Could also work to make a decoy. Have a drone or something that's only a projector and the stuff to make it move and function and make it project a different ship, or you could make it look like it has an absurd amount of firepower so the enemy runs off. Hell, you could even use it to make your ship look BIGGER.
I had an idea somewhat like this, though not to be used as an actual cloaking device. What I thought would be cool is to have really large ships to be produced by the projector and used as decoys, same with small ships. Have a large ship that could deploy 'fighters' as a scare tactic against the enemy by using projectors, sort of the like the hologram armor ability from the halo games. Of course it wouldn't be effective for long but once you see several ships pop in out of no where you might crap your pants a little!
like a hologram sorta thing where you project a large amount of fighters that are heavily armed and scare your enemy into surrendering? cause if so i had the same idea
Yeah basically, lord. I haven't had enough time in survival to toy with the idea but once I figure out the problems I'll try and test its effectiveness in pvp. Hmmm, maybe even just use a deployable one as a scapegoat so you could escape from a fire fight.
You can actualy place a decoy on the hologramed fighter (which will only be one truster, one giro, one generator, and one projector), so if the enemy ship have turrets, the decoy not only will distract the turrets, it will make it more confusing for the playing who uses the ship. This can be a great tactic if you want to do a kamikaza bombing. You will need two players for this, one will distract with the worthless hologramed fighter, so the turrets will aim at him. And from the other side, make a rocked that is manualy directed by a camera. This way you can hit his weapons or his reactor bay and shut him down, bring the main ship to give the finishing blow.
To increase effectiveness, make the non-decoy fighters also have projector shells. Then your quarry can't tell the difference, and is forced to target all of them once they see the real ones take something down.
Even if it can't hide large ships completely, you could make a special blueprint to cover turrets or thrusters and project fake ones, if the blueprint has some sort of "dazzle" camouflage (look on wikipedia), that might also help. This concept is interesting because even if it fails, it only costs a projector block.
Seems like the best usage of the cloak would be in asteroid fields for pirate raids. Just get several fighters to hide in crevices and cloak. When a ship they want to raid comes by, they activate their engines and pummel it before it knows what happened.
The yellow ship worked okay, too. Im its own way. Looked like gold ore from a distance. And even up close it was not too bad. The only problem, i see, with this is the banding effect the projector has. But as you pointed out, shadow hides it well enough. What we do need, is stealth thrusters, of some kind.
I like the idea. Just beware of auto turrets. No cloak will hide you from the laser of death lol. I've used the projectors before in a battle. As a decoy target. Effective in large ship fights. To be noted: the server I play on has the 25cm HE cannon direct fire cannon that has a 25k effective range. (Though most my fight take place from 2-5k ambush them less then 800m Auto turret trade off). Love the channel. Keep up the good work
Now that's awesome. Although you're not completely invisible, you blend in with the background much better, especially on asteroids. That's great for multiplayer, since there're people that don't like you
Just some ideas here for future updates: What if you could change the opacity of the projector? You could use this more effectively to create camouflage or even fake ships. What if you could use your projector to project the ship you are currently in so you could see damaged parts or somebody attaching to your ship? For that, you would probably need to be able to adjust the size and be able to spin it around. What if you could project other things like asteroids or certain hallways of a ship? What if you could project people too, to make fake people as a distraction? The possibilities are endless with this, and I hope they can pull it off.
Damn, this is cool. I had another camouflage idea a while back that you might enjoy testing; Design a ship to look like its already been destroyed and that its floating debris. someone comes up to investigate, decides to come salvage it, boom. Turn the thrusters on and blow them away.
If you're in shadow, the projector makes a very effective cloaking device. Awesome find aaron. I think it'd be great for asteroid field ambushes but. not quite practical in deep space.
omg lol that is such a good idea and it works so muck! When i saw that it was there at the end i went back to when you glimpsed at the asteroid a couple times i couldn't even see it.
I doubt it would work, think about it. It might cloak your ship but the projection moves and movement is incredibly visible i can spot tiny pixels moving from miles away in games like Dayz and stuff like that so it would probably backfire. Anybody agree/disagree?
Zigary The dovahkiin But that would be cheaty. The real challenge is to use vanilla objects to create things like conveyer belts and cloaking devices. Not just find a mod on steam.
TheOriginalBoybarian DB has a creative view on creative ideas. It's not creative if you just mod it. It's only creative if you solve the problem yourself. That's engineering. That's why they call it "Space Engineers".
A really good way you could make these more effective is by having little extra bits poke out of the frame designed to cover the ship, if you make it less form fitting and have very jagged edges it'll be a lot more effective.
I think having a slight camouflage pattern (blacks, browns, greys) on the projection shell would be better to break the outline of the ship better than just a purely black shell if you're hiding ontop of asteroids.
