Star Citizen Live: Radar and Scanning

So radar, ping, and scan are kind of bundled together, but they're kind of different concepts. We think of radar as what you currently see within your range. It's your passive contacts. You're flying around and you see a ship, or you're flying around and you see a station, and there's information you see appearing; you see the UI indicating that the thing's there. Whereas ping is more of: I can't see something, I'll ping out and maybe uncover stuff. Now, that could either be something's very, very far away or something's heavily influenced by an ambient signature, so you can't quite see it without a little bit of help. The only downside of doing that kind of burst to see more is you reveal that you have done it. So if I were to ping out and go find Sean, Sean would know that I pinged, but now I can maybe see Sean. And then scanning is more of: what information could I get about that contact? So a common flow is I could ping out, I find some little blobs, and maybe I could scan it and uncover that, oh, there's something interesting that I want to go into in that blob. So I get closer and it appears as a contact, and maybe multiple contacts, and I could scan those to get other information. So it's a way of expressing in the world what's happening and maybe show some interest that may want the player to go toward that direction or avoid that direction.

That's probably a two-parter question. First part, I'm just going to iterate more on the radar technology. So when VTT took this on, we did have a lot of radar and scanning functionality and even ping. But it was a lot of systems that built up from different designers and different features. And when we took this on, we wanted to unify it across the entire game so that it could be used anywhere by any designer to facilitate those original mechanics. Passive, it's on your radar. Ping, you go out and find it. Scan, you get information. Whether that's a mission, whether that's on foot, or whether that's on a spaceship, or even on both. So because of that, in Star Citizen you are not just a spaceship. You are a person, and you are a group of people. And in the document for our radar scanning, we do facilitate how and why we want to share information. Now, the technology to do that is there, but it's not available yet for this current iteration. The primary focus for this upcoming patch will be for ships, because we're going to iterate on developing this tech, basically replace the old system with the new one, and then add on extra features throughout patches. So this tech will allow us to put it on to other things like players and on ships, but the current one will not be exposed to players until an upcoming patch. And one of those primary things is how do we get that information from a player on foot to a ship or vice versa.

Now, going back to radar, ping and scan: radar again is what's near you and what information we could perceive as the person playing. Now, if I'm on a ship, I'm actually going to see different signatures and even different contacts because it's based on the ship radar. If I have a small little radar, I might see certain... I'll go with the Prospector. It's made for finding mining things. So if I get on foot, my FPS radar might, depending upon my customized loadout, see different things to what my ship was seeing. So it also depends on what the player has as loadouts in both the ship and on foot that determine what he sees from his radar and ping. Now, if you do line up both of them, then you'll probably see similar information. But again, your ship is going to have a much more powerful system than one that's on foot. Your ship might be able to see something far away on the planet, but you go on foot, you're not going to see it. I mean, unless you have some nuclear power plant, I don't think your radar will be able to see things that far away.

Now, your scan information, that is something we're looking at on how to send that information to and from the player, because that is something you can transfer reliably. Technically, you could have different things determine it: if I have a medical scanner and I have a mining scanner, they'll uncover different things. But where we store it is something that the player could look at at any point in time once we unlock that information through a UI. So radar-wise, it depends on your loadout. Scanning-wise, it depends on your loadout. But what information you uncover from your scanner, in a later upcoming patch, you'll be able to access that either on foot or on the ground. Hopefully that answers that question in a bigger way.

Yeah, and one other point to it, and it's a little higher level: when we reinvigorated the tasks around scanning and getting that wrapped up and completely done, as well as Squadron requirements, one of the big parts, and again one of the big benefits to be able to direct the two different pillars, the vehicle and the actors, is that we got to design this together. So what we didn't want was a whole separate FPS radar system that just has no ability to crosstalk with what happens in the ship scanning, because ultimately we're both, and we should be able to transition the data between both. So it was a nice thing to be able to design this together. And it just so happens that the ship stuff was obviously a little further along in terms of the amount of time that's been spent on it over the years. So we were able to get that done first, and then we wait for the FPS and everything coming up behind it.

