Return to “Suggestions”

Post

Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#1
I know that there are tons of threads relating to sensor gameplay.
Im just trying to build a link register to them and to build an overview of confirmed and suggested gameplay on it, to provide a single point of entry for new forum members and new suggestions (or at least a single index one can link to)


Confirmed features on sensors:

Everything has a "signature"
this signature is based on the type of object and its composition.
An asteroid with vitrium ore has a different signature than one with bexium ore.
Wormholes have a completely different signature than asteroids which is in turn different to a suns signature.
every data point in the signature has 2 parameters.
The frequency and the amplitude, the "strenght" of this single frequency.
The amplitude of a signal gets lower with increasing distance to the object generating the signal
This signature is displayed by the manual sensor display.
automatic mode scans the whole sphere around the ship for signatures and reports its finds the the player in form of sensor contacts "there is a ship/asteroid/wormhole etc"
In manual mode the player may finds things the computer would not note as objects, to prevent the automatic sensor from false positive reports.

this false positive prevention can also be used as stealth measure.
if one reduces his signature below the others false-positive-treshhold, he becomes effectively cloaked.

this cloaking effect is dependent on distance between the ships, as when the "cloaked" ship gets too close, its signature gets over the treshhold and the ship shows up on automatic sensor reports.

in manual sensor mode this stealth effect can be worked around, as one may sees signatures in manual mode that would not show up on the automatic reports



Things I (and others) extrapolated or would like to have without large changes to the known facts:

Different types of equipment will produce different signatures.
pretty self explaining, weapons produce different peaks in a ships signature than production modules.

what i'd like to have: every single type of weapon/module/etc has a unique signature.
so plasma weapons have a different signature than laser weapons.
or to bring it to its consequent end: every make of weapon has its unique signature, so a mk2 lavablade plasma cannon looks differently (in details) to a mk1 version.
those unique signatures should always fit into the general "weapon" sheme, but be different in the details.

another thing i'd like to have: zoomable sensor readout graph.
from what we have seen in the videos the manual readout always shows the whole range of spectra it can read.
so you always see from kHz to PHz frequencies.
i'd like to be able to zoom in to specific areas, to analyse them more closely.
example:
when you are maximally zoomed out you see in the spectrum that there is something that emits a "weapon" signature (100kHz-1MHz eg.), but you cant see much more because the graph is to coarse.
now you can zoom in to the area you are interested in (100kHz-1MHz eg.) and see some characteristic peaks at 120kHz and 150kHz and see that it is a plasma cannon


understandable parametrisation:
i'd like to avoid a generic "sensor strenght" value, as the RF engineer in me is annoyed by such aggressive simplification xD

i'd split it into 3 general parameters
  • sensitivity
    sensitivity is the factor that that defines how big the smallest signal must be that the sensor can still pick it up
  • spatial resolution
    the spatial resolution is how precise the sensor can locate a signal, or to say it different, how wide the smallest cone is in which the sensor sees a signal.
    the higher this resolution is, the smaller is the cone, the more precise can the sensor locate signals.
    this leads to sensors might not be able to tell ships apart if they are close to each other.
    so instead of 3 fighter-sized blobs you only see a single corvette-sized blob linky
  • frequency resolution
    the frequency resolution defines how small of a frequency difference the sensor can still resolve.
    a poor sensor might only resolve 1kHz, 5kHz, 10kHz as independent values. a good sensor might be able to resolve 1000Hz, 1010Hz, 1020Hz etc.
    this enables you to perform more detailed analysis on objects, the poor sensor might only sees "weapon", the mediocre sensor sees "plasma weapon" and the good sensor sees "lavablade mk2 plasma cannon"
this varibles negatively influence each other.
a high sensitivity (long range) sensor will neither have high spatial nor frequency resolution, giving you only general directions of "something".
while there might be a couple of ships, you only see a single blob.

a high spatial resolution sensor might be able to tell you that there are multiple ships, but you'd have to be much closer to the group to locate it.
(here is the danger in balancing that the high sensitivity sensor might be able to tell the independent ships apart, the high spatial resolution sensor should always provide an advantage in this area)

high frequency resolution sensors will provide you the most detailed information about the "igredients" of a ship, but only at low sensitivities and spatial resolutions.
so you can tell that a ship (or group of ships) has lavablade mk2 cannons, but you cant tell which ship (or hardpoint) has the cannon.


this leads to another "i'd like to have"

all information should be "real".
when you want to know which hardpoint on the battleship has te lavablade mk2 cannon you have to fly close with a frequency scanner and scan the whole ship for the position of the cannon.
this should of course be assisted by the board computer, but the computer is cautious to tell you data as guaranteed if it isnt sure itself, you should get better results if you do it manually.


another suggestion: ID's

talvieno provided a nice write up here, but i'll write it for short here.

