Transponder module with antenna

Deon Beauchamp ●

Sailing ships of old would carry various flags(colours) to indicate their status, but would not necessarily show most of them unless they were in fleet or with an ally.

The Jolly Roger was raised on an attack run to scare the victim ship into surrender.

Running a neutral identifier would be a choice to avoid engagement or other identifiers when in difficult territory.

Verification codes could be required with an identifier to allow the use that identifier.

Displaying your real identifier could be required when docking at a station.

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Semtex ●

...

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Deon Beauchamp ●

... --- ... did your vessel explode before you could complete the message ? 🤔

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Wilhelm ●

S is for silent agreement, I assume :)

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Semtex ●

:)

The post belonged to a different thread

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Wilhelm ●

Having your transponder off (intentionaly or otherwise) could have other faction-related impacts as when you're docking at a colonization authority base (for example), they might question why your transponder was shown to be off at some point along the trip.

This would obviously require some sort of additional interactions (NPC space cops or whatever), but that would tie into factions in general. Break the colonization authority up into sub-factions like 'colonization security, who have their own missions or colonization emergency responders (CER) who go rescue ships or stations in hazard. Heck, they might even rescue you if you're lucky with a ship out of fuel and drifting towards Delfos.

Currently, it seems to be implied that your transponder is somewhat built into your antenna. Being able to separate that and shut off or manipulate the output to appear to be part of a different faction would be a fun additional layer to ship to ship (or ship to station) interactions.

The renegades might try to spoof a legitimate ship signal to get close to your base, and there should be some method to detect a spoofed signal. Ideally something that is never 100%, but increasingly harder to spoof as your tech tree advances. Same in reverse, if you're trying to spoof a signal to approach a base, some basic renegade outpost should be easier to fool than an advanced military facility or battleship.

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Marcus Parriott ●

well.. there are patrol ships... i would imagine they would be the default pirate hunter, and you could fall under their catagorization as a pirate if your transponder seems... suspicious...

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Wilhelm ●

Having patrol ships detour towards you to do a brief scan would be interesting

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4Peace ●

Pirate station can offer transponder change service, so you cannot do it on the fly and change back whenever you like.

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Wilhelm ●

I like that it would need to be a process so it's not an instant flag change. Learning how to do it pirates or renegade mission reward?)

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Wilhelm ●

Or if they eventually do factions, becoming an ally of the renegade faction (assuming you can't just join it and have a separate mission tree from the colonization authority) and at that point they teach you how to hack your transponder to hide your nefarious activities.

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Deon Beauchamp ●

I have been inspired by the previous comments.

Passage codes that you can purchase from any space station that have a limited duration.

That is a code to confirm the validity of a transponder status.

You could buy faction membership code for a week, month or longer.

You could buy a temporary transit code, trading guild pass or a mining license for operating in controlled territories.

The right to purchase a code would be determined by your current record

All of these codes would grant favour of some sort beyond normal status.

I am not sure how the transponder of your vessel and of your character comms system would relate.

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Wilhelm ●

A renegade ship might charge you a toll for safe passage through an area and if you pay your transponder gets updated temporarily so that the other renegades in the area don't shoot on sight. Cool

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Marcus Parriott ●

i like that idea... could have a highly patroled prospector asteroid field with "better than average" mining materials in a relatively small area...

pay the prospectors for access to their prospect claim.

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bnainz ●

Hmm...I've been wondering how this would apply to online games, in a way that admin would fine fair.

I say keep it (antenna and transponder) together, for coherence sake, and enable 3 transponder outputs:

Open channel: This is what you decide it broadcast when, well, broadcasting generally.
Response channel: This is what you decide it broadcast when a scanner or another transponder 'interrogates' you. Maybe a hard target lock does it too? Just more information you decide to add, that is publicly available.
Encrypted channel: This only broadcast what you have in there, when it receives a 'password' you set up. Could be general or response channels, just now encrypted. For use with friends/factions.

Now, the tricky part is spoofing, and a fair way for players to engage in that.

One way I've been thinking on, is (this is the in-game logic) by having a unique encrypted identifier attached to each antenna when it is made. This is set up so that only certain people can access it, if they get the license to access that encryption, i.e. police/base security/bounty hunters. Now you the player can remove that, but now when you are scanned by someone with that license, they will know you have a tampered transponder, since the encryption is gone.