They can. So a lot of the work that we've done is to talk with designers on what information they would like to have across different ships, even on foot, and what type of upgrade paths you would want radars and scanners to have. And a lot of those types of things usually amounted to different types of signatures, the strengths at which you can see them, even the strengths of how resistant they are to ambient, even the types. So we've unlocked a lot of information and a lot of ways to categorize information so that designers could make stronger radar, stronger ping, or stronger scanners, or unlock specific information. We've also incorporated different ways that we could potentially allow players to filter out that stuff, but it still depends on what the designer said that this particular radar can do or this particular scanner can do.

To support that a little bit: there's now three separate functions of our radar, ping, scan system that are all able to be balanced independently per ship, per item. But then, in addition to those three separate ones, you've got three different signature types where, again, you could have a scanner better at detecting CS, you could have a better scanner for EM, you could have a better scanner for IR. So there's a lot of designer control now, and it basically gives them a ton of tools to make all the stealth kind of gameplay, or really all the electronic warfare that we've been expecting to have within Star Citizen, work as expected and as intended.

And with that, we've also been in talks with different balance teams on what values these things do and how they interfere with each other, so that we could get that electronic warfare, we could get that stealth gameplay. I keep going back to this in different examples: Sean really likes that idea that you have a big ship and you can maybe see it, and you get a little bit closer and all of a sudden there's a bunch of contacts, because that big ship was hiding all the smaller ones. So an upgrade path could be that you have a radar that's more sensitive to seeing those contacts further out than another one, because of the ambient volume. It could pierce through it more than another type of radar. The downside could be more power. It just depends what design wants.

I just want Goose to talk to me. 'Talk to me, Goose. It's not one, it's two.' I always found that to be great. It's obvious, but it takes some doing, especially when you've got three different signature types, how you calc them, how you actually merge them. And in the end, the challenge is how you balance them all. The first time we even took a look at it, the Hammerhead had more signature than an Idris, and then if you were beside the Hammerhead, you would never get seen, even at 10 meters or so.

It's a good question because it kind of depends. It really depends, one, on the ship. So what's happening within that ship? Even what's inside of it: if it's cargo that's actually emitting IR or whatever, that could cause some problems, if it's not shielded. But it's also considered that there's always cross-section. So cross-section is almost a visual thing. So if you're getting up to 100 meters, you obviously see it. And if you can see it, he can probably see you. Now, if you're behind him, different story. You're probably not going to get called out, but you may be picked up from CS in terms of your radar. So you're going to want to try to occlude yourself. So if you're approaching to zero to 100 meters behind asteroids and stuff, yeah, you're going to get right up to him and he's going to have no idea you're there. But I don't know how you're maneuvering with all your stuff turned off. It really depends. But all those tools are there now, and you'll know they're there. It'll be pretty obvious, I think.

We actually have a test level that Kirk Tome was messing with where there's a gas cloud that has high EM and IR emittance. So if something flies in there, you're not going to see it. If you get close enough, if your radar detects cross-section, you'll be able to see it. So it really depends on what the other player's radar is and what your mission is doing to determine what you can see and how...

When we're talking about cross-section, it really is cross-section. If you are horizontal to a guy versus being top-down, your cross-section is way less, way, way less.

It is, because the shield technology that we're using is based off SDF stuff from physics. And the beauty of that is it gives us a more accurate description of cross-section on the overall surface area. So we're 100% using the physical representation of that ship. So if you have one that transforms in different ways or even animates, you're going to get different cross-section. So like on the Hammerhead, if you look at it horizontally, the cross-section is a lot smaller than if you flipped it upside down.

Then it's super loud. But a Gladius, being a good, decent fighter, coming at you nose first, it has a very small cross-section. So you may not pick it up. That's why the question is like, it really depends. But that's what's so cool about it. Again, that's the system we wanted to bring in here.

With that 'depends', we also wanted to add some stuff onto the UI to help you with that. So one of the things on there is what your signatures are emitting versus the ambient levels that are happening. So it gives you an idea of how well seen you are versus what's happening in the environment. The best way I describe it is like a Thief visibility meter.

