Cold Steath

[Felix Bonding]

Cold Stealth

[I don't know if more copies of this thread exist but that's not the point. I am very passionate of this topic and therefore I am creating this thread. I would like this to return in some form and I believe others would as well.]

Brumster had a really cool tested out idea behind stealth. While it was a very frustrating and impractical form of stealth, it still had intriguing uses. I want it back... And I think much of the stealth-loving community also wants it back.

Side-Note: Silent Running works perfectly as intended and as I would envision... I do not wish this function to ever change and is completely unrelated to Cold Stealth or the true "Cold Running" that Brumster Misinterprets as Silent Running... (Srry Brumster, but this is part is true, as silent running closes vents which builds up heat and could never contribute to being cold).

The idea behind Brumster's amazing tests could be found here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=24248

It has no way of allowing players to truly maneuver or attack AND be stealthed simultaneously so this doesn't break the game. Ever. You cant even have shields online because it takes up too much power usage. The use that it would have is for making a very gutsy feign death or "lie in wait" pouncing approach. Even then, it takes a lot of effort to power down and wait to ice up as well as power up, toggle hardpoints, begin accelerating, or even making an escape with FSD. Also it creates a utilization of FAoff, as of right now there seems to be silly to ever turn it off for anything. I want this intriguing form of stealth back. In some manner.

On a suggestive approach, the devs have made significant changes to heat-related incidents in the past. I think it's very hard to maintain below 10% heat build up based on power management. Likewise it is very hard to build up heat without seriously trying to. My suggestion is to make sensors only pick up heat-related objects above 10%. This only makes sense because the ice graphic begins when you hit 10% heat level and declining. Now I've managed as low as 5% in an ASP with only life support. It seems power usage correlates to heat percentage. This means I can have any combination of modules online equal to 5% power usage. That's not a lot, but I can power on what I can so that I can slightly power up faster when I need to... Which is maybe a half-second faster. Maybe someone can suggest better but this is a starting look at the least.

 

[ahiredgun]

Silent running all non necessary modules off I can fight well enough while being dead cold. The dbx is really good at it. The diamondback can lie in wait with all modules off for up to 25 minutes while staying at 2% heat. Once everything needed comes back online. (Sensors weapons distributor thrusters) you can fight fairly well at about 20-30% tie heat sinks to chaff so you cannot be targeted when your vulnerable.

 

[Felix Bonding]

This isn't the same. Silent running makes you vague contact at all times and currently 0% heat is necessary to drop off the sensors which is way below the time the ice graphic occurs. However I do like silent running builds and do fly them. But this isn't Cold Stealth im looking for. Ty for the post though!

 

[goemon]

well, it's working as intended by the devs:

"We wanted a ship to still be visible on the radar at close visual range (even in silent running) but for it to drop into “fuzzy” after a few hundred meters, while at the same time we also wanted the “fuzzy” to last for several thousand meters.

We ended up using an inverse square curve for signature detection that felt like it was balanced on a knife edge but it did eventually give us the results we wanted."

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=166724&p=2543685&viewfull=1#post2543685

___

so, basically, what you are looking for, is not in the game(-mechanics)

 

[Felix Bonding]

Actually goeman you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Silent Running is working as intended. Yes. I get this. Cold Stealth is NOT Silent Running. Has NOTHING to do with Silent Running. Refer to the link in the OP for more info.

I am looking for straight up lowering your heat radiated (not closing your heat vents with silent running) and lowering to the point that scanning sensors can no longer pick you up. In the past, it could only be obtained by powering off drives, Powering off shields, and keeping at 0% heat. Silent Running has zero affect and in fact would do the opposite by building up heat internal i am 100% okay with how Silent Running works. Cold Stealth is completely different.

 

[YinYin]

It shouldn't be easy to cool down that far.
A good stealth pilot already turns off almost/all modules for cooling to sustain silent running and low temperature longer.
The silent running/shutting radiators really is just the last push to prevent that minimal heat from your ever running power plant to escape (till that point you should be cold running already - and thus also cooling back down to cold more quickly if you do toggle silent running for a breather).

