Silent Running Mode, Stealth, and Cloaking Device

[alexanderson1993]

Previous bridge simulators I've worked on have had three forms of making a ship invisible:

• Silent Running Mode: A Reactor setting that dramatically reduces the Reactor output, decreasing the ship's signature on sensors.
• Stealth Field: An active system which masks and monitors other ship systems to determine what is causing the biggest impact to the ship's sensor signature.
• Cloaking Device: An active system which hides the ship outright.

Thorium Nova should be able to support all three modes with the right configuration. All of it is based on adding up the signature of each ship system.

Signature is now a damage property of ship systems - see https://thoriumsim.com/blog/fixin-to-fix. As systems get damaged or are repaired, there is a chance that the visible signature of the system increases. Whether a ship is seen on sensors is based on all of the signatures being added together.

Sensors will be configured with a signature threshold where ships will begin appearing on sensors, though transparent and difficult to spot, and perhaps yet another value for when ships are fully visible. Sensors can be upgraded to improve these thresholds to see hidden ships better. So a ship with a signature value of 2.5 can be seen on sensors with a threshold of 2.

Ship systems are configured with a minimum and maximum signature value. They will also be configured with a "spike" value and duration, which is what the signature goes to when the system is used. For example, torpedo launchers will have a very high "spike" value that will last for a few seconds after a torpedo is launched, while thrusters might have a lower "spike" value that they jump to as they are being used. Systems that are always running, like Reactors, will multiply their power generation percent by the spike value and add it to the inherent signature value of the system.

Natural Stealth: Ship equipped with systems that have low signature values and low spike values don't need any extra systems to be stealthy, they just don't show up on sensors most of the time.

Silent Running Mode: All systems have zero signature (though maybe still spike values), except for reactors which have a high signature. Silent Running Mode happens when power is removed from systems sufficient for the reactors to power down so they don't put off as much of a signature.

Stealth Field & Cloaking Device: These active systems will be configured with a negative signature value. When they are turned on, they decrease the ship's overall signature by that amount. As usual, how much signature is removed is based on how much power is applied to the Stealth/Cloak system, and less power will be applied if the system is damaged and has low efficiency. If systems are producing more signature than the Stealth/Cloak removes, the ship will become visible again.

Again, all of this will be configurable.