Use for online play: Your character name for the server is that 'encryption' on the antenna, you can't change the name, only 'remove' it, unless you build a new one that will 'repopulate' the encryption again. So, only applies when you are actively trying to be sneaky, or incognito. If you want to go back to normal, say a station or player base requires it for security, just build a new antenna, which 'resets' your status to those who can interrogate for that special 'hidden' 4th transponder response.

Application: You are a bounty hunter, you see a ship fly by with no signal. You interrogate, no response. You use your bounty hunter license to interrogate, and get back a 'tampered' flag. This player removed his transponders 'VIN', essentially, and the antenna is powered on, but not broadcasting, and the entries are all blank as well.

Hmm...I've been wondering how this would apply to online games, in a way that admin would fine fair.

I say keep it (antenna and transponder) together, for coherence sake, and enable 3 transponder outputs:

Open channel: This is what you decide it broadcast when, well, broadcasting generally.
Response channel: This is what you decide it broadcast when a scanner or another transponder 'interrogates' you. Maybe a hard target lock does it too? Just more information you decide to add, that is publicly available.
Encrypted channel: This only broadcast what you have in there, when it receives a 'password' you set up. Could be general or response channels, just now encrypted. For use with friends/factions.

Now, the tricky part is spoofing, and a fair way for players to engage in that.

One way I've been thinking on, is (this is the in-game logic) by having a unique encrypted identifier attached to each antenna when it is made. This is set up so that only certain people can access it, if they get the license to access that encryption, i.e. police/base security/bounty hunters. Now you the player can remove that, but now when you are scanned by someone with that license, they will know you have a tampered transponder, since the encryption is gone.

Use for online play: Your character name for the server is that 'encryption' on the antenna, you can't change the name, only 'remove' it, unless you build a new one that will 'repopulate' the encryption again. So, only applies when you are actively trying to be sneaky, or incognito. If you want to go back to normal, say a station or player base requires it for security, just build a new antenna, which 'resets' your status to those who can interrogate for that special 'hidden' 4th transponder response.

Application: You are a bounty hunter, you see a ship fly by with no signal. You interrogate, no response. You use your bounty hunter license to interrogate, and get back a 'tampered' flag. This player removed his transponders 'VIN', essentially, and the antenna is powered on, but not broadcasting, and the entries are all blank as well.

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Wilhelm ●

Using SE1 faction concepts as a baseline, let's say the Royal Mining Corporation faction is kind of upset at you for that incident on the mars-like planet where you may have done some 'too doon' salvaging of one of their mining outposts.

Their guns at other outposts might be immediately hostile to you if you get too close, and if they have a trading station, they certainly won't sell to you.

Spoof your transponder signal before approaching and maybe you could get under their guns, or even convince them you're not the one that ground up their mining station, it was some dude who just looks a lot like you.

This above example could also apply between one player faction and another player faction, two guilds are at war, this could be an infiltration mission, or maybe a scouting or simply 'hey I still want to trade even though we're enemies.

It should be a temporary hack.
It should not be foolproof (unless the grid in question has no countermeasures, meaning it just accepts whatever the antenna tells it)
It should have some sort of tech tree ranking so there are levels
It should allow for countermeasures also to detect exactly this sort of thing being done to you.

The tech tree rankings would then be compared (spoofing vs. detection) leaving something akin to a % chance that your spoofing attempt works or not. a really generic example would be 'rank 1 spoofing vs. rank 1 detection = 50/50 chance of it working. Rank 5 spoofing vs. rank 5 detection also = 50/50 chance. Rank 1 spoofing vs. rank 5 detection = 10% chance of working? Rank 5 spoofing vs. rank 1 detection = 90% chance of working? etc.

Having it as a separate block allows the 'no countermeasures' situation since if it's built in to every antenna then it's always actively looking for spoofed signals. Meaning if you want the capability to detect spoofed signals, here is a separate block you need to build (some sort of computer block that analyzes radio signals).

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Wilhelm ●

This also opens up the whole concept of hacking to gain access to remote (hostile) grids. This could be one of the things you could do, but a full on electronic warfare/transponder block could include spoofing signals, but also act as a firewall (incoming) and perhaps a way to remotely gain some access to remote grids. Not to the point of taking over the remote grid, but shorting out some turret control or something might be a fun aspect.

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Wilhelm ●

Taking the hacking logic, hacking doors and other blocks to temporarily bypass or gain access would be nice, and the 'electronic warfare block' I mention above could be countermeasures for such things.

