Welcome aboard Visitor...

Daily Screenshot

Server Costs Target


9% of target met.

Latest Topics

- Anyone still playing from a decade ago or longer? »
- Game still active. NICE! »
- Password resett »
- Darkspace Idea/Opinion Submission Thread »
- Rank Bug maybe? »
- Next patch .... »
- Nobody will remember me...but. »
- 22 years...asking for help from one community to another »
- DS on Ubuntu? »
- Medal Breakpoints »

Development Blog

- Roadmap »
- Hello strangers, it’s been a while... »
- State of DarkSpace Development »
- Potential planetary interdictor changes! »
- The Silent Cartographer »

Combat Kills

Combat kills in last 24 hours:
No kills today... yet.

Upcoming Events

- Weekly DarkSpace
05/11/24 +3.1 Days

Search

Anniversaries

19th - Server

Social Media

Why not join us on Discord for a chat, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook for more information and fan updates?

Network

DarkSpace
DarkSpace - Beta
Palestar

[FAQ
Forum Index » » Developer Feedback » » [DISCUSSION] Electronic warfare.
Goto page ( 1 | 2 | 3 Next Page )
 Author [DISCUSSION] Electronic warfare.
Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy


Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
Posted: 2010-07-27 09:50   
Warning: Long post. Also, in the experimental phase, so all provisos about nothing being set in stone apply, as per usual with my posts. Also, it would probably involve ludicrous amounts of programming.

Okay, so I think most would agree with me when I say that the electronic warfare system is currently a bit pants. It's simplistic, and causes some strangeness occasionally.

Currently you have a signature rating, which essentially represents how detectable you are. In theory, this show how far away you can be detected by someone, and I believe different ships can see different signature levels at different distances.

In practice, this seems to tend to be an on-off thing. Either you can see the enemy from maximum range (which is a few k, if memory serves), or they're basically invisible until they're right next to you.

The signature numbers also tend not to be very useful. A negative signature can still be detected, for example, which means that there's not really any easy way to tell if you can be seen until they start shooting you.

The ECM and ECCM gadgets basically work by increasing or decreasing signature ratings. They don't actually affect what signatures a ship can detect; they merely increase or decrease that signature. Cloak is currently something of a special case, in that while cloaking uses the signature rating to decide how long it takes to cloak or decloak, it doesn't have any bearing on how visible you are when cloaked.

Currently, however, the system creates some weirdness. First off, cloak takes longer to decloak the higher your signature is. This means that lots of ECCM makes you take a long time to simply switch off a device, which seems counterintuitive.
Secondly, you get strange things with projectiles. Bombs are easily visible when the command dreadnaught launching them is completely undetectable. Missiles will become strangely untargetable just before they enter PD range.
Thirdly, there's no way to tell when someone can see you or not, which is annoying.

Thus, I propose a revamp.

First, though, a few snippets from reality, showing just what I'm taking inspiration from, and what I'm ignoring for the sake of playability.

First: Stealth in space.

There isn't any. Space is like an Antarctic icefield, and ships are like red-hot iron resting on its surface (except that spaceships don't melt holes in the fabric of reality, obviously).
Modern detection technology can detect the space shuttle's main engines from beyond pluto, and can detect its tiny gnat's-burp manouevering thrusters from around about the asteroid belt. We can only assume that in the future, sensors will be even better.
The basic problem is that the background temperature of space is around about absolute zero (although you wouldn't freeze very quickly, but that's digressing) and spaceships are, even when idle, almost three hundred degrees Kelvin hotter. Which is a difference of about 530 degrees Fahrenheit. Thermal imaging would have no problem picking this up. If a ship lights up its engines, things get infinitely worse.
Similarly, radar would have no problem, since there's very little in space to cause clutter or interference.
Modern technology can manage a full optical sky sweep in about four hours, assuming you're standing on the outside of your ship with a wide-angle camera and a computer. Presumably you could stud sensors all over the ship and get it done faster, or get all-around coverage.

