SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post

[Suicide Junkie]

If only the host keeps a copy of the full map, and each player has a separate .gam file to download, each player's file could be populated with the info they have seen Last.

The downloads for each player would be smaller, at the cost of more storage space on the host machine.

[Roanon]

Separate .gam files for each player is generally a good idea. There would be no need to encrypt the data, and this would even encourage the player community to write addons for game data management. Only the administrative overhead is a bit higher, for instance pbw would have to be reprogrammed so that each player only will get his .gam file and do not have access to others.

[Aiken]

Small note: I'd like to see the Proxy Partnership "feature" (viewing the systems\planets\ships of partner of your partner) removed in SEV. It's unrealistic, imho.

[dogscoff]

Small note: I'd like to see the Proxy Partnership "feature" (viewing the systems\planets\ships of partner of your partner) removed in SEV.

When you say "removed", I assume you mean "A moddable option to allow/disallow it".

I think nothing should ever be removed by hard code- give modders as many toys to play with as possible.

[Aiken]

Actually, I meant "removed" But yes, making it optional feature is better.

[AgentZero]

I kinda like the whole obfuscation thing, but I wouldn't go so far as to apply it to things like planets. I mean, a planet is BIG, and as soon as your ship enters the system they're gonna know where the planets are, and even have a rough idea of the conditions of said planets. So as soon as a ship enters a system we'd get a rough idea of what the conditions of all the planets were like but not if there's anyone living there, unless the colony has reached a certain stage of development. However, even if you know someone owns that planet, you won't know WHO until you wander on over and take a closer look.

But ships, even big ships, compared to the scale of an entire solar system, are TINY so naturally, they'd be a lot harder to find, and until genuinely advanced sensors are available, finding a ship in a solar system would be like... Well, you know.
When you detect a ship in a star system, I think there should be several stages of identification:
1) There's a ship over there somewhere.
2) There's a ship right there and it's about -this- big...
3) And it looks sort of like this (silhouette)
4) Now it looks exactly like this.
5) It's weapons/engines/shields are about this powerful

And that's all we'd ever know until actually making contact with the empire owning that ship. Then, under Diplomacy, one would have the option to 'Share IFF Codes'. Once this is done, any ships in you 'Unknown' list that belong the empire you shared with will be moved to that empires list. Obviously, any new designs will still come up as Unknown unless IFF codes are shared regularily.

More to say but no time to say it..

[dogscoff]

I mean, a planet is BIG, and as soon as your ship enters the system they're gonna know where the planets are, and even have a rough idea of the conditions of said planets. So as soon as a ship enters a system we'd get a rough idea of what the conditions of all the planets were like but not if there's anyone living there, unless the colony has reached a certain stage of development.

I disagree. Look how little we know about planets in our own solar system- I mean until a few years ago we weren't even sure if there was water on the moon. Granted, SE4 tech is way ahead of us, but the very fatc that planets are so BIG makes it difficult to map and survey them quickly, especially from a distance.

The answer, of course, is to give modders as much flexibility as possible, thus allowing modders to satisfy both your and my points of view.