Zaiyo Modi
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Posted - 2008.04.22 19:02:00 -
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Edited by: Zaiyo Modi on 22/04/2008 19:07:01
Jade's post was a fun read, just what I wish Eve to be. Recalling someone on the forum somewhere menioning passive scanning, this made me come up with an idea after reading this thread.
Active & passive scanning:
Passive scan:
Passive scan would be a window with a button that says "passive scan", this window will paint contacts with weak ship-signature-strength. This way you can get a list of contacts (mostly of ships), but without indication of ship types or any location in space. Now, cloaked ships will show up as weak contacts, but they will likely be much nearer your position. And if the passive scan is used when a recon is 30km off your ship, the signal strength will indicate that a cloaked ship is nearby. You would need luck or be tiringly paranoid to spot say a recon trying to catch you offguard.
This passive scan may be used to gain knowledge that a "cloaked" ship is nearby, especially if you accidentally happen to fly 30km near it. Clever manouvering may enable you to actually triangulate the position of a cloaked ship (like a cloaked hauler).
With recon ship, they might be more stealthier, and harder to spot but they will show up as weak signals, but indistinquashable from regular passive contacts far off your position.
Active scan:
Active scan will be a way to both search for and pinpoint the distance and vector to another ship. A list of contacts will show distance, vector and shiptype. The important thing is that when a pilot presses the "active scan" button in the scan window, his ship will radiate a much higher signal strength for the next 60 sec, revealing his position to anyone simply looking at their scanning window.
I like the notion of this making for a cat and mouse game, where you can relax abit more if you are a miner or simply staying put at a safespot.
The activity with active and passive scan, will serve as a limited intel tool in a star system that no longer provide guaranteed intel on local pilots, as well as giving people a "fair" change in spotting when they are probed out.
Probing tools would perhaps "need" to be changed to balance the power to probe, so that the prober isn't wasting his time doing so, by having potential targets just warp away too easily.
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