Sensor Ops and You: A Design Proposal
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=lightspeed&message.id=27971
2004/06/30
I'd like to see a detailed physics model that allows ships in Jump to Lightspeed to use stealth and disguise.
Consider the ways a spaceship could be detected or identified (these are just some examples I dreamed up):
Note that "active scans" are detection-and-identification technologies that send out some kind of signal and then read the signal that bounces back (or not). (Think of these as like the sonar "pings" in movies about submarine warfare.) Active scanning is good for resolving details about other vessels, but it has the drawback of letting other ships know exactly where you are and what you're doing. They use up a lot of power, too.
Passive scans, by contrast, just take in information about other ships that they give off or deliberately broadcast. These don't always give you a lot of detail, and you need to be fairly close to the other ship for certain types of passive scans to work, but they're good for detecting other ships when you don't want to be detected yourself.
So -- given all these ways that we can detect objects in space, and, once detected, learn specific information about them, wouldn't it be interesting if JtL allowed us to explore all these phenomena as sensor options?
You're a Imperial frigate patrolling the spacelanes to control the piracy that's been reported in this sector of space. Your active radar scan is always on, "pinging" the space around you. This has the double effect of letting you "see" any ships in range of your radar, but also of warning off any Bad Guys (because they can detect your active scan).
Today you're cruising along near a "hot" star (one that puts out a lot of junk radiation that makes scans difficult) when your radar picks up a ship far ahead. You move in close enough to run an ID scan (passively reading the ID transponder code broadcast by all ships except pirates). The ID scan says it's the Ghazal, a YT-1300 bulk freighter registered out of Corellia, but you order your sensor operator to run a neutrino emission scan [to roughly determine the ship's power output] and a gravitic displacement scan [to measure the ship's tonnage] just in case. Given the recent outbreak of piracy, you want to make sure this ship really is who she claims to be.
The passive scans report that the Ghazal is a little bigger than expected, but within the upper boundary for freighters. Still, something in your gut is nagging you. Your sensor technician is pretty good, so you order your ship in a little closer and send to the Ghazal to submit to a routine cargo scan. (You're a dedicated servant of the Empire; you don't ask for permission.) Another ship shows up on the radar in the distance (too far for ID transmission), but you want to finish with the Ghazal first.
As you close to visual (and cargo scanning) range of the Ghazal, your sensor tech completes a set of active electromagnetic (EM) scans, and you can now see the ship for yourself visually. She appears to have more gun turrets than the typical bulk freighter... and the turrets appear to be sporting quad turbolaser cannons, which are way more powerful than usual....
Suddenly your sensor tech looks sharply up at you and says, "Sir, infrared emissions suggest that this ship is masking its real power signature!" The readings on the neutrino scan spike upward abruptly as the Ghazal feeds power from its shielded (and sliced) engines to its weapons systems -- all of which suddenly lock on to you. It's a pirate! She's been using illegal technology to mask her power signature from other ships, and more illegal technology to change her ID transponder code to that of a ship with no outstanding warrants. This must be the ship that's been attacking the honest merchants in this sector!
You order your ship to power up its weapons, but the fake Ghazal is already firing on you. Normally your frigate would be more than a match for a freighter, but this is obviously no ordinary freighter... and that's when you notice that the ship you had seen just at the edge of your radar is running toward you. And so is the ship that has just appeared from out of the photosphere of that nearby "hot" star, where it was using the noise of the star to hide from most scans.
Are these ships friends coming to your rescue? Or are they more pirates, which could put you in real jeopardy?
Better run your sensor scans!
So would anyone else like to see this kind of thing in Jump to Lightspeed? Or is it too complicated, and we should just stick to quick-and-dirty fights?
2004/06/30
Janson wrote:
This may be something that gets included with capitol ships, though. It would be necessary for them, really.
Flat, how would you figure this would be implemented?
You're right about the applicability of this idea to capital ships, and I should have said so. Let me try it now:
This stuff is really intended for multi-person ships, and not for starfighters. Basically the only sensor stuff a starfighter needs is an integrated radar/ID transponder analyzer to recognize other ships, an ID transponder of its own, and possibly a sensor jammer (although all this is for is to make it harder for other ships to get lockons). More advanced sensors are really only needed on capital ships and certain highly tweaked freighters.
Of course, if other types of ships are ever introduced, such as research ships or safari vessels, then they'd probably want more complete sensor packages, too. But the full set of sensors (basically everything I proposed in my original message) would really only be seen on purely military craft.