I didn't see the ship cloaked near the yellow henry until you mentioned it. I think something to remember when looking at cloaking ships is that a cloak isn't going to do all the work for you (Certainly not a cloak of this design) so positioning is also important. For example that ship was in a crater in the asteroid so would be difficult to tell apart from the asteroid anyway unless you were inspecting up close, in the same way that an aircraft with standard camouflage markings flying low to the ground is hard to distinguish from the ground, add to this the fact that the ship was hidden in the shadows of the asteroid, which seemed to lessen the effect of the projector's flickering and hence make the ship even harder to spot, also at a quick glance you can see that there is no ore in that crater, so unless you've been sent to search for a ship in the area your gaze isn't going to linger for long on that crater.
Oh well, I saw the yellow ship well and let my eyes circle around the asteroid aswell but I couldn't find the projected ship without you telling, WOW! :D
I don't think you need to hide it from me when I am not wearing my glasses. "Wait that was a ship?" "Yes sir" "I thought it was a freaking pack of chewing gum..." "but sir, the ship is larger than our own and it is colored in bright rainbow colors, surely your eyesight is not that bad?" "GAH you scared me! I didn't see you standing there!" "Sir I am 3 feet away from you." "I need my glasses..." -Recording #13 from the audio sensors in the captains hull.
You can actually beat the thruster issue very easily simply using newtonian mechanics. The stealth function obviously isn't meant to be a full combat cloak, simply a stealth function to disguise approach. All you need do is: find your enemy target, activate the cloak, turn off inertial dampers, and accelerate at them. Now you turn off thrusters and coast until you've come into combat range with the complete element of surprise.
As I watched this video a thought came to mind, if you add wielders at key location this projector block can make a metal shell around the ship as an emergency shield or project the same ship and make it slightly self repairing .
I think I remember Sage saying, when trying this concept in multiplayer (maybe the phaser battle), that the projections are only visible on his client side only. Have the devs changed it? The only reason I say this is that Arron seems to be in single player, and thus the cloaking device would not be seen by anyone else and it still could be client side only making it kinda useless, especially when turrets will still see you.
This is reminding me of the Somebody Else's Problem field from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You have no idea the ship is there until you actually start looking for it. Now I'm just waiting for someone to set up a script or mod to make this a much more active camouflage, maybe imitating colors on the other side of the ship? That would probably never happen, but food for thought!
(Message for LSG) I've noticed in Minecraft that, when you layer different colored glass over each other in a striped pattern, it gets harder and harder to see through them. So I was thinking, if you had multiple projectors overlapping, (one in front of the other) maybe it'll hide the craft completely.
One thing that could be done with the projectors is using them as decoys in a way. You could have a handful of small ships, but using projectors they would appear to be GIANT ships plastered with turrets. Im sure you can see how that would stop a little fighter from attacking your defenseless mining ship in a multiplayer survival.
Hey, could you maybe use projectors as distraction/attackers? At Example: You have suicidedrones on your large ship, when you launch them, you activate the projektor, so they seem like a normal small ship from distance. (maybe 2 to 3 times as big as the drone.). When people shoot at it, they would know that there is a projector used. Now, at first you can use these drones as distraction, but also you can use them to attack the enym ship. Most likely people would stop shooting at the projection, but inside you still have the drone with warheads, only waiting to fly at the enemy ship and explode.
I'd like to actually see something like that implemented in the game. Some sort of invisibility device that makes your ship totally invisible, with the downside that it cannot be used while the ship is moving, and a cloaking device which, on the otherhand, does not make you 100% invisible but lets you move freely.
I recently revisted this theory, and. I think I made it work. It follows the "if you want hide a fire hydrant, paint it red" principle. TL;DR of the concept is, I have two projectors on my large grid fighter. That project two copies of the same destroyer that the fighter is hiding within. Both the destroyers, and the fighter. Have a "tiger striped" red, grey, black, and white camouflage pattern (Large grid fighters are OP) Make a specialized hollowed out, hull of a larger ship. You want the space the fighter is going to occupy to either not touch the blocks of the other grid, or to touch them in a way where they can't be welded or else it will make them brighter then the rest of the projection. Whatever camera you're going to use to aim, you want it to have a projected armor block, encompassing it. Pointing straight forward to the end of the projection. This will let you see through the cloak and still aim with your camera. You want to use a "dazzle" style of camouflage. The actual camouflaged skins don't work that well, so use something like battered armor skin or no skin. Paint the entire hull light or dark grey. Then fly around it and stripe it. Leave the guns on it. The thrusters on it. Anything that isn't a subgrid or hidden inside the hull. Get a good broken up pattern of colors, paint the fighter the same colors in the same striped pattern. And, i had 3 of my room mates try to find the ship through the camera of another one @1000m and none of them could see it. Forgot to add, you need two projections, keep them in line width wize, but alternate them a few blocks up or down, and forward and backwards. It makes glitch effects across the entire projection making it difficult to see what's inside
the game makes the environment as simply as it can so when you are far from asteroid's or planet's ground it disappears making even deep underground bases completely visible
If you used the sky box that has more intense shadows it would work like a dream. It works really well if you were going for a more realistic space. At the moment the default skybox is very bright.
