Ideas
General ideas for Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance mechanics. Not necessarily good ideas!
Definitions
- ISTAR stands for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance
- Kill Chain is the phases of an attack:
- Identify a target
- Dispatch forces to the target
- Attack the target
- Destroy the target
- (Assess damage)
Intelligence
- SIGINT
- Detect enemy transmissions (COMINT)
- Signals from ships to drones/missiles/other ships
- RADAR emissions (ELINT)
- EMCOM mode for ships
- Cannot command missiles or drones
- Cannot send datalink to other ships
- Detect enemy transmissions (COMINT)
- Spoofing
- Emit false signals to mislead enemy SIGINT
- Decoy drone with a ship power radar signature
- Flares (possibly delayed action)
- Jamming
- RADAR jamming
- Somewhat directional. Narrower direction means longer range.
- Optical jamming (lasers)
- Completely directional, you need a perfect lock
- RADAR jamming
- Emit false signals to mislead enemy SIGINT
- Track identification
- Tracks may initially be unidentified, with a list of possible identities that's narrowed down over time
- Track confidence score
- Confidence score goes down over time while not directly observed. Down very fast if it is occluded.
- AI behaviour profiles
- Mission briefing gives hints on enemy tactics. e.g. "this captain likes to do retrograde intercepts with guns"
- Pre-battle prep
- Before the battle starts, players can pick intel. e.g. from a set of 10 "cards", pick 3 intel revelations. Representing intelligence gathering efforts happening in the time leading up to the battle
- Instead of picking, it could be a randomised part of the mission briefing, giving slightly different versions of the same mission each time you play it
Surveillance
- Ground stations
- Very powerful ground based radar, essentially omniscient within their LOS but cannot see over (or near) the horizon
- IRST (Infra Red Search & Track)
- Detect heat signatures, this gives direction but not range. Tracking position over time starts to give range estimate
- Optical tracking
- Direct detection
- Occultation, requires searching an area of sky for a while
- Surveillance zones
- Like occultation, define a specific area (direct from ship/volume of space) to search
- Choose between refresh rate and size - wider field is surveyed slower
- Like occultation, define a specific area (direct from ship/volume of space) to search
- Low observability
- Low thrust burns (e.g. cold gas) are harder for IRST to detect and track
Reconnaissace
- Single use surveillance drones
- Send it on a flyby to detect enemies out of LOS
- Narrow high intensity RADAR
- Like surveillance zones - pick a specific direction to illuminate with high intensity RADAR
- Constellation of microsats with passive sensors
- Limited lifetime, short range, but wide field if deployed properly by the player
- Large recon satellites
- Probably deployed before the game starts, vulnerable to being shot down
- Spectrograph
- Long range spectrographic analysis of enemies to assess battle damage
- Deniable operations
- "Neutral" unarmed ships with passive sensors, or deploying observation satellites.
- Must stay within orbital lanes expected of neutral shipping
- Probably a war crime