Advanced Sensors: Active Radar, Passive Radar, Thermal Camera, Night Vision Camera
One thing SE1 was always missing was advanced sensor technology. We had just basic cameras and very short-ranged sensor blocks. It just feels weird to be flying a spaceship but then relying on the Eyeball Mk. 1 to spot anything - isn't this game set like two centuries in the future, not two centuries in the past?
What got me sucked into Space Engineers was the prospect of building guided missile ships. Guided missile scripts existed since a long time ago, but for detection they relied on turrets or camera raycasting. Turrets had an 800m range and while raycasting could go farther, it had difficulty acquiring far-off targets and added lots of lag both on the source ship and on the missiles.
Some of that could be solved with mods which extended turret or sensor range, but that brought up two issues:
1. There were no counter-measures against such detection. Turrets and sensors cannot be jammed or spoofed.
2. Turrets and sensors can detect through solid objects such as other grids or terrain voxels.
What I'm proposing is that to detect and acquire a firing solution on another grid (B), our grid (A) has to know its location based on it being visible to some kind of sensor on our grid (A) or a friendly grid (C) which can transmit over an antenna.
Radar Blocks could have an active and passive mode. In active mode, they'd "illuminate" all grids within line of sight and a certain range (ie: 5km) with radar. In passive mode, a radar would not illuminate any grids. Both active and passive radars would detect any active radar illuminating them and depending on distance to the grid and the grid's size would detect a radar-illuminated grid. Radars would have a noticeable power requirement. Radar blocks could be directional and wide angle, with tradeoffs like increased power consumption and size for the wide angle.
This would mean that players would have to make decisions whether to activate a radar, thus consuming power and giving away their location to any passive radar that they are illuminating. It would also create interesting battle tactics like keeping a ship with an active radar farther back and out of harm's way while ships with passive radars or antennae deploy farther forward.
Smaller ships would be detected at closer distances.
Ships could use terrain to break line of sight and get closer without being seen by radar. This could create an incentive to deploy radar stations around a planetary base to prevent an enemy from getting close undetected.
A Countermeasures Block could further degrade enemy radar performance. Depending on the distance, power input, number of Countermeasure Blocks, and the number and power input of enemy radars, it could make enemy radars misreport the grid's distance, misreport the grid's position, not detect the grid at all, or shut down the radar entirely.
A thermal camera mode would be a welcome addition. In thermal mode, a camera would highlight "hot" objects - this would include players/NPCs/creatures, visual fx like explosions, and powered grids. Tell me you've never wanted to build an AC-130 style gunship in SE.
Night vision could be another camera mode for low light conditions like when in an asteroid or on the dark side of a planet. I'd recommend adding this to the space suit as well.
Given that thermal / infrared sensors have already been used for target acquisition and tracking since the 60's and image recognition AI has enabled the same to a lesser degree for cameras today, I think the camera could also detect other grids depending on the mode that it's in.
In thermal mode, a camera could detect grids at a distance depending on a thermal rating of the grid. The thermal rating would increase according to the grid's power generation or consumption up to a cap and slowly decrease if the generation or consumption get lower. Hydrogen thrusters would also have their own contribution to the thermal rating. Ships in atmosphere would have a lower thermal rating cap than ones in space, since atmosphere would dissipate a lot of the heat. This would make more power-hungry grids (ie: larger grids) easy to detect further out while grids with low power consumption could approach closer without being detected. Dipping into the atmosphere could be one way to make detection less likely.
In normal or night vision mode, a camera would detect grids based on their size, distance, and lighting conditions. A small grid at night would be visible at a much closer distance than a large grid at daytime.
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Why is this all needed? The Space Engineers combat experience mimics 1915 but with thrusters. Everything is still barebones based on visual detection with eyeballs, close range broadside to broadside or dogfighting, and not much in the way of tactics, especially prior to the engagement itself.
Adding in advanced sensors would create new and interesting tactical decisions to be made before engagement and would enable more modern (and what would exist in the future) combat such as guided missile ships and planes to exist with far less lag or seeing through terrain.
I like this feedback
I honestly agree with the combat against players and even ai always seemed to be lacking, you had all of these advanced weapons and abilities, but besides just telling an ai to do something for you, everything was just you manually doing it but with progressively bigger designs until you could just toss even more mass at the enemy, with minimal incentive for tactics besides who knew more about the games systems and who had more time.
I honestly agree with the combat against players and even ai always seemed to be lacking, you had all of these advanced weapons and abilities, but besides just telling an ai to do something for you, everything was just you manually doing it but with progressively bigger designs until you could just toss even more mass at the enemy, with minimal incentive for tactics besides who knew more about the games systems and who had more time.
I'd also say being able to build the radar custom, so players can engineer different types. For instance a radar that can see a great distance but can't lock correctly and a shorter range one that can lock.
I'd also say being able to build the radar custom, so players can engineer different types. For instance a radar that can see a great distance but can't lock correctly and a shorter range one that can lock.
