the idea of sensor ghosts is fascinating to me. it reminds me of a bit in my favorite book blindsight, where the earth gets surveyed by alien probes that leave no trace except for a data stream tightbeamed at an asteroid in the outer belts. they send a group of probes to burn nonstop out past the asteroid to take snapshots of it as they pass by (which gave me one of my favorite quotes of all time, "Once or twice we are even asked if some judicious use of thrust and gravity might allow us to linger a bit longer, but deceleration is for pansies; we're headed for the stars. Bye Earth. Bye Mission Control. Bye Sol. See you at heat death."), and then a second group of probes to burn towards halfway & away the second half so that they actually come to a stop at the asteroid, and when they try to use 3 probes to triangulate a high resolution deep scan of the asteroid's internal composition, it vanishes instantly. because the asteroid was a super-positioned quantum particle; real enough for something to bounce a signal off of towards the real destination, but if you attempted to inspect it to garner any insight as to what put it there the waveform is collapsed & it snaps out of existence, revealing the true location of the data's destination -- but, even though the trick was identified by drones shot ahead of the human-laden space ship, by the time they find out it is, thanks to the fun of space travel & newton's third law, it's already too late to turn back. they're locked in to their heading & have been since leaving earth and all they can do is flick cards at a wall until they complete their trip out and then their trip back before rerouting to the new destination. whoever it was that laid the trick successfully managed to buy themselves a bunch of time, to prepare for/to do
something, and the only thing humanity learned about them in the process is that they are either hostile or scared, of
something.
a signal relay station,
made out of a sensor ghostalso, the idea of a type of sensor ghost that functions literally exactly like an AI fleet until it gets revealed & vanishes is really cool to me. you're out in the blackness of dead space doing dead space things, and then a huge sensor signal shows up, something so big it can only be a hostile warfleet, and it's bearing down on you with murderous intent, and then just as it reaches you it fades into nothing -- a mote of dust that caught your ship's sensors in exactly the wrong way. or, you spot a small signal in an asteroid belt you're searching and it slips away from you as you approach it and begins fleeing, dodging you when you try to catch it until you e-burn an intercept course & it's revealed that it was a mote, a stray streak of exotic energy acting as if negatively magnetized away from your fleet, for no discernible reason. creepy stuff lays down this road.
edit: oh yeah & I just remember i wrote a big post spitballing ideas for sensor ghosts in call of duty's minimap that would allow for cod to give a permanent sorta-uav to both teams to discourage camping -- mostly just for me to document the thoughts somewhere I'd be able to find them later if needed. i would copy/paste some of the more applicable ideas but im tired so i'll just
hyperlink it & hope nobody actually reads any of it. 1 juicy thought real quick before i actually log off though; a [redacted] station/site in a system defended extremely heavily by a massive number of patrolling fleets, most of which are sensor ghosts. an abandoned station that is revealed to be a sensor ghost & teleports to a new location when you reach it, once or twice. a type of star (or terrain. magnetic field?) that generates sensor ghosts. an abandoned station that is revealed to be a sensor ghost & teleports to a new location every time you reach it unless/until you use a neutrino detector to work out its real location & its not revealed until after you park at 0 speed within combat initiation range. a station that does the same but isn't abandoned/undefended & attacks as soon as you reveal it. a hullmod that generates sensor ghosts for enemy fleets with a lower ECM rating, and reduces sensor ghosts generated by an enemy fleet with this hullmod & a higher ECM rating. a campaign ability that creates a ghost signal of your fleet that emergency or sustained burns away from nearby hostiles but is only usable while going dark is active and in slow mode
okay a few ideas. i have a problem
On the comments of larger maps, as much as I'm wishy-washy on having them being larger (and the slipstream feature sure as hell justifies that), I guess I 'get' keeping the current size from both a design and SWE standpoint. It's probably complex enough as is to plan out much less consider randomized elements. But hey, mods find a way...
Yeah, I'm not sure increasing the Sector size just for the sake of "more" would be a good idea. I could see doing it if, say, it really needed more room to fit something specific in, though...
my last campaign i did that to my game to increase the difficulty by making the distance between things in hyperspace unreasonable