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

[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.

[Droplede]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
I like my old idea of limited range scanners and sensors that can only see a sector around the ship on level one and 5 sectors by level 5.

Planets sensors arrays and or scanners would have a greater range of 5 to start out to 10.

This way a ship passing through a system may or may not see all the ships or planets in that system. They would have to EXPLORE the system.

I'm OK with this idea for sensing ships, but hiding planets is a bit too much. I think it's a good abstraction to be able to see all planets in a system once it's entered. I mean, on Earth, with today's technology, we can see system after system after system across the galaxy and determine if there are planets there or not. I'd buy having planet population size hidden until you're close, but ....

For me, greater fog o' war is good for spaceships, bad for systems. And even then, half the joy is reading the funny (and most often grossly misleading) ship names my buddies come up with. Nothing says fun like finding out the hard way that his scan-blocked "Flower Trader" class transport ship has a star destroyer on board.

[mac5732]

I would like to see where your not able to see ship designs of enemy or friendlies unless you have a treaty or until you have made contact with that particular ship. Then the only design shown would be of the ships you've already had contact with.... same with units..


my 2 cents Mac