Life support and thermal signature

[specialsymbol]

Ok, these two things keep bothering me from the start:

1st Life support.
How comes that my cockpit freezes over when I have life support activated? Doesn't that mean that it's getting cold in my ship, too? Barely a really comfortable situation. I thought life support is meant to keep you comfortable in space.
Then - how comes that as soon as I switch off life support all the oxygen in a cockpit bigger than my living room is gone? I'd rather like to see a display showing the oxygen/CO2 percentage dropping/rising (maybe even depending on activity, read: steering or general input frequency, maybe steering with more effect and selecting switches less so).. and the possibility to close the pressure suit by hotkey only when the conditions get critical. It would add a bonus to bigger ships though (but rightly so!). If you fail to close the suit manually you pass out for a couple of seconds until a failsafe system kicks in and shuts it automatically. That would add another tactical element during fights when you need all the energy you got! Of course, since it's the future, you could also program the suit to close automatically when a certain value is reached.

But: please keep the option to have the ship freeze over! That's one of the coolest things in the game. I only wish I could leave my seat and walk around then...

2nd the thermal signature thing. I like the concept of detecting thermal signatures thus running a low profile and being able to sneak up on people. But why no optional radar? Why no implementation of an option to include a radar that advertises your position to everyone but renders everyone visible in return (except behind LOS, as asteroids or planets)? Think about the horror when you're hidden in an asteroid field, wait for enough miners to show up and then fire up the radar scaring up the sheeple.. see them turning headlessly away, storing the cargo hatches and trying to evade while you pick on your prey...
I mean, it would be fine if it was an omnidirectional radar. I also like the idea of radar cones, but that might overdo it a little.

 

[Defacto]

For the temperature, our Suits regulate our temperature, I'm not sure how much the temperature changes, but I think the temperature can change quite a lot before it is considered hazardous.

Hopefully, deeper life support mechanics arrive in the future. Possibly with the 1st person expansion?

Deeper sensor mechanics, like active sensors and EM (sensor-sensoring) sensors and such was in the plans. I hope it arrives in the future.

 

[Cyberneticist]

Then - how comes that as soon as I switch off life support all the oxygen in a cockpit bigger than my living room is gone?

To add drama and excitement, of course. At least you don't get thrown out of your pilots seat when the ship gets hit.

2nd the thermal signature thing. I like the concept of detecting thermal signatures thus running a low profile and being able to sneak up on people. But why no optional radar?

Probably because ships are already optimized for low radar signature. Also, you'd have to take things like size of the radar signature from different angled, etc, into account.

Cop Vipers with 100% detection sitting in front of stations would make smuggling impossible, too.

 

[Defacto]

It would require us to add more mechanics to smuggling than flying very fast through the opening, which I think is a good thing.

Active sensoring should be used in situations where you want to make sure to pick up targets, at the cost of heavily increasing your signature in the EM range.