For reference, a Russian Oscar-class submarine (don't ask me why it's floating in space) with its crew shivering at zero degrees centigrade can be detected (with modern technology) from 38,800,000 kilometres, which is about a hundred times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. And that's assuming that nobody's fired up anything like nuclear reactors, engines, guns, etc.

Fortunately, detection isn't the same thing as getting a target lock.

Just because you can see someone from a long way away doesn't mean you can shoot them. For that you'll need to get closer, or use active sensors like radar which will let the enemy get a target lock on you just as easily as you can on them.

This is where things get a bit more interesting. However, since the enemy can always see us with a telescope, we're not just going to be able to become invisible and stop the enemy from shooting us like that. No, we'll have to degrade their sensors and stop them from getting a good firing solution on us, using electronic warfare systems.

Offensive ECMs typically work by transmitting interfering radar emissions on the same frequency as the enemy radar, overloading it in a similar manner to the way a bright light will blind a person or a camera. Usually, ECMs are fairly specific in that they degrade radar systems operating on particular frequencies, but are indiscriminate in the sense that they jam everything operating on those frequencies, and can't target specific, individual radars.

Note that this means they work by degrading enemy sensors, not by making you more stealthy as the system currently works. A subtle difference, but one that shall be important later.

In addition, using ECMs will actually make the user more visible to the enemy, because they will be radiating large amounts of radio energy. This makes them a target for radar-seeking weapons, that home in on radio waves like heat-seekers home in on temperature. These can't be jammed, but can be foiled by turning off your jammers.

Now, ECCM.
ECCM isn't really a single device in itself. Rather, it's a series of techniques ans systems designed to reduce the interference of ECM, including things as simple as boosting signal strength to "burn through" the jamming, changing frequency to one that isn't being jammed, or using systems that can track the energy emitted by a jammer. Most military units today use electronic warfare systems that fill the role of both ECM and ECCM.

ECCM is a bit complicated in that in some ways it reduces the effectiveness jamming, but in other ways it increases the power of the detection system (which counters the jamming).

Okay, still with me? Let's start trying to apply some of these principles to darkspace.

First off, I'm going to simplify it a bit. Since we can see enemy ships visually when they're around, I'm going to ignore the bit about being able to detect but not target enemy ships. It would just be too much work to have some kind of extra diamond that you weren't allowed to click on or shoot at (well, possibly...), and you'd just end up with them filling the screen and being confusing. Also, I'm going to assume that sensors can either see well enough to shoot accurately or can't shoot at all, since adding a miss chance would similarly be rather complicated (possibly).

We'll also assume that everyone has hyper-mega-unjammable broadband connections that allows ships to acquire targets that have been acquired by allied ships.

So now we have the diamonds representing when you have a firing solution and can shoot at the enemy. No diamond, and you'll have to ctrl+target, which nicely represents acquiring the target optically (sort of).

Okay, now. Changes to the interface.

The Signature bar will change. Instead of some arbitrary number that indicates how stealthy/visible you are, we'll have it start from zero and increase as detectability increases. If you have a detectability of zero, you'll be nigh-impossible to detect. If you have a detectability of eleventy billion, people on the other side of the MV will be able to target you.

This value will depend solely on your ship and its active systems. If it's a dreadnaught, firing all of its guns and running huge amounts of electronic warfare systems, you'll be hugely visible. If you're a scout with your engines turned off, your signature will be low. The K'luth cloak will make you optically invisible and cut a big chunk off your signature. K'luth ships may well be naturally stealthy as well. UGTO ships will probably be the most visible.

Now, in addition to this, we have a detection threshold. I'm seeing this as a line that moves along the Signature bar, representing the sensor strength that is hitting your ship. If the signature bar starts from the left, the detection line will move from the right, moving to the left as enemy sensor strength grows. Once the threshold falls below your signature, you're detected.

This will make it nice and easy to tell if someone can see you or not.

Now, how to detect people.

