[StargateSpankyHam]

I'm implementing ECM in my mod, and I was wondering...how do I make the fuzzy red blip effect? I can make a SEXP that determines if the player is jammed (based on distance to an ewar ship), and I think I can make non-jamming enemies not show up on the radar with the stealth SEXP, but I am having trouble making the jammer ship show up as a fuzzy red blip. The theory being, if you are shining huge amounts of electromagnetic energy out of a ship, your enemy is at least going to have a great guess as to where you are.

[Goober5000]

The hidden-from-sensors flag (or ship-invisible sexp) does this.  (It also prevents the ship from being targeted.)

[Arpit]

I'm implementing ECM in my mod, and I was wondering...how do I make the fuzzy red blip effect? I can make a SEXP that determines if the player is jammed (based on distance to an ewar ship), and I think I can make non-jamming enemies not show up on the radar with the stealth SEXP, but I am having trouble making the jammer ship show up as a fuzzy red blip. The theory being, if you are shining huge amounts of electromagnetic energy out of a ship, your enemy is at least going to have a great guess as to where you are.

This idea was exactly implemented in Last Hurrah in Silent Threat:Reborn.

[Goober5000]

Well, not precisely.  ST:R's mission used time, rather than distance, to control the ECM.  Distance would be trickier, although the actual sensor sexps would be the same.

[0rph3u5]

Food for thought:
Since I loath the "hidden from sensors"-approach as it makes fighting flagged ships a pain beyond compare, another way to represent ECM would be not to obscure a target but to overload the radar and targeting with false signals; this would give the player the ability to target ships that are visible because they are right in middle of the screen (and so get the benefit of missile lock or targeting assistance) but would also force the player to to rely of manually picking targets ... this would also represent other targeting systems like image pattern reckognition off a real-time visual feed such as a gun camera compensating when the primary targeting systems is not functioning

Given the advances in the engine, I've come to understand, it is quite possible to do just that with some effort (create ships via ship-create in large enough distance to the player with the characteristics of present ships by the same method that is used by in-mission jumps) --- there would of course have to be a failsafe in place that the "false singal" ships don't interfere with the mission but that could be another simple set of events to do that...

ps. don't mind me; just passing through

[StargateSpankyHam]

While wandering through the pile of SEXP's, I found 'is-facing'. It has an optional setting for a minimum distance. Set the view cone to 180 degrees, and it works surprisingly well at doing stuff based on ship distance!

In regards to mission design and invisible ships - yes, it is indeed a pain in the butt, but in the context of the mission, not an insurmountable one. There are eight GTVA fighters, and three Shivan interceptors (including the ewar interceptor). The mission revolves around the player destroying the ewar interceptor. Once it goes down, conventional dogfighting is again possible. Given the new Shivan weapons in my mod (especially the dogfighting beam cannons the Shivans show up with), it is fully intended to be a SHTF scenario.

If the Shivans do slice and dice all the player's wingmen during that time, the player can call for reinforcements after the ewar ship is down.

Also, if the player brings an Aurora, then they get some very useful AWACS support and ECCM.