Silent running... M.A.D.

[Talarin]

Give sensors different modes - each using different power consumption.

The idea being that "full active" sensors extend the range at which you can detect a SR ship - but power consumption is so high that your weapon output is reduced significantly. (Oh, and you can be detected further away too.)

 

[Ashnak]

Lorewise, that could be similar to the KWS. If I look at the power consumption, the Sensors seem to be passive, while the KWS is active (roughly uses 4 times the power to cover twice the distance - should actually be 16 times the power, though...).
So, introduce something like a 'Combat Scanner'. Active module, power hog, range/power consumption similar to KWS (or even worse). And using it lights your ship up like a christmas tree, even for those CMDRs relying on the passive sensors. If you're SR'ing, using the Combat Scanner will make you visible again to everyone. In any case, you'll need a lot of power to run the active Combat Scanner. And it might be limited to something like a 60° angle in front of your ship, so a SR'ing CMDR would have to approach from your blind side to stay undetected.

 

[Riverside]

Make Heat sinks only take heat from the main ship radiators & any HRP is not actively cooled & so has a much slower heat cycle. Silent running should be useful for hiding (running away or sneaking up) but once you are actively engaged in a fight (shooting or taking hits) and HRPs fitted will absorb the heat & make silent running periods shorter & shorter until it can no longer be sustained without disengaging from the fight.

 

[insanephoton]

After a bit of digging I found the relevant DDF thread on sensors. Here's what we could have had...
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7828&highlight=vasili

 

[Ian Skippy]

In ED lore scanners can be set to active: detecting all ships, regardless of coldness, while givibg away your position to everyone for miles. It must be aimed, and ships on planets can remain hudden.

 

[Karla]

Does it matter if PvPers all using the same set up? Surely that means that it's more down to skill than luck in choosing the correct bit of equipment to bring with you. Isn't that why CQC only uses sidewinders?

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Take a tip from Spock in The Undiscovered Country: All ships vent gas. Let's rig our torpedoes to home in on gaseous anomalies and then...

"To be or..."

Spoiler

NOT!!!

 

[Ddraig]

A bunch of overly complicated module sensors when all that needs to be done is to restrict Silent Running to function only if weapons are holstered.

 

[Majinvash]

So basically, reduce the HP that HRP's give, reduce the RoF on Railguns (either down time between or increase and increase heat to compensate while also increasing ammo capacity, reduce the effectiveness of heatsinks a bit in conjunction with lowering the heat generated by higher-end SCB's (dependent mostly on how big a nerf , and introduce a detection penalty for firing while Silent Running. Good talk.

Sort of but its not quite as simple as that.

HRP still need to be a useful add but there should be a penalty for stacking.
Heatsinks, should dump heat as they do now as they still need to be useful for players to cool down SCB usage.
There is nothing wrong with rails guns in terms of power or firing speed, their heat output is already pretty high.

Its not a simple nerf this buff that type thing, its a lot more required to balance their use against using shields.

The idea for HRP was to allow players to continue fighting after the shields dropped but as usual didn't test how it could be used properly, even through people where showing them in Beta.

There have been lots of solutions of how to fix the current meta but until the new batch of engineer weapons come out its pointless even really getting into.

I personally would like to see the number of HRP you can fit limited in a similar style to how many SCB you can power and cool at any time.
That is balance but lets see what happens. The current meta is boring as hell ( Queue AA telling us how amazing and skilful it is )

Majinvash
The Voice of OPen

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

You can use an MAD for detection, not for targetting. I don't think it'd be a counter unless you elaborate a bit on the mechanic. You can detect ships already with bare eyes.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

You can use an MAD for detection, not for targetting. I don't think it'd be a counter unless you elaborate a bit on the mechanic. You can detect ships already with bare eyes.

Even if it was just a sound that was emitted when a SR ship is detected would be a help... As for seeing it with your eye's, what if the ship is trying to stay out of your field of vision such as approaching from behind?

 

[GunnerBill]

Welcome CMDR's,

We are all aware of the current PvP trend towards silent running ships and how the inventive PvP crowd have no other choice but to play this way well it's madness.

Today on submarines and expanding into other ares of use we have very good M.A.D. systems (Magnetic Anomaly Detector). It seems to me that we need these as a module within the game to help render silent ships useless (EDIT Possibly the wrong word, think of this as more of a counter measure towards SR).

http://www.cae.com/uploadedFiles/Co...ty/Media_Centre/Document/datasheet.MAD-XR.pdf

Discuss but as always please keep it clean and civil.

I don't disagree with your sentiment but then we'd soon be wondering why a chaff of magnetised particles wasn't avaialable to counter this MAD detector...

because that would be quite easy to manufacture in the 34th century.

 

[Han Brannigan]

But as you point out, there would still be a way to do this

Yes - but not an immersive one. Just landing as fast as possible is kinda wrong.

and maybe you smugglers need to come up with some kind of shielding to protect your cargo.

I'd like a secondary mechanic to be tested and in place b4 removing the primary one.