As for how to implement this idea, there are three key areas that would need code:
You could get more complicated with the idea of ships having detailed characteristics that can be detected, but these are the essential elements that would have to be implemented in the Jump to Lightspeed code. The good news is that once you have these three essential concepts coded to any degree, adding new types of characteristics (and new sensors to reveal those characteristics) would be relatively simple.
Easy for me to say, of course.
2004/07/01
NattyDreadlock wrote:
... at some point smaller Imperial patrol/scout ships need to have similar, but lesser versions of these senors for player controlled vessels. Now these smaller player controlled Imp ships may have problems handling some of the larger, stronger or better upgraded freighters, but the Imp player's identification of the "illegal" ship could possibly create a TEF, plus he can send message to friends to look out for the ship if he can't engage or if the ship escapes.
This is exactly the kind of great gameplay my sensors suggestion is designed to promote.
A little background might be useful here. I have several reasons for being interested in getting broad-spectrum sensing features into the space part of SWG, but three reasons stand out.
Advanced Tactical Gameplay: Advanced sensors would never be necessary for players who just want to duke it out, but players who enjoy exploring tactical options in combat need a detailed sensor system. Ships must have enough properties (size, mass, heat/power signature, ID, etc.), and space must have effects on those properties (nebulae can hide your ship or light it up, stars can mask your radiation, etc.) to give players a satisfying space combat experience beyond "fly, shoot, fly, shoot."
Enhanced Roleplaying: As suggested in the story of the Imperial frigate, having lots of sensor options allows players to roleplay characters who employ tactics of deception, and allows other players to roleplay characters who seek to expose what is hidden. A rich sensing system makes these roleplaying styles possible.
Strong Star Wars Resonance: With a Galactic Civil War playing havoc with law and order, the seamier parts of the galaxy are able to operate more openly... but some amount of hiding is still necessary. A richly detailed sensor system offers a greater number of more interesting gameplay options to SWG players who want to explore the world of Boba Fett, Calo Nord, Prince Xizor, and others. In particular, scanning technology as one form of sensor operations has been a part of Star Wars products from the original movie (remember the Imperial scanning team that goes -- briefly -- into the Millenimum Falcon on the Death Star?) to the TIE Fighter space combat game (the cargo container scanning challenge) that Jump to Lightspeed is to some degree supposed to resemble.
I think there's enough gaming goodness inherent in a strong/deep sensor system to make it worth having in SWG's space game. It's probably not something that can implemented in the initial release, but I hope we'll see something like it some day.
2004/07/07
RontoMike wrote:
Great idea! I had a similar (but much more simplistic) idea.... have the JtL in-game "radar" operate on a line-of-sight that can be blocked by planets & asteroids. (Maybe have nebulae have a % chance of blocking sensors, depending on the sophistication of the sensor package.)
I imagine a more advanced sensor system still being able to use the "radar" display -- it just gets a few more controls added to it to let you select between the various scan modes.
For example, you'd start out in the Passive EMS scanning mode, where you could pick up information on nearby energy sources without broadcasting your own location (assuming you've turned off your ID transponder). Below your scope would be two buttons: "Passive EMS" and "Active EMS". Clicking on either of these would reveal a radial menu of sensor options, including "All".
So if you then clicked on "Active EMS" | "All", your ship would start "pinging" with the entire suite of active sensors to locate and describe nearby objects. (This is where I'd like to see a Sensor Ops or Avionics discipline -- someone with better sensor skills should be able to get more information about other ships, in the same way that Scouts/Rangers get more detailed creature stats.) Or you could choose "Active EMS" | "Radar" and have your scope work just like it does now on the ground (with possibly a couple of enhancements for space combat).
This idea would also require some sort of object size vs. ship size check.... a Star Destroyer would have a much harder time hiding in an asteroid field than an X-Wing....
Which is absolutely as it should be. An ISD basically shouldn't care if you can see it -- in fact, the "shock and awe" they are intended to inspire depend on their being seen; the big Imperial ships should normally be doing everything they can to light up every sensor within a parsec. If their sheer size and destructive capability can persuade you to give up because the Emperor is too strong to fight, so much the better.
From the Empire's point of view, of course. ;-)
Although there are some Rebels who "prefer a straight fight to all this sneakin' around," you're right that the Rebellion would benefit more from having an enhanced sensor environment in SWG. Being able to use "natural cover" (nebulae, asteroids, stars, etc.) would give offer Rebels the tactical options necessary for the shadowy hit-and-run strikes that should be their modus operandi. (I don't recall seeing in the movies any Red Squadron pilots flying around looking for TIE fighters and saying things like, "d00d, u wanna duel?", then cloning and doing it again....)