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Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#1
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.
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.
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#3
This is a great idea, just having to power to fly around and have a whole fleet of holographic ships would be awesome. For example if you were mining/trading ship and you had to go through dangerous territory of pirates or opposite faction you could put up a couple holograms of big battle cruisers, so that it looks as if you were safe from attack unless they had a sizable fleet.
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#4
I like the idea of holographic ships and fleets.

Maybe a holographic image could also be generated around an existing ship (with or without drones).
The ship then appears to be much bigger, and is less likely to get attacked.

Or: it looks like an asteroid or part of it (land on asteroid, generate holographic asteroid-texture around ship, and start mining, or just hide there from potential threats).
To find the ship, you need to shoot at every asteroid around ;) (of course, if the "real" asteroids were moving in space, asteroid-camouflage would be more interesting).
On a side note, CutterJohn came up with the idea of a mine in the disguise of an asteroid, here.
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#7
McDuff wrote:At space scales, a decoy would surely be more like something that spoofs another ship's UID to look like something else on the system map, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have to physically generate a hologram, just a convincing enough fake ID.
thats assuming that you are just asking for the ID, but the thread is also about actively confusing enemy sensors which will not only be asking for your UID
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#8
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
McDuff wrote:At space scales, a decoy would surely be more like something that spoofs another ship's UID to look like something else on the system map, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have to physically generate a hologram, just a convincing enough fake ID.
thats assuming that you are just asking for the ID, but the thread is also about actively confusing enemy sensors which will not only be asking for your UID
Which comes down to the complexity of drones. Simple basic ID spoofing could give way to more advanced spoofing of things like engine/shield/heat signatures. And that itself would be dependent on the quality of a scanner - presumably a really good scanner would know the difference between an actual hot body and a fake hot body.

Holograms are only good up real close, after all.
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#10
This is a fantastic site for realism in space sci-fi
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... detect.php

Basically, an effective decoy IS a whole spaceship. This is similar to tactics used in naval warfare nowdays. Carrier groups have many support ships whos role is to act as more enticing targets for missiles and torpedoes. This is because realistically, missiles and torpedoes are smart enough to tell the difference between a decoy and a target.
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#11
Sasha wrote:This is a fantastic site for realism in space sci-fi
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... detect.php
As of 2013, the Voyager 1 space probe is about 18 billion kilometers away from Terra and its radio signal is a pathetic 20 watts (or about as dim as the light bulb in your refrigerator). But as faint as it is, the Green Bank telescope can pick it out from the background noise in one second flat.
...Fuck.
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#13
I just think that this has a lot more gameplay potential than flick-of-a-switch cloaking.
You can't balance cloaking very well because it's so... binary. And insanely powerful.

Stealth is a much cooler mechanic because you can work with it. You can use special hull materials (with certain drawbacks), minimise your power settings... you can play with this stuff.

Now deception is even better. Messing with the enemy's mind... in creative ways that are far more than just a boolean flag.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Decoy Drones - distraction instead of cloaking

#15
A cool twist to the ordinary visible/invisible cloaking would be that you only blend in with the universe if you're kinda stationary compared to the surroundings..
For example if you're pasing along and see something that should not see you, then you need to go to a complete stop which you actually need to actively do because if you just cut the power to everything except the cloaking device you keep drifting... on the plus side you might have the opportunity to direct the ship away from the enemy before shutting power, thus still not completely invisible but at least on your way to safety... could create some intriguing tension where you'd have to decide whether you should cut the power and drift or generate a possibly noticable spike to decelerate rapidly to become more less visible.

In the game Natural Selection 2 they've implemented it rather nicely (I think at least), you're only cloaked when being completely motionless, and even then if the enemy looks closely they can discover you.

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