Ships "Stealth" Mechanic

Deon Beauchamp ●

Would this include vessels in weapon range?

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captainbladej52 ●

First I'm going to preface that people have wanted better detection methods for various things for awhile and I actually agree we need better methods for certain things than we have now. That said when you start getting into things such as what you've proposed here is when I start seeing potential red flags going up. While you may have suggested this in good faith, there is a danger it would make larger ships and bases too easy to detect and punish those who build "incorrectly" and build over a certain threshold. In the real world, a larger power signature can give away certain installations and so on. So in that way yes it's realistic, but realism doesn't always make for good gameplay.

If you're going to suggest that things could be detected easier via power draw and such, you would also need ways to minimize the power signatures or so on without it being purely "just build smaller" or "just don't use as much power". Because if those are the only options it again punishes people for building "incorrectly". Just like those who ask for heat mechanics, there would need to be ways to detect said heat sure, but also hide said signatures as much as possible. Balance and counterbalance effect. I tend to build on a larger scale than some people might, and if my only options are "build smaller" or "don't use as much power" or "just hide in an asteroid" this gives a massive power imbalance in favor of super tiny ships. While I would expect smaller ships to be harder to spot and harder to detect because they don't use as much power, this runs the risk of turning anything over a specific size into a flashing neon sign saying "come shoot me griefers" and such purely for the "crime" of being larger. This would need to be thought out more than purely just what's here.

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Jakub Wołkowksi ●

this could be easily solved by capping max size/power draw detection to some reasonable amount, obviously the detection range shoudn't scale up endlessly, the point isn't to make bigger ships easier to detect, it's to make smaller, low power vessels harder to detect. they could also make it so grids with certain blocks (like weapons and medbays) are easier to detect. they could also add active radar, that periodically pings you nearby grids it can reach.

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captainbladej52 ●

@Jakub Wołkowksi: And this is where you get into the mud and murky waters when suggesting stuff like this. What's considered a "reasonable" cap? You would also need to define both ends of the spectrum as well, how detectable something at the absolute minimum detectability is, and then maximum detectability. Assuming something is at the absolute minimum level of detectability, how close could it get to a larger ship/station before it's finally detected? And I don't mean a human player happens to be looking in that direction and sees it moving, I'm talking as in how close can it get before the systems on a ship are like "wait a minute there's something here". Would they be able to practically reach out and physically touch the other ship, or would they be a little farther out such as say 1km just to quantify a number for discussion?

Then on the opposite side of the coin for a grid at maximum detectability, how obvious would it be something is there? Are we talking it's lit up like the Las Vegas strip and has it's own flashing neon sign above it's head saying "come shoot me and raid me" that anything within 2000 km can see, or what are we talking? How far away could this grid be detected?

Then there's the the issue of the max size/power draw cap itself. How large would a grid have to be before it's considered to be at the cap? Just to give some numbers for discussion purposes. I have 2 ships and a station that I use at times. One is a small destroyer that's about 30 blocks long, 20 wide, and 7 tall. Then the second ship is a dreadnought at 85 long, 43 wide, and 7 tall. The station is around 300 blocks long, 125 at the widest, and 75 tall. Far as total potential power output, the destroyer is capable of outputting around 2 gigawatts if it throws everything it has at something. The dreadnought is capable of producing around 5 gigawatts of power. The station is capable of producing around 50 gigawatts of power. Ballpark where would my 2 ships and station fall on the detectability spectrum of this suggestion out of say 100? 1 being least detectable and 100 being most detectable. In terms of grid size alone where would they fall? And in terms of power draw where would they fall?

Would the destroyer be towards the lower end of the spectrum on grid and power draw? Would the dreadnought have hit the scaling cap on grid size or could it still scale higher? Would it be close to the destroyer in power draw or alot higher? Then for the station has it hit maximum detectability on grid size and power draw? I don't need to know everything down to the last one and zero, but I do want to have an idea of what I would be working with if this were implemented. Because as another pointed out, this has pretty massive implications for both the pve and pvp players in this game. If not done with surgical precision, this would severely punish people for building "incorrectly" and paint targets on alot of backs.