You should use the cloak to disguise objects like turrets on your ship. By using it this way people won’t see details such as like turrets or the bridge, engines if you have them on.
I'm thinking you could use this concept to jury-rig a jammer or stealth ship. You could use pistons or rotor on a projector to make crazy shapes around your ship or move the .projection right into an enemy's line of sight, preventing them from getting a good shot on your or your friends.
A large ship might not benefit much from this, but by the time you get close enough to the small, blacked-out Henry or similar-sized ship to make out what it is you're already close enough to see the projector hologram. I should try this out on the Shadow Lynx. On another note, you could potentially use this to disguise a fighter as a transport shuttle or other seemingly harmless ship.
to improve the cloaking "power", it might be good to colour the cloaking shell in lighter and darker shades, and use one for every astroid or environnement
I have a great idea using the projector the darkened armor and 2 mods first one the no armor corners and the second one armor thrusters since the armors outlining also gives it away
I use the simply stars skybox and pitch black paint to stealth my ship, its called silent night, its not much to look at, but you won't be looking at it because its impossible to see
You should try using multiple hologram blocks in unison even for the small ships. Maybe the pulsing of the hologram will be broken up by several holograms.
Nathan C. Hello, fellow person named Nathan! That's my name too! Anyway, I think that if you have more than one of the same blueprint, overlapping, it gets less transparent, so you could do that too.
Holy crap i didnt see the one in the crater till the end of the video, i was even thinking that it would be an ideal place for the cloak to work earlier in the video.
Just got this game, because of your vids. I have to say, it a lot more of an undertaking than your vids give credit. Perhaps you could post a vid of the creation process of one of these projects? Just so folks get an understanding of the hours your put into all of this..
Welcome to Space Engineers :3 it is certainly a difficult game to get the hang of, even the movement is disorienting at first, but once you get past the first hurdles it is a great game with tons of depth.
Zach Bananasaur it's not about depth, it is about time. If you have never played similar games then these videos make these projects look like a half hour commitment rather than the 8+ hours that get spent to build the ships and contraptions.
I agree! It does give you the feeling of "oh, this game looks easy you can make cool stuff really fast" but no. Space engineerings is a pretty hard game to get started with and before you get to build such cool stuff like his projects (before what his projects are concerned with start concerning you) it takes time and dedication!
Zach Bananasaur I'll never get past my first hurdle, the movement was no problames, just the designs. I just can't build a good large ship. I have made awesome fighters, but my big ships just look horrible.
Have you considered making a sort of drone trap, where drones would launch and attach onto a ship. They would then use their thrusters to stop the ship or slow it down. ( cant remember if u did this yet)
thank you for highlighting this subject. i dont think im the 1st to use the projector in this fashion. but i have bin dong some testing off and on since it came out. in-e one can look up "CGS noneuno" on steam workshop, art, and pictures for more ideas for free. thank you for your time.
First time watching this video I missed the ship, but I caught it the second time, at a quick glance it could actually work; For the large ships try putting patches of the shell as different shades
Hmm, now I'm wondering if it would be possible to create a Holographic fleet. Basically a central command ship with projected images of itself all around. It wouldn't work for close up attacks but it could provide enough of a distraction to make an attacker hesitate.
I like the fact that it's not perfect, this for example adds a good advantage but still forces you to think about it, it would be boring if there was just some standard cloaking that you could turn on to make you invisible/disguised without thinking outside the box a bit, like force fields, its good that people have made those gravity shields cuz they only deflect rocks+objects, not bullets or missiles, kinda beneficial but with imperfections, if you want some over the top crazy star trek things then a modded version will be fuckin sick, but not standard :)
I think you could improve this by making your bubble more irregular and splashing some light patches on it here and there - this theory is two-fold: first, the eye is drawn to bright color and might miss the larger outline if distracted by the smaller section; second, the bright specks against black background maybe confused for stars at medium distance. What I wonder about is if you could create a slightly larger dummy of your ship, then use multiple projectors with offsets to confuse onlookers about your real shape and position.
for the bigger ships have you tried making the surface rough (try to go bumpy maybe even pointy) and asymmetric shaping for the holo object? (the idea behind this is to just break up natural/artificial lines as much as possible).. also would using heavy armor blocks (or any other blocks that use the camo scheme) for the hologram help break up the countours any or would the transparency cancel that out?
