Cloaking is boring. You don't see me, you can't shoot me. Haha I laugh. Oh yah, costs 37 puns of energy that I had no intention of using anyway.
So... how to make the "you miss me" feature more interesting and ideally, visualise it in the process?
(if you can visualise it, it's real...)
Our ship deploys a decoy drone. This drone would be "flying in formation" with our ship, doing it's very best to tell all interested parties that it is us.
So there's two of us now.
Until a ship gets close enough for visual identification, it would take a very good sensor suite to tell the difference.
And advanced drones could also feature a holo projector.
If so, how do you or the AI determine which ship is fake, if any? Would the guise flicker when hit?
At the time of drone deployment, my ship may already be the target of something.
The moment "me" splits in two, there should be a 50% chance of something targeting the real me to have that target switched to mini-me.
These drones should be bulky military systems and have low endurance.
It would get old quickly if no ship was what it seems...
I don't think it would be a good idea to build such deception systems with better endurance into "real" ships for that reason.
Spinoff :
If the drone can pretend to be one ship type, why not another?
The big juicy freighter I am escorting through pirate alley... is not really there. But the would-be pirates don't know that, yet.
A drone would only be able to "memorise" one configuration.
You launch it and make it follow the intended ship until the "emission scan" is complete.
Then you can launch and retrieve the drone as that ship at will.
The size / power of the drone would limit what size of what it can pretend to be and how long it can keep up that guise.
Post
Fri Dec 14, 2012 5:07 am
#1
Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking
Last edited by Gazz on Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:31 am, edited 3 times in total.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.