So, uh ... from all the different stealth videos I've seen and my own experiments it seems that what you want 'back' is still very much possible. This makes what you are actually asking for (and emphasizing how it has nothing to do with silent) a little unclear.
You want ships to cool down more easily or further ...?

 

[Felix Bonding]

Also this what you partially clipped:

We ended up using an inverse square curve for signature detection that felt like it was balanced on a knife edge but it did eventually give us the results we wanted. Having that scenario in amongst the other combat scenarios was ambitious for Alpha 1 but it really was a make or break as a test for our heat and stealth mechanics. I’m glad we were able to make it work in the end.

They speak of stealth mechanics yet have none. What do the devs even want? they don't even know. But the fact is, the old stealth wasnt game-breaking. But yet they think they fixed stealth when in fact they took it out entirely. Silent Running isn't stealth. Its jamming. So instead we have Jamming Mechanics not Stealth.

As for the the question on heating and cooling, , i was aware that only invisibiliy could be acquired at 0% heat which is unobtainable. Fuzzy vague is all we can get by my knowledge which is considered jamming in my personal opinion. stealth no longer exists.

 

[YinYin]

You get invisibility with range. The colder you are the sooner you are gone from scanners.
If you are within 500 m of a ship it will always see you at least fuzzy afaik - which makes sense considering you can never go absolute zero - physically impossible.

 

[Felix Bonding]

Interesting. I hadn't found a thread on it here in the forums though i did a vague search and mostly found outdated material. If this is true is there a thread or place that tells tested results on distance including heat scales? Between visible, fuzzy, and invisible?

 

[ahiredgun]

Actually goeman you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Silent Running is working as intended. Yes. I get this. Cold Stealth is NOT Silent Running. Has NOTHING to do with Silent Running. Refer to the link in the OP for more info.

I am looking for straight up lowering your heat radiated (not closing your heat vents with silent running) and lowering to the point that scanning sensors can no longer pick you up. In the past, it could only be obtained by powering off drives, Powering off shields, and keeping at 0% heat. Silent Running has zero affect and in fact would do the opposite by building up heat internal i am 100% okay with how Silent Running works. Cold Stealth is completely different.

Now I understand in some ships if you turn off enough things then you will be simi invisible just tried it in my db scout was able to keep heat at 12% and my friend says I was fuzzy on his scanners at less than 1km. Wow I had no idea this was in the game stealth combat without silent running.

 

[Felix Bonding]

Lol your welcome! Its your heat level that does this and it intrigued me as well. I just was under assumption the full invisibility no longer existed which YinYin pointed out still is available in a different manner. Now note: toggled hardpoints will always show you on sensors. That's a dev balance mechanic which I'm ok with. You must have them untoggled and drives/shields offline to even attempt invisibility from sensors.

 

[goemon]

Actually goeman you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Silent Running is working as intended. Yes. I get this. Cold Stealth is NOT Silent Running. Has NOTHING to do with Silent Running. Refer to the link in the OP for more info.

I am looking for straight up lowering your heat radiated (not closing your heat vents with silent running) and lowering to the point that scanning sensors can no longer pick you up. In the past, it could only be obtained by powering off drives, Powering off shields, and keeping at 0% heat. Silent Running has zero affect and in fact would do the opposite by building up heat internal i am 100% okay with how Silent Running works. Cold Stealth is completely different.

actually i have a problem to understand, what you are talking about, yes.

from the game mechanics a low heatsignature is treated the same way as silent running. basically heat <20% works like silent running.

with the difference, that at silent running no heat is vented, why you are getting cooked.

so, cold stealth is not "completely different".

(and my dbs and my cobra run on 16-19% heat, so i do know what " running cold" or "cold stealth mean)

 

[Felix Bonding]

actually i have a problem to understand, what you are talking about, yes.

from the game mechanics a low heatsignature is treated the same way as silent running. basically heat <20% works like silent running.

with the difference, that at silent running no heat is vented, why you are getting cooked.

so, cold stealth is not "completely different".