First off: All ships will have basic sensors of some sort. Small scouts will have high-resolution (i.e. powerful) yet short-ranged sensors, because they're too small to be able to fit really big antennas. Bigger ships will be fighting other bigger ships at longer distances, so they'll sacrifice resolution (sensor strength) for range, meaning they can potentially see further than scouts but have trouble with stealthy things.
Similarly ewar gear will be optimised for different ship sizes. Scouts will have short-range, high-power ECM, dreadnaughts will have long-range, low-power ECM. All sensors will have a range falloff, reducing in power over distance.

Now, these basic sensors won't stack (they don't really stack very well in reality). Instead, just the highest sensor rating will be compared to enemy ships. Similarly, sensor-enhancing devices and ECCM will only benefit the ship they're mounted on.

Now for an interesting bit.

ECM won't reduce signature. Instead, it reduces the sensor strength of enemy ships caught in the radius.

This means that you won't become invisible just by powering up your ECM. Instead, you'll have to get close enough to the enemy that your ECM overwhelms their sensors, which in turn increases the danger to you that you'll be spotted anyway.

However, an interesting twist occurs here: If you take your ECM scout and sit it next to an enemy dreadnaught, it might be able to target YOU (or not, as the case may be), but it also won't be able to target the allied missile dreadnaught sitting 4k away, because you're reducing the enemy ship's overall ability to see.

Do you see the difference here? Currently, in order to cover an allied ship with ECM you need to sit next to the allied ship, but with this new system you'll need to sit next to the ENEMY ship. The enemy can then counter this by either attacking you or sending spotters outside jamming range, forcing the enemy fleet to split up. In order to make the risk to the jamming ships worthwhile, jamming may have to be made significantly more powerful.

All of this produces a niche for an EWACS-type line of ships, which sacrifices armament for powerful sensor systems that can spot targets for otherwise-jammed allies, and a niche for ECM boats that attempt to jam enemy EWACs.

"But what about cloaking?!" I hear you cry.

Well, cloaking is simple. Firstly, it makes you invisible in the sense that you can't see the ship on the screen.
Secondly, it drops your signature by a lot, possibly over a period of time. Dreadnaughts would end up with a higher signature than scouts, and would take longer to get there. This will take the same period of time to cloak/decloak regardless of enemy sensors, but you will be detectable for different periods of time depending on where the detection threshold is.

Most ships will probably have a fairly high sensor rating when you're close to them. A cloaked ship will probably be spottable by a base-line ship of the same class when they're perhaps a ship's length away from each other. Smaller ships will detect larger ships at a larger distance, and vice versa. This allows cloaked ships to creep up on the enemy, but doesn't give them total impunity. It also encourages scouts to fly in search patterns to try and spot cloaked ships, which I think is a tad more interesting and less laborious than remembering to press "p" every so often, and lets canny k'luth players avoid patrols without the risk of being randomly detected by a scout 1k away. Add in the system that lets you know how close you are to being detected, and cloaked ships should have a far more exciting time evading patrols and keeping an eye on that slowly creeping detection threshold.

That's all for the moment. In my next installment, I shall be suggesting gadgets to go with this system, so hold off on device ideas for the moment and just comment on what I've got so far.
_________________
[Darkspace Moderator] [Galactic Navy Fleet Officer]


Walrus of Apathy
Admiral
Templar Knights


Joined: August 07, 2005
Posts: 466
From: Dorans Basement
Posted: 2010-07-27 10:11   
Very interesting, But how would planet sensor bases and anti-sensor bases fit in with this?


I can see this making ECM forts comeback just as much as every other idea out there right now, only worse, becuase any enemy ship caught in the cluster would practically be unable to target anything with so much ECM in the air.
[ This Message was edited by: Beastkiller on 2010-07-27 11:05 ]
_________________


  Email Walrus of Apathy
Red October
Fleet Admiral

Joined: May 30, 2010
Posts: 165
From: Stillwater, Oklahoma
Posted: 2010-07-27 11:53   
Geja... if you want some Electronic Warfare Gadget ideas, I posted some under Alanstar's Suggestion Thread. Since everytime I suggest something, someone takes slots reserved for ideas. So I just made a whole thread for all different types of ideas I can pop out of my head.
_________________


  Email Red October
Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy


Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
Posted: 2010-07-27 18:39   
Quote:

On 2010-07-27 09:50, Gejaheline wrote:
In my next installment, I shall be suggesting gadgets to go with this system, so hold off on device ideas for the moment and just comment on what I've got so far.