@Jakub Wołkowksi: And this is where you get into the mud and murky waters when suggesting stuff like this. What's considered a "reasonable" cap? You would also need to define both ends of the spectrum as well, how detectable something at the absolute minimum detectability is, and then maximum detectability. Assuming something is at the absolute minimum level of detectability, how close could it get to a larger ship/station before it's finally detected? And I don't mean a human player happens to be looking in that direction and sees it moving, I'm talking as in how close can it get before the systems on a ship are like "wait a minute there's something here". Would they be able to practically reach out and physically touch the other ship, or would they be a little farther out such as say 1km just to quantify a number for discussion?

Then on the opposite side of the coin for a grid at maximum detectability, how obvious would it be something is there? Are we talking it's lit up like the Las Vegas strip and has it's own flashing neon sign above it's head saying "come shoot me and raid me" that anything within 2000 km can see, or what are we talking? How far away could this grid be detected?

Then there's the the issue of the max size/power draw cap itself. How large would a grid have to be before it's considered to be at the cap? Just to give some numbers for discussion purposes. I have 2 ships and a station that I use at times. One is a small destroyer that's about 30 blocks long, 20 wide, and 7 tall. Then the second ship is a dreadnought at 85 long, 43 wide, and 7 tall. The station is around 300 blocks long, 125 at the widest, and 75 tall. Far as total potential power output, the destroyer is capable of outputting around 2 gigawatts if it throws everything it has at something. The dreadnought is capable of producing around 5 gigawatts of power. The station is capable of producing around 50 gigawatts of power. Ballpark where would my 2 ships and station fall on the detectability spectrum of this suggestion out of say 100? 1 being least detectable and 100 being most detectable. In terms of grid size alone where would they fall? And in terms of power draw where would they fall?

Would the destroyer be towards the lower end of the spectrum on grid and power draw? Would the dreadnought have hit the scaling cap on grid size or could it still scale higher? Would it be close to the destroyer in power draw or alot higher? Then for the station has it hit maximum detectability on grid size and power draw? I don't need to know everything down to the last one and zero, but I do want to have an idea of what I would be working with if this were implemented. Because as another pointed out, this has pretty massive implications for both the pve and pvp players in this game. If not done with surgical precision, this would severely punish people for building "incorrectly" and paint targets on alot of backs.

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Tael ●

Stealth has been asked for a number of times with a number of contributing factors, such as heat, size, power-usage, special paints/shapes, and with active devices like radar jammers or chameleon/cloaking devices.

-PvE players are mixed on it, either wanting it if they think they'll be able to use it to hide from pvp or enjoy it in pve, or hating it if their typical play-style wouldn't play in to taking advantage of it.

-PvP players tend to be more interested in stealth, though typically on the conditions that it have a minimum range within which it wouldn't function to prevent griefers/infinitely-respawning grinder-monkeys from abusing it, and that when someone starts shooting they lose stealth immediately so that we don't end up having to deal with "stealth-griefers".

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Jakub Wołkowksi ●

I mean as with most settings, it could be a toggle during world creation, i think that's the healthiest approach so each player/server can set up their world to their liking

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Semtex ●

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Ammorok ●

Regardless of the Pro Vs. Con of how to get stealth done, a good many people seem to want stealth and detection in some form. We may not all agree on the methods of how to balance it, but that's why we add these suggestions. For each suggestion there is an argument for and against what to do and how to do it. I love seeing huge builds lurking in the void of space and also small ones that pack a punch in raids. Yes, if detection is based purely on one type of signature the pitfalls mentioned previously in the thread would cause a "meta" to develop, possibly towards smaller grid size. While I don't want to be told how to build my stuff, this is just an extra engineering challenge. First, how do I use it, how does it work and how can I protect myself from others that use it? If you want to just build big ships that's fine, but its a bigger target. Just like if a ship is too small, it gets annihilated in one shot. there are trade offs.

5914591e62e44a7cb12eace4a505270a

Some form of signature detection and masking is needed, I think there has to be some compromise to make the balance work and be reasonable. I have some faith that Keen can understand this very controversial topic is not easy to work with. Sure they could make some block that vanishes a ship just to shut people up for arguments sake, but they don't want to alienate their players.

Why do you want Stealth?

To hide from bigger factions and ships in game because you are a loner or tired of getting thrashed?
To have a tactical advantage in a battle, scouting or ambushing?
To grief other players and watch the world burn?

There are options for detection: Individually or in combination

Energy/Power Signature
Heat/Engine Signature
Radar/Beacon Signature

There are options for game rules: Server imposed

Player Honor code (But we know griefers follow no rules)
Game Block Restrictions (But who wants to be forced to use max block caps?)
Game function Restrictions (But who wants a wimpy game feature?)

