Re: Friday, May 5, 2017
Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 11:38 pm
I see where you're going with this. Interesting idea.Graf wrote:This might be a bit overkill, but it would be cool to be able to broadcast multiple IFF signals in different directions. This would enable you to send your faction's signal behind you to your fleet to prevent them from firing upon you, but the enemy's signal in front enabling all sorts of nifty tactics. You could order your ship to look like a different thing to different people allowing you to be extra duplicitous.
One picky note is that "broadcasting" means you're sending out a signal in all directions. Typically that's how an IFF transponder ought to work, because the alternative is to send a signal along a narrow beam to a specific receiver. But if you do that, you need to have line of sight to the receiver, and it's tricky to hit a target if both the sender and the receiver are moving (as, I presume, would normally be the case for two spaceships).
You could get away with that in a game, though, with a "your computer is really good at this kind of position prediction" handwave. Even so, it would be sort of funky to be able to send to multiple friendlies.
In between these two are directional antennas that send a signal in a widening cone. (Even narrow-beam emitters actually become conical eventually.) This might be the kind of signals technology you have in mind.
Also, this is just a layman's understanding. If there's someone here who's done SIGINT, they could probably give you a better response.