I'm looking for ways a player can modify his or her ship in a meaningful way. Currently, I'm interested in the radar system.

Is it possible to change the size of the radar box in the interface/sidebar, simulating radar systems with different max ranges, by giving a player different outfits? Can an outfit change the sidebar, or is that something that can only be done by giving the player a new ship with a different gov't and interface? Is there a way to change radar box size in the interface depending on the allied ships in the system, simulating real aviation scenarios?

Also, are there any other qualitative features related to the radar system of a ship that can be changed other than interference, IFF, and size/density? Is cloak-detection something that could be implemented by just having a "better radar"-type outfit? Is it possible to have a radar that is so cheap/ineffective that it wouldn't give a red-alert klaxon when hostiles were in the system?

Werhner,
a noted rocket scientist

I don't think anything you want is possible (at least directly, clever people would devise a way to make the outfit swap your ship for an identical version, but with a different inherent government that would cause the sidebar to change and thus increase the space of the radar, but that's about it), except for detecting cloaked ships: the Cloak Scanner ModType allows to reveal cloaked ships on the radar and/or on screen and/or target them.

Besides, the klaxon-on-hostile is so mainstream, it has been a feature of all ships ever since Maelstrom, that I don't see anyone making a ship without such an essential item.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 14 June 2006 - 04:20 PM

Actually, it is possible to change the radar size. look at the intf resource.

Zacha nailed it.

...in other news, for a while I was playing around with the idea of having a duplicate of every ship in the game, the only difference being the "target" graphics. They would be "type a" and "type b" and would have mutually exclusive AppearOn bits. What toggles between them is a "radar" outfit. An outfit that does nothing except change how ships look in the sidebar. Cooler pictures, and some relevant information on fighting them. Never did anything with it though...