ID's are reactive systems that share data about your ship if asked to.
so when your ID is active an another ship sees "something" at your position, it will send an ID request and your ship will identify itself.
this increases the effective sensor range of ships which scan for you and deals with the problem of "how does he know that im Asetniop from the free systems alliance?", as my ID tells him who you are.

if you have deactivated your ID, the request from the other ship stays unresolved and the computer of the ship will disregard you as sensor noise, asteroid, whatever.
this also deactivates all IFF systems, so you do not show up as "Asetniop from the free systems alliance" but at best "unknown Arrestor class ship".
this of course requires the other ship to know the Arrestor ship type, else you would only show up as unknown ship.
see the internet of LT for more on signature matching.

this opens up diegetic possibilities of deceiving people.
you may steal ships from the local pirate faction, deactivate your ID and raid a transport.
now everybody thinks that the pirates raided the transport and not their dear friend to whom they wanted to sell their cargo too.


any suggestion, noteworthy post, etc that is not covered in some way or another, feel free to post links, will add them to the OP ^^

Cloaking
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Sat Feb 20, 2016 5:47 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Post

Re: Sensor Stuff

#2
Excellent idea, Cornflakes. Sensor functions are crucial to information-management gameplay. So now is a great time to try to consolidate what we think we know about sensors and what we'd like to know more about.

I particularly like the idea that sensors would have sensitivity, angular resolution, and frequency resolution settings. I also like the idea that these would be mutually exclusive, though on that point a couple of thoughts occur to me:

1. Would you consider an all-in-one sensor package as long as it consumes most of a ship's mounting points?

I'm thinking mostly here of explorers, who might need high-quality versions of all three sensor characteristics. As long as they still have a tradeoff to make (fewer weapons/defenses, or slower engines, etc.), would that be OK?

2. I can imagine a fleet containing three or more ships that specialize in all three of the sensor characteristics. To what extent should ships be able to pool and actively integrate their inputs so that they basically function as one ship with a really good all-in-one sensor?
Post

Re: Sensor Stuff

#3
Flatfingers wrote:Excellent idea, Cornflakes. Sensor functions are crucial to information-management gameplay. So now is a great time to try to consolidate what we think we know about sensors and what we'd like to know more about.

I particularly like the idea that sensors would have sensitivity, angular resolution, and frequency resolution settings. I also like the idea that these would be mutually exclusive, though on that point a couple of thoughts occur to me:

1. Would you consider an all-in-one sensor package as long as it consumes most of a ship's mounting points?

I'm thinking mostly here of explorers, who might need high-quality versions of all three sensor characteristics. As long as they still have a tradeoff to make (fewer weapons/defenses, or slower engines, etc.), would that be OK?

2. I can imagine a fleet containing three or more ships that specialize in all three of the sensor characteristics. To what extent should ships be able to pool and actively integrate their inputs so that they basically function as one ship with a really good all-in-one sensor?
Personally, I think that a sensor that combines all three characteristics should use more energy :geek: .
Image The results of logic, of natural progression? Boring! An expected result? Dull! An obvious next step? Pfui! Where is the fun in that? A dream may soothe, but our nightmares make us run!
Post

Re: Sensor Stuff

#4
Idunno wrote:Personally, I think that a sensor that combines all three characteristics should use more energy :geek: .
That would also work as long as a power generation module is required, and it chews up most of the available space in a ship.

Otherwise small ships, with less available energy, wouldn't be capable of meaningful exploration.
Post

Re: Sensor Stuff

#5
Flatfingers wrote:Excellent idea, Cornflakes. Sensor functions are crucial to information-management gameplay. So now is a great time to try to consolidate what we think we know about sensors and what we'd like to know more about.

