not to mention the fact that the night vision is completely operating off of radar and not any actual night vision technology. which means night vision shouldn't be able to see Silent running ships at all.
It makes sense that "night vision" operates off of active radar instead of any form of visible or non-visible light amplification. Considering that we can use night vision see terrain that is not emitting on the electromagnetic spectrum (or reflecting in some cases), it would make sense that the "night vision" in-game would use the same principles as terrain following radar (albeit on a larger scale). For detecting other ships, it shouldn't really matter if the ship that is being lit up by radar or not is in silent running, as all this does is minimize the emissions the ship gives off. While silent running would have a small effect, it would be nowhere near as large as the effect of the geometry and material composition of the ship being illuminated. Since we do not know the what materials our ships are made of, we will ignore this and focus on the shape of the ships. If you look at any ship in ED, you will notice that there are A LOT of fine details and protrusions sticking out of the surfaces of the paneling. Each additional seam protrusion on the ship WILL increase it's radar cross-section (they will also show up on night vision and make the ship appear slightly brighter at a distance), so you would be hard-pressed to say that the ships in ED are optimized for stealth.
Now, as for normal sensors, these would be passive sensors. They do not actively give off EM emissions, rather they absorb the emissions given off by other objects (such as other ships). If a ship stops emitting on the EM spectrum (i.e. activates silent running) it will disappear from passive sensors. Conversely, if a ship were to start putting out more EM emissions (i.e. activate night vision) it should become more visible to passive sensors. In this respect, I really like the fix that CMDR Cosmic Spacehead proposed:
Keep night vision OP, but using it makes your ship very very very visible to sensors. So you can use it, but target lock is a doddle, even in silent running, and missile locks are faster.
And gimbal and turret tracking is better, if possible.
Also tie it's range to sensor range.
Lore can be that your ship emits a lot of easily detected signals when using NV.
The main advantages to this solution are that:
- It does not reduce the functionality of night vision outside of combat (keeps everyone else happy)
- It adds another layer to the detection and evasion mechanics (think giant laser shooting submarines in space)
- It has a basis in established science (I like this cuz I'm a bit of a nerd)
I wholeheartedly endorse Cozmic's solution here. +1 from me.