Some veteran SE players have sensitive egos when it comes to this, I get it, its nice feeling like a beast in a gun brick. I know personally that I don't like being told what to do or being forced to do something I don't want to and would rather have less restriction. Some folks have strong feelings on this, so before we all get bent out of shape, I suggest those that can't handle getting out maneuvered in battle when on equal footing or are unwilling to damage their "PRECIOUS" creation, just stay in creative mode and away from live servers.

Instead of penalizing folks by withholding features, let the game meta guide some of that balance on grid size and functionality. Would that mean smaller ships would be more prevalent, sure maybe, but why is that a bad thing?

Smaller ships reduce server strain due to calculations associated with huge grids.
Veterans have a challenge to be efficient and make better builds to cope with detection.
New players with competitive builds can swing it with veterans, instead of getting steamrolled every time.
New player retention to SE2 might be more stable because they have a more effective passive survival defense that is not dependent on being a master pilot or genius engineer.
Lone players with moderate resources can still make ships that can go "toe-to-toe" with larger factions with vast resources.
No rules or restrictions are imposed on the player, just the challenge of adapting to the technology.

Its easy to have fun when we have overpowered ships, we are loaded with custom gun turrets and have years of combat experience under our belt. BUT new engineers do not have that yet. Stealth could add an option for new players that want to be on a live server but are not ready to duke it out with big ships. If the complaint is that people don't know how to build or are at a disadvantage because of their "wrong build", then show some class and teach them if they are willing to learn and quit complaining. And if this is still not acceptable to the community, just make a button in the options menu that gives the ability to turn off specific blocks.

Regardless of the Pro Vs. Con of how to get stealth done, a good many people seem to want stealth and detection in some form. We may not all agree on the methods of how to balance it, but that's why we add these suggestions. For each suggestion there is an argument for and against what to do and how to do it. I love seeing huge builds lurking in the void of space and also small ones that pack a punch in raids. Yes, if detection is based purely on one type of signature the pitfalls mentioned previously in the thread would cause a "meta" to develop, possibly towards smaller grid size. While I don't want to be told how to build my stuff, this is just an extra engineering challenge. First, how do I use it, how does it work and how can I protect myself from others that use it? If you want to just build big ships that's fine, but its a bigger target. Just like if a ship is too small, it gets annihilated in one shot. there are trade offs.

5914591e62e44a7cb12eace4a505270a

Some form of signature detection and masking is needed, I think there has to be some compromise to make the balance work and be reasonable. I have some faith that Keen can understand this very controversial topic is not easy to work with. Sure they could make some block that vanishes a ship just to shut people up for arguments sake, but they don't want to alienate their players.

Why do you want Stealth?

To hide from bigger factions and ships in game because you are a loner or tired of getting thrashed?
To have a tactical advantage in a battle, scouting or ambushing?
To grief other players and watch the world burn?

There are options for detection: Individually or in combination

Energy/Power Signature
Heat/Engine Signature
Radar/Beacon Signature

There are options for game rules: Server imposed

Player Honor code (But we know griefers follow no rules)
Game Block Restrictions (But who wants to be forced to use max block caps?)
Game function Restrictions (But who wants a wimpy game feature?)

Some veteran SE players have sensitive egos when it comes to this, I get it, its nice feeling like a beast in a gun brick. I know personally that I don't like being told what to do or being forced to do something I don't want to and would rather have less restriction. Some folks have strong feelings on this, so before we all get bent out of shape, I suggest those that can't handle getting out maneuvered in battle when on equal footing or are unwilling to damage their "PRECIOUS" creation, just stay in creative mode and away from live servers.

Instead of penalizing folks by withholding features, let the game meta guide some of that balance on grid size and functionality. Would that mean smaller ships would be more prevalent, sure maybe, but why is that a bad thing?

Smaller ships reduce server strain due to calculations associated with huge grids.
Veterans have a challenge to be efficient and make better builds to cope with detection.
New players with competitive builds can swing it with veterans, instead of getting steamrolled every time.
New player retention to SE2 might be more stable because they have a more effective passive survival defense that is not dependent on being a master pilot or genius engineer.
Lone players with moderate resources can still make ships that can go "toe-to-toe" with larger factions with vast resources.
No rules or restrictions are imposed on the player, just the challenge of adapting to the technology.

