Radar,Signature,heat,and scanning

Firstly let's outline the most important things the proposed system includes.

• Objects,planetary bodies,sectors in space defined by the colonization system and faction controlled areas,asteroids and other Defined playerspaces should have attributes. Some examples are reduction in signature/emission, thrust output, power output,speed and many others I'm sure you can think of.

• Reduction in visibility:planets -50%,asteroids -50% within 25m of the surface.

• All blocks need an emission signature value. This value should be dynamic based on the blocks state (on,off) and when the block is in use, think a thruster

Firing.

Using this as an outline lets go into detail about how this might work.

Starting with the basic blocks, the things we build every item in space engineers, individual blocks should not have a signature but instead the “VISUAL” Detection should be calculated by the X-Y-Z dimensions of the craft or building. This would work better than simulating every face on a ship and using the faces of blocks… This could be super intensive on cpu and server calc.

Moving into power and production lets talk about how these will define a ship in many ways, but first let's talk about progression and how that fits into the gameplay of the proposed system. In the current system what we speculate to be the general power progression is as follows.

Wind-Solar-Water Turbine-Battery-Hydrogen-Reactor

Signature should be tied to the power output of a block as well as where it is in the progression tree. This would be a low to high signature left to right on the above line.

Similarly thrusters should follow

Water-Jets-Hydrogen-Ion

Signature should be tied to the power output of a block as well as where it is in the progression tree. This gets complicated based on how you want to do this. Disregarding propellers and jets, hydrogen and ion thrusters should be balanced by what they do. For ions they provide indefinite thrust based on energy, for hydrogen you gain large power outputs for fuel consumption and usability in every environment. So here is my proposal.

• Hydrogen should have no/low signature when not firing but a large signature when firing
• Ion drives should have a moderate signature even when idle but have very low increase when firing.

Industry, weapons, and other utilities

For the rest of the blocks I wanted to simplify into a large category and provide some basic outlines as above. All of these blocks should have a progression, state (on/off,working/idle), and gameplay balanced based approach as above to the signature generated.

Bringing this all together lets talk about the blocks you would need to make and im gonna take some inspiration from a game called from the depths here

And list out some blocks you would need.

• DIRECTIONAL IR SCANNER —detects grid size by XYZ -good for short range detection of grids passively -covers 90 degrees
• 360 scanner — a spinning radar that detects in all directions- detects grid size by XYZ -good for short range detection of grids passively -covers 360 degrees –

These two scanners cover the physical size of an object and are capable of a “ ping “ a high energy pulse that detects objects from a great distance; however they emit a very large signature when doing so and the signals they produce also emit high signatures.

• Directional Signature receiver — detects signature of grids based on output and distance- 90degrees
• 360 signature receiver — detects signature of grids based on output and distance

These two scanners are passive sensors that detect signatures given off by grids producing it. They do not emit any signature and are not very effective at detecting small grids at distance. But large grids producing a lot of energy firing thrusters continuously even at extreme range would be detectable even if for a short time at which point you can lock on the 360 scanner and ping the target disclosing your direction but giving you info on the grid in question like the( size appx, signature number,presence of a jump drive, and other related info). The closer you get the more info you can get from a grid.

you have a ship that has one 1m reactor and 16 1x2m small ion thrusters and the ship is 10mx10mx10m (for an easy numbers game)

The reactor has a signature of 10000

each thruster has an inactive signature of 100 and an active signature of 150

lets say a bounding box is created for the x-y-z of the ship and for every 1m of surface area of the ship calculates for 50m to the baseline detection range so for this the expected minimum detection range of this ship with everything powered off is 5000m

this number is the -visual range - of the ship in question

for scanners lets say a passive scanner set for the next example

the ship is powered up and thrusting

the visual range is 5000m

now the detectable range is calculated as the (visual range) + ( signature output)=(passive detection range)

this equals 17400m for the given example

now for active scans lets say -- an active scan for a large antenna has a range of 500000 m each 100000 m interval has a reduction in power of a percentage and lets also say that the (power) is 75000( this number represents the signature threshold- the range at which a certain signature is detected )

so

500000m = >75000 -15%

400000m = >63750 -15%

300000m = >54187 -15%

200000m = >46059 -15%

100000m = >39150 -15%

50000m = >25447 -35%

so at 500000m ships under 75000 signature are not detectable

likewise at 50000m ships under 25447 signature are not detectable

or some variation of these numbers.