It's annoying how only the pilot of a vessel can use its detector. This limitation obstructs players attempting to act as co-pilots managing ship's systems and sensors, making multi-person ships that much harder to justify. However, detectors are technically weapons. If one was mounted in a turret, non-pilot players could probably use it the same way as other weapons. This turret would also serve as a camera pod with a real zoom function. All types of vessels designed for multiple crewmen could benefit from such a detector turret.
Nice idea. It would be good to eventually see more complexity to scanning, like stealth, directional scanning, scanners that specialise in certain objects etc. But the turret change sounds very easy to implement by comparison so I fully support it for a change that could be achieved in the short-term.
Call it what you will, but I'm of the mind that says "The Detector" should either be On or Off. If it's On, you detect what's out there. If it's Off, you don't. Having to ping, ping, ping, ping to locate and follow something - such as a resource a couple miles out, is not fun game play, it's tedious.
You must not bother pinning down Zirax POIs then. Tedious is not the term I'd use for the experience of dodging turret fire in a scout SV to reach detector ID range. I'm hoping a detector turret can be made just by pencil whipping some config files. It might even just be an alternate function for normal turrets, like how Vermillion added the detector function to survival tools. It's nice to have layup solutions when you can find them.
I'm not a fan of this because it is basically the same as just being able to see objects from x number of KMs away. The detector is an opportunity for adding interesting gameplay, such as a stealth and counter-stealth mechanic, or tracking down a specific signal in a large asteroid field. If it's just detecting all the time with no interaction, you may as well go back to before they existed and just base it on proximity except with increased range. That's a little boring IMHO, which is why so many people requested a scanner. I'd prefer they develop the mechanic further rather than dumb it down.
I would prefer to add radar to the bases, especially since the mod is already available in decorative blocks. Detects only moving objects (HV/SV/CV/Drone/Transport). With an average range between the SV and CV detector. And for detectors, it is desirable to add filters: Resource, Base and POI, Flying objects. This would reduce screen clutter.
I'm one of those fortunate enough to have a Logitech G13 game pad, and I've programmed one of the keys to Activate slot 1 (detector), send a detector pulse, wait and pulse again, until the key is pressed a second time, which, in essence, turns on the detector until I turn it off. Right now there is no stealth/counter mechanisms in the game at all, and the detector, though a nice touch, is just tedious. Even in an On/Off toggle state, it could still be shot off a vessel. Where space combat is concerned, to date, only one game has really understood it, but don't take my word for it, just watch and see for yourselves: I will never get tired of that video, because they actually understand things like Physics and how they relate to space-borne combat. We don't have anything close to this. Even our longest ranged weapons, Artillery turrets, are only effective within visual range. Imagine, instead, if I could pin-point you from just below a moon's polar orbit, while you're fiddling about in high orbit of a planet, lock on with four rail guns, and crack your thrusters from that kind of range. Then things like Stealth and active detection and evasion would be meaningful. I'll be honest, we're never going to see anything like that. I doubt combat in EGS will ever evolve beyond what it is - a circular dance of who-can-land-a-lucky-missile-shot-first. It's my number one reason to hold PvP in complete disdain - combat mechanics are pure garbage. Mix that with the limited top speed of ships, that a small craft with a single small thruster will reach the same top speed as a massive ship covered in XL Thrusters, and you've built garbage out of garbage. Skill is not required. Tactics are not required. All you really need is a shield generator and a supply of pentaxid and more ammo than your opponent, and you'll win. Wee. When it comes to AI combat, they at least have the singular distinction of being able to call for backup and know that it will arrive. We don't have anything like that. Maybe you've got faction members somewhere nearby, maybe you don't. Sure, you fly around in an impressive, massive carrier, but your ship-borne fighters aren't going out there on their own - that takes pilots we don't have. So that brings us back to the Detector again - in it's current incarnation, it's a nice bit of decorative eye candy, and not much else. It shows us where things are, just not for long enough to really be all that useful. Tracking a resource detected 5 miles away means no less than 8 pulses to reach it, and it's not like it's in active motion either. You just fly in a straight line to get there. So why punish us with it in this form? Turn it on, leave it on, until we turn it off.