Its easy to have fun when we have overpowered ships, we are loaded with custom gun turrets and have years of combat experience under our belt. BUT new engineers do not have that yet. Stealth could add an option for new players that want to be on a live server but are not ready to duke it out with big ships. If the complaint is that people don't know how to build or are at a disadvantage because of their "wrong build", then show some class and teach them if they are willing to learn and quit complaining. And if this is still not acceptable to the community, just make a button in the options menu that gives the ability to turn off specific blocks.

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Semtex ●

The detection capability of the radar is determined by the radiated energy of the "search" pulse, the distance of the target, the RCS (radar cross section) of the target, the sensitivity of the receiver, the size of the aperture of the transmitting and receiving antennas and the wavelength/frequency used (more -> radar equation).

A large ship radar system has antennas of large size, with an area typically one to two orders of magnitude larger than a small ship radar system. A large ship radar system can easily use frequencies that are physically unavailable to small ship radars (they just don't have large enough antennas).

What does this imply?

A large ship radar, with a large antenna, will pick up much weaker radar echoes of targets than a small ship radar with a small antenna - for the same search pulse energy in proportion to the ratio of the products of the transmit and receive antenna areas. However, the large ship has greater energy resources and can use more search pulse energy.

Stealth technology reduces the effective reflecting area of the RCS - and is strongly frequency dependent.

It is a passive technology - RAM (radar absorbing material) coatings and surfaces, non-metallic structural materials... No magic boxes with an off-on switch.

Active devices fall into the category of radio-electronic warfare - jammers, etc.

It follows that anti-radar stealth material must cover the entire ship in some minimum thickness, and its effectiveness is directly proportional to the thickness of the layer of RAM material on the surface of the ship.

The question is how to implement this in the practical world of the game...

Calculating the RCS of ships and the range of radars by antenna area and transmit power is obvious nonsense - a huge computational burden with minimal effect.

But what about such a procedure?

Let's declare that the quality of the reconnaissance and targeting radar system is equal to the sum of the areas of all the ship's radar antennas (or better - the square root of the areas of the antennas) and the set transmitting power.

We declare that the RCS of the ship is equal to the sum of the PCU of the ship.

We declare that the RAM material used, although spread uniformly over the entire surface of the ship, can be deposited as a single block or group of blocks for simplicity of design. A single (smallest) block of RAM material will mask one PCU point against the one unit of radar system power...

The detection capability of the radar is determined by the radiated energy of the "search" pulse, the distance of the target, the RCS (radar cross section) of the target, the sensitivity of the receiver, the size of the aperture of the transmitting and receiving antennas and the wavelength/frequency used (more -> radar equation).

A large ship radar system has antennas of large size, with an area typically one to two orders of magnitude larger than a small ship radar system. A large ship radar system can easily use frequencies that are physically unavailable to small ship radars (they just don't have large enough antennas).

What does this imply?

A large ship radar, with a large antenna, will pick up much weaker radar echoes of targets than a small ship radar with a small antenna - for the same search pulse energy in proportion to the ratio of the products of the transmit and receive antenna areas. However, the large ship has greater energy resources and can use more search pulse energy.

Stealth technology reduces the effective reflecting area of the RCS - and is strongly frequency dependent.

It is a passive technology - RAM (radar absorbing material) coatings and surfaces, non-metallic structural materials... No magic boxes with an off-on switch.

Active devices fall into the category of radio-electronic warfare - jammers, etc.

It follows that anti-radar stealth material must cover the entire ship in some minimum thickness, and its effectiveness is directly proportional to the thickness of the layer of RAM material on the surface of the ship.

The question is how to implement this in the practical world of the game...

Calculating the RCS of ships and the range of radars by antenna area and transmit power is obvious nonsense - a huge computational burden with minimal effect.

But what about such a procedure?

Let's declare that the quality of the reconnaissance and targeting radar system is equal to the sum of the areas of all the ship's radar antennas (or better - the square root of the areas of the antennas) and the set transmitting power.

We declare that the RCS of the ship is equal to the sum of the PCU of the ship.

We declare that the RAM material used, although spread uniformly over the entire surface of the ship, can be deposited as a single block or group of blocks for simplicity of design. A single (smallest) block of RAM material will mask one PCU point against the one unit of radar system power...

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Ammorok ●

So then if:

(RCS) Radar Cross Section = PCU
(TS) Thermal Signature = Thrust Output
(PS) Power Signature = Power Consumption
(RAM) Radar Absorbing Material = (TBD maybe % of grid with special composite plating?)
(AEWS) Active Electronic Warfare System = Some Special Block
(TD) Thermal Dispersion = (TBD maybe % of grid with special composite plating, or a refrigerant cooling system?)