_________________
[Darkspace Moderator] [Galactic Navy Fleet Officer]


SpaceAdmiral
Grand Admiral

Joined: May 05, 2010
Posts: 1005
Posted: 2010-07-27 19:06   
tl;dr......jk

complicated , lots of coding ,
but a perfect blend of reality,logic, and gameplay

original idea too, dont see games quite like this

"fixes" problem of luth cloaking in other thread

ecm forts might come back

ugto ships will have highest base sig? ICC have shields on and shields must give off some great signature/energy

good idea, id say would be better system, but some other things should have higher priority

all im worried about is ecm forts
_________________


Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy


Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
Posted: 2010-07-27 19:24   
Quote:

On 2010-07-27 19:06, SpaceAdmiral wrote:
ugto ships will have highest base sig? ICC have shields on and shields must give off some great signature/energy



Because ICC have better ewar systems, traditionally, so presumably their built-in ECM will be better than UGTO ships.

Actual visibility doesn't really matter, since DS warships are basically visible from the other side of the MV, but for playability purposes we're glossing over why you can't see all the enemy ships on the F2 map. It's the sensors and anti-sensors that are more important than plain old signature.
_________________
[Darkspace Moderator] [Galactic Navy Fleet Officer]


Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights


Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
Posted: 2010-07-27 19:46   
This is the sort of thing I thought of when I noticed there were EW ships, and was mildly disappointed when I noticed it was basically set up as "ghetto stealth". Sure it's kinda fun to fly around with negative sig and nobody can see you unless you get too close, but a setup like this would be a lot more fun.
_________________
Adapt or die.

-Shadowalker-™
Admiral
Galactic Navy


Joined: September 23, 2007
Posts: 709
From: Shadows
Posted: 2010-07-27 20:09   
since everone is more focused on pewpew electronics, would be fun to use.. >:)
_________________


  Email -Shadowalker-™
MrSparkle
Marshal

Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
Posted: 2010-07-27 20:38   
That's quite a wall of text. It's gonna take me a while to digest it all.

One problem I see is that ECM being effective near the enemy instead of near the teammate won't work, since sight and radar info is shared among the faction. So long as teammates can target the enemy, ECM near your ship won't have any effect.

I want to add to this discussion: Bombs should not be affected by ECM/ECCM and should always be visible to planet defenses. Bombs are not ships, fighters or missiles and should have no signature to affect. They have no propulsion, only minor tracking, much like torpedoes, whereas ships, fighters and missiles do have propulsion.

I'm not liking the current method of bombing which is simply bringing enough ECM to hide bombs. Bomber frigates come with too many ECM making it pretty easy for them. Having a few of them basically guarantees no planet can see their bombs.

One pleasant side effect is the potential usefulness of anti-sensor bases again. But the main reason for the change is because it's too easy to overwhelm the planetary sensor bases, when you should have to overwhelm the laser defense bases with lots and lots of bombs instead.

I really have to read and digest the rest of the OP.
_________________


Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black


Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
Posted: 2010-07-28 00:05   

I like it Geja.
Ironically, I did suggest a line of AWACs type dessies awhile back, but LOL... someone told me... "That's real life, this is DS!"



Anyway, I can see where ya going from here. You could use new and existing variables like:
- Signature
- Sensor strength
- ECM activity/strength

Signature will remain siggy, as it currently is.

Sensor strength speaks for itself, and will be an indication of whether you're being jammed or not.

ECM activity will work like ESM gear, detecting the presence of ECM in the area.

How the 3 will be inter-related will be up to an equation of sorts I guess. Distance, number of ECM units employed, ship's default signature, ship's default sensor strength.

The thing I'm trying to think of is how ECCM will fit in anymore, assuming you're going for a real life interpretation of all these things.

