BFett wrote:How does idea 1 function in game? Does the general purpose scanner only let you know that there is something within a certain radius of your ship? Does the active scan then function as the player targeting a ship and getting shield, weapon, system, and cargo status? This would include the ship's name and if it is hostile or not based on IFF data.
you did read the other walls of text i wrote in this thread, no?
all scanners are basically "equal", but good at different things.
the "general purpose" scanner gives you reasonable data over reasonable distances with fast exposure to generate the "usual" space game sensor.
gives you position, speed, approximate ship type and, when the target is cooperating, everything the IFF provides.
not including name or faction status without further database access, because, how should the scanner know?
for general gameplay functionality it should also provide hull and shield strength estimates.
the special purpose scanners are, as my labeling suggests, for things beyond the classic information.
they are long exposure sensors which give you additional data compared to the general purpose scanner, but couldnt generate a reliable "normal" view on their own.
they give rough longer range data at the cost of producing only a single image every thirty seconds
OR (depending on the actual variant)
produce a "detailed scan" at close range (with similar time constraints, say once every 30 seconds) which gives higher detailed data about ships
cargo contents, equipment details, energy distribution etc.
its not that the general purpose scanner couldnt provide that data on its own, but its simply
not designed for that.
it trades the detail capability against things that are more useful on average, reasonable range, reasonable info, fast aquisition.
you could probably design a general purpose scanner which approaches the detail abilities of a (cheap) detail scanner,
but it wont be as cheap to install and run, or small, or fast to produce the scans as the specialised one.
BFett wrote:
I'm not sure I fully understand what you are proposing in your second idea. If you are suggesting making the scanner in LT even finer than it already is, I might be against that idea. Sell me on why this would work well in LT.
im not saying that the scanner gets
finer in general.
im saying that some scanners may have other areas of maximal detail.
so theres maybe a scanner which has a hundred frequency bars in the 10-100kHz range, but only one readout for the whole 1-10GHz range.
and another one the other way around.
the first scanner would, for example, be ideal to differentiate between different kinds of ore, the other would be good in differentiating drive systems.
not that we make
all the sensor data have a billion individual readout bars, but that different sensors have different densities of readouts in different frequency ranges.
it would also be silly to demand more readout bars, as i have no idea how many there are and if thats enough, too many, too few.
thats a balancing constant, not a design constant.
BFett wrote:
I like the concept of the 3rd idea. Long exposures looking out at a far distance will easily pickup any slow moving object outside of sensor range. However, if used on nearby ships all you'd get would be a blurred image with useless data. So doing the same with different types of sensors could add flavor to LT.
i'd more say relative velocity / angular velocity, and not near/far as separator.
its just that near/far tends to coincide with angular velocity
BFett wrote:
The fourth idea could be a dangerous one to implement. Remember that other AI in LT are going to use every feature that gets coded into the game. So here you'd have to consider not just how the AI would treat you but how you'd like the same thing done to yourself. If you want to be able to ambush NPCs and are willing to be ambushed yourself then it's probably not a bad idea.
then you'd have to treat debris fields with care, because raiders and hostile scavengers could be hiding in them.
perfect