Thief or Syphon Filter. Maybe that's really old. Yeah, it's got a little visibility meter. So you've got that ambient level. So a good example, and this is more for FPS because they have the dB signature, so like sound: if you're in a room that has a generator running, it's super loud, that ambient sound is going to be like full bar. And as you run, your signature is going to move up and down as it is, but it's probably staying below. So that means you're stealth, you're not detectable easily, or passively from somebody else's radar. But could they focus scan you? Could they ping you? Yeah, they could still do all that kind of stuff.

I think we've got to beat to death the design of that. And I know Tony very specifically is very, very keen to talk through that and to work that design out. So I wouldn't say much there. In terms of the system, though, yeah, definitely. The system itself, we've basically got a databank of objects that can be stored, because short of selling it as an item or giving it to other players, we've also got to do a couple other things even before that that will lend itself to it. So the first one is being able to share contacts and all that kind of stuff within your ship to other people in your ship, like a gunner or something like that. So number one, we've got to do that. Number two, we've got to be able to share stuff to party. Like if you've got a friend in the party. We want to make sure that we're going in the direction... to use a Battlefield term, they called it squad sight, but it's basically everybody in the same squad can see the same stuff. They're sharing radar targets. And how the system deals with that, because you may be good at detecting this, but this guy's better at detecting this. I think it's super cool because the party can actually be laid out in such a way that you've got a ship that's really, really good at scanning CS, you've got another one that's better at IR, there's another one that's good at EM, and then there's another one that's actually the loudest signature in your group, so it's actually clouding the rest of you guys being stealth together. So I love that there's that dynamic, but we've got to get there. And then once we've got that, cool. Then we'll package that up and put it in a shop and maybe we do something about it. But I'm sure Tony will want to talk through the actual design of that.

Yes. Radar: I know for some of the bigger ships, there's been ideas of having a radar globe and then being able to interact with what your actual radar is doing. There's different designs on that, but the one that I'm more familiar with is the scanning MFD. I'll backpedal and say this is not something for 3.14, this is something that's upcoming. We've been in talks with UI and other teams on what that MFD is going to do and what information it should have. So going back to scanning, you're going to unlock a bunch of information. If I go to a mineable and I find that it has gold, or if I go to Sean's ship and I find that it has a weapon or even gold, that information gets stored in my object databank on the ship. That MFD's goal is to show you that information. So if I go to scan a ship, I'll get the nice UI and I'll see all the information there. But if Sean's gone, I can't look at that information again, hence the MFD. The MFD is supposed to be that window of memory of what I scanned in the past. The good news is in the object databank, we have that whole underlying system where we actually save that information. We just don't have a way for the player to uncover it. The only way you could uncover it is if Sean comes back and you try to rescan him, then we show all the information that was there. So the scan UI is going to be that housing of: I scanned a bunch of things, maybe I could look at what was there in history, and even maybe have a way of transferring it somehow. Because that's going to be the ultimate thing: what do I do with it? Do I bring it with me on foot? Do I transfer it to another party, or do I sell it? I think Calix, another designer on VTT, had the idea: he wants to steal it. I could go and scan it, sneak aboard my ship and steal it. So why not? It's on the ship. We just have to have ways of accessing it. There's a ton of ideas that we want to have fun with.

Yes and no. So each of the seats, as of right now, has its own operator subcontext. So if I'm piloting, I could be flying. And if some guy in the back were to have a scanner on his turret, he could be in the scan mode. Now, if he scans something, it gets saved into the ship's databank. And what's cool about that is if maybe me and Sean are in a Cutlass, he's scanning someone and I'm in combat shooting and flying, whatever information he unlocks, I'll see it too. And this is there in 3.14. Everyone in the same ship, in the same seats, the scan information is shared across the entire ship. So you could have buddies that just scan everything. Go for it.

It's all about making sure that information gets to everybody else that's on the ship.

Yes. A lot of information to send and receive to different people.

