Sneaky sneaky radar stuff

posted on March 20th, 2010, 12:35 am

Adm. Z was explaining to me how it's possible to make ships invisible to the mini map, and I was thinking this would be a great idea to have in FO.  Maybe it would be a power of the romulan intel center, or maybe non-cloaking scouts could get the ability, but it would be a neat addition for ships to have a limited ability where you can not see their radar profile on the minimap.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 12:39 am

Aye it can be done with a replace weapon. You could set the replaced ship's map icon to display nothing via ' mapicon = "empty" '

posted on March 20th, 2010, 12:42 am

Adm. Z was explaining to me how it's possible to make ships invisible to the mini map, and I was thinking this would be a great idea to have in FO.  Maybe it would be a power of the romulan intel center, or maybe non-cloaking scouts could get the ability, but it would be a neat addition for ships to have a limited ability where you can not see their radar profile on the minimap.

Think I suggested something similar for the non-cloaking scouts.  Effectively putting them in "grey mode" so that they could not show up on radar and were not auto-targeted by ships.  They'd have to be manually targeted.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 12:43 am

Yeap.  It's because of that post that I added scouts in there.  I didn't know it was possible to remove something from the minimap like that.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 1:04 am

yep, that is how it works.

I would love to see a Stealth ship that uses radar jamming tech so it doesn't show up on the minimap(I know its not radar )

Even if it wasn't a scout, it would be pretty cool.  I just like amassing a whole bunch of these ships and just fly fight into a base where they can't see until you are right on top of them   verry cool

posted on March 20th, 2010, 1:27 am

It is quite a nice trick. Perhaps for certain new Romie unit(s) this might be good? Possibly a nice replacement/addition to the Spectre too - would fit it's name

posted on March 20th, 2010, 5:34 am

I agree.  That would be an excellent way for non-cloaking scouts to hide themselves AND use terrain to better effect .

  A Scout with this feature activated could sit pretty in the outskirts of an asteroid doodad and then disappear from the minimap.  Thus it would be hard to spot and unlikely to be found.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 11:21 am

what about the problem of hiding a ship at the end to cling on to a few more minutes before facing the ignominy of defeat?

perhaps when other ships are set to search and destroy mode they can detect it because they are purposely looking for it?

i like the idea very much, i think it should only apply to the romulans, MAYBE  the veteran intrepid could do it to a lesser degree like in voyager where voyager could drift by sensor nets while keeping quiet.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 11:22 am

the ship would still be shot from nearby vessels. But the main problem i see is that the ship is also invisible on your radar. I don't like that. But yep we have similar ideas for that in the future.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 2:02 pm

Yea, so it would be like a form of imperfect stealth technology that only works if you arn't near the ship.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 2:41 pm

I dont like it, got enough on with normal cloak nevermind super cloak.

posted on March 20th, 2010, 3:03 pm

I agree.  That would be an excellent way for non-cloaking scouts to hide themselves AND use terrain to better effect .

   A Scout with this feature activated could sit pretty in the outskirts of an asteroid doodad and then disappear from the minimap.  Thus it would be hard to spot and unlikely to be found.

Exactly.  .

the ship would still be shot from nearby vessels. But the main problem i see is that the ship is also invisible on your radar. I don't like that. But yep we have similar ideas for that in the future.

As it is now, people go out of their way to hunt down the little colored blips near nebulae and things called scouts. That's why people choose team colors that match the surroundings. Most people completely and utterly ignore scouts unless they notice them on the minimap. If it was a time dependent thing, or had  a  big downside (like dramatically reducing sensor range - so that the chance of your opponent actually seeing the thing or by accident, attacking it - then I don't think it would be too unbalancing