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Marcus Parriott ●

i was just thinking hacking doors.. grind it down to hackable, if your hacking ability is high enough repair and boom, its yours.. if not... guess what, you are gonna have to grind that bad boy all the way down.

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Wilhelm ●

Oh interesting, I was envisioning inducing a temporary 'confusion' in the door whether your space buddy is authorized or not, but your comment opens up a different line of thought, which is that bar 'to hack' a block (using SE1 logic I guess) could vary at the hacking point depending on your 'skills', such as your research level on the research tree. The electronic warfare block I mentioned above could also act as resistance against hacking moving that bar farther down

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bnainz ●

Hey Wilhelm, here are a couple more ideas from FalconBMS I picked up on spoofing and jamming you might find interesting with your ideas, maybe some integration or inclusion into SE2 electronic warfare suites:

1. RWR. - Radar Warning Reciever. What it is, is a dedicated screen that shows 'you' in the middle, with electronic threats around you. The beauty is that it is passive, works with radar off. Another good function it has, is that it depopulated other contacts based on threat level, i.e. if someone has their radar on, it shows a radar contact with its azimuth, then if it goes into a 'soft-lock', it highlights with a noise, and if it goes into a 'hard-lock', it starts flashing and making a -lot- of noise.

We already have this though, kinda, in that contacts show up on the U.I when certain conditions are met. The indication of a hard lock would be nice, though, and also the ability to move them to a separate LCD screen to declutter the UI.

2. Jammer. - This is a little different from what people usually think, and might be interesting to include with SE2, too. Jamming is like when you blow a air-horn in a noisy room. No one can hear what anyone else is saying anymore...but everyone can for sure hear that air-horn. Jammin is realitively simple, you just need lots of power. The tricky part that is top secret, is when you only want to jammer 'certain" frequencies and bands (i.e. enemy radar, SAM radars) while still being able to use and see your guys stuff. In actual use...someone turns on their jammer. They are now easier to spot on rwr, since it is loud, but you cannot get a solid lock on them with your radar. Everyone knows you are there, but no exact information. Then, when you get close enough, there is a 'burn-through' range, where a radars own energy has enough power to burn-through the jamming and get a solid lock. The last thing, is Home-on-Jamming missile capability. Modern missiles can 'track' in on a jammer, without needing a radar lock. HOJ means you fire a missile at a jamming location, and it will just home in to the target, still trying to get its own radar lock on the way. It may or may not burn through. Modern usage is to realistically deny a long distance lock, or completely deny older radar systems from the air, land, or sea.

For SE2? Well, as I said, universal jammers are actually pretty easy, just add power. But so are HOJ weapons. The tricky point is 'spoofing', or denying specific radar signatures. A jammer could deny, or reduce, the ability for you or AI to lock a target, maybe untill they get much closer. Conversely, your UI contact would show us much further out. On a real radar, you get a blob of multiple close contacts that jump around when someone is jamming. You could have your UI contact jump around in different ways, requiring a visual or even manual targeting?

Hey Wilhelm, here are a couple more ideas from FalconBMS I picked up on spoofing and jamming you might find interesting with your ideas, maybe some integration or inclusion into SE2 electronic warfare suites:

1. RWR. - Radar Warning Reciever. What it is, is a dedicated screen that shows 'you' in the middle, with electronic threats around you. The beauty is that it is passive, works with radar off. Another good function it has, is that it depopulated other contacts based on threat level, i.e. if someone has their radar on, it shows a radar contact with its azimuth, then if it goes into a 'soft-lock', it highlights with a noise, and if it goes into a 'hard-lock', it starts flashing and making a -lot- of noise.

We already have this though, kinda, in that contacts show up on the U.I when certain conditions are met. The indication of a hard lock would be nice, though, and also the ability to move them to a separate LCD screen to declutter the UI.