So scanner-wise, that's still in discussion of how much the players can actually have control over. But design-wise, they're set up to be medical information or law information that determines what you unlock. There's still discussion on what to allow players to filter out in that scan mode. Radar: we actually did a lot of back-end fundamental stuff to allow players... Now there's no UI, so you won't be able to access this in 3.14, but the foundation, because remember, Vehicle Tech, we build the foundation of stuff, is there. And we have a way for players to turn on and off certain signatures, even turn off certain contact types. One of the discussions we've had and seen across the community too is they want to be able to turn off certain contact types, because you get to Port Olisar and there's like a billion turrets. Well, why not allow you to turn it off, or have it off by default and then you could turn it on? So behind the scenes, designers set up what kind of contacts you can see, and the player can then opt in on which ones he wants to have. We just need to have a UI to expose that information. Maybe that could be the radar MFD. It really depends how in-depth we want to get it. But the functionality behind the scenes, again, is there.

I like the cube. Good news is we actually had the graphics and VFX teams help out and concept new ideas of how we want to have this blob. So we did get rid of the box. I'm sorry, the box is gone. And it got replaced with more of a fuzziness, that there's some object within there. Because the whole idea of ping is that we don't know what's there, or where all of it is. It's more of a general area. There's something here or a bunch of things here and you don't know what it is. It requires you to either focus more ping so you can reveal contacts, or get closer. But the idea is just there's something there. So the VFX all got changed. Now, we wanted to move the VFX to be more on the player's lens to indicate that it's more of a system that's happening and relaying the information to you in 2D, because it's not a 3D in-the-world effect that happens. But the old effect was kind of 3D. Now, we didn't quite get all of that there, because there's some stuff we want to do with the player ping and radar. So we have a hybrid right now where it's still in the 3D world, but it looks like what we're going towards with that on-lens VFX. So we did get rid of the box. It is still in 3D, but we want to move it more into 2D so it overlays on top of things. One of the complaints we've always seen too is you ping out and you can't see the box because the mountains blocked it. We want to get rid of that so that it's mostly on the UI. So you go, okay, there's something there, you just have to fly towards it. So we're getting there and we're improving the effects. And as Jared said earlier, this is not final. We're continuing to develop the VFX. So when you guys see it, please put in your comments, because I'm sure we will take your feedback and make modifications as it goes. But for 3.14, it's a hybrid to get us where we want to go.

Yeah, and what you'll see, and Mark described it really well, is depending on the distance, depending on the signal of the thing, it'll be wider or more narrow. It's meant to be rezzing in. That's kind of the thing. You know there's something there, you just don't know what it is. You don't even know how it's shaped. You have a blob of a bunch of different meshes that it looks like, and the closer you get, the more it resolves, and then the closer you get, you actually get a contact. So basically, if you're coming into a system and you're willing to give away your position, because if you hit ping, that pretty much is going to notify everybody that gets hit by the ping that they've been hit by a ping. So it's like walking into a room and going, 'Hello.' And then somebody way off to the side goes, 'Hello.' And you're like, all right, they're over there. But that's the whole idea with this: there's this broad-phase ping, then you have passive radar. As you get closer, you resolve to a contact, then you scan to get the info. That is the loop.

That pretty much goes back to what the designers want to set up different scanners and radars to be. I have a feeling that when you first get the system up and running, you want to expose everything, and then you want to decrease it down and make different variants to indicate different upgrade paths. So that's kind of what we're doing for the ships right now. So all the ships are going to have basically similar radar and scanning, and then different ones will get exposed and broken out to be stronger and more flexible in what they can do, because now the system allows it. So I imagine the same thing's going to happen with FPS. Now, FPS doesn't have as many variations as ships. There's dozens of ships, and they each have different roles and goals. So they're going to have a lot more complex items that determine how you scan and radar, whereas for FPS we might have a few dozen, and then over time more of them come out. So the initial ones will probably allow you to do the same gameplay loop as now, where you can scan mineable rocks and you could ping them out and find them. And then I'm sure there will be upgrade paths that the mining team or even the FPS team will decide to branch out, or restrict other ones to focus more on a goal. You can make a scanner or radar more focused on bounty hunting versus mining. Having one to do both is more of a gateway to make the branching paths work.