_________________
... in space, no one can hear you scream.....


Forger of Destiny
Chief Marshal
We Kick Arse


Joined: October 10, 2009
Posts: 826
Posted: 2010-07-28 00:10   
+1 to the ECM part.
+1 to the ECCM part.
But you forgot scanners.

Excellent example quoting, good, perhaps well-balanced system. But if you need to revamp scanners, you will have to make ECM weaker. Also, sensor systems work in a pan-directional way, where jamming in one direction does not hamper others. Though it would be hard to implement sensor strength based on direction of jamming ship, it should be implemented alongwith this system.

Overall, good work Gejaheline, exemplary wordpwn3000. You are great. Same for this new sensor idea.
_________________
Forging legends and lives outside till naught remains inside.


Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy


Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
Posted: 2010-07-28 07:28   
Thanks for the positive comments, guys. I'm hoping that you're all enjoying reading and thinking about this as I did when I was writing it.

Time for a bit of Q&A before I do the next giant wall of text:

In reference to the ECM forts, I'm hoping that their effects will be mitigated by them only being effective when the enemy is nearby. If they're a long way off, it won't stop enemies from bombarding people near the planet at long range.

The ECM-versus-bombs thing is a bit more tricky. In an ideal world, ECM/ECCM would have SOME effect on bombs in order to make it harder/easier for planets to defend against bombs, but currently it's basically an all-or-nothing thing where they all get through or they all get shot down, which sucks in both directions. I'm thinking that some kind of percentage chance of detection might work. Giving planets a secondary uber-powerful sensor system that detects everything in point-defence range would negate ECM bombing, but at the same time it would virtually remove the effects of electronic warfare from bombing. That needs some more thought, and I shall probably write another article on it at some point.

The issue where allies share sensor information is unintentionally intentional: I realised that this would make things a bit more difficult, and then thought "Well? Why shouldn't it be a bit more difficult?"
Basically, it would encourage ships to spread out in order to avoid having everyone get ECM'd at once, and it's possible that standard sensors are sufficiently terrible that a single un-jammed ship can't see everyone on the battlefield. I'm predicting that in all battles there will be at least a background level of fuzz pretty much everywhere, particularly if there are larger ships on the field, which will hopefully make it nontrivial to perform spotting duties. It might almost be necessary to bring EWACS ships of some sort. This element would probably need a lot of tweaking to get the balance right.

Antiradiation missiles would be pretty awesome, but they might be difficult to implement. As-is, jamming ships might not have a diamond, so you'd either need some kind of auto-targeting weapon that homed in on enemy jammers, or a special diamond that only let you launch antiradiation weapons at them.

Directional jamming: Okay, technically you can target specifc radar sources with modern jamming technology, but for the most part jammers are omnidirectional, performing targeting by changing what frequencies they're jamming (which is how they avoid jamming friendlies). This is how combat aircraft jam enemy missile systems without having to point directly at the enemy radars, and why it's difficult to jam lots of radars at once (because they operate on different frequencies).
Similarly, radar systems are regarded as pan-directional, when in reality they use a narrow beam that sweeps out a circle (or sphere).
It's not that I didn't consider the myriad ways to jam and counter-jam and how they work, but I came to the conclusion that making it any more complex would bog things down from a design perspective and just make it more fiddly to use in-game, which isn't always a good thing. Don't worry, I'm a massive fan of realism, but unfortunately it's got to stop somewhere, particuarly when you're talking about INTERNET SPACESHIPS LOL. Thus, things are a bit simplified, but hopefully just complex enough now that it's more interesting than ghetto-stealth, as Talien so accurately put it.
As a side-project, though, I might see just how in-depth I could make ewar, and post it up if only for amusement.

As for how ECCM and scanners fit into the equation, read on and be enlightened, my dears.


Ok, time to continue the series. Gadgets and devices.

We've got the electronic warfare system above, but we've not really defined the devices that make use of them. Let's fix that with some basic devices.

We're going to basically replace all of the current ewar devices, so if I don't mention a currently existing device, assume it's been jettisoned.

