Musing on detection information for alien active sensors

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

A few thoughts to add to the mix.

Either you like sub sims as much as I do, or you are in the Navy but only because Aurora is a fleet game rather than a single ship or small task group game (such as Sub Command). If I was writing more of a tactical game then I would love to include many of your suggestions. I need to try and find an abstract level than provides fog of war but doesn't present the player with too much information (based on the fact there could be dozens of hostile ships), or too much micromanagement.

As an aside, have you read the Deep Sound Channel series of book by Joe Buff? I think you would enjoy them as they really get into the intricacies of underwater detection, in this case during a nuclear war at sea. There are six book in the series.

Steve

[plugger]

Goodaye Steve,

Naval / Professional Poker Player / Crocodile wrestling (never on a Sunday)  background.

Yep, like the subsims. Have several shelves of books on sub related topics. Don't know the ones you have mentioned but I'll track them down. Thanks.

I'm enjoying your game. Killed a tree and printed out the first hundred pages of your Trans-Newtonian Campaign AAR and took it away on the family camping trip to read. Answered a lot of questions and a fun story. Pretty bleak future you've painted for poor old mother earth though.

Cheers,
Plugger

[mrwigggles]

Goodaye Steve,

Naval / Professional Poker Player / Crocodile wrestling (never on a Sunday)  background.

Yep, like the subsims. Have several shelves of books on sub related topics. Don't know the ones you have mentioned but I'll track them down. Thanks.

I'm enjoying your game. Killed a tree and printed out the first hundred pages of your Trans-Newtonian Campaign AAR and took it away on the family camping trip to read. Answered a lot of questions and a fun story. Pretty bleak future you've painted for poor old mother earth though.

Cheers,
Plugger

Kurt Six Power series ends I would argue on a darker note.

[sloanjh]

I like the suggestion in principle. I think similar suggestions have been made before and I decided against it. Not sure why I like it more now :-)

Perhaps an easy mechanic to use, and for players to understand, is to divide current active sensor ranges by 10 and multiply them by the current EM tech. This would halve current starting sensor ranges but they would be about 10% better than at the moment by the time you research the 8000 RP level of EM sensors. 3x better at 120,000 RP and 7.5x better at max tech.

I like this idea.

I agree. The trick would be finding a way to display that uncertainty. Perhaps the display of enemy active sensors could accept a user-provided parameter as the estimated EM sensitivity. Similar to the current display of thermal ranges.

Or maybe you could add a slider to the sensor tab (defaulted to 10) on the F3 window that would let the user try out different enemy passive tech levels (which is exactly what you said)

However, in many cases you 'know' what the target is based on past active contact so the lack of an ID is more irritation than suspense.

This has been my experience.

Assuming we move to a passive ID model, thermal would definitely provide an ID. Perhaps EM detection of shields would also provide ID due to unique frequencies or some other technobabble. Even EM detection of active sensor emissions might be possible depending on identification of the characteristics of individual sensors. It is probably easiest to have detection based on all passive information rather than change the current active / passive split to active + some passives / other passives.

From a "realism" point of view, I would say that passive EM should only tell you the alien sensor design that you detect, and then you should need to guess as to which class it is (similarly for thermals and engines, perhaps).  From a "game play" point of view, my recollection is that we tried that when you first introduced some of the fog-of-war stuff several years back, and it degenerated into a micro-management and user-interface nightmare, with Aurora generating multiple "unidentified yet" entries for the same class which had to be waded through by the player.  I think that the current system is best: the identification/matching process is abstracted away as a staff function, in the same way that TMA is.

In other words, I think it's best to abstract it such that any passive contact gives you enough information for a empire/class identification, rather than trying to add nuances to different contact types (thermal/EM/active).

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Perhaps an easy mechanic to use, and for players to understand, is to divide current active sensor ranges by 10 and multiply them by the current EM tech. This would halve current starting sensor ranges but they would be about 10% better than at the moment by the time you research the 8000 RP level of EM sensors. 3x better at 120,000 RP and 7.5x better at max tech.

I like this idea.

I have added this for the next version. It should add a degree of uncertaintly. Now I just need to figure out how to display it appropriately

[attachment=0:g2jp5ezr]active3.JPG[/attachment:g2jp5ezr]
Steve

[Erik L]

How about for the uncertainty you increase the size of the "sensor dot" on the system map? Larger uncertainty, larger circle. And maybe offset the circle somewhat so a player won't just head to the center of it.

[James Patten]

I suppose "gravitic anomalies" could be introduced which could drastically affect the active grav sensors operation, which changes for the better as your technology improves.