Yeah. And to expand a tiny bit on the harvestables, the mineables: the whole intention with this system, and a big part of the changes and why it took as long as it did, was it needed to be designer-friendly enough that it was an arbitrary component that we can add to any entity. So if we want to just make a box have a crazy EM, IR, dB, whatever, just set it on the entity. It's all very straightforward as far as the designers go. So we could just add these components on these arbitrary ones, and it's all up to us what that signature is and how strong that is and what entities get them. So it's nice because, again, for Squadron and things like this, mission components or mission entities can have these. You can add them to pretty much anything.

To go on more with what Sean was describing: in the past, we had that XenoThreat event, we had a little bit of radar scanning. It was mostly trying to hook it up to an existing system that didn't quite support it. And the designers got really far. But the new system will be a lot more flexible. So if we were to go down that path again, they could relay more information and unlock the mission better based on what information you get and how quickly you get it, based on your radar or your scanner that you have. So designers now have a lot more open-endedness in what information they want to give to players. And especially once we have more branching paths, that determines what information you get. So it's cool, because if you have a medical scanner, maybe if you scan this thing for a mission, you're going to uncover a different path than if someone has a bounty hunter scanner. Now, these aren't real scanners right now, but the idea of what design can do with them for their missions is exciting.

Yes and no. So we've gone through different ideas of what it means to be skill-based. And there's some ideas to get it there. But what we wanted to focus on is, again, getting it working where everyone knows how it works. And once we get to that level, then we can maybe add extra things that make a skillful player unlock information better. I don't know what that means yet, because it's still ongoing discussions of what and how we can make it more skill-based. But one of the things that we're bringing in to bring that gameplay into there is scanning is now tied to the signatures and the detection of an object. So if you have a ship far away that's on the edge of your radar and you scan it, you may not get all the information about that object unless you get closer, just because of the emissions that it's making, and it's off at the edge where you can't quite see it really well. So you could see Sean's ship, but maybe you can't see his contents, and you have to sneak up on him so your signatures aren't too far out, so you could scan him to see if he has anything better. So there is a bit of emergent gameplay that comes out of there. But the whole process itself being skill-based is still ongoing, on what that means and how we could deliver it to a player. And again, we're focusing on getting the basic system there, and we'll modify it as we go. A lot of it, too, is we'll watch what players do and maybe add different things for different skill sets.

Yeah, I think there's still a couple layers in there; there's a bunch of player agency now. And whether or not you want to call that skill really depends situationally what it is. But they can focus scan on it. They'll know what the interference is according to the signal of the scan target. So again, if you've got a lot of interference, you're going to want to focus more. And that's, again, a little bit of a skill. You've got to know to do that. And if you don't know to do that, you're going to take that much longer to scan. So that's just speaking of the scanning independently, but with the whole electronic warfare suite, there's plenty of skill involved. And a lot of it has to do with situational awareness and knowing yourself. Checking the ambient levels. Am I stealth? Am I not stealth? Has somebody pinged me? Have I pinged somebody else? Do they know where I am? All those layers of it are the little cat-and-mouse kind of gameplay that I think we want out of this.

And the skill out of that, too, is if you design your ship to be less emission-based and you're aware of how far those emissions can go, that determines how well you could sneak up on someone and scan them to relay that information back, or just go all hands on board and try to take over that ship. But if you have a ship like a Hammerhead that's emitting something crazy, you're not going to be able to sneak up on someone, because you're just loud.

But it's what Chris likes about all of this. It's all about preparedness to go to the thing that you're going to go to and then adapting in the situation. But it is the forward thinking, and a bit the agency that you have to make those decisions on the way in.

Hopefully soon(TM). Ambience has a direct impact. Well, there's two different types of ambience. So there's ambience that a bigger ship interferes onto a smaller ship, or bigger emissions interfere onto smaller emissions. And that will never 100% bleed out the emissions. It's more of a modifier, so that even if you're really up close to it, you'll eventually see it. And then there's more of an environment ambient, where you have to be above it in order to see the object. So in order to know what those values that we need are, we need to have reasonable signature generation across the board. And the first pass of that is going to be working with VET on what emissions we should be seeing, so that we could get reasonable ranges for ping, for regular passive radar, and also for scanning. But once we're there, then we could take those values and plug them into the environment so that you could have stealthier areas, like an asteroid field could completely hide CS and you're completely allowed with EM and IR. We have to be careful what those values are, because we want them at a range that makes it harder to see and not completely blind players. So we will have some areas that emit ambient, because we're going to toy with values to get it there. And once we have a baseline of how we want this stuff to be, we're just going to keep pushing more and more until eventually more systems have it, and then ambience everywhere.

