuver the main guns. This is much how modern navies work, large carrier + escort vessels (usually a cruiser or 2 and a few corvettes and destroyers).

I could see a medium bomber being able to use a couple turrets to attack and cut all the small turrets off a large ship this way. Granted in the end it wouldn't be able to scratch a giant ship but it would become a valuable member of an assault force to wreck that thing.

 

[EricBlank]

Yeah, we should definitely be able to see whoever's shooting at us for a period of time after being hit. That and jumping immediately after firing are exploits people have brought up before that, although I appreciate guerrilla warfare, are currently nigh impossible to counter.

We don't have to worry about (rail) turrets getting hacked off anymore, though, unless shields drop to below 50%. With weapons scaling linearly a tiny fighter bomber isn't going to be able to down your shields in any reasonable amount of time, if at all. If its big enough to threaten you, you can probably see it anyway, and definitely can if it fires on you.

Also, I meant to use a scanner drone/fleetmate to detect targets too small for the larger craft to pick up on, not big targets. If I understand your system correctly, anybody should be able to pick up on craft significantly larger than them (like 3x their mass?)

 

[Mariux]

http://starmadedock.net/threads/ver...-ships-useful-no-gigantic-titan-nerfing.7675/

Already a thread for that.

 

[aceface]

yes yes yes

 

[ltmauve]

Hmm... so in addition to giving Jammers and Cloakers their own modules, (which I approve of)
you're also adding passive scanners? Did I read that right? And are passive scanners passive as in they don't increase your detection amount or are they passive because they are constantly active? Or both?

I think what needs to happen is that there needs to be two separate detection levels - general/area/there-is-something-out-there and spotted/there-it-is-over-there. After all, if someone walks in with a wide area jammer you know they did that, but you don't know where they are.

 

[iceman6491]

As an expansion of this, what would people think of all ships essentially have an inherent, passive radar jammed effect, which shows diamonds dependent on the relative distance between two players and the mass of the ship detected. Scanning (which btw probably should be logic activated for this to work well) would reveal diamonds of targets easily, with the range and duration of these targets showing up being defined by the 'strength' of the scanner.

Radar jammer then moves into a competing role with the scanner. If your jammer setup is stronger than the scanner, you will not be revealed when being scanned. If the scanner is stronger than the jammer then it will reveal the ship, maybe even based on a percentage difference that defines the distance at which it reveals the diamond.

I was just thinking of this based on warships at the moment. You need to actively search for other targets, whether or not they show up is down to a combination of the qualities of the radar, the size of the target and how the signal is reflected (i.e. stealth ships / planes that reduce their radar cross section to something equivalent of a small sparrow by reflecting the signal away from the dish). You dont magically get awarded a "hey, there is a ship over there" by just sitting there doing nothing in your little row boat...

Sorry for piggybacking of the OP's suggestion ... call it inspiration ...

 

[TheOmega]

As a person who FREQUENTLY uses perma stealth technology, I disagree with being able to see jammed entities. HOWEVER COMMA cloaked ships should have a ripple over the surface to allow you to physically see them, if they are moving fast enough. Turrets should be able to fire on those ships, if they don't use tracking missiles of any sort. The mass of the ship you are in shouldn't affect how well you see smaller craft, for instance; You are flying your small fighter. Another fighter jumps to your sector. A titan also jumps to your sector. You feel screwed because it's a fudging TITAN. Now, the titan can't see your signature well, and its still a fudging titan. What says the smaller ship has better radar than the titan? Please don't make fat jokes about it, it has feelings too.