I particularly like the idea that sensors would have sensitivity, angular resolution, and frequency resolution settings. I also like the idea that these would be mutually exclusive, though on that point a couple of thoughts occur to me:
thank you, i really appreciate that from your mouth ^^
Flatfingers wrote: 1. Would you consider an all-in-one sensor package as long as it consumes most of a ship's mounting points?

I'm thinking mostly here of explorers, who might need high-quality versions of all three sensor characteristics. As long as they still have a tradeoff to make (fewer weapons/defenses, or slower engines, etc.), would that be OK?
i'd say that we simply allow multiple sensor hardpoints to be designed into ships, and the rest comes from the usual balancing regarding hardpoints.
with construction points/mass/volume etc.

so when you build a ship with 3 sensors, you dont have space in it for other hardpoints.

the ship then has 3 different sensor ranges.

a simple "something" range from the high sensitivity sensor at long range

a more complex "multiple something" from the angular resolution sensor at medium range

and at low range a detailed "multiple agressor fighters" at low range


another possibility would be to devote a major part of the ship to the sensor and mount a oversized (corvette sensor in fighter chassis) jack-of-all-trades sensor into it.

along with already established hardpoint balancing this could produce the effect you seem to want.

this JOAT would of course have to obey to the sqrt(a²+b²+c²)=const definition, that it always stays equally "good" in sum.
a sensor with good sensitivity would have a big a but small b and c to balance this out.
Flatfingers wrote: 2. I can imagine a fleet containing three or more ships that specialize in all three of the sensor characteristics. To what extent should ships be able to pool and actively integrate their inputs so that they basically function as one ship with a really good all-in-one sensor?
hmm.... i think you should may be able to increase spatial resolution by using multiple ships which are relatively far apart, so that the angle between the ships and the target gets as large as possible.
with multiple viewpoints you get better information where what is.

for sensitivity i'd use the opposite, multiple ships as close as possible to each other that they can filter out noise, thus increasing sensitivity.

for frequency resolution i just had a pretty funny idea: the ships which want to act synergistically have to travel at different velocities / vectors.
so that they can use the doppler shift to calculate more precise frequency data ^^
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Mon Jun 23, 2014 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Post

Re: Sensor Stuff

#6
Perhaps a 'synchronize' mechanic? If two or more friendly Sensor vessels are at a certain distance from each other, their sensor packages would add to each others creating a one large bubble? :think:
Image The results of logic, of natural progression? Boring! An expected result? Dull! An obvious next step? Pfui! Where is the fun in that? A dream may soothe, but our nightmares make us run!
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#7
Always figured equipment should be part of the equation.

Ships are always broadcasting. They broadcast radio for collision detection and communication. They are quite warm so they're emitting in the infrared, to say nothing of the drives spitting out megawatts of power. Laser frequencies for high bandwidth communication.

Distilling it all down to a single stat, I'd basically just assign each piece of equipment on board, as well as the hull, an emission stat. If its powered on, its emitting [X]. Other ships would have passive sensors that can detect [Y]. Y>X? Then you detect. Y>10X? Detect with more info. Y>100X? Even more info, etc.

So, to be stealthy, you research stuff with low emissions. Shut off equipment. Throttle down. That would enable stealth gameplay without having a silly 'cloak' at the push of a button.



Cornflakes_91 wrote:talvieno provided a nice write up here, but i'll write it for short here.

ID's are reactive systems that share data about your ship if asked to.
so when your ID is active an another ship sees "something" at your position, it will send an ID request and your ship will identify itself.
this increases the effective sensor range of ships which scan for you and deals with the problem of "how does he know that im Asetniop from the free systems alliance?", as my ID tells him who you are.

if you have deactivated your ID, the request from the other ship stays unresolved and the computer of the ship will disregard you as sensor noise, asteroid, whatever.
this also deactivates all IFF systems, so you do not show up as "Asetniop from the free systems alliance" but at best "unknown Arrestor class ship".
this of course requires the other ship to know the Arrestor ship type, else you would only show up as unknown ship.
see the internet of LT for more on signature matching.

this opens up diegetic possibilities of deceiving people.
you may steal ships from the local pirate faction, deactivate your ID and raid a transport.
now everybody thinks that the pirates raided the transport and not their dear friend to whom they wanted to sell their cargo too.


any suggestion, noteworthy post, etc that is not covered in some way or another, feel free to post links, will add them to the OP ^^

This concept is called a transponder. Its in common use on aircraft, since it positively identifies aircraft, and active radars that actually detect aircraft are expensive, relatively short ranged, and can cause a host of electrical interference problems if used over civilian centers.