If you are not paying attention, or if there is another ship that draws your attention, like the striking yellow vessel, I think this cloaking tactic does work alright. However, the better option would probably be to physically color the ship to match an asteroid and use camouflage instead of this attempt at 'cloaking' - simply because it has a vibrant phase-movement effect that is hard to not notice at times for some people. However, If you don't have the time or the desire to go over your ship with a fine-tooth-comb and make it look suitably randomized and colored carefully enough to functionally work as camouflage - this particular technique at least fills in for a 'low time cost' stealth method. -_I'll Be Watching._
Hmm, what if you would use mor than one projektor? The projections would lay over another, so it would be harder too see trugh, even if the projection gets darker on some spots
Just wondering, why not have a mod for the projector to be able to copy a chunk of rock from an asteroid and get rid of that pulse effect? then you would technically become invisible when on an asteroid or have a pitch black output for the projector to conceal you in dx11. Just a thought.
More of camouflage than a proper cloak, works like camo netting or a ghillie suit to break up the outline of your ship , still i have applied it to my stealth ship(which has the cloaking mod also) so to make more of a secondary camo feature to it, or to make the ship look like a completely different object to try and confuse an opponent. As for Henry being a stealth ship he is just a poor shape for it he is to bulky. A very thin and a sleek ship is a must for stealth and can make a huge difference with deeply inset thrusters or modded thrusters that do not give off light
Avoid making the cloak a bubble. Try making it jagged to "sew" it into the environment. While projector cloaks may not be a perfect solution, it can help a lot. One could even design a cloaking ship to bore into an asteroid until it's flush, then use the projector to cover the hole. It would provide a smaller visible area, making it even harder to spot, and if the projection were made to be larger than the hole, then the projection would clip through the asteroid, literally blending into the asteroid's surface.
Hey mate they Cloak doesnt just have to be to "hide" the ship. In a battle it helps alot because your foe finds it much harder to target critical systems and stuff.
I've been thinking since you posted this... What happens if you layer multiple fields over each other? Does that increase the effectiveness? Too much power consumption?
Sage used a projector on one of his ships and found out in one of your battles that it only works client side. unless this is changed it means only you would see the cloak making it pretty useless.
Idk if it works or not but I use projectors to project an identical ship next to me when I'm dog fighting against another craft, it's like a decoy thing
i dont know if this would work or not ive not played with the projectors that much, but as well as cloak/camo, could they be used as like a masking system, to make small less armed ships look bigger and more armed than they are. maybe the ability to look like an enemy ship while passing through there teritory...
"Oh yeah! There's a yellow one... wait a second..." That's a really effective cloak, dude. I'm impressed
Happy birthday my dude - you are 9 years older than when you made this comment. Just thought I'll mention it.. no reason... :P
Could also work to make a decoy.
Have a drone or something that's only a projector and the stuff to make it move and function and make it project a different ship, or you could make it look like it has an absurd amount of firepower so the enemy runs off. Hell, you could even use it to make your ship look BIGGER.
"No ship that small has a cloaking device!"
+Anakin Skyobiliviator Maybe he could just float away with the rest of the garbage.
+Anakin Skyobiliviator Lord Vader demands an update on the pursuit.
I want that Henry, not excuses.
+Brainbodger you can't handle Henry he's a tough little ship
He may not look like much, but he's got it where it counts, kid. This is the ship that made the Kessler run in twelve parsecs.
I had an idea somewhat like this, though not to be used as an actual cloaking device. What I thought would be cool is to have really large ships to be produced by the projector and used as decoys, same with small ships. Have a large ship that could deploy 'fighters' as a scare tactic against the enemy by using projectors, sort of the like the hologram armor ability from the halo games. Of course it wouldn't be effective for long but once you see several ships pop in out of no where you might crap your pants a little!
i had that idea too... but the problem would be power those projectors
like a hologram sorta thing where you project a large amount of fighters that are heavily armed and scare your enemy into surrendering? cause if so i had the same idea
Yeah basically, lord. I haven't had enough time in survival to toy with the idea but once I figure out the problems I'll try and test its effectiveness in pvp. Hmmm, maybe even just use a deployable one as a scapegoat so you could escape from a fire fight.
You can actualy place a decoy on the hologramed fighter (which will only be one truster, one giro, one generator, and one projector), so if the enemy ship have turrets, the decoy not only will distract the turrets, it will make it more confusing for the playing who uses the ship.
This can be a great tactic if you want to do a kamikaza bombing. You will need two players for this, one will distract with the worthless hologramed fighter, so the turrets will aim at him. And from the other side, make a rocked that is manualy directed by a camera. This way you can hit his weapons or his reactor bay and shut him down, bring the main ship to give the finishing blow.
To increase effectiveness, make the non-decoy fighters also have projector shells. Then your quarry can't tell the difference, and is forced to target all of them once they see the real ones take something down.
Even if it can't hide large ships completely, you could make a special blueprint to cover turrets or thrusters and project fake ones, if the blueprint has some sort of "dazzle" camouflage (look on wikipedia), that might also help. This concept is interesting because even if it fails, it only costs a projector block.
You make playing Space Engineers look SO easy.
Seems like the best usage of the cloak would be in asteroid fields for pirate raids.
Just get several fighters to hide in crevices and cloak. When a ship they want to raid comes by, they activate their engines and pummel it before it knows what happened.