But 3.14-wise, we will have an ambient level within the PU. So that is not way far away. That has to come with this, because otherwise the whole ambient signature side of it is kind of moot. So there will be an ambient level, plus coming from the ships.

Yes, of course. I wish. So one of the big fundamental things that we've done in our tech for the scanning is trying to think of how we could get anything scannable and how we could unlock that information. So we built out a system to allow us to create ways of getting information, either through async calls or through immediate data. Like cargo takes a while to get. So when you're scanning it, you may not get it right away, because we have to go send it to a server, which sends it to another server that eventually comes back to you. So having a planet be scannable to tell you that information is achievable, because we have that whole system there and we could put it in to unlock that information and send it to the player. Now, whether or not we're going to add that is a good question. That's where Vehicle Tech Team builds out the technology to allow other teams to use those foundations to add that information. So while it's possible, I can't say yes, that's something that's going to go there. Behind the scenes, the planet works, and the resources that are there are something we could obtain. So maybe in the future, that is something we could expose to the players: hey, maybe there's a severe weather storm here, or there's cargo, or there's a bunch of gold on this planet somewhere, go find it. And you could ping out; that actually would be kind of cool emergent gameplay. So the system is flexible. We just have to start adding it in based on what other content teams and feature teams would like it to do. So we should totally tell the mining team, hey, there's this cool idea.

It's going to be a question for the PvP bounty guys, I guess. I would assume so, because with bounty, part of the gameplay is finding them. So it's not super fun if you have this infinitely long, always-on-screen 'go here'. That's pretty straightforward. And I'm sure they're going to have a bunch of layers. If it's a certain bounty level, maybe it starts getting that bad. Like a GTA five-star kind of thing: okay, everybody in the server, this guy, he's right here. Let's avoid him. But I don't want to answer on their behalf.

How close you are to the comm relays and the security stations, whether that information is getting relayed or whatnot.

But again, if you know you have a bounty on you, you're going to change to the stealth gameplay stuff. You're not going to be loud. You're not going to be going into systems pinging and all that kind of stuff. So I would expect as much. But yeah, we have to see as the FPS stuff comes on.

Well, I guess that bounty thing is kind of going with how other things go. You expose a system with 100%, here's everything. And then you start bringing back stuff with different upgrade paths and bring it into other systems. So at the time that was made, radar and scanning couldn't give them that information, or any way of uncovering stuff or going to find where that bounty is. So it's now available. So maybe that is something that could get exposed, so that you ping out and maybe you go, okay, he's over here. But again, that's going to be more the feature team working on that, and how they want to use radar and scanning to do that sort of information.

So radar is based 100% on the signatures and the ambient. And I was saying we have environmental ambience and the nearby ambience of another object emitting. But there's also a third one. And this is when chaff is emitted, it actually generates a volume of ambience so you can't see in between it, in it, or out of it. So if someone makes a big enough ambient field, that's how chaff blocks out a missile lock, or how you're actually able to see that object. So bringing that emergent gameplay of how we can make maybe those little bits of ambient fields around is something that actually was talked about. There was a concept of a radar jammer, which literally, if you activate it, just spits out a bunch of ambient fields around you. We did something similar with the interdiction, where you jam and it blocks things from quantum traveling. We could literally do the same thing with radar, where you blind stuff around it. It's things that are feasible, but it's, again, one of those things: is it something that a ship does? Is it something that a player brings on foot? Tech-wise, we're there. We will bring it. Design-wise, a ship just needs to say this is its purpose, and then we'll start utilizing it. And then the other thing is interference with scanning. So we do have stuff in our design doc that we're going to bring forth through the next patches as interfering with scanning. Because if you're scanning something and your ship has precious cargo or even stolen stuff, we want you to be able to block that, so that there's counter-interference, so that if security scans you, they're not going to see the bad goods. But if he has a strong enough radar, he's going to be able to find it. So for detection from radar and ping, there's a possibility of a jammer, or the system has a way of doing it; we just have to incorporate that on the feature teams or on ships. And ways of interfering with scan is stuff we're going to be introducing through different patches.