The key issue with the idea of turning it on/off is properly assigning a cost to doing so. As you so clearly describe, turning this system off allows for certain circumstances, since you can't be positively identified anymore. But now the game would need a soft identification system.

Can they identify your ship? Can they follow you without you noticing? If they do follow you, and see you dock to a ship that you own and has its transponder enabled, can they put 2 and 2 together?

Deceiving people is interesting only if there are methods the deception can fail, and that will much harder to enable.
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#8
CutterJohn wrote:Always figured equipment should be part of the equation.

Ships are always broadcasting. They broadcast radio for collision detection and communication. They are quite warm so they're emitting in the infrared, to say nothing of the drives spitting out megawatts of power. Laser frequencies for high bandwidth communication.

Distilling it all down to a single stat, I'd basically just assign each piece of equipment on board, as well as the hull, an emission stat. If its powered on, its emitting [X]. Other ships would have passive sensors that can detect [Y]. Y>X? Then you detect. Y>10X? Detect with more info. Y>100X? Even more info, etc.

So, to be stealthy, you research stuff with low emissions. Shut off equipment. Throttle down. That would enable stealth gameplay without having a silly 'cloak' at the push of a button.
Which is exactly how i imagined and described it,

Except the arbitary x, 10x, 100x scale.

But i think a single stat does not give enough gameplay for such a very complex system as detection and identification.

It would also remove all choice from buying sensors, as you just seek out the sensor with the highest sensitivity.

But with a multidimensional system like i described you actually have to know what you want to do and search out an approbiate sensor.

You want to see every ship in the system?
Get a high sensitivity sensor.

You want to count the nuts and bolts on the surface of other ships?
Get a high spatial resolution sensor.

you want to know what a ship has equipped and what is in its hold?
Get a high frequency resolution sensor.

And i totally dont know where you got the silly cloak from right now :think:
cutterjohn wrote: This concept is called a transponder. Its in common use on aircraft, since it positively identifies aircraft, and active radars that actually detect aircraft are expensive, relatively short ranged, and can cause a host of electrical interference problems if used over civilian centers.

The key issue with the idea of turning it on/off is properly assigning a cost to doing so. As you so clearly describe, turning this system off allows for certain circumstances, since you can't be positively identified anymore. But now the game would need a soft identification system.

Can they identify your ship? Can they follow you without you noticing? If they do follow you, and see you dock to a ship that you own and has its transponder enabled, can they put 2 and 2 together?

Deceiving people is interesting only if there are methods the deception can fail, and that will much harder to enable.
transponders were my primary motivation for this, yes.

AI would already need to have a kind of notion of "putting 2 and 2 together", how else could they categorise factions they dont know?

If they see a ship from an unknown faction dock with one of their enemies they should know that they are friendly to each other and like the unknown faction less.

Same the other way around.
if they see a ship that was hostile to them dock with a known faction, they should like the dock provider less.
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#9
from cloaking
Spoiler:      SHOW
blacktea wrote:Bringing back the cloaking discussion. Maybe if we could have "zones" wich will hide everything insid,e up until some distance, they could be used to cloak entire systems or stations. If we could build a "cloaking" device, wich produce this kind of zone in given radius, then we could have moveable zones, bound to an object, to cloak ships. Or with modification of this technology, we could have other kinds of zones around the ship, like nanobots shield or emp. I hope Josh will consider bringing this kind of functionality into the game.
Spoiler:      SHOW
Cornflakes_91 wrote:i'd prefer to include it in the general framework around sensors and what we already know for sure about them (look here for a write up)

so that cloaks are no
Gazz wrote:I pressed invisubul button so you can't see me! Hurr durr!
feature.

so that you actually have to do something for your stealth-ness.

like reducing your emissions by turning down your reactors and stuff.


BUT i'd enjoy a "damper field" mechanic.

not a stealth per se but a device that reduces your signature to lower levels.

this could also be frequency-dependent.

so the dampener field produces an "anti-signature" reducing your signature along a signature graph.

this amounts to pulsar9's different sensor areas (IR/X-Ray etc) without making them artificial borders but natural continua

so you have to match your equipment and dampener field that nothing "sticks out" of the dampening effect.

this also introduces more reconnisance into strategic gameplay.

so you may tune your sensors to listen in the areas where your enemies dampeners are bad....
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Thu Jul 17, 2014 7:32 am, edited 3 times in total.
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#11
from devlog discussion july
Spoiler:      SHOW
Flatfingers wrote:Back to the targeting question for just a moment....