Have you tried using a second projector to get a more cloaked effect?
I think that may make the fuzzy lines running through it become larger and more visible.
Dragon's breath I can see where that would be a problem... :(
I did. It looked almost no different unfortunately. That was with layering and projecting on the same spot.
Oh, that sucks. DexteroExplosion
What if the hologram was of glass/windows?
The yellow ship worked okay, too. Im its own way. Looked like gold ore from a distance. And even up close it was not too bad. The only problem, i see, with this is the banding effect the projector has. But as you pointed out, shadow hides it well enough.
What we do need, is stealth thrusters, of some kind.
I like the idea. Just beware of auto turrets. No cloak will hide you from the laser of death lol. I've used the projectors before in a battle. As a decoy target. Effective in large ship fights. To be noted: the server I play on has the 25cm HE cannon direct fire cannon that has a 25k effective range. (Though most my fight take place from 2-5k ambush them less then 800m Auto turret trade off). Love the channel. Keep up the good work
Now that's awesome. Although you're not completely invisible, you blend in with the background much better, especially on asteroids. That's great for multiplayer, since there're people that don't like you
Just some ideas here for future updates:
What if you could change the opacity of the projector? You could use this more effectively to create camouflage or even fake ships.
What if you could use your projector to project the ship you are currently in so you could see damaged parts or somebody attaching to your ship? For that, you would probably need to be able to adjust the size and be able to spin it around.
What if you could project other things like asteroids or certain hallways of a ship? What if you could project people too, to make fake people as a distraction?
The possibilities are endless with this, and I hope they can pull it off.
Damn, this is cool. I had another camouflage idea a while back that you might enjoy testing; Design a ship to look like its already been destroyed and that its floating debris. someone comes up to investigate, decides to come salvage it, boom. Turn the thrusters on and blow them away.
If you're in shadow, the projector makes a very effective cloaking device. Awesome find aaron. I think it'd be great for asteroid field ambushes but. not quite practical in deep space.
That final cloaking was amazing, the use of a shadow has awesome
omg lol that is such a good idea and it works so muck! When i saw that it was there at the end i went back to when you glimpsed at the asteroid a couple times i couldn't even see it.
You're my favourite Space Engineers creator! Thanks for making all of these videos. You've got a very creative way of playing this game :D
I doubt it would work, think about it. It might cloak your ship but the projection moves and movement is incredibly visible i can spot tiny pixels moving from miles away in games like Dayz and stuff like that so it would probably backfire. Anybody agree/disagree?
It's better than nothing, it may save you and your ship one day!
You could use the cloaking device mod.
Zigary The dovahkiin But that would be cheaty. The real challenge is to use vanilla objects to create things like conveyer belts and cloaking devices. Not just find a mod on steam.
wow... you have a very pessimistic view on creative ideas
TheOriginalBoybarian DB has a creative view on creative ideas. It's not creative if you just mod it. It's only creative if you solve the problem yourself. That's engineering. That's why they call it "Space Engineers".
A really good way you could make these more effective is by having little extra bits poke out of the frame designed to cover the ship, if you make it less form fitting and have very jagged edges it'll be a lot more effective.
I think having a slight camouflage pattern (blacks, browns, greys) on the projection shell would be better to break the outline of the ship better than just a purely black shell if you're hiding ontop of asteroids.
I didn't see the ship cloaked near the yellow henry until you mentioned it. I think something to remember when looking at cloaking ships is that a cloak isn't going to do all the work for you (Certainly not a cloak of this design) so positioning is also important. For example that ship was in a crater in the asteroid so would be difficult to tell apart from the asteroid anyway unless you were inspecting up close, in the same way that an aircraft with standard camouflage markings flying low to the ground is hard to distinguish from the ground, add to this the fact that the ship was hidden in the shadows of the asteroid, which seemed to lessen the effect of the projector's flickering and hence make the ship even harder to spot, also at a quick glance you can see that there is no ore in that crater, so unless you've been sent to search for a ship in the area your gaze isn't going to linger for long on that crater.
The yellow one actually looked like a gold deposit, so you could make different colors to blend in with the different ores on asteroids
Oh well, I saw the yellow ship well and let my eyes circle around the asteroid aswell but I couldn't find the projected ship without you telling, WOW! :D
My ship is very small and this technique could work very well on it. Awesome idea. Thanks alot, and a happy new year everybody!
the projecters are clientside
The movement that the projector generates gives it all away.
You should review the “Death Star [Working/Vanilla] Final Version” by 505 Legion! I think it’s really cool!
I thought the yellow ship was a gold vein xD
Me too! XD
I noticed the cloaked ship before the yellow ship xD
I don't think you need to hide it from me when I am not wearing my glasses.
