We've fleshed out some new propositions, and courtesy of S1lverhair, its been pretty well summed up. I've posted his words down below. Its a fairly accurate representation of what we have in mind right now.
UPDATE(9/15);
With some progress in the right direction, i've added a "goals" section so we know what will still need to be done. As we gain USABLE materials, i'll amend the appropriate "idea's" section.
Update(the start);
So i thought it would be helpful to manage my topic by re-organizing all the things that have been thought and considered, and stating the actual goal, then further append it with ideas and desires.
Of course, ideas/comments are not just welcome, but necessary. If i missed something, or didnt state something true, or if you'd just like to see your idea up in the front, PM me about it.
BTW, i tend to ramble, case no one noticed... If you can restate something better, please do lol.
The Main Goal
To have the player ship be able to move about "undetected" by other, enemy ships. Basic concept being stealth.
Heres some goals i've setup so we have a visual marker of what we need done:
Progress Key;
Not Completed
Made Progress
Completed
Script that allows players to fly around "undetected", or unengaged by threats.
Looks like we have something that might work. It will need a few tweaks
Script that will detect if a ship has entered the appropriate conditions to be detected, based on the Base Variable
Script to determine the "Base Variable" which will be used for most everything. Likely an algorithm based off the base value, being ships size(type), then variable factors such as speed and turn rate.
Script to determine energy consumption. This will probably be a factor of the Base Variable. Makes sense, since its using the same stats
Hotkey that will run a check to see if the device is present in cargo, then, if true, activate the stealth script
Get something that works in game
Conduct testing to make sure its stable and works properly, then polish and Complete.
So far, we've tossed around a few concepts. Let me describe them.
As of 9/17, this is where we stand. It does a pretty swell job i may say of rounding up what's been tossed around. An entirely new concept has been devised that varies from the original idea's. Check it out!
S1lverhair wrote:righto lets do a roundup on the ideas coming out here.
pardon the lack of spelling.
first we want a way to cloak the player ship so we can get into a bit of skullduggery. such as sneaking up to a carrier and boarding from point blank range or uncloaking a destroyer and watching a pirate swarm quickly revise their plans.
second we want it to be fair, not just some magic ware which costs a lot but makes the game easy because only you have it and noone else uses it *cough* jumpdrive*.
TrixX and blueshade's ideas are both completely differeent and quite compatible.
Blueshade has suggested a device which once adtivated consumes some energy from the ships generator and uses that energy to masks the ships signature. this active cloaking device may hide the ship from enemy scanners. it has been suggested that this cloaking device exist in various forms from the bargin basement models which chew up masses of energy and slightly reduce energy output to state of the art models which would make klingons proud.
Trixx is suggesting a far seperate mode of stealth in that instead of the player actively invoking a piece of high tech to mask the ship that instead the ship is hidden my just maintaining its energy output profile a la Normandy from mass effect. To do this the energy profile for every ship at leas IS would need to be calculated and Maths would need to be done to determine if a ship is bieng detected or not. and for truly effective hiding while remaining mobile a speccial class of ship would have to be used. call them Shadow variants. like raider but with a bigger price tag and a straight 50% off emmissions (yould be suprised how much you can reduce emmissions (sound) in RL by just a bit of careful design)
both ideas are valid and excellent and I firmly believe that both should be used. but the implementation is going to be a real kicker.
how will this all work
first is the matter of calculating energy emmissions, how much energy a ship emmits and it what way it emmits energy. Some ideas have been thrown around.
1. that a ships energy signature is the sum of all of the energy emmitting stuff on board e.g. generator, engines, weapons shields, energy emmitting cargo (warheads, hammerheads etc.) and it all comes out to a numberwhich then goes to MATHS to figiure out if the ship can be detected.
2. same as in case 1. except each thing on the ship emits energy in a different spectra, lets call them colours. say there is about 10 of them ranging from red to violet like a rainbow and each component emits energy in one or more bands based on its type. this woy you can know what type of ship it is and what kind of heat it is packing from its passive energy signature alone.
How are things going to be detected. just as important as what you are going to detect the how of detecting it comes in a variety of forms based on RL examples.
1. passive. the most used kind of detection, passive is basicly seeing or hearing where you watch for the energy signatures of other things, this requires no energy. but, as you know if you ever have heard a bump in the night provides little information about any contacts it finds unless the signal is distinctive. Blueshade has accurately described the process of hiding from passive sensors like going quiet in a submarine where tou have to reduce as much energy emmission as possible and hope you arent noticed.