Then the formula might look like:

(RCS+ TS+PS)-(RAM + A.E.W.S. +TD)= Signal

We can ignore Beacon distance as that can be adjusted manually anyhow.

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Tael ●

It may be better to assign different blocks different RCS values instead of just using strait PCU, as strait pcu would discourage the use of smaller blocks and we'd end up with a bunch of minecraft-noob-houses flying around with stealth abilities far exceeding all the B-2 spirits and Amun-Ra stealth-frigates people would actually want to build and use...

As for power/thermal... it may be best to just roll those in to one as thermal buildup/dissipation (with thruster output and weapons-fire significantly boosting the thermal sig on top of heating the ship). IRL power-usage in things not meant to emit signals/energy would be hard to detect, especially with something that has a hull as thick as ships do in SE, but everything that uses power creates heat, and it would allow for things like radiators, internal heat-sinks (thermal-storage), and general heat-management-play,

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Oselotti ●

Thermal signature is the most important part in space. A ship produces heat but we probably need the whole cooling system mechanic. On the other hand I would be happy just with the simplified system like engine heat. Anyway the detection range should vary even if the ship is not very stealthy perhaps like between 10 000-50 000 kilometers or something like that.

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Tael ●

Given both the much smaller size of the SE solar-systems, and the relatively short range of jump-drives, this is probably pushing it.

Radar/detection range probably shouldn't be more than a few hundred km in space at most, pining the entire solar-system to look for an active thruster would be excessively resource intensive, and if people just getting off planets can't jump far enough to escape player-pirates without having amassed the resources for a dozen jump-drives first then we'll have issues.

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Deon Beauchamp ●

Can you list all of the different types of blocks that have been discussed here to achieve the stealth function please.

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Ammorok ●

(RCS) Radar Cross Section = PCU Larger the blocks the higher the ping. -Example only (25cm=1rcs, 2.5m=25rcs, 5m=50rcs)

(TS) Thermal Signature = Thrusters/ H2 & Ion/ maybe Jump-drives?,
(PS) Power Signature = (Active Reactors/engines/ Weapons and AEWS countermeasures) and (Passive Batteries/solar-panel/wind-turbine/anything else that is not Active that uses power like lights/ Gyro's etc)
(RAM) Radar Absorbing Material = A special composite plating whatever you build the ship out of that's not heavy or light.
(AEWS) Active Electronic Warfare System = Some Special Block for Electronic Countermeasures
(TD) Thermal Dispersion = TBD special composite plating, or a refrigerant cooling system(refrigerant tank/Heat sink/cooler-block)

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Semtex ●

In my opinion, you're not counting RCS correctly. RCS is a reflecting AREA. Thus, as a 0.25m x0.25m x0.25m block is assigned a "unit" RCS (one unit), then a 2.5m block will have RCS of 100 units and a 5m block will have an RCS of 400 units.

However, we can also do it the other way round - the RCS unit is one square metre. Then a cube wall with an edge of 0.25m perpendicular to the direction of the radar radiation will have an RCS of 0.0625m2, a 2.5m cube wall 6.25m2 and a 5m cube wall RCS 25m2.

Of course there are "subtleties" in this - a slanted surface has a smaller RCS, but in turn two surfaces forming a hollow angle have a much larger RCS (= "corner reflector")....

And of course, the entire surface area of the ship counts. If we omit the "subtleties" mentioned above, we can simplistically calculate the RCS directly from the dimensions of the ship. Thus a large battleliner 240m long (250m is supposedly the unofficial size limit for a compact structure in the game), 60m wide and 30m high will have RCS of 7200m2 (side view), 14400m2 (top view) and 1800m2 (front view) in various projections. The small fighter, 24x6x3m, will have RCS of 72m2, 144m2 and 18m2, respectively. But this only applies to " prismatic" blocks, and does not respect the actual shape of the ships. And even such a simple case will not have the RCS the same in all directions - the RCS is very dependent ( and intricately dependent) on the angle of observation.

