Radar and Medium Range Detection

So, i considered doing such a post for a while, the topic of radar is a hot subject, and i agree that a long range fully acurate radar would be a very bad idea, at least in the current iteration of the game. that being said right now the way we can use to detect and track things at relatively short distances, being LIDAR, is extremely performance inefficient, ineffective anyways, and does not leave a lot of room for design and counter engineering, since all you can do reallly is "add more cameras, i guess"

So, if there ever is to be a radar system, may it be in this itteration of space engineers, or a possible future one, here is the way i see the problem.

a radar which works only by range is flat out the question, as it would make it way too easy for greifers to stalk upon unsuspected newbs and blast them full of rockets, range is of course a factor, but it must not be the only one. only a combinaison of different parametters can make a radar into a balanced and interesting addition to the game

That radar of mine has 2 modes which will greatly change how the radar operates.

the first is active radar, and it works in conjonction with antenna and other radars on the grid. in this mode the radar simply blares extremelly powerfull EM waves in all directions and let the antennas listen to what the radar picks up. an active antenna and radar in active mode is needed for this to work

What you can detect is based on multiple factors. how much energy you are pouring into your radar system is one, the size of the enemy grid is another. the detection power quickly falls off at range, so you need a lot of power to be able to track something that is trying to stay hidden. moreover, you are effectively broadcasting your own location to everyone for hundreds of killometers, so it isn't exactly a subtle way of doing things. an enemy ship can put decoys on its grids to help counter active radar. essentially decoys broadcast a complementary signal to your own ship signature, which greatly decrease the point where a radar can tell your sig appart from background noise. for exaple, if a ship can be detected at 10km usually, but has 10 decoys on it, then it will only be able to be detected at about 4 km by active radar.

but this isn't the only way you can find things around. the radar is also equiped with as sensor array, which activate when the radar is turned into passive mode.

the radar does not emit anything in that mode, it only listen to what is happening around it, trying to locate interferences of artifical origin. it also keeps track of any antenna broadcasts, perhaps so you can keep track of known objects or friendly ships. it has 3 sensors it can call upon to detect things in this mode.

The first is the heat sensor. this sensor looks for unusual energy readings which could highlight the presense of nuclear reactors. A ship wdrawing a high amount of power from reactors will be able to be detected by this sensor, potentially to quite a long range. Of course, batteries, solar pannels, hydrogen engines and wind turbines are next to invisible to this sensor, so it is a good idea to turn off reactors and switch to battery power if your goal is to not be detected.

then there is the gravity sensor. this sensor tries to look for heavy things in space. it is next to useless for light crafts, but can detect very heavy ships up to tremendous distances. it has 2 issues however. the first is that it cannot detect things if they are within a planetary gravity field, as the planet will spoil its readings. the second is that the sensor is unable to differentiate between a station and the asteroid it is latched onto, meaning that it would just interpret the reading as another rock. this property could be used by savy engineers when they want to hide very heavy ships from detection.

the last sensor is an optical detection system. it is able to see anything that comes within 1000m of your grid. no matter what it is, it is however unable to see past that distance.

my hope is to demonstrate how to create a radar sytem that fixes the problem of the current lidar system, while also inserting engineering based counterplay into the design.