But while we are talking about it - one thing I'd really like to see would be hidden/shielded storage compartments. Where the likelihood of the cops finding your contraband while scanning you is directly proportional to hidden stuff/overall Cargo in %. Who will notice a few kgs of Narcotics hidden away in 200t of Bio Waste...

I'd still like to have a mechanic for small ships though - and imo silent running works pretty nice so far.

I'd be all aboard a petition to massively raise heat production in silent running ( making it unwise to shoot and use thrusters simultaniously for more then 10 seconds or somesuch)

If you'd like to use non thermal sensors ( and in my mind running cold/silent is an euphemism for a bunch of things you do to avoid detection form Visual, Thermal, Magnetic and Radar based sensors ) you'd have to introduce sth to counter these (I'd like that btw).

In the finished game I'd like the Smuggler role having to do a lot of walking around on spaceports bribing Officials and finding sellers/buyers for your wares. Maybe these ppl will agree to meet you away from the station in an ill lit part of the system ( on the dark side of a moon ) to exchange your 'goods' there far from the prying eyes of authority - of course they could decide they do not want to pay after all and pew pew pew could ensue..

sorry for derailement

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

sorry for derailement

No need to be sorry as you raised some good point's!

 

[Nerwan]

Sort of but its not quite as simple as that.

HRP still need to be a useful add but there should be a penalty for stacking.
Heatsinks, should dump heat as they do now as they still need to be useful for players to cool down SCB usage.
There is nothing wrong with rails guns in terms of power or firing speed, their heat output is already pretty high.

Its not a simple nerf this buff that type thing, its a lot more required to balance their use against using shields.

The idea for HRP was to allow players to continue fighting after the shields dropped but as usual didn't test how it could be used properly, even through people where showing them in Beta.

There have been lots of solutions of how to fix the current meta but until the new batch of engineer weapons come out its pointless even really getting into.

I personally would like to see the number of HRP you can fit limited in a similar style to how many SCB you can power and cool at any time.
That is balance but lets see what happens. The current meta is boring as hell ( Queue AA telling us how amazing and skilful it is )

Majinvash
The Voice of OPen

The thing is though, shielded ships (well big ones) can already mostly kill HRP laden ships in a 1v1 and Corvettes and Cutters can sit and take fire from everything short of 4 full rail-de-lances without taking much harm (even then the rail de-lances really have to know what they're doing). So I'm not clear that HRP+silent is really as OP versus shields as you make out. If anything you'd want to affect their performance in wings but possibly not in 1v1s which would be a hard thing to achieve..

 

[Kewpa Eurus]

Silent running should remain viable, but it does need some balancing. Currently a silent running build negates kinetics as you can't target your opponent. The only way to effectively hit your target are with conventional lasers or rails. With this being obvious, one has the easy choice of equipping mirrored armor and stack HRPs. This creates a tanky ship, with both ramming power and high damage output from rails.

To compare it to a classic MMO this ship has the defense of a "Tank" and the damage output of a "Rogue"

I see the silent running ship playing the "rogue" roll. It should be hard to track and have high damage output, but at the same time be fragile. A "glass cannon" as you will. A silent runners ships defense should be in it's ability to hide itself and be agile. It should not have the right to be able to sit there and go face to face with another build.

I have no ideas on how to balance this at the time, just giving my opinion of what an SR ship is at the current state and what it really should be.

 

[xondk]

Welcome CMDR's,

We are all aware of the current PvP trend towards silent running ships and how the inventive PvP crowd have no other choice but to play this way well it's madness.

Today on submarines and expanding into other ares of use we have very good M.A.D. systems (Magnetic Anomaly Detector). It seems to me that we need these as a module within the game to help render silent ships useless (EDIT Possibly the wrong word, think of this as more of a counter measure towards SR).

http://www.cae.com/uploadedFiles/Co...ty/Media_Centre/Document/datasheet.MAD-XR.pdf

Discuss but as always please keep it clean and civil.

Hrm,
It could be interesting if instead of it being an on/off state, would be a sliding scale, so like.

Heat Level.
High - No stealth, no problems targetting.
Slightly High - Can target, but aim is thrown off slightly, in similar manner to chaff but less?
Medium - Can target, but aim is off more.
Below medium - Can target, but aim is off similar to levels of chaff?
low - full stealth, can't target?

What values to be 'high' or 'low' I don't know, but the idea of a sliding scale has its appeal.

 

[Wasp0]

A bunch of overly complicated module sensors when all that needs to be done is to restrict Silent Running to function only if weapons are holstered.

Thats actually a pretty damn good suggestion. Anyone who argues against this suggestion obviously has some rather nasty intentions

 

[Whiterose]

Any technology cannot defeat the good old Mark 1 eyeball.

 

[Karla]

Considering that multi-crewed ships is imminent, perhaps one of the tasks of a co-pilot / engineer will be scanning and pin-pointing where to shoot at the enemy? A bit like a soldier on the ground pin pointing a target with a laser designator for an air-strike.