Just to give you an idea - a large B-52 has an RCS of ~100m2 in frontal projection, a smaller and more modern F-16 has an RCS of ~4m2 in frontal projection, and "specially shaped" F-117 has only 0.1-0.01m2 in frontal projection. But that's only for frontal projection, side and top projection will give quite different RCS areas. An aircraft carrier (naval) typically has an RCS of 10-15000m2, a large naval warship depending on size and type 1000-2000m2 - but modern ships shaped according to "stealth" rules only 100m2 or even less. But again - only in some directions of view

"Stealth" shaping is designed to reduce the RCS from the "most threatened direction" but worsen it from other directions. For it to work, the shaping has to obey strict rules - But this is exactly what "captainbladej52" repeatedly writes about - you have to build ships according to someone else's rules? Do you want that?

In my opinion, you're not counting RCS correctly. RCS is a reflecting AREA. Thus, as a 0.25m x0.25m x0.25m block is assigned a "unit" RCS (one unit), then a 2.5m block will have RCS of 100 units and a 5m block will have an RCS of 400 units.

However, we can also do it the other way round - the RCS unit is one square metre. Then a cube wall with an edge of 0.25m perpendicular to the direction of the radar radiation will have an RCS of 0.0625m2, a 2.5m cube wall 6.25m2 and a 5m cube wall RCS 25m2.

Of course there are "subtleties" in this - a slanted surface has a smaller RCS, but in turn two surfaces forming a hollow angle have a much larger RCS (= "corner reflector")....

And of course, the entire surface area of the ship counts. If we omit the "subtleties" mentioned above, we can simplistically calculate the RCS directly from the dimensions of the ship. Thus a large battleliner 240m long (250m is supposedly the unofficial size limit for a compact structure in the game), 60m wide and 30m high will have RCS of 7200m2 (side view), 14400m2 (top view) and 1800m2 (front view) in various projections. The small fighter, 24x6x3m, will have RCS of 72m2, 144m2 and 18m2, respectively. But this only applies to " prismatic" blocks, and does not respect the actual shape of the ships. And even such a simple case will not have the RCS the same in all directions - the RCS is very dependent ( and intricately dependent) on the angle of observation.

Just to give you an idea - a large B-52 has an RCS of ~100m2 in frontal projection, a smaller and more modern F-16 has an RCS of ~4m2 in frontal projection, and "specially shaped" F-117 has only 0.1-0.01m2 in frontal projection. But that's only for frontal projection, side and top projection will give quite different RCS areas. An aircraft carrier (naval) typically has an RCS of 10-15000m2, a large naval warship depending on size and type 1000-2000m2 - but modern ships shaped according to "stealth" rules only 100m2 or even less. But again - only in some directions of view

"Stealth" shaping is designed to reduce the RCS from the "most threatened direction" but worsen it from other directions. For it to work, the shaping has to obey strict rules - But this is exactly what "captainbladej52" repeatedly writes about - you have to build ships according to someone else's rules? Do you want that?

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Semtex ●

Heat signature

The first thing you need to understand - you are observing an object in the background. More precisely - you are observing a warm object against a cool background.

In order to hide the object, you need to lower its temperature. Ship power sources produce heat, lots of heat. Of course, also all equipment in the ship consumes energy and produces heat. This heat needs to be radiated - or temporarily stored somewhere. Suppose such a system exists in the game...

But there is a second problem - the operation of propulsion systems. If the law of action and reaction exist in the game, the ship is propelled by reaction mass. The reaction mass leaves the ship - and is of course hot, very hot! So when the engine is switched on, there is a very significant heat signature left behind the ship. And forget the solutions used in aviation - there the engine exhaust is cooled by mixing it with cool air. With lots of cold air...

Except there is no air in space - you have nothing to mix engine exhaust with. And "covering" the engines in the ship's structure doesn't help either - you can't erase the heat signature of the hot reaction mass. The reaction mass MUST leave the ship, it's the only way it can give the ship momentum.

An ion engine won't help - the effective temperature of its reaction mass is even higher than that of a hydrogen engine. The jump engine is a gameplay crutch - but it consumes energy, so it could somehow be masked by heat storage (which would formally exist in the game...)

The RAM material works by converting the absorbed radar energy into heat. This works very well in an atmosphere where the air ventilates and cools the aircraft surface. But much worse in space...

AEWS - devices actively emit radio signals (and of course - consume energy and generate heat).

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Semtex ●

RCS is usually drawn on such graphs (in the example - for two different frequencies): c3a43b7f2ae1838d9c4624b80028ccb7

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RCS of an aircraft (computer model, not real one) from the DCS game as a three-dimensional graph:

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Especially on the left model It is good to see how minimizing RCS in the front projection in reality affects RCS in other directions

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Tael ●

I'm all for realism, but you may be getting a touch too far in to how some things work for a game about building cool and interesting ships (and blowing them up).