This conversation has focused so far on how to target some other ships's subsystems. What about the other side of that gameplay: should defenders have some ways to counter an attacker trying to target individual ship systems?

By this I don't just mean "gating" requirements for an attacker, such as having to have the Fire Control Software Mk. II program loaded to be able to target subsystems -- I mean things (active and passive) that a defending ship can do to mitigate or avoid targeted damage.

Which if the following defensive options would feel most fun to you?
  • ECCM to break target locks
  • some kind of subsystem cloak
  • some kind of subsystem hardening
  • higher agility = harder to achieve subsystem target lock

While I'm on this subject, I'd like to add a larger thought here.

A lot of the discussion about combat design, not just here but in other threads as well, seems to me to be focused almost exclusively on offensive mechanics. I'd like to suggest that defensive features need love, too.

It's not surprising that there's enthusiasm for coming up with features that are about actively dealing damage. Blowing stuff up is exciting. Michael Bay says so.

But it's also true that too much personal bad-assery gets boring. If you can easily defeat opponents because you have a vast arsenal of offensive capabilities and the other guy is limited to "run away," that's not a well-designed game. The challenge is too unbalanced.

This was my concern in the discussion about hidden wormholes in every star system -- a powerful offensive design feature that allows attackers to show up in any star system whenever they want. My concern was (and remains) that this would significantly unbalance the large-scale game in favor of attackers. I felt that this view was dismissed as my being in favor of "turtling," which wasn't the case, but I chose not to push back aggressively on that. (Not my style.)

Now, I think, we're seeing a similar emphasis on the attacker's side of gameplay, only this time at the tactical level.

To be clear: I happily endorse LT having plenty of features like subsystem targeting that support expansion by conquest. That's a fun way to play. I'm not in any way trying to end discussion of offensive game mechanics, or to reduce the number and variety of such features in Limit Theory.

What I'm asking for is, if not equal attention, at least some more attention to design elements that support expansion through non-lethal means. Insuring that players also have a nice assortment of active defensive capabilities to choose from is one part of that high-level design perspective intended to produce a game whole difficulty always feels fair.

So I'd like to challenge my fellow armchair designers: what active gameplay features can you suggest that would be fun from the perspective of the "slow growth" player, who'd like to be able to build up a stable empire of their own rather than taking chunks of someone else's space through force of arms?

What are some active mechanics that would be fun to use that prevent getting blown up or conquered?
Spoiler:      SHOW
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Flatfingers wrote:
  • ECCM to break target locks
[nitpick]
the Correct term would be ECM, Electronic Counter Measures
ECCM is to counter ECM, Electronic Counter Counter Measures
[/nitpick]

i would enjoy different kinds of ECM, for example the dampening field generator
(description at the bottom of the page incl link to the thread where it was posted originally by me, page linked because the explanations in the thread are assumed for the dampening field generator)

if you cannot resolve the subsystems on the enemy ship with your sensors, you cant target them via subsystem targetting.
(maybe allow to "mark" positions on the hull where you know something is but your sensors cant resolve a system? to fire on them)

other forms of ECM would also be concieveable, for example using different forms of flares and chaffs to put enemy sensors on a wrong lead,

or even create fake sensor images that look like ships

fake sensor images + strong damper fields could be funny to use :twisted:

"suddenly this freighter made a jump of 200 meters to the right and now i have trouble hitting it....?"

this could have different forms of applying this effects on the enemy too, simple dropped flares, drones which create decoy images, focused sensor disruping beams which work like guns and only in lines/cones.

the directed effects could also come in form of "disruptor fields", which apply magic system disrupting effects on the targetted ships
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#12
some thought on nebulae:

now with zones getting proper collision meshes, nebulas could become sensor dampers "for free"

as the distance already has to be determined between to ships to get the arriving signal strenght that the distance of how "deep" a ship is in a nebula could influence the signal strenght too.

a single raycast could be used to check how much of the distance between the ships is "inside" the nebula and attenuate the signal strenght accordingly.