(and my dbs and my cobra run on 16-19% heat, so i do know what " running cold" or "cold stealth mean)

Heat and Silent Running has no affiliation whatsoever. Neither does Cold Stealth. Cold Stealth technically is still entirely NOT in the game. If you read what me and YinYin were talking about, he was verifying a different approach to complete invisibility, but it will only work for a very short time because the heat build up will occur in a short amount of time.

Silent Running is practically turning off radiators / shutting vents. It does not make your ship cold, in fact its the opposite of cold... it builds up heat because the vents are closed. Now closing the vents does allow other sensors to have trouble picking up your heat because its not being vented out. Its being contained within.... still if you heat up enough, your still going to show on sensors. And you do.

Now let me help you out with the definition of Cold Stealth as I think you and probably other readers might also be confused with it. I'm not sure so I'll elaborate on this topic. Stealth, as people know it, is just getting as low a heat signature as possible and possibly Silent Running so that you aren't an easily targeted entity. Most people (including myself as I've done this) have made Silent Running builds with heat sinks etc that can do this essentially for a long long time. Its the practical way to "stealth" right now.

Cold Stealth is when you CANNOT be detected AT ALL on anyone's sensors. This is what I'd like to achieve. What YinYin described as the only functioning version of Cold Stealth I can attain to, is to get as cold as possible by shutting nearly everything down... maybe life support too with A grade for the 25 minutes of it... you'll never reach that time anyways but I'll get to that in a second... and then go into Silent Running which closes your vents with the very small (maybe 2% heat as ahiredgun said?) remaining amount of heat isn't exposed. 2% heat should build very slowly with vents closed. But as YinYin also apparently mentioned was the fact that distance is a factor. The closer another entity, the more probable their sensors are to pick me up... and if they linger long enough, I will become more easily sensed as the heat builds internally.

This is the truest form of actual stealth in the game right now... its okay a different look at stealth as well... but there isn't much practical use for this form of stealth, and if there is, it would be very hard to undergo that special usage.

Also 16-19% heat would still make you a vague contact most probably as ahiredgun just pointed out he sat at 12% heat and was a vague target.... although might need to be tested at that low a heat signature with the vents closed to see how that performs... and at different distances as I think 1km still means you'll be a vague target. Again... with this analysis, you need to have a lot of distance from everything, extremely low heat signature, closed vents, weapons toggled off, no drives or shields online.... All this is more or less redundant amounts of nerfing from Frontier... as before in Brumster's time, it was already pretty unorthodox to be in Cold Stealth when 0% was achievable. But it at least had certain uses... With the distance factor and the fact that you have to manage the heat even further, it might not even be worth the time now. And it was barely worth any time before.

So my statement remains in this capacity: We no longer have feasible stealth mechanics. Any mechanics where we're vague targets and the opposing sensors knows your there is not stealth by definition and more closely related to Jamming enemy sensors than true stealth. Cold Stealth, while momentarily able to be achieved, has no practical uses as you cannot be near pretty much anything for it to be remotely useful in any capacity. And thats a shame.

 

[cluelessforumuser65578]

running as cold as possible works well at range and in areas with lots of sensor clutter

 

[YinYin]

Why can't you acknowledge jamming sensors, being off sensors at a closer distance than usual and lying in wait with a frozen canopy at ~10% heat as true stealth?
Would you be okay with being able to also turn of the power plant (and probably taking a hell of a long time to boot it back up) to purge the last few percent?

edit: ^^^ yup - and in asteroid belts you can always easily create that clutter to hide in by chipping off bits from asteroids or dropping scrap.