Calculating the radar return of each and every block, and how every other block might interact with that block to potentially produce a greater return would be excessive, if RCS is a thing then I'd expect they'll go just with a return equal to the dimensions of the ship (probably only from front, back, sides, top, and bottom) before other modifiers like radar absorbing material or other fantastical counter-measures.

Heat sounds about right, trying to cool a ship would be part of trying to be sneaky, and the thruster-exhaust giving you away for a bit even after you've stopped your burn would help to reduce shenanigans that stemming from people trying to abuse the sim-speed and programming blocks to pulse the thrusters in a way that produced thrust without heat.

As for RAM... That would probably end up as part of the balance, RAM bumps up your thermal sig, heatsinks bump up your RCS.

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Semtex ●

For SE1, there are plug-ins that automatically mark damaged blocks in the grid. The mechanism of automically rendering the outline of the ship in different views could be used to compute the RCS as the area of the ship in the baseline projections. Subsequent addition of these areas, or better averaging them, would determine the RCS of the ship as a "spherical object", the same in all views. This would eliminate the problem of the complex calculation of the RCS in the current view, and the base RCS of the ship would always be just one number. This value would be further adjusted only according to the use of RAM material. Or the projection area covered by RAM material and the projection area not covered by RAM material would be calculated separately, and then these values would be added together... This would simulate the impossibility to cover with RAM material, for example, the nozzles of engines...

Heat traces...

The reaction mass, the exhaust of the engines, should exist independently of the ship once formed and gradually cool down - radiating heat, increasing in volume and expanding into a vacuum, so that it gradually cools down.

The simulation function could be as follows: a working engine generates ten "smoke" objects per second. The "smoke" object created is defined from the size of the engine and its instantaneous power by some number representing the internal energy of the "smoke" object.

This energy is observable as an emanation of the object, and every second (or fraction of a second for a smoother visualization) it is halved (or by some percentage) and the object increases in size (the "smoke" expands). This process continues until the object's "internal energy" falls below some threshold (or a set number of cycles pass) and the "smoke" object is removed by the game mechanism.

Disadvantage of the idea: Small engines would produce small "smoke" objects that would quickly disappear. So it would be advantageous to have a large number of small engines instead of one large engine... It would be logical that for the same total thrust and the same kind of motors, the footprint would be the same in terms of intensity and duration. But this is obviously not possible without a complex calculation of the interactions between the "smoke" objects...

For SE1, there are plug-ins that automatically mark damaged blocks in the grid. The mechanism of automically rendering the outline of the ship in different views could be used to compute the RCS as the area of the ship in the baseline projections. Subsequent addition of these areas, or better averaging them, would determine the RCS of the ship as a "spherical object", the same in all views. This would eliminate the problem of the complex calculation of the RCS in the current view, and the base RCS of the ship would always be just one number. This value would be further adjusted only according to the use of RAM material. Or the projection area covered by RAM material and the projection area not covered by RAM material would be calculated separately, and then these values would be added together... This would simulate the impossibility to cover with RAM material, for example, the nozzles of engines...

Heat traces...

The reaction mass, the exhaust of the engines, should exist independently of the ship once formed and gradually cool down - radiating heat, increasing in volume and expanding into a vacuum, so that it gradually cools down.

The simulation function could be as follows: a working engine generates ten "smoke" objects per second. The "smoke" object created is defined from the size of the engine and its instantaneous power by some number representing the internal energy of the "smoke" object.

This energy is observable as an emanation of the object, and every second (or fraction of a second for a smoother visualization) it is halved (or by some percentage) and the object increases in size (the "smoke" expands). This process continues until the object's "internal energy" falls below some threshold (or a set number of cycles pass) and the "smoke" object is removed by the game mechanism.

Disadvantage of the idea: Small engines would produce small "smoke" objects that would quickly disappear. So it would be advantageous to have a large number of small engines instead of one large engine... It would be logical that for the same total thrust and the same kind of motors, the footprint would be the same in terms of intensity and duration. But this is obviously not possible without a complex calculation of the interactions between the "smoke" objects...

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Tael ●

Getting one base RCS value for a ship based on the average of its cross-sections seems a good idea.

