Heat and stealth rework to broaden ship design options and play

[Rubbernuke]

Please rethink stealth.

Make it so the cooler you run, the harder it is to lock on even when that ship is firing. Tune clean drives and low emissions tech (like lasers, powerplants / shields) should mean something, and that hull tanks have a reason to exist.

It would be a simple tweak, as currently when you fire you are seen. Surely you should only be seen the hotter you are and the distance of detection?

The counter to the above suggestion would be simple: fixed weapons, or emissive / heat dumping lasers.

The advantages would be that unless you are running hot you are immune to homing missiles that are normally the bane of hulltanks (like the Packhound) as they can't lock onto you. Gimbals would be ineffective, making module sniping more difficult.

You would have silent assassin builds, and give heat weapons a reason to exist (including Mahons laser)- it would be a race to dump heat into a target to lock on, or for a cold runner to keep cold to avoid being locked onto.

It would be an interesting break for the meta as well which favours big everything....you could make cold running cargo ships, torpedo builds, smugglers and so on.

 

[Sylow]

Make it so the cooler you run, the harder it is to lock on even when that ship is firing. Tune clean drives and low emissions tech (like lasers, powerplants / shields) should mean something, and that hull tanks have a reason to exist.

The boldened part is something i absolutely see no rhyme and reason for. I mean it's like "Captain, we are being hit by a many gigawats laser, we can detect the beam from right where it starts, but we have no idea who is shooting, so it's impossible to shoot back." I mean, a low emission laser would be nothing else but a dimmed laser pointer, not a useful weapon any more. It just doesn't add up for me.

It seems quite logical to me that any ship firing high powered weapons (read as: any weapon capable of affecting a ships shields and damaging the armored hull) is quite easy to detect.

 

[Rubbernuke]

The boldened part is something i absolutely see no rhyme and reason for. I mean it's like "Captain, we are being hit by a many gigawats laser, we can detect the beam from right where it starts, but we have no idea who is shooting, so it's impossible to shoot back." I mean, a low emission laser would be nothing else but a dimmed laser pointer, not a useful weapon any more. It just doesn't add up for me.

It seems quite logical to me that any ship firing high powered weapons (read as: any weapon capable of affecting a ships shields and damaging the armored hull) is quite easy to detect.

Maybe I should have refined what I said: depending on what you fire and when you'll be detected.

Currently you can be at absolute zero and fire once to be lit up forever. How it should be is that the lower energy weapons should be stealthy- frags, torpedoes, dumbfires, non-incendiary multis, cannons, low energy lasers. PA should ironically be like this, where you fire and move- your energy /heat output would spike (making you detectable) and then drop back.

It would make sensors more important as well. It could be that A grade sensors cut through a lot while D grade (as what everyone has) turn out to be pants.

It would require testing for sure, but the sweet spot would be that the stealth ship has say 10 degrees of temp to keep out of lock, while the defender has to dump heat into that target to lock.

I mean, with the new nightvision, and simply looking for beams / drive trails you can find people. What stealth should do is make automated targetting impossible or very hard to do.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

when thermal vent first came out it worked in such a way that you dropped off radar even if you were 500m away.
you could stay completely off radar at all times.
then they changed it so that when you fired you were spotted.
I wasnt too happy with that change but i was like "alright, so the radar must be tracking the firing back to the ship, fair enough, as long as i can still sneak up on people"

But then they turned around and gave stealth builds a huge slap in the face with the Night vision functionality
and to make matters worse the night vision functionality isnt using actual night vision tech, but the radar instead.
Meaning stealth ships should NOT be seen by "night vision" at all. But frontier decided that they are.

Frontier made all the groundwork for stealth to be in the game and then turned around and decided they wouldnt have stealth anymore.

Its extremely disapointing that night vision not only can pick up stealth ships using the radar even if the radar doesnt detect them, but pick them up even if those ships are outside the radar's range.

there is no way to "sneak" up on someone anymore because they can just pick you up from 20km out.

 

[Rubbernuke]

In this idea stealth builds trade shields and fancy toys to keep the heat output low, so its a decent trade I think. Right now low power shields, lasers, clean drives etc have no real place. Hull tanks are far too vulnerable while shield tanks are too tanktastic.

This also makes sensors more of an issue too. I think FD need to revisit linking sensor grade with gimbal efficiency. Mostly everyone uses D grade- it should be that A is long range and expensive, B is unjammable etc.