2. Jammer. - This is a little different from what people usually think, and might be interesting to include with SE2, too. Jamming is like when you blow a air-horn in a noisy room. No one can hear what anyone else is saying anymore...but everyone can for sure hear that air-horn. Jammin is realitively simple, you just need lots of power. The tricky part that is top secret, is when you only want to jammer 'certain" frequencies and bands (i.e. enemy radar, SAM radars) while still being able to use and see your guys stuff. In actual use...someone turns on their jammer. They are now easier to spot on rwr, since it is loud, but you cannot get a solid lock on them with your radar. Everyone knows you are there, but no exact information. Then, when you get close enough, there is a 'burn-through' range, where a radars own energy has enough power to burn-through the jamming and get a solid lock. The last thing, is Home-on-Jamming missile capability. Modern missiles can 'track' in on a jammer, without needing a radar lock. HOJ means you fire a missile at a jamming location, and it will just home in to the target, still trying to get its own radar lock on the way. It may or may not burn through. Modern usage is to realistically deny a long distance lock, or completely deny older radar systems from the air, land, or sea.

For SE2? Well, as I said, universal jammers are actually pretty easy, just add power. But so are HOJ weapons. The tricky point is 'spoofing', or denying specific radar signatures. A jammer could deny, or reduce, the ability for you or AI to lock a target, maybe untill they get much closer. Conversely, your UI contact would show us much further out. On a real radar, you get a blob of multiple close contacts that jump around when someone is jamming. You could have your UI contact jump around in different ways, requiring a visual or even manual targeting?

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Wilhelm ●

Good thoughts! An actual radar/lidar and for that matter IR detection blocks would be pretty good.

I've always had a bit of an issue with the grind and re-weld to gain ownership of a block as a 'hacking' concept. It works, it's 'fine' but say you want to gain access to a door, maybe you just want to unlock it, you don't want to demolish and build a new door in its place. Thus you would 'hack' the door controls, disable (electronic warfare) the sensing logic that determines if you're friend or foe or spoof your own signal (as above) to make you look like a friendly space buddy vs. an unwelcome visitor.

Anyway, the transponder block from the original request opens up a lot of possibilities for this at a ship level, and the logic then carries over to personal (out of ship) behavior but on a specific block vs. space buddy level instead of grid to grid.

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bnainz ●

-- Here is an idea could work for 'all' the things, it's been refined some:

Short Version:

Factions have ranks, and you can 'tag' a 'control' type block to require a certain faction rank to access. Any other blocks that are also with it in a grouping, or with it in a sub-grouping, will also require that same faction rank to access. Blocks that are hacked are reset to 'neutral', with the current tag able to be deleted, and replaced with faction tag you are able to re-tag.

Full Explanation:

1. Block Command and Control - 'Control' type block(s), like a cockpit, antenna, control seat, AI controller, certain terminals, etc, that are in a grid's block grouping (or any contol blocks in a sub-group's particular listing) will control who can access any of the blocks within that grouping. The default setting is 'neutral', but if you join or create a faction, you can 'tag' the different faction(s) on those control blocks (like a checkbox in a blocks system menu page)....restricting access to those blocks in the grouping unless you are in that faction, and have appropriate faction rank.

2. Faction Ranking - Just like a grid's list of blocks have a hierarchy...

- The overall grid name --> any sub-groups --> the general blocks --> neutral blocks

...also the Faction Ranks mirror that for access on who can control and at what level:

- Faction Commander (the overall grid) --> Faction Officer (sub-groups) --> Faction Member (general blocks) --> Neutral

...you can place a tag equal to your rank, or lower. If a entire grid is neutral, anyone can use anything. If the cockpit has a faction's 'Commander' tag enabled on the block, only a Commander rank can access it. If you have a sub-group of all the turrets and a control seat set to Officer, then only an Officer rank can access that control seat and control the weapon settings....or a Commander, or a Commander using the overall grid's 'captain's seat' command block type.

3. Scanners - long range scanner work as normal(scanners types are another discussion), any antenna with a Faction tag enabled will also broadcast the Faction name, Short range ship/grid scanners will pick up any Faction Tags on any of a grid's command blocks, and on Space Suits. Items in storage are hidden. Short range scanners are used, say if the antenna or a ship seems suspicious (the antenna has your faction tag, but a close range scan shows all the command type blocks are neutral....or have an enemy faction's tags...meaning the ship was probably captured and all the command blocks were hacked, except the antenna). The third type of scanner is the hand scanner, or the personnel scanner block. This reveals a player's name and a list of any factions they are a member of. It is a last ditch measure, or used to secure sensitive areas (bridge, weapons, storage). Have an airlock with personnel scanner blocks in it, leading to the bridge. If someone stole a Suit and kept the faction tags, the personnel scanner will reveal their true affiliations. For the personnel block scanners, Imagine a 'to' block and a 'from' block fitted to a corridor between the two airlocks doors, and a wall of light that slowly passes through it (like the Homeworld hyper jump sequences) for the scan.

