Todd Papy · Star Citizen Live Game Director

The plan is, yes, that you can. We can't do it right now. So basically what we're doing is currently the vehicle tech team is working on kind of a rebalance of basically EM and IR and also the addition of ambient signatures. So when that comes online, which I think is soon, then we will go through and basically rebalance the EM and IR signatures across the ships, but then we'll also implement it into stations and gas clouds and the sun and planets, so on and so forth. So then the system will actually work properly and depending on where you're at in the gas cloud, either you will be shielded by just being naturally there based off of the background of the gas cloud, or you will have to go run low emissions or stealth in order to be hidden.

Richard Tyrer · Core Gameplay Director

And to just touch on that, because that's something that's been under my purview, we're also going to be working on adding cross-section as a signature. So on the ships, it will be EM, IR, and CS. So the cross-section essentially is kind of like your visual representation of a signature. So when you're inside a gas cloud, that gas cloud will obscure some of your visuals. We actually got it working already in terms of we generate this almost like a physics proxy around the ship and it does take into account the orientation of the ship. So if you're looking at it nose on, it's got a sleeker profile than if you're looking at it from a broadside. So when you're thinking about partial obscurity or hiding behind an asteroid or anything like that, it will lower your cross-section signature. And from a point of view of EM and IR, currently in the game right now, EM and IR is kind of like a binary decision. So it's like if the ambient value of that signature is higher than your signature, you're basically hidden. And that's not necessarily what we want it to be. So what we want it to be is that these things are a bit more nuanced so that if you have a high ambient signature, such as in a gas cloud, it dampens the signature which you are emitting. And what that means is that you're never just permanently stealthed. There's always an opportunity like, oh, you're trying to reduce the signatures. And in the new HUD, which we're also implementing, we'll be showing your signature emissions on you. And that will be both on FPS and on the ship side of things. So you'll be able to tweak different systems to basically lower your emissions. And you'll see those emissions be affected in real time when you go into something like a gas cloud, so you'll see them be dampened. And this gives us really awesome capabilities for, let's say your org has got a giant fleet and you have a large capital class ship, you can have smaller fighter class ships within the shadow of the larger capital ship, which then gives us this really cool gameplay where, if you're a pirate and you're like, is that one object? And you're going over there and all of a sudden that one dot on your radar turns into lots of other dots. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, maybe I've pulled the gun too early. So yeah, there's lots coming on radar and scanning. And I know I say that a lot, there's lots coming, but that stuff's actually working right now. I've seen it working, so it will be coming in future updates.