To start with, we're assuming that all ships have basic sensors and some ECM equipment that stops the enemy from targeting them until they get within combat range. This basically justifies why you can't target all enemies all the time, and would look pretty much like DS looks now, where people don't show up as diamonds until you're in the same area. One new variable I will be using is "sensor rating", which is basically how strong a ship's sensors are. The higher your sensor rating, the lower a signature you can detect.

Additionally, one basic assumption I'm making is that bigger ships will have longer-range but lower-rated electronic warfare systems. This can be countered by giving them more devices, for example a command dread (being a CnC ship) will probably have lots of electronic warfare devices. Smaller ships will be the opposite, with strong, short-ranged ewar devices.

I'm going to start with ECM, for no particular reason.

---

The ECM gadget will essentially do the same thing as it does now, with a few cruical differences.
Currently, ECM behaves like some kind of strange stealth field, reducing the signatures of everything in the area of effect.
The new ECM gadget will behave subtly differently, as I've said previously. Rather than reducing the signature of affected units, it will reduce the sensor rating of enemy ships in the area of effect, with a stronger effect nearer to the ECM-using ship (and, in fact, it will increase the signature of the ship using the ECM, probably by quite a large margin). This will reduce both the overall power and the range of enemy sensors that are affected. Ideally, ECM won't affect friendly sensors.

ECM will be stackable, although testing may suggest that it not be 100% efficient. So for example the first ECM reduces sensors by 20%, the next by an additional 16%, the next by another 12.8%, and so on (my maths there are probably a bit questionable, but you get the idea).

This particular form of ECM is known as "offensive" ECM, jamming enemy ships. This distinction may be important later, since defensive ECM may also be an option.

All of this means that a ship fitted with offensive ECM will need to actively engage a target (by getting close to them) in order to degrade their targeting. You won't be able to stealth-up your dreadnaughts by flying a bunch of scouts alongside them; instead, you'll need to get your scouts alongside the enemy ships, where they'll be more vulnerable. The enemy will have to either deploy countermeasures in the form of EWACS, by sending in ships that can see and intercept the ECM ships, or by sending spotters to see the attacking dreadnaughts so that they can return fire.

On the note of counter-ECM, let's move on to the next gadget.

---

Sensor arrays; collections of antennas, amplifiers, and so forth that augment a ship's basic sensors. These are the equivalent of current scanners, except that they're not useless for anything but bombing.

Sensor arrays are practically similar to ECM, except that instead of lowering enemy sensor ratings, it increases the range and sensor power of the ship they're fitted to. They still increase signature though, so a ship that's got lots of sensor arrays can both see and be seen from a longer way away, and can attempt to "burn through" enemy ECM interference.

Note that these arrays only boost the ship using them, and that sensors on different ships don't stack. Using a big pile of ships with lots of sensor arrays on them stacked in one place won't be any more useful than a single one; spread them out instead so that if one gets jammed, the others can take over spotting enemies.

The idea here is that you can increase your sensor range and power quite significantly (as opposed to the current scanner that just increases your sensor range and that nobody uses except for bombing), but has a tradeoff in that it's vulnerable to ECM. If you're looking for sensor integrity, you'll want the next gadget down.

Next:

---

Electronic protection systems (EPS); a fancy newfangled name for ECCM. A set of signal boosters, interference filters, directional antennas, and so on and so forth that increase the ability to resist enemy ECM.

EPS won't quite work in the same way as ECCM, however, which is one reason for the new name.

Rather than increasing sensor strength (which is what ECCM currently does, although it does it by raising signatures), instead the EPS reduces the effect of enemy ECM on the ship using it by a percentage. This won't increase the ship's sensor rating overall (nor will it increase signature), but it will reduce the impact that enemy ECM will have. Like ECM, it will be able to stack with itself on the same ship, but probably giving a reduced effect for multiple EPS (you can't solve all problems by just throwing more antennas at it, after all). So one EPS might reduce enemy ECM effects by 50%, two by 75%, and so on.