Yeah, so Mark pretty much touched on all the active ECM stuff that we have, which is chaff, which works like an ECM thing, electronic countermeasure, right now. It just happens to have the exact same signature that we want to mask. And that's why, again, you've got IR missiles, you've got EM missiles. This is the whole reason for those. And the same thing will work with radar. But then there's some of the passive stuff, again, like the whole player agency and being able to set yourself up on the ship side. Mark talked about the interference: the stronger your signal is, the less that interference is going to affect you. So basically, if you can remove stuff from your ship or turn off things within the ship that are louder, that is effectively a passive countermeasure; you're countering whoever else's scanner as best as you can right now. But the ECM is going to come from chaff. And then further to that, I would hope that from an operator scan position, we can do more. But in the meantime, it's all ambient interference and current signature levels, and the active one is chaff. For example, for the tank, I want smoke. Then that should obviously just cull out the CS. Why would you have a cross-section? You can't see the tank. So it's things like that.

Yeah, and it doesn't make you immune to the scan. All it does is it really increases the amount of interference. So it's going to take forever for the guy to actually scan you the whole way.

So it's either going to take you longer, or, for the different levels of scanners, it might protect you from the first three levels of scan. But if somebody upgrades to scanner five...

And that's a good note, actually. It was part of the feature set and part of the criteria that we set up the feature on: partial scans give you partial info, and depending on the interference there, you're only going to get a certain level of information off the ship. So for example, if there's a ton of interference, you're going to get the fact that it's a ship, maybe the name of the ship, maybe even the pilot, but you're not going to get anything else. You have no idea about the weapons. You have no idea about anything. You're either going to have to get closer, focus your scan, do a whole bunch of stuff to make that happen. And just feeding back to the player, that's what's really important to us: that people learn and play with the system because they've got feedback and they know what's happening. And this is the big thing that's changed from the old scanning. We used to have MFDs with little IR and EM graphs, but they were just flat numbers. There was no relative anything. So you knew it went up, but you don't know how much it really went up, or why that matters. So there was no way to learn what the scanning was doing. So now it's a little more clear and immediately fed back to the player.

Sure. One of the biggest things that we've taken the liberty of doing is trying to get rid of the restriction of distance. So before, the radar would have a flat distance of how far it would see things, and that's it. And your passive radar, basically your regular radar, is only going to show you the things that are technically streamed in on your machine, because those are the things that are active: you could target that, you could shoot it, you could interact with it. Ping is mostly supposed to be the thing that says, hey, there's stuff out here that's maybe further out than your worldview. That could be, in our immediate near release, a few dozen kilometers away, to where we want to go once we get server meshing in, where they're a few hundred thousand kilometers away. And what we're doing with the technology is, when you ping out, we've changed the whole system to do an async query, so that once we have the API for server meshing ready, we could query the backend to find things that are of interest to the radar that you have, and then report it to you as a blob or even as a potential contact, depending on how far you are. And since we know what that information was, because it was all information that was just stored off in a databank, we could uncover it and store some stuff in the blob, so that when you ping out and you see a blob far, far away, you could scan it and go, there's something in here that's of interest to me. I could go fly in that direction and then proceed with more of the gameplay of pinging, and then eventually it comes onto your contacts and you can see it. That's where we're heading. So the immediate step is replacing our existing systems and removing restrictions so that you can see things that are streamed in. And then once we have the server meshing technology there, we'll hook up those hooks so that we could uncover the information that's been streamed out, and even across different servers, because it's in the local system. And then relay that to you as either a point that's saying there's an active contact here, or a blob. And then you could scan it to uncover whatever information is relevant to your scanner or the objects that are there. So that's where we're heading, and that's what the backend system for radar and scanning is utilizing to move towards giving players the ability to find things further out.