4. Faction Tags and Ownership - You can set or remove any faction tags on a command type block that you have the authority to through it's System menu page. If the block has a faction tag that has a higher authority, or from another faction, you must first grind it down to nonfunctional and then repair to hack it, as usual. When you hack a block, it behaves as if it was 'neutral' (anyone can access it's settings or any blocks within it's grouping)...even with the current faction tags still showing. You can delete those tags, setting it to neutral...but can only put new tags that you have access to, back on it.

-- Questions:

Should blocks that have been hacked show up in a grids block list as hacked? Maybe a exclamation mark (!), next to the block name? Would also populate for damage received and repaired normally, or during building, reminding you to reset the faction privileges flag?

Should officers be restricted to a particular su-group of blocks, or have access any sub-group on a grid? For example, you have a ship with three control seats on the bridge. One is the Captains chair, then a weapons officer, and an engineering chair. Can you restrict any weapons officers to only his control seat and associated blocks, and not the engineers stuff?

Based on the question above, can we create sub-groups within a sub-group? And have that sub-structure ability for faction sub-ranks, as well? Then you could set up an Faction Officers Ranking, with specific sub-ranks for particular grid sub-groups?

-- What does all this enable?

Just like a boat can raise multiple flags to run on, this system would enable control of a grid, and can partition that control out. This would enable trade, stealing, spying, spoofing, smuggling, faction property security, wars, boarding/capture....and it is agnostic, it will work in PvP, PvE, and EvE. It also fits in with SE2 systems, already.

-- Scenarios:

Say you sneak onto a ship and want to hack their weapons sub-group. You can hack each turret one-by-one and take them offline, or hack the control seat that controls that group. If you delete the Faction tags in the seat and add your own....you now control that group. But everyone who looks at the grids system page will see it, too. If you leave the current faction tags on it...trying to be sneaky and see if no one notices the turrets are offline....the chair is hacked, and untill a new tag is placed, it behaves as if it is neutral.

They could respond by taking all the turrets and remove them from that sub-group, isolating that control seat by itself. Or they can just change the settings on the turrets, but you can just change them right back. They can delete the hacked tag and refresh it with a new one, requiring you to regrind it and hack it again. Or they can grind down their turrets and hack them, regaining control one-by-one, adding them to a new sub-group with a new command block. If you have your own faction tags on that control seat, they would have to fight you, re-hack that seat, and refresh the tag by deleting it and installing a new one.

Now, say there is a hostile pirate base that controls a jump node shortcut to a resource rich sector. You happen to catch a pirate courier ship from them, and take full control, grinding down all command blocks and deleting their faction ownership tags. You can't fly your own faction tags on the antenna to broadcast, since you are hostile to the pirates, so you leave the cockpit and antenna blocks neutral.

You wait for the sentry ships to be on the other side of the base, and make a dash to get in jump range. It sees you as: (Unknown Signal), (Neutral). It manages to intercept you though, trying to do a close range scan...which picks up any faction tags on a grids command blocks. They all come back neutral...except your suit. It is still tagged to your personal factions ownership. You are now flagged as hostile to the pirates.

Next try, you steal another ship, hack it, and leave the tags on all the command type blocks. You remember to remove your suits tags, and try again. This time you pass through, no problem. In the next sector, though, you meet another ship of an allied faction...but your antenna is still flagged as hostile to them since you didn't remove any of the pirate tags.

Now, you want to do some smuggling, by buying some weapons on that pirate base. You steal a ship, and hack it. But, to walk around the base, you need a pirate suit. Upon search, that ship has some extra space suits in storage that still have their pirate 'Faction Member's tags that won't trigger a guard, so you put them on and head over. You dock, no problem, head to a trade terminal, and buy stuff. But...you want to try and steal some -more- stuff from their storage area, also. You enter the interior, your 'Faction Member' tags on the space suit are enough to access the outer doors restrictions. Inside you head to the cargo area, enter an airlock, and when you cycle it, a wall of light passes over you...a personel scanner block system...and it reveals your name and faction memberships....which flags you as hostile...to the interior turrets also inside the airlock.

-- Here it is, a Command and Control structure for players. Could probably be tweaked to be better, its just the rough framework.