This will mean that a ship fitted with EPS won't have particularly good sensors, but they'll be hard to degrade, ensuring a basic level of operation. This will probably be useful for combat warships that have a limited number of ewar slots, and ships with lots of ewar slots may have one or two if they expect to get jammed.

While the other devices will change properties with hull size, EPS can probably stay the same, since it reduces enemy ECM (which is scaled by enemy hull size) and benefits sensors (which is also scaled by hull size). More powerful enemy ECM will still have a greater effect on sensors than weak ones even if both are reduced by 50%, for example.

---

That's the three basic devices, equivalent to the ones we've currently got. For fitting purposes, I'd be inclined to make ECM and EPS swappable, but have extra sensor arrays be reserved for ships that are most likely to have them. Modern fighting machines tend to leave the giant radar arrays reserved for dedicated units, after all. I'm not really convinced either way, though.

I'm working on the assumption that pretty much all ships will have at least one and possibly two ewar slots. Ewar will become pretty important, and ewar systems will have profound effects on sensor ability. Unenhanced sensors will be pretty bad and rather short-ranged, but EPS will be relatively powerful, perhaps reducing enemy effects by 50% or more. Similarly, sensor arrays will increase sensor ranges by up to 100%, although EPS should be more effective at reducing enemy ECM than arrays are at increasing sensor ratings. obviously, these are just ballpark estimates at the moment.

For rough comparisons between the three systems: Sensor arrays should boost power by less than ECM reduces it, and EPS should reduce ECM effects such that a sensor + EPS being attacked by an ECM should end with a modest increase in sensor range (which makes sense for two devices versus one). Loading up on lots of EPS can never completely counter ECM, one should note, since it's a percentile reduction in effect.

To keep things from being too static, where ships end up being always targetable or never targetable, I'm thinking that signature will be affected far more profoundly by the actions of a ship. Currently, charging weapons and moving faster tends not to increase signature by all that much, but by making these have more of an effect, it creates a tradeoff between fighting and "running silent".

Hopefully, the choices here provide both a good selection of devices for dedicated ewar ships, but also make people put a little thought into what ewar devices they want to fit onto their warships. Do you take some EPS, to make sure you can keep fighting when the airwaves fill with static, or do you pack extra ECM to make it harder for the enemy to spot which blip amongst all the fuzz is a volley of incoming missiles?

And, of course, it opens up avenues for dedicated ewar ships. A destroyer loaded up with sensor arrays would make for a rather handy asset for supporting dreadnaughts, for eaxmple, and with the grouping system you can now run interference with a group and still gain prestige.

That's all for now. Next up: Ideas for more "experimental" ewar, in the sense that there's no existing equivalent for them at the moment.
Ye gods, that's long. If you've read this far, thank you, and congratulations for making it!
_________________
[Darkspace Moderator] [Galactic Navy Fleet Officer]


Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights


Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
Posted: 2010-07-28 10:43   
Huh, and I thought EW was fun now, if this makes the cut I'd almost never do anything else. Only thing that bugs me is it's just in the idea phase right now and may or may not actually be implemented.

I've got a few ideas myself that would fit right in with this kind of setup, but I'll wait until you're finished because you'll probably end up covering some of them along the way.
_________________
Adapt or die.

*Obsidian Shadow*
Grand Admiral

Joined: January 03, 2010
Posts: 316
Posted: 2010-07-28 17:51   
IMPLEMENT IT NAO!!!
_________________


Forger of Destiny
Chief Marshal
We Kick Arse


Joined: October 10, 2009
Posts: 826
Posted: 2010-07-29 08:00   
One word : EPIC.
You thought out your e-warfare system so well it just might end up in v1.540. No joke, it just might. +1 to the super post a little above, may luck be with you Geja.
(On a side note, your maths is also good, don't anticipate or apologise for possible mistakes)
_________________
Forging legends and lives outside till naught remains inside.


Goto page ( 1 | 2 | 3 Next Page )
Page created in 0.018322 seconds.


Copyright © 2000 - 2024 Palestar Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
Terms of use - DarkSpace is a Registered Trademark of PALESTAR