No Thermal when Stationary

[PlasmaXJ]

Number 2
Fits with real thermodynamics better.   

I kind of disagree.    I just can't see the few degrees kelvin being detectable from thousands of kilometers.    It also punishes large ships for no particular reason, as having one big ship or 10 small ones should be simillar for detection, when the heat is spread out (larger hull), not concentrated around engines.   .   .   

Inferred telescopes can measure temps from just about anywhere in the observable universe.    The problem is they only see tiny portions of the sky.    Aurora sensors are different so I can't speculate on them.   

(EDIT)
Also they are limited to speed of light, which means they would have to wait for 4.  4 years to see a ships thermal signature in Alpha Centauri.   Well I am typing I believe they also have low resolution. 

(EDIT 2)
 Man I didn't read that right, I am sorry i believe you may be right on the detection of degrees around 0
kelvin.  But real spaceships produce lots of heat and it is very hard to get anywhere close too those temps, in a crewed ship operating with electronics and other machines.  So they sould be radiating heat all the time unless dead in space.

[papent]

Option 2 for sure

[MarcAFK]

I'm for option 2.
Additional tech could potentially allow warships when 'switched off' to completely negate their baseline thermal output. Maybe something similar to absorption shields could soak up the baseline thermal output to a point before releasing it, either one pulse or perhaps once that point is reached it starts releasing a percentage of the saved up thermal, untill the amount being released matches the baseline output, then at that point it releases the full thermal output plus the same fraction of the saved thermal untill its all gone.

[Whitecold]

I much more like the second option, instantly disappearing would likely enable weird tactics with thermal seeker missiles.

Actually, while a cooldown might be too much, giving a delay might be necessary to ensure ships keep slow to reduce their signature, and not just drop speed for 5s to cause missiles to loose lock.

[mtm84]

Late to the party but put me in the Option 2 camp.

[ExChairman]

Goes for two.

But perhaps having a mothball option down to o emissions, mothballing is essential power downthe ship and opening up to the vacume to preserve it, isn't ?

[Zincat]

Surely options 2. For gameplay reasons.

Large warships being able to stay at 0 thermal emission, effectively completely invisible to passive sensors, would be a REALLY bad thing for gameplay in my opinion. Completely change the flow of the game in some situations.

It would mean that your ONLY choice for scouting a system is going is with active sensors switched on, because passive do not guarantee you have useful information. You can literally park a huge fleet of warships 10km from a planet, and be 100% sure the enemy will never see them unless they use active sensors.

This would give a huge advantage to whomever "occupies" the system first. I come in, scout with actives, I'm relatively sure I'm alone, park my ships with speed zero. This results in me being effectively hidden now.
If someone else comes in the system later, they are at a complete disadvantage. If they move around, I can see their thermal emissions. And they can't see me unless they turn on actives. Which would make them visible from a LONG distance away thanks to my passive EM sensors.
Basically, I have every advantage in being able to decide whether to engage or not, while they are forced to turn actives on or be completely blind, and risk me being able to launch a devastating surprise attack.

This would be a big change in gameplay, and not one I would like.
I would put the thermal emission of ships not moving at 5% or so of maximum. Maybe add a tech research line to lower that somewhat, but certainly never to 0

[Tree]

If there's a technology to lower the minimum thermal emission when stationary, I'd rather we start at something like 10 or even 15 percents and then end at 5. The values are going to be ridiculously tiny and hard to spot and effectively 0 if we go any lower than 5%, won't they ? DSTS might be able to spot a 40k tons ship's 40 stationary thermal signature easy and from far away, but I don't think I ever had a warship with 1000 or 2000 in thermal sensor sensitivity.

[hubgbf]

Option 2 to keep a logical detection system and technobable

A wreck can be seen anywhere in a system, even without thermal or EM sensor, just like a planet.
Let's say it can be detected by standard navigational systems included in every ship to avoid crashing on an asteroid.

But what is the difference between a wreck and a powered down ship ? (or a mothballed one)

An aurora ship navigates in an aether, which make it invisible on standard sensors (not thermal nor EM), but when destroyed it goes off the aether, and become detectable easily.

I like the idea of a ship not powered down having a minimum thermal signature due to its size or power. (thermal is only based on engines, why not including other generator? I'm sure most power generator system in aurora must also generate heat, it is the same for every human being aboard.

Just an additional question : will aurora C# have an improved "hide and seek" system ?

When there is only one grouped fleet, you can hide on the other side of a planet, you can try to power down some of your systems to increase stealth, at least for some time, at the cost of being unable to restart them immediately when needed, etc...

