Reorganizing the radars

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breese
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Reorganizing the radars

Post by breese »

As part of my efforts to add new radar types, I want to suggest that the current sensor upgrades categories are modified slightly, so that they follow the categorization of the weapons and ammo.

I suggest this:
  • Sensors/Common: Replaces both Sensors/Basic and Sensors/Intermediate.
  • Sensors/Confed: Replaces Sensors/Advanced.
  • Sensors/Highborn: Will contain the Elite radar.
  • Sensors/Rlaan: Will contain a new kind of radar.
  • Sensors/Enhancements: Will contain radar enhancement such as threat assessments.
A consequence will be that shops that previously only sold Basic or Intermediate will now sell both.

What do you think?
charlieg
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Re: Reorganizing the radars

Post by charlieg »

Perhaps this belongs in developer focus. Hopefully it'll get seen here soon enough though.
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breese
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Re: Reorganizing the radars

Post by breese »

breese wrote: [*] Sensors/Enhancements: Will contain radar enhancement such as threat assessments.[/list]
After having spent the whole day trying to hook these enhancements into the exiting configuration files and associated code, I gave up. There were simply too many changes needed (to handle odd dependencies in the code) to be worth it.

Instead I have decided to simply add the threat assessment to a select few sensors.
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Re: Reorganizing the radars

Post by pyramid »

So this classification has been already implemented. Can somebody please move this thread to developer focus.

It seems this topic has gone almost unnoticed.

When it comes to believability, it makes sense to classify upgrades by faction (or even manufacturer). In this case, it would be only consequential to also classify all other upgrades in the same way, or otherwise risk being inconsist and subject to confusion on the part of both developers and players.

On the other hand, when concerned with game mechanism, I would advocate classification by distinguishing features, be it sensor functionality, or race, or manufacturer, or all of them, e.g. rlaan_military_friendorfoecoloring. Specs like range however are not distinguishing classification factors. Within a class/family, they are sensor model features.

Since I don't understand enough about the sensor functions, besides them having friend or foe coloring or not, I cannot favor any of the previous or new classes, but find it rather disadvantageous to reduce the number of currently implemented classes from 3 (basic, intermediate, advanced) to 2 (common, confed).
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Re: Reorganizing the radars

Post by TBeholder »

As to "Elite Radar", IMO displayed projections should not be a part of hardware, it's just unreasonably weird.
Since this one seems to be best used for a relatively close-range display (because targets not fitting into the cylinder base cannot be displayed correctly), i propose to use it as such. Maybe on MVDU when it will be used. And/or with a variable scale.
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breese
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Re: Reorganizing the radars

Post by breese »

Turbo Beholder wrote:As to "Elite Radar", IMO displayed projections should not be a part of hardware, it's just unreasonably weird.
The Highborn (Elite) rader is not just the same old hardware with a new display projection. Contrary to the other basic radar designs (Confed and Rlaan) it contains both close-range and long-range sensors. Furthermore, it reacts differently to features like ECM than the other basic radar designs do.
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Re: Reorganizing the radars

Post by TBeholder »

breese wrote:
Turbo Beholder wrote:As to "Elite Radar", IMO displayed projections should not be a part of hardware, it's just unreasonably weird.
Contrary to the other basic radar designs (Confed and Rlaan) it contains both close-range and long-range sensors.
The Highborn (Elite) rader is not just the same old hardware with a new display projection.
There's no reason not to show the same projection with any other radar.
Even for a shuttle with radar for some reason not good at great-angular-speed-tracking at all, cylindrical projection is useful - it would ease manual docking if all dock ports and those helper nav points (the base "shows" them, so no need to hunt and lock) will be indicated once they are more than one pixel apart. :)
breese wrote: Furthermore, it reacts differently to features like ECM than the other basic radar designs do.
Again, it's cool for preview... but ultimately should become a function not of projections, but of the radar upgrade itself. ECM resistance set explicitly is needed not only to show the difference between civilian and military radars, but also to make some missiles less easily jammed than others (like in Frontier).
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