As for the heat, I was thinking more along the lines of just doing some lore/RP excuse of "the detecting ship can see the exhaust and its cooling/dispersion and focus their efforts in a much smaller area based on some trajectory and probability math to still find you" type thing to avoid issues trying to track a bunch of exhaust particles when someone inevitably puts 2500 small thrusters on a ship... It isn't a perfect idea, but it is the best I've got for the moment that avoids the issue.

On a related note, heat-detection-play would encourage the addition of a 3rd type of thruster, one that spends fuel like an h2 thruster but has a low thrust output and isn't hot.

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Gregory Jennings ●

I'm ambivalent on stealth as a general gameplay mechanic but I do think some kind of sensor detection achieving "RADAR" type results should be included. Any such system will likely have some variability in detection for different size or powered objects I suppose but "stealth" is something more than "harder to detect" in my mind. Stealth is actively deleting sensor tech, not the function of the inherent limits of the tech.

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Semtex ●

At the same levels of technology and the same levels experience of players , a small ship has no real chance of succeeding against a big ship.

The probability of a small ship winning can be expressed very simplistically as a ratio of ships masses or PCUs.

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Tael ●

WHAT BLASPHEMY IS THIS?! YOU DARE ACCUSE FIGHTER-PILOTS OF SANITY?! X)

In all seriousness though, If you're trying to 1v1 a large-grid with a small grid then you should expect to be at a disadvantage, stealth wont change that, but it may help them either escape from bigger threats a bit more easily or come across as viable enough to see a bit more use by non-aces/noobs after they've got big stuff they would otherwise use.

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Semtex ●

Accuse a combat pilot of sanity? I would never dare...

I'm lucky/honoured to know in my life a few of them...

Fortunately, none of them have been in an actual war, but that's not a requirement.

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Deon Beauchamp ●

Would I be right in thinking that a pure graphite covering would be stealthy?

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Semtex ●

No. The RAM material should also have magnetic properties, just electrical conductivity is not enough.

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Semtex ●

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation-absorbent_material

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Deon Beauchamp ●

Well!, iron may not be needed as graphite in graphene form has good magnetic properties, so an aerogel composite of graphite and graphene in pyramidal cones would work.

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Semtex ●

Maybe... I can't judge this, I've never dealt with such an issue in depth.

But logically - in space can by use also solutions unthinkable for aircraft in atmosphere... Then preliminarily - yes.

But aerogel generally has poor mechanical properties, so that could be a problem for ship accelerations. And hits or near explosions could completely strip a small ship of its "fine feathers"

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Deon Beauchamp ●

The aerogel can be reinforced with dopant and fibre.

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Deon Beauchamp ●

I believe large scale array antennas can pick up almost anything and the potential is increased if the detector is static and has data on the normal background field that it can use as a differential for discerning anomalies.

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Tael ●

That would give cause to build listening posts and early-warning installations... an interesting thought...

..Though one should be careful about involving the ability to compare what's currently seen to pre-existing data, lest you incur an absurd argument about how someone's idea involves an absurdly powerful low-power omni-directional detection system capable of instantly detecting things by how they occlude the background-radiation of the universe and immediately differentiating between random bits of normal dust/rock and anything that would actually be worth paying attention to.

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Semtex ●

The SE2 universe appears to be completely static. Unfortunately.

Then detecting moving objects would be relatively easy...

And the second thing - the skybox. A simple black skybox would become a deadly enemy for stealth fighters...

Personally, I like to use it a lot in SE1 too - all visible objects are "real".

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Ammorok ●

I agree, The calculation of this feature illude me as to what may be the best way to factor it in, hence the example only idea. I do think we need a radar detection and evasion feature in SE2 vanilla. All the ideas so far definitely add to the needed conversation to make this happen.

Detection & Evasion:

Angles and block material should play a major role, as a physical challenge.
Heat signature and power signature need to be included and should play a major role, for systems challenge.

This is an engineering game concept so it needs to be interesting to figure out. While SE2 is starting out this is the time to address all those aspects both their advantages and deficits. We already try to hide from enemies in SE1 with limited ability in vanilla or with enhanced MODS. So, in some respects we already are trying to adapt to a limited gameplay mechanic that was never really fleshed out previously. So for SE2 detection and evasion or ability to be more stealth is only logical to ask for. Its the complexity that makes it interesting and satisfying to overcome obstacles.

F-22-thermal-image

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Semtex ●

The calculation is basically the same as the graphics card does when calculating raytracing.

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Ships "Stealth" Mechanic

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