2. active. the other type of detection, active works by sending out a signal yourself and watching or listening for the reflections. common examples are using a torch, radar, echolocation, sonar etc. active sensors typically provide much more information about the contact. Trixx has proposed a powerfull ping scanner as a form of active sensing but smaller normal radar type devices could easily be implemented as well. I envision the primary difference bieng that the smaller versions could not pierce the active camoflage of mid range cloaks unless at close range.
right thats it for my basic recap of the ideas thus far. I have forgotten stuff but lets talk about how we want this implementedon a basic level first and thene get into the extranious (like how exactly will you not notice a destroyer sneaking up behind you) stuff later.
Ideas to prevent hostile ships from engaging the player
Basically, the running idea is to have the script change the status of the HOSTILE ships in the area. Basically, so long as the ships wernt actively engaging the player they would be set to "neutral". The script would then remember the relation values, and set the player hud to display the hostile ships as such.
When the stealth is dropped, the saved value will be returned, and everything will be as was.
With any luck, this should be what we need:
TECSG wrote:@BlueShade Zero,
Below is the modification I make to the script !fight.targeting which is the script all NPC ships use to acquire a target.
The targeting script attempts to find a target that is not a satellite but if it doesn't find anything it will look for a target of any sort. I patched the 2nd part of the script to ignore a satellite if it has a local variable called 'stealth' set to [TRUE]. I don't actually check the object is a satellite as it would just be a waste of time given that my scripts should be the only ones setting such a variable, however, even if they are not, ships would still be targeted because the first check in the script would find them.
The first check in the script (for any non-satellite target) could easily be modified in the same way to ignore a ship if it has a Camouflage Device in the cargo bay.
I'm not sure if a ship would remain 'cloaked' as far as the enemy were concerned if it started shooting at it though, in such cases, the enemy may target the ship directly rather than using the targeting script.
Code: Select all
073 * target any ship: long range
074 * **using class Mvable ship instead of null should prevent sats being tageted
075 * during combat. Check for sats and beacons after
076 skip if $enemy
077 $enemy = find ship: sector=[SECTOR] class or type=Moveable Ship 2134 race=null flags=$flags refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$maxrange maxnum=null refpos=$arefpos
078 if not $enemy
079 $visible = find ship: sector=[SECTOR] class or type=null race=null flags=$flags2 refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$maxrange maxnum=50 refpos=$arefpos
080 $found = size of array $visible
081 while $found
082 dec $found =
083 $target = $visible[$found]
084 $stealth = $target -> get local variable: name='stealth'
085 if $stealth != [TRUE]
086 $enemy = $target
087 break
088 end
089 end
090 end
Not perfect, it needs a few tweaks to work with the player ship, but its been said that shouldnt be a huge issue.
Thanks to TECSG for generously sharing this with us.
Ideas as to being stealthy(detection)
So far, the idea is to use an array of values, some constant, others variable, pulled from various sources to determine if a ship "sees" or detects the stealthed player.
RANGE is what everything will boil down to in the end. Every value will be to determine how far away the player ship will be detectable at.
Heres some of what we've considered.
Ship size - (M5, M2, M6)
Ship speed - (faster they go, the easier to detect)
Ship Maneuvers - (i KNOW turning speed can be detected)
Enemy Scanner type - (better scanner, better detection right?)
Environment - (is there something in the way?)
know i missed some, throw some ideas up!
As for being detected, as mentioned RANGE is the determining factor. I've also rambled the idea of having a small variable put in, so the player doenst just "know" how far they'll be detected at, and add a chancy element to it.
When the player is "detected", the HOSTILE ship which detected it should engage the player. An idea was put out to have that ship also "inform" the player position to all other hostiles of the same race. I dont think the Split would tell the Kha'ak that your there, but if it cant be helped, oh well.
Balance
Some things where put forth about balance, and it makes sense.
So far, we've accepted that some form of renewable resource would be acceptable. So far the idea is to deplete weapons and or shields.
My thoughts on the matter, is to deplete weapon energy first, then the shields.
Some further idea's suggest to cut shields all together once the stealth is on. I like this idea personally. If the shields could be "turned off" and then "turned back on" with out having to recharge, i'd find this ideal. That way, getting shot while cloaked would be VERY painful, and incite the player to drop the stealth as quickly as possible to regain shields.
Perhaps when shields are turned back on, they should take a "re initialization" hit of a certain %?
An idea i put forth, was to have the "depletion" a variable factor, affected by ship size, speed, maneuvers, weapon fire, the works. Something to note, would be that this value could be taken from the detection range estimates, since those would already be calculated.
The base factor SHOULD BE ship size. Just a quick quote.
That sums it up nicely.I'm thinking the ship size should be a STATIC depletion, and be the most effectual. A small ship will consume little energy, while a large ship would consume a far greater amount of energy. This would force the distinguishment that a small ship is for covert ops and at low speeds could remain stealthed for a long long time, while a large ship would be black ops, only ever being able to stealth for a few minutes, and could move more freely since its speed isnt very high and doesnt factor as heavily, but it would have more bravado and bluster in its appearance.