In honor harrington, a ship can hide itself easily by cutting its wedge. It is unable to move, has no protection from wedge, and needs soem time to start them, but he can hide. In other books some stealthy ships have a heatsink, with a limited capacity to absorb the generated heat and become invisible as long as it can avoid to radiate heat.

But does Aurora needs these features ?
Will an AI be able to use them? Is it possible to use it when you play versus yourself without schizophrenia ?
I think it won't be easy to implement.

My 2 cents
Hubgbf


Edit : aether is now a canon notion for C#, and not a technobable used by Kurt in his last campaign like I wrote in the first verison of the post.

[Adseria]

It seems to me like this boils down to a single question: What is "stationary?"

If "stationary" means just turning off the engines and coming to a stop, but leaving other systems (weapons, sensors and so on) running, then option 2 would be the obvious choice, since all of those systems would generate heat.

If "stationary" means turning off all non-critical systems that generate heat, leaving only the absolutely necessary systems (like life support) and systems that don't generate heat running, then option 1 would make more sense.

Personally, I think option 2 would be preferable; if the ship can start moving and shooting immediately (minus the crew's reaction time), that means that non-critical systems are left on (since it would take time to activate those kinds of systems), and if they were left on, they'd be generating heat.

[chrislocke2000]

Option 2 looks good to me. Possibly multiple the base heat for those ships in refit to reflect they are being worked on? Also what about minimum passive EM as well?

[sloanjh]

No 2, it means a thermal sensor will always be able to detect SOMETHING, you're not totally blind - but also seems largely consistent with actual physics

Also, good shout - this has always bothered me!

This is a tough one. As I agree with the quote I also understand the mechanism Steve is trying to implement. Question: wouldn't be then better have a way to switch off the ship? This could have a button same to the active sensor. To get on again you could suffer a jump shock alike penalty which depends on training crew etc. This should impact only thermal and EM as I don't like mothballing features to be back again.

Otherwise, I vote number 1: it sounds better than the 2nd just because the latter doesn't actually move things forward but just make them more complicated.

This points out a potential exploit that should be taken into account.  Let's say I've got a missile with a thermal seeker chasing me.  Should I be able to make it lose lock by simply cutting my engines?  Admittedly it's hard to know whether or not an enemy seeker has thermal capability, but still....

BTW, I always thought that thermal output was proportional to speed in the first place.  When approaching a potentially inhabited planet during scouting I used to have an involved process where I would gradually slow down as I got closer.  It sounds like this was all for naught - that my thermal output was the same no matter what (which sounds counter-intuitive to me).

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

BTW, I always thought that thermal output was proportional to speed in the first place.  When approaching a potentially inhabited planet during scouting I used to have an involved process where I would gradually slow down as I got closer.  It sounds like this was all for naught - that my thermal output was the same no matter what (which sounds counter-intuitive to me).

Slowing down does matter in VB6. As you slow down your thermal output drops. The problem in VB6 is that a ship with max speed is assumed to have full thermal, even when it isn't moving (has no orders). Everything is based on current speed, not current orders. In VB6, you can set a ship to 1 km/s using the picket order and drop its thermal output to virtually nothing.

The difference for C# would be that anything without orders would be assumed to have zero speed (effectively the same as setting the 1 km/s order in VB6) and anything with orders would use the current speed (as per VB6).

The concerns over option 1) and the ability to shut down to avoid thermal seekers already exist in VB6.

Option 2) seems a better option and is the more popular, so I will implement that. The question is what proportion to use. I think perhaps 5% of size and maybe even a little more.

[Rye123]

sorry if I'm remembering this wrongly, but doesn't missile interception chances depend on ship speed? Yeah the ship's not technically moving but I'm assuming it's flying around dodging missiles.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

sorry if I'm remembering this wrongly, but doesn't missile interception chances depend on ship speed? Yeah the ship's not technically moving but I'm assuming it's flying around dodging missiles.

Yes, in VB6. So the downside of setting low speed is easy to hit.

The assumption in C# would be the ship would accelerate to dodge missiles. Missiles are much easier to detect in C# so this isn't too much of a stretch. I might need to add something to show a thermal signature when the ship dodged, but it would be a rare situation where that was meaningful (as the ship would need to be detected already in order to have to dodge the missiles).

In effect, the C# change would remove the micromanagement in VB6 of slowing to 1 km/s after movement and then speeding up in response to missile attack. This would happen automatically instead. Plus with option 2 the VB6 ability to almost vanish from thermal sensors would be removed.