NPCs Disappearing / Reappearing

rekurzion

rekurzion
Has anyone noticed this?

I'll be in a system flying through SC and get a new contact notification then select the target. As I'm moving to position for a simple scan the target disappears just as it gets into scan view.

The other scenario is I'll be flying through SC and several NPC contacts appear. If I come to a stop they will disappear. If I accelerate again at any speed they appear.

In both situations the actual NPC still exists. I can see their SC light. To test this I had an NPC pirate after me. I came to a stop and the contact item for the NPC disappeared. I could still see it fly towards me, get in position behind me and interdict me. Only then could I select the target.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
There's been an undocumented change a while ago making the Scanner Contacts act weird in SuperCruise.

In general, this >seems< how it works :
  • own Ship slow = drastically reduced Scanner Range...sometimes
  • own Ship fast = normal Scanner Range... quite often
  • other Contact moving slow = drastically reduced signature...sometimes
  • other Contact moving fast = high signature... quite often

The main issues are that
  • the changes were undocumented and not part of the Patchnotes
  • the Scanner behavior is inconsistent and unreliable as there's oddball exceptions in both directions

That makes some/many contacts seemingly appear and disappear in an arbitrary manner, while others defy that and apparently work normal/in a different manner.

PS.
I once made a detailed Suggestion concerning potential cat & mouse Gameplay in SuperCruise by making FSD performance/size and Speed + Throttle setting affect SC Sensor signature.
What we're seeing somewhat resembles that, however the lack of documentation and the many inexplicable exceptions make it an awkward experience.

I haven't been able to find a pattern to the exceptions, i.e. why a slow contact is still visible from considerable Range while a faster Contact much closer repeatedly vanishes off the Scanner, all while a similar speed (slow) Contact can vanish at as little as 10Mm range.

(If there's an official explanation to the new SC Sensor mechanics, I haven't seen them; in pure theory it could simply be a bug and I wouldn't know)
 
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rrobes

R
Random drop outs of contacts, mission target blips drop in and out off contact.

TBH, I don't think it's a bug, likely programmed in.

I've also noticed that if I'm approaching a station or a mission USS during an assassination mission, and there's an NPC trying to interdict me, the distance countdown slows down and doesn't seem to correspond to the approach speed. In other words, the game is keeping me in SC so the NPC can successfully interdict me, happens very regularly.

At least it seems that way. It's OK, the NPC is dead to me soon enough.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
I know some grumble about the bugs, but I find it fun working out ways around the bugs/features - makes the game a bit more dynamic when you need to adapt (and far cheaper for fdev than actually implementing new features :) )

Though it does make guides on the internet age quite badly ...

Edit: Bring back the Skimmer Rain!
 

rekurzion

rekurzion
Bigmaec said:
I'm pretty sure that's intended, because it's too reliable to be a bug.
Perhaps some sort of "making supercruise hunting more exciting" feature.
Might be a bug, too, who knows. At least it's annoying.
Click to expand...

i, too, thought it could be a stealth 'feature' to make SC hunting more 'difficult'. but whats the point when all i have to do is add the tiniest thrust? what's the difference between going 30km/h or 40?
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
Zed said:
One documented feature of the scanner in SC is the concept of the 'time horizon' rather than an absolute distance. And by documented I mean someone from FDEV mentioned it in the forums years ago.
Click to expand...
It somehow makes sense, interdictors work the same (aka longer range at higher speed, shorter at slower).
Would just be nice to have a scanner range value for that in outfitting similar to the x seconds of the interdictor.
Like "this scanner works 100 times x your current SC speed in ls".
 

Mr T

Mr T
rekurzion said:
Has anyone noticed this?

I'll be in a system flying through SC and get a new contact notification then select the target. As I'm moving to position for a simple scan the target disappears just as it gets into scan view.

The other scenario is I'll be flying through SC and several NPC contacts appear. If I come to a stop they will disappear. If I accelerate again at any speed they appear.