Sounds like everyone agrees that detection/scanning needs more in-depth mechanics, like stealth, signal strength and filtering. Manual activation is one small step in that direction, as is The Big Brzezinski's suggestion. I'm willing to put up with manual activation if it means further improvements get added. Otherwise sure, disable it. But it would suck to lose manual activation if more details are getting added.
agreed in all accounts. I too would love to see more stealth mechanics attached to gameplay. could be interesting to be sliding across the ground pinging in your starter HV and then discover a stealth drone hiding by your desired resource deposit that just didn't show up until you had line of sight on it.
I presume if constant query detectors were feasible, that's how HV/SV detectors would have worked before, and space detection would have happened much sooner.
I did a little copy/paste work on ItemsConfig, and tried sticking a detector on CV sentry guns as an alternate function. I even stuck some ammo in there to make sure it still shoots. It all works. Players CAN use detectors mounted in turrets like any other weapon.
I kind of have to wonder if anyone really understand what "Stealth" is, when it comes to things like RADAR. For the most part, Stealth technology relies on the shape of the craft to reflect radar signals away from the receiver. The other application is the use of specialized coatings that absorb radar signals. Either have the effect of rendering a craft invisible to radar. However, in space, you'd be better served using Thermal Imaging in combination with Radar, as it can be extremely difficult to hide a craft's thermal signature. Now, mix in some high-tech sci-fi with it, and you could perform detection by sensing various radiological emissions - such as the radiations given off by warp drives or even power systems. If we assume our Detector is some sort of onmi-sensor array (a bit of a masterful bit of engineering to fit all of that into a 1x1x1 block), hiding from it would be nearly impossible, as rendering a profile invisible would require multiple layers of shielding, for heat, radiant emissions, as well as specialized surface coatings to either reflect and midirect or absorb radar pulses (which incidentally CAN be detected by looking for radar "voids"), which would put the CPU cost of a Stealth component somewhere between 3 and 5 times the cost of an RCS 2 unit. So while this may make for interesting game-play, it also makes gameplay even more unrealistic and combat even more cumbersome than it already is, largely due to the factors listed above - now combine that with a constant need to switch from manually activated weapons systems to a detector to manually pulse, and you'll spend far more time switching than fighting, and combat will drag on even longer than it already does. Not saying things couldn't be improved - there's always room for improvement, the question really is what improvements can be made that actually improve the experience overall without creating burdensome mechanics?
You could have the old system of passive detection back, but it would only yield a vector and not a distance and require emissions (ie active power, for medium range detection and active thrusters in line of sight for long range detection). To get the distance as well as direction you would have enable active sensors (to execute a ping). The other issues highlighted is that thing disappear of the hud too quickly. I agree. Passive sensors could maintain knowledge of something that has been actively pinged *so long as* line of sight is maintained. Additionally, passive sensors can progressively approximate distance as a result of triangulation due to movement. The act of active pinging of course will break you own stealth immediately and reveal your direction over a long range immediately (but without a passive sensor track, then it would only be momentary and progressive triangulation would not be possible). This is where a directional active sensor comes in (as a variant of the existing omnidirectional ping) - precise long range detection within a narrow cone (which also means you dont reveal yourself outside that cone either). Of course, if a means of hiding one target while revealing another at a sufficiently coincident location is possible, then you have a means of decoying and misdirection - ie decoy drones that you could release at the same time as employing some kind of obscuring tech (or just full power off and drift). If it passes behind something or has some other means of obscuring itself (for eg some kind of stealth trick), then tracking would be lost until re-pinged. A common sci-fi stealth tech is heat accumulators and shunts, heatsinks etc. The idea is that instead of radiating heat continuously (from power generators or whatever), it can be accumulated and shunted out one side of the ship (the side that is ideally hidden from view) or shunted out when you are hidden by planet, asteroid etc. I wonder however if any of this matters much in the case of majority solo play where the enemy AI is unlikely to ever be sophisticated enough to deploy such tools in any meaningful way.