now nebulae and dust fields become hideouts for pirates and danger zones for everyone else :D

this attenuation effect could also be frequency specific, so it might only absorb certain bands of radiation

maybe hiding weapon signatures but not engine signatures, or hides wormholes but nothing else

endless possibilities :D
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#13
*shameless copying of ideas which i think are worth incorporating*

Connecting detection, sensors, and energy settings

Dev Log 13/01/2014 (Sensors)


i've collected some rambling about active and passive sensors from those both threads and made a synthesis out of that.

suggestion #1

this is mainly inspired by gazz' approach on active/passive sensors.

emmisivity.

the emissions of any equipment is tied to its energy allocation (the more energy, the brighter)
so far, so known.

but this emissions are modified by a variable: emmisivity.

emissivity defines the ratio of energy input to sensor signal output.

a stealthy engine with low emissivity can use much more power than a non-stealthy engine with high emissivity while maintaining a similar sensor signature.

for some devices the energy allocation status modifies the emissivity.

an engine would have a much higher emissivity when going into cruise mode (=high energy allocation) than one shortly below the "mode switch".
so for the switch area the energy<->emission function becomes nonlinear.


#2

(thx thymine and cha0zz mainly from the second thread)

instead of having flat energy levels and that increases their effectivity, there are now 2 types (or modes) of sensors.

active and passive ones

passive ones work like i have outlined in the other posts here, they gather information from the radiation they receive.
this requires a target to be actively emitting radiation to get some information about it.
"cold" things like asteroids, wrecks and ships which have powered down everything dont emit much raditation to gather data, so they are only dim signals on a passive sensor.

but passive sensors have very low emissivity, so they are pretty stealthy, at the cost of having shorter range and requiring "hot" targets.


active sensors generate radiation and "paint" objects with it.

they increase the emissions of the target by some (range dependent (1/r²)) value, leading to higher detection probability and data fidelity.
as you define which radiations the target emits.

the reflected part can also be modified by "stealth" equipment, absorbtive hull plating, dampener fields etc.

besides emitting radiation they work like passive sensors and listen for the emissions they generate themself.

this active generation of emissions also causes a large increase of emissivity of the sensor (as you put the energy out there).
making the actively scanning ship much easier to detect.

theres also the possibility of sensors "going active" by allocating more energy to them (maybe not all, but some)
below [arbitary, device dependent threshhold] % energy allocation the sensors operate in passive mode,
above the treshhold they start emitting radiation actively and increasing their effectivity much more than what would the same sensor aquire without active mode.


this separation leads to a few interesting concepts

"screamer" missles, basically active radar emitters on a drive, increasing the visibility of all things in their range.

"target painting", C4 ships could focus high powered emitters on a target ship, leading to higher sensor precision of all ships targeting this enemy.
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#14
Just saw the topic title and instantly thought of a suggestion.

Wouldn't be awesome if you could collect signal fragments from different systems that when collected together (and maybe, just maybe, use some kind of signal analysis minigame/tool), you could find hard to find anomalies, ancient civilisations on planets that can't be found other than scouring space.. stuff like that. Sort of like triangulation I suppose.. so you'd go to all adjacent systems and potentially find a signal fragment.. and by finding them in those systems, it would also allow you to know which system (or a better guess) the anomaly is in (the system that doesn't have the signal fragment.. a bit like the old minefield game).. then once you think you know which system it is in and you've collected enough fragments, you can plug it into some kind of signal filtering device that limits all background signals an only allows for the signal you found to show through.

Something like that anyway.. that would be very cool.
Post

Re: Sensor knowledge and suggestions

#15
another thing that came to me yesterday as i rewatched development update video #1:


i want to be able to hide behind/around an asteroid/capital ship, but how do we calculate that adjacency that it somewhat resembles the asteroid's form?


we compute a "bubble" analog to the shield bubble.

the shield-like bubble accounts for various geometries, for example a long, rod shaped ship would not have a spherical signature bubble but a cigar shaped one.


when a ship is in the "signature bubble" it counts as "too close to be differentiated" and just shows the larger object
or a "not identifyable object" with the combined signature of both objects if they are of roughly the same size.


if its computationally feasible those bubbles could be calculated for every scanning ship/resolution.

so for a ship with low resolution sensors the signature bubble is large, for a ship with high resolution sensors its small.

Online Now

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests

cron