In both situations the actual NPC still exists. I can see their SC light. To test this I had an NPC pirate after me. I came to a stop and the contact item for the NPC disappeared. I could still see it fly towards me, get in position behind me and interdict me. Only then could I select the target.
Click to expand...
I've been PP undermining lately and have noticed this happening all the time. It seems to me to be a timed event / glitch rather than being related to how fast you're going or where you are in relation to the contacts as nothing I do appears to make any difference to it occurring. I can pretty much predict when the glitch will occur every time. I'm surprised there hasn't been an issue raised on the tracker for this, wondering if I should raise one? If it's not annoying anyone else at the moment then I may not bother. Mind you, that lazy attitude might be why there isn't one logged ;)
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
There's another thread about this...

In the game manual, it states that ship scanner range in super cruise should be dependant on the FASTEST ship .

You should see 40 seconds ahead, based on the fastest ship. So, if a ship is travelling real fast, everyone within a 40 second range of that ship (based on that ships speed) should see them.

In reality, the "of the fastest ship part" isn't working. So you have super cruise vision range of 40s, based on your speed... which is dumb, a bug, but denied and said as working as intended by FD.

Frontier please fix this annoying issue...

Since the latest quality improvement update there's a persistent issue with players who are present in the supercruise instantly appearing and disappearing constantly from radar, which makes them impossible to keep a lock on. This appears to be influenced by throttle. When you decelerate to...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
Drelthar said:
You mean this?

"Ships are automatically visible within a 40 second time horizon, based on the fastest ship’s speed. "
1603241229373-png.192036


Note - "based on the fastest ship’s speed."

Does this not mean that my speed being 50M/s, should not affect my vision range of another ship, so long as they are going faster than 50M/s?

They would be the faster ship, therefore, the vision distance should be a 40 second time horizon based on their speed - mine has become irrelevant to the equation.

So, why then, when -I- slow down, do I lose lock on someone who is speeding up, only to regain lock when I speed up a bit?

Seem's like what is actually happening is:

Ships are automatically visible within a 40 second time horizon based on your speed alone.
Which isn't what the manual says, and doesn't align with the stated design based on "emissions" (of which you give off more the faster you go)

NOTE: - The original quotation appears to describe the correct behaviour, but is not what I've experienced personally.
Click to expand...

webapp

issues.frontierstore.net issues.frontierstore.net

I do need to do some detailed testing on this though, as I will admit, this is all based off of my perceptions from general play, and not direct and focused testing. So... I may be wrong.
 
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Mr T

Mr T
Ok, I'm starting to see the picture now. I see there was a ticket for that one which was close by FD:

Status By Design

Greetings commanders,

We will be closing this issue as it works as intended. The sensor detection works based on emissions – at low speeds emissions are very low, and it’s quite hard to get to a close enough distance in supercruise to pick up these low amounts. This is why they disappear because they’re too low for the scanners to pick up.

Fly safe! o7.

I'm guessing the intent was to stop the likes of gankers pulling over commanders who are stopped in SC because they're using the FSS to scan a system.

I always see the contacts drop off near the start of my SC session but that will be because they haven't got up to speed yet, as NPCs only start appearing in SC after you are there in the session.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Mr T said:
Ok, I'm starting to see the picture now. I see there was a ticket for that one which was close by FD:

Status By Design

Greetings commanders,

We will be closing this issue as it works as intended. The sensor detection works based on emissions – at low speeds emissions are very low, and it’s quite hard to get to a close enough distance in supercruise to pick up these low amounts. This is why they disappear because they’re too low for the scanners to pick up.

Fly safe! o7.

I'm guessing the intent was to stop the likes of gankers pulling over commanders who are stopped in SC because they're using the FSS to scan a system.

I always see the contacts drop off near the start of my SC session but that will be because they haven't got up to speed yet, as NPCs only start appearing in SC after you are there in the session.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but is it actually working as intended?
 

Mr T

Mr T
Drelthar said:
Yeah, but is it actually working as intended?
Click to expand...
Well, it would seem the NPCs appear on the scanner when they first get into SC, so are the supposed to? I would guess not. They then drop off and eventually come back which I'm assuming is because they're going faster.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Mr T said:
Well, it would seem the NPCs appear on the scanner when they first get into SC, so are the supposed to? I would guess not. They then drop off and eventually come back which I'm assuming is because they're going faster.
Click to expand...

But is it because you got faster?
 
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