Actually I think speed of light delays could be fascinating but it would require complex sensor indicators and additional sensor filters when the player wants more precise information.Deus Siddis wrote:Then we should enforce a maximum radar and communication range somewhere under a light minute.klauss wrote: The only thing I see could become rather complicated, is speed of light delays. I don't think we ought to venture into that area. I foresee lots of complications that would arise, in gameplay mechanics, that would be hard to overcome.
Tangentially, that will solve our major issue of every ship of a hostile faction in the system attacking you at once. And the issue of the radar and target selection interfaces being overloaded with radar contacts. And the issue of knowing everything that is in the solar system without having to explore it.
The radar to be inclusive of information would have to be sophisticated with distinguishable variations in patterns to create a sometimes blurry image that the player can reliably differentiate between hard to detect ships and far away ships.
To do this, I propose a plan that takes all the distinct methods possible to differentiate at a glance and puts them to use. In some non essential to differentiate places, it would take advantage of difference between additive color and subtractive colors and possibly phase between color primary color models sometimes the get the best effect. To a degree color blind people would be able to make use of the most important features since the more important information is the more clearly it would be seen. Here is my suggestion:
Color Hue=Relation | Colored dots Using some version of the most elemental colors possible would be for example: Blue Friendly, Red Hostile, Yellow Neutral, and a combination of the primary colors to make custom subtractive colors for inbetween indications: Greens partially friendly; oranges partially hostile; and purple disloyal turncoats in progress. Or for alternative use of colors to avoid the yellow green discrepancy: Red hostile; blue neutral; Green friendly; Teal partially friendly; Purple partially hostile; Yellow turncoat.
Opaque= Detection strength | Subspace signatures may be stronger on huge distant ships than the visible light from a nearby broken down ships. So non transparent dots would be either nearby ships or well detected ships.
Brightness=Importance | Targeted indicators turn white and ships in your squadron are brightened to a higher shade using additive color mixing. Other known ships get progressively less bright till they are neutral. It indicates how well known the ship are: So light reds are nemesis; light green are friends; light yellows are acquaintances. Then light subtractive color browns are known mysterious.
Color Shading=Time delay by time spent | The farthest objects within the selected range show up as black and are hardly distinguishable from the background. Except when they have been stationary for a long time their signal is considered reliable and will show up as normal dots. Known ships in the distance ships would show up as a combination of white and black by decreasing their original color saturation to a maximum of grey.
Puffing=Ambiguousness | Hard to locate due to interference like stealth, the puff would be as big to indicate the area the source may be located in.
Shape=Ship shape | Nearby ships would have markers just big enough to distinguish a shape of the ship. Puffing would distort the shape to be unrecognizable and morph into the shape as discovered.
Cell shading contrast=Proximity | The closer the ship the more noticeable the cell shading is so that small ships can be instantly identified as just as close as larger more detectable ships. The cell shading of closer objects would always block the cell shading of objects behind it while the inner markers always shine through due to a no obstruction rule.
Size= Size and distance of ship. | This would be a good indicator for when about to crash into an object. The size would shrink from maximum marker size logarithmically to a the minimum. This way if perfectly in the centre of an object like a station, the marker would fill the entire scanner with either a 2d flattened or 3d, silhouette of the object from the ships perspective, but other markers would be visible through it due to a no obstruction rule.
Smearing=Movement | Objects moving position in space may have enabled a progressively shaded streaky smear left on the background of the display to record a recent record of movement when not looking. If there is also a real time subspace position for the object it may also have a streaky smear and if known to be the same object would link a thin line between any missing history.
Scanner filters
-Time delay range- The player may choose a range to view and the limits will adjust to ignore everything else and make remaining more distinguishable.
-Movement history- Streaks would indicate time delayed paths. When not filtered they would travel from the real time subspace signature if available, along the delayed location history if available. It would appear more smeared or darker shaded toward the oldest data due to the rules of shade, buffing and cell shading. If there is a significant discontinuity between subspace location and apparent time delayed location, the two are linked with a thin unremarkable line to fill the gap and show they are connected.
A lot of this information could be on the HUD as mentioned, but I believe only combat and relative movement related information should be on the HUD since it can be drawn on visible objects as an enhancement of high priority information. Distant objects would stay in the radar unless perhaps they are incoming