"Wait that was a ship?" "Yes sir" "I thought it was a freaking pack of chewing gum..." "but sir, the ship is larger than our own and it is colored in bright rainbow colors, surely your eyesight is not that bad?" "GAH you scared me! I didn't see you standing there!" "Sir I am 3 feet away from you." "I need my glasses..." -Recording #13 from the audio sensors in the captains hull.
same
Right there with you two XD
You can actually beat the thruster issue very easily simply using newtonian mechanics. The stealth function obviously isn't meant to be a full combat cloak, simply a stealth function to disguise approach. All you need do is: find your enemy target, activate the cloak, turn off inertial dampers, and accelerate at them. Now you turn off thrusters and coast until you've come into combat range with the complete element of surprise.
As I watched this video a thought came to mind, if you add wielders at key location this projector block can make a metal shell around the ship as an emergency shield or project the same ship and make it slightly self repairing .
I think I remember Sage saying, when trying this concept in multiplayer (maybe the phaser battle), that the projections are only visible on his client side only. Have the devs changed it? The only reason I say this is that Arron seems to be in single player, and thus the cloaking device would not be seen by anyone else and it still could be client side only making it kinda useless, especially when turrets will still see you.
Projections are visible to other players on servers.
Oh ok, just wasn't sure. Thanks.
Other people should be able to see it as well, because it was made so you and your friends will be able to build together from the same "blueprint".
This is reminding me of the Somebody Else's Problem field from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You have no idea the ship is there until you actually start looking for it.
Now I'm just waiting for someone to set up a script or mod to make this a much more active camouflage, maybe imitating colors on the other side of the ship? That would probably never happen, but food for thought!
(Message for LSG) I've noticed in Minecraft that, when you layer different colored glass over each other in a striped pattern, it gets harder and harder to see through them. So I was thinking, if you had multiple projectors overlapping, (one in front of the other) maybe it'll hide the craft completely.
+ninjamonkey2251 I was thinking kind of the same thing only you'd be using a chunk of rock for that projector with that pulse effect gone
This is a great idea, I'm going to have to remember this when doing further builds.
Changing the texture overlay of the projector to the same texture as the skybox would be a cool experiment.
One thing that could be done with the projectors is using them as decoys in a way. You could have a handful of small ships, but using projectors they would appear to be GIANT ships plastered with turrets. Im sure you can see how that would stop a little fighter from attacking your defenseless mining ship in a multiplayer survival.
Hey, could you maybe use projectors as distraction/attackers? At Example: You have suicidedrones on your large ship, when you launch them, you activate the projektor, so they seem like a normal small ship from distance. (maybe 2 to 3 times as big as the drone.). When people shoot at it, they would know that there is a projector used. Now, at first you can use these drones as distraction, but also you can use them to attack the enym ship. Most likely people would stop shooting at the projection, but inside you still have the drone with warheads, only waiting to fly at the enemy ship and explode.
I'd like to actually see something like that implemented in the game. Some sort of invisibility device that makes your ship totally invisible, with the downside that it cannot be used while the ship is moving, and a cloaking device which, on the otherhand, does not make you 100% invisible but lets you move freely.
Hello there and as usual I'm Aaron from Last Stand Gamers and welcome...
I just love it. ^__^
You could stack many holograms to make the "cloaking field" thicker. You could even hide a whole station if you simulate the stars on the hologram.
I recently revisted this theory, and. I think I made it work.
It follows the "if you want hide a fire hydrant, paint it red" principle.
TL;DR of the concept is, I have two projectors on my large grid fighter. That project two copies of the same destroyer that the fighter is hiding within. Both the destroyers, and the fighter. Have a "tiger striped" red, grey, black, and white camouflage pattern (Large grid fighters are OP)
Make a specialized hollowed out, hull of a larger ship. You want the space the fighter is going to occupy to either not touch the blocks of the other grid, or to touch them in a way where they can't be welded or else it will make them brighter then the rest of the projection. Whatever camera you're going to use to aim, you want it to have a projected armor block, encompassing it. Pointing straight forward to the end of the projection. This will let you see through the cloak and still aim with your camera. You want to use a "dazzle" style of camouflage. The actual camouflaged skins don't work that well, so use something like battered armor skin or no skin. Paint the entire hull light or dark grey. Then fly around it and stripe it. Leave the guns on it. The thrusters on it. Anything that isn't a subgrid or hidden inside the hull. Get a good broken up pattern of colors, paint the fighter the same colors in the same striped pattern. And, i had 3 of my room mates try to find the ship through the camera of another one @1000m and none of them could see it.
Forgot to add, you need two projections, keep them in line width wize, but alternate them a few blocks up or down, and forward and backwards. It makes glitch effects across the entire projection making it difficult to see what's inside
good idea for that is to have a base built into the asteroid and cloak the entrance
the game makes the environment as simply as it can so when you are far from asteroid's or planet's ground it disappears making even deep underground bases completely visible
If you used the sky box that has more intense shadows it would work like a dream. It works really well if you were going for a more realistic space. At the moment the default skybox is very bright.
Fantastic. Well done. Everytime I watch your channel I find the most interesting things.