(Almost) All lovers of small combat spaceships will be against it. Because their chances of succeeding in a duel against a big ship are dropping to zero. Just like in reality.
(Almost) All lovers of small combat spaceships will be against it. Because their chances of succeeding in a duel against a big ship are dropping to zero. Just like in reality.
This is a good idea. PVP severely needs some kind of radar/detection system to find other players and help facilitate combat in a meaningful way.
The PVP servers I ran always had a small map size of about 20kms radius just to help facilitate PVP because otherwise without any kind of radar you would never find someone to shoot.
This is a good idea. PVP severely needs some kind of radar/detection system to find other players and help facilitate combat in a meaningful way.
The PVP servers I ran always had a small map size of about 20kms radius just to help facilitate PVP because otherwise without any kind of radar you would never find someone to shoot.
(Necro - ik) I really like this idea, especially coming from more tactical games like From the Depths (FTD) and Nebulous fleet command, as well as an interest in games such as elite dangerous and air defender. Mainly i want to see some form of detection system like FTD bc that would be cool and is a visible example of what a detection system could be.
As mentioned, SE1 was (and is) really lacking in tactical combat technologies like detection, countermeasures etc. Sensors and detection mechanics would be a really good addition to make combat more immersive, and allows for levels of immersion into the tactical side of combat - in the sense that you could just have a targeting computer (idk how to describe it well but a computer that processes all inputs and gives targets) all the way to full player control over sensor detections (like looking at a radar screen and pointing out targets from there).
Now with NPC encounters and other world immersion things being developed, the proposed system would enhance that aspect greatly. in addition, a transponder system would enhance it even more, because it would enable play around transponders, including civilian cargo/transport ships that are doing their own thing, military ships that could enable/disable transponders depending on the situation, piracy ships that home in on civilian transponders, policing ships that assist with SOS transponders etc. it would give another level to the gameplay, as players could control their transponders according to their situation. however, this is really only describing beacons and the like but has great potential.
with sensor detections - transponders could be automatically added to radar detections, and having a long range radar would enhance transponders.
what would be a cool addition to sensors is having a noise rating, as all sensors intrinsically have some noise in their detection, and some regions in space would have higher noise (like asteroid fields). this would also allow different flavours for some sensors, like doppler vs continuous wave (CW) radars, as doppler is noise resistant but relies on movement, whereas CW is susceptible to noise but can detect stationary targets. this would also enable tactics like hiding in noise (like hiding in an asteroid field) or using electronic warfare to cause noise etc.
a stealth system could also be a great addition, if done well, as balancing it would be difficult, and it doesn't necessarily need to be implemented. however, it would enable more gameplay options.
Those are my thoughts on this suggestion (and probably overlaps a lot with it), but this system would be really cool to see implemented, and ofc all additions should be modifiable in world settings to change how difficult/realistic the sensor systems are, as some players really just want an arcadey feel, while others want a hard core sensors system.
(Necro - ik) I really like this idea, especially coming from more tactical games like From the Depths (FTD) and Nebulous fleet command, as well as an interest in games such as elite dangerous and air defender. Mainly i want to see some form of detection system like FTD bc that would be cool and is a visible example of what a detection system could be.
As mentioned, SE1 was (and is) really lacking in tactical combat technologies like detection, countermeasures etc. Sensors and detection mechanics would be a really good addition to make combat more immersive, and allows for levels of immersion into the tactical side of combat - in the sense that you could just have a targeting computer (idk how to describe it well but a computer that processes all inputs and gives targets) all the way to full player control over sensor detections (like looking at a radar screen and pointing out targets from there).
Now with NPC encounters and other world immersion things being developed, the proposed system would enhance that aspect greatly. in addition, a transponder system would enhance it even more, because it would enable play around transponders, including civilian cargo/transport ships that are doing their own thing, military ships that could enable/disable transponders depending on the situation, piracy ships that home in on civilian transponders, policing ships that assist with SOS transponders etc. it would give another level to the gameplay, as players could control their transponders according to their situation. however, this is really only describing beacons and the like but has great potential.
with sensor detections - transponders could be automatically added to radar detections, and having a long range radar would enhance transponders.
what would be a cool addition to sensors is having a noise rating, as all sensors intrinsically have some noise in their detection, and some regions in space would have higher noise (like asteroid fields). this would also allow different flavours for some sensors, like doppler vs continuous wave (CW) radars, as doppler is noise resistant but relies on movement, whereas CW is susceptible to noise but can detect stationary targets. this would also enable tactics like hiding in noise (like hiding in an asteroid field) or using electronic warfare to cause noise etc.
a stealth system could also be a great addition, if done well, as balancing it would be difficult, and it doesn't necessarily need to be implemented. however, it would enable more gameplay options.
Those are my thoughts on this suggestion (and probably overlaps a lot with it), but this system would be really cool to see implemented, and ofc all additions should be modifiable in world settings to change how difficult/realistic the sensor systems are, as some players really just want an arcadey feel, while others want a hard core sensors system.
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