 

[goemon]

So my statement remains in this capacity: We no longer have feasible stealth mechanics. Any mechanics where we're vague targets and the opposing sensors knows your there is not stealth by definition and more closely related to Jamming enemy sensors than true stealth. Cold Stealth, while momentarily able to be achieved, has no practical uses as you cannot be near pretty much anything for it to be remotely useful in any capacity. And thats a shame.

nice write-up. so, i did understand you correctly. this is why i wrote "well, it's working as intended by the devs:

"We wanted a ship to still be visible on the radar at close visual range (even in silent running) but for it to drop into “fuzzy” after a few hundred meters, while at the same time we also wanted the “fuzzy” to last for several thousand meters.""

this is exactly the situation we have:
- if you are close, you are auto-resolved.
- you are fuzzy a few hundred meters
- and stay fuzzy for several thousand meters.

now, you dislike that, and i can see why, and as a dedicated smuggler i would love "true stealth" (e.g.: dropping from sensors).

but i personally think it makes sense from a pure game mechanics perspectives. how many bugreports would fd get from people getting damage "from nothing" (e.g.: true stealth)? how to differentiate a scanner not working and "stealth"? if you read in this forums, you will get some threeads of people in combat, where 1 of 3 pilots can't see one or two of the others etc.

 

[Felix Bonding]

nice write-up. so, i did understand you correctly. this is why i wrote "well, it's working as intended by the devs:

"We wanted a ship to still be visible on the radar at close visual range (even in silent running) but for it to drop into “fuzzy” after a few hundred meters, while at the same time we also wanted the “fuzzy” to last for several thousand meters.""

this is exactly the situation we have:
- if you are close, you are auto-resolved.
- you are fuzzy a few hundred meters
- and stay fuzzy for several thousand meters.

now, you dislike that, and i can see why, and as a dedicated smuggler i would love "true stealth" (e.g.: dropping from sensors).

but i personally think it makes sense from a pure game mechanics perspectives. how many bugreports would fd get from people getting damage "from nothing" (e.g.: true stealth)? how to differentiate a scanner not working and "stealth"? if you read in this forums, you will get some threeads of people in combat, where 1 of 3 pilots can't see one or two of the others etc.

Now you misinterpret me. I never said i wanted stealth AND combat to function simultaneously. If you read my posts before i mention that i am 100% ok with the weapons toggled on taking you out of stealth. That would break the game to fight purely invisible. What i am wanting is a sustained Cold Stealth. Not a very unstable form. Drives, shields oflline and weapons toggled off.

To add, your point on the 3 pilot thing was mute. Victims cry, yes. But if Stealth Combat was supported, the stealth pilot is doing his job... To destroy without being seen. And smart victims would chaff, power down, and silent run and prepare snd FSD jump. Now the stealth pilot is having problems. He cannot lock you. Play smart. Off the whiners cry out stealth BAD so what are suppose to do? Cry stealth GOOD? It's really what this has come down to if you want to look at it that way.

 

[Marra Morgan]

What i am wanting is a sustained Cold Stealth. Not a very unstable form. Drives, shields oflline and weapons toggled off.

I've tried to understand what you mean by this "cold stealth" - from what I can gather, you want to be able to reduce your temperature, by turning stuff off, to the point where you disappear as a sensor contact entirely?

 

[Felix Bonding]

Absolutely. In a sustained capacity and not so far away that you have to gap close literally 10km out. I am okay with distance where if an entity comes within a km or two your seen. It
Makes sense. But not several thousand I can't do anything with that. Also the unstable flux of having to. Vent so often... I like the concept but again defeats purpose of stealth. The flicker exposed you, your as good as dead. Thus the inadequate form of stealth.

The main point of this ENTIRE thread is there are more practical ways to engage or disengage in combat. Think about it. What is the point currently to Cold Stealth? There is none. Silent running or just SCB meta builds are more practical forms of play than Cold Stealth could ever be. Period.

 

[Defacto]

As I understand it, by ''cold stealth'' he means not silent running, but cooling off your ship and/or turning off heat-producing equipment to such a level that you basically get the same effect a silent running.
As I understand the game mechanics, it's not your ship's heat that makes you visible, but the heat that you radiate away. If you go silent, your radiator arrays are turned off, and the only heat you radiate away is the blackbody radiation from your hull.
If you go cold, the radiator arrays will also turn off, or decrease in intensity, since they are not needed. You can visibly see this (radiator arrays stop glowing, and the radiator cowls close when you get really cold). When this happens, you will be harder to detect, since you are radiating less.