I did something like this with the projector, except i used glass with the dark side facing outwards. It worked decently but yours works alot better!
It's just like nature! One second you think it's a safe spot to sit, the next you see a spider tucked away.
It could be use to cloak an entrance or a hangar if you build a base inside of an asteroid since it blend pretty well with it
You should use the cloak to disguise objects like turrets on your ship. By using it this way people won’t see details such as like turrets or the bridge, engines if you have them on.
I'm thinking you could use this concept to jury-rig a jammer or stealth ship. You could use pistons or rotor on a projector to make crazy shapes around your ship or move the .projection right into an enemy's line of sight, preventing them from getting a good shot on your or your friends.
Is it possible to actually mobilize a meteor? Like, strap enough engines onto it so that you can drive it through space?
Probably
No, its a static grid.
That would be the best stealth ship
Planetary Assault via big fucking rock full of guns
A large ship might not benefit much from this, but by the time you get close enough to the small, blacked-out Henry or similar-sized ship to make out what it is you're already close enough to see the projector hologram.
I should try this out on the Shadow Lynx.
On another note, you could potentially use this to disguise a fighter as a transport shuttle or other seemingly harmless ship.
I discovered this game few days ago and its great! your channel too!
Happy New Years Arron! Cheers friend, from Boston, Massachusetts!
It's been wicked great year!
to improve the cloaking "power", it might be good to colour the cloaking shell in lighter and darker shades, and use one for every astroid or environnement
If you layered the holos on top of each other, it'll make a gradient that hides the ship even better
This mixed with the tunnel worm model might make for a really good ambush ship...
nah, I feel that the shield makes it stand out more =P
I have a great idea using the projector the darkened armor and 2 mods first one the no armor corners and the second one armor thrusters since the armors outlining also gives it away
Have you thought about using projectors to make decoy ships? to draw fire from the main target.
I use the simply stars skybox and pitch black paint to stealth my ship, its called silent night, its not much to look at, but you won't be looking at it because its impossible to see
The projector block can also be use to complete an idea rejected earlier... regenerating armor.
You should try using multiple hologram blocks in unison even for the small ships. Maybe the pulsing of the hologram will be broken up by several holograms.
How about the blueprint is some kind of huge, cool, dangerous ship and is used to scare away opponents instead of becoming invisible?
because it wouldn't fool anyone
Nathan C. Well, its just an idea.
Nathan C. Hello, fellow person named Nathan! That's my name too! Anyway, I think that if you have more than one of the same blueprint, overlapping, it gets less transparent, so you could do that too.
Starkiller10569 I'd still render in differently, just saying.
Nathan C. Well, I posted that when I was really tired so it's probably not a good idea. I'm still gonna try it, just to see what it'd look like.
I wonder if this would work for hiding the entrance to a base that's in an asteroid or even an exterior landing pad? Time to go experiment.
Thats actually a pretty awesome idea.
You should try making a kind of self reloading gun that uses welders to assemble a shell, pistons to load it, and maybe gravity generators to fire it.
Glad to see you covered this.
A gatling turret won't detect that at first glance at all. Another useful invention.
Wont it? then it cool you could use it on missiles(even the slow one) which used to get destroyed by the turets in his previous vids
You can also make a decoy flying next to you distract fire
Holy crap i didnt see the one in the crater till the end of the video, i was even thinking that it would be an ideal place for the cloak to work earlier in the video.
Just got this game, because of your vids. I have to say, it a lot more of an undertaking than your vids give credit. Perhaps you could post a vid of the creation process of one of these projects? Just so folks get an understanding of the hours your put into all of this..
Welcome to Space Engineers :3 it is certainly a difficult game to get the hang of, even the movement is disorienting at first, but once you get past the first hurdles it is a great game with tons of depth.
Zach Bananasaur zach you missed the point entirely
Zach Bananasaur it's not about depth, it is about time. If you have never played similar games then these videos make these projects look like a half hour commitment rather than the 8+ hours that get spent to build the ships and contraptions.
I agree! It does give you the feeling of "oh, this game looks easy you can make cool stuff really fast" but no. Space engineerings is a pretty hard game to get started with and before you get to build such cool stuff like his projects (before what his projects are concerned with start concerning you) it takes time and dedication!
Zach Bananasaur I'll never get past my first hurdle, the movement was no problames, just the designs. I just can't build a good large ship. I have made awesome fighters, but my big ships just look horrible.
Have you considered making a sort of drone trap, where drones would launch and attach onto a ship. They would then use their thrusters to stop the ship or slow it down. ( cant remember if u did this yet)
thank you for highlighting this subject. i dont think im the 1st to use the projector in this fashion. but i have bin dong some testing off and on since it came out. in-e one can look up "CGS noneuno" on steam workshop, art, and pictures for more ideas for free.
thank you for your time.
waiting for some action with cloaked designs :D
I couldn't see that ship in the asteroid at all until you pointed out where it was
First time watching this video I missed the ship, but I caught it the second time, at a quick glance it could actually work; For the large
ships try putting patches of the shell as different shades
Hmm, now I'm wondering if it would be possible to create a Holographic fleet. Basically a central command ship with projected images of itself all around. It wouldn't work for close up attacks but it could provide enough of a distraction to make an attacker hesitate.
I like the fact that it's not perfect, this for example adds a good advantage but still forces you to think about it, it would be boring if there was just some standard cloaking that you could turn on to make you invisible/disguised without thinking outside the box a bit, like force fields, its good that people have made those gravity shields cuz they only deflect rocks+objects, not bullets or missiles, kinda beneficial but with imperfections, if you want some over the top crazy star trek things then a modded version will be fuckin sick, but not standard :)
What about a series of projectors, each creating a larger bubble around a vessel?
I think you could improve this by making your bubble more irregular and splashing some light patches on it here and there - this theory is two-fold: first, the eye is drawn to bright color and might miss the larger outline if distracted by the smaller section; second, the bright specks against black background maybe confused for stars at medium distance. What I wonder about is if you could create a slightly larger dummy of your ship, then use multiple projectors with offsets to confuse onlookers about your real shape and position.
for the bigger ships have you tried making the surface rough (try to go bumpy maybe even pointy) and asymmetric shaping for the holo object? (the idea behind this is to just break up natural/artificial lines as much as possible).. also would using heavy armor blocks (or any other blocks that use the camo scheme) for the hologram help break up the countours any or would the transparency cancel that out?
have you thougt about a bubble of stones being held by sperical gravity generators? would be a good cloak for asteroids if the shield isnt moving.
If you are not paying attention, or if there is another ship that draws your attention, like the striking yellow vessel, I think this cloaking tactic does work alright. However, the better option would probably be to physically color the ship to match an asteroid and use camouflage instead of this attempt at 'cloaking' - simply because it has a vibrant phase-movement effect that is hard to not notice at times for some people.
However, If you don't have the time or the desire to go over your ship with a fine-tooth-comb and make it look suitably randomized and colored carefully enough to functionally work as camouflage - this particular technique at least fills in for a 'low time cost' stealth method.
-_I'll Be Watching._
Would it be effective to use a holographic decoy? Like putting a few images of your fighter around the real one to distract enemies and attract fire?
Might work in stations and bases for cloaking weapons and defenses or doors.
Hmm, what if you would use mor than one projektor? The projections would lay over another, so it would be harder too see trugh, even if the projection gets darker on some spots
I have an idea! You should use this in conjunction with the ghillie suit system to create a super-stealthy attack ship.
LastStandGamers Have you thought of using this technology to disguise the entrance of an astroid secret base?
Just wondering, why not have a mod for the projector to be able to copy a chunk of rock from an asteroid and get rid of that pulse effect? then you would technically become invisible when on an asteroid or have a pitch black output for the projector to conceal you in dx11. Just a thought.
How about using the projector to create a hidden door for bases inside asteroids?
More of camouflage than a proper cloak, works like camo netting or a ghillie suit to break up the outline of your ship , still i have applied it to my stealth ship(which has the cloaking mod also) so to make more of a secondary camo feature to it, or to make the ship look like a completely different object to try and confuse an opponent. As for Henry being a stealth ship he is just a poor shape for it he is to bulky. A very thin and a sleek ship is a must for stealth and can make a huge difference with deeply inset thrusters or modded thrusters that do not give off light
Avoid making the cloak a bubble. Try making it jagged to "sew" it into the environment.
While projector cloaks may not be a perfect solution, it can help a lot.
One could even design a cloaking ship to bore into an asteroid until it's flush, then use the projector to cover the hole. It would provide a smaller visible area, making it even harder to spot, and if the projection were made to be larger than the hole, then the projection would clip through the asteroid, literally blending into the asteroid's surface.
Hey mate they Cloak doesnt just have to be to "hide" the ship. In a battle it helps alot because your foe finds it much harder to target critical systems and stuff.
I've been thinking since you posted this... What happens if you layer multiple fields over each other? Does that increase the effectiveness? Too much power consumption?
Happy New Year LastStandGamers i love see you play Space Engineers greeting your best subscribing jonas you are so cool: D
Sage used a projector on one of his ships and found out in one of your battles that it only works client side. unless this is changed it means only you would see the cloak making it pretty useless.
So you could somewhat cloak kinda automated missiles? I wonder if that would work or not?
Idk if it works or not but I use projectors to project an identical ship next to me when I'm dog fighting against another craft, it's like a decoy thing
i dont know if this would work or not ive not played with the projectors that much, but as well as cloak/camo, could they be used as like a masking system, to make small less armed ships look bigger and more armed than they are. maybe the ability to look like an enemy ship while passing through there teritory...
distraction idea!! project your ship somewhere else!
what about making the feild much bigger? so there is more in between teh shell and the lights and other contours of teh ship