Help with building a stealth ship.

[minerunknown]

I would like to build a ship that is highly undetectable by the detection systems and causes the guns to miss frequently when shot at. Any suggestions on how to do this without sacrificing almost all useability?

[An Ning]

Small size.
Build mostly of wood or alloy.
Use wireless snoopers.
Use passive sonar.
Use torpedoes and missiles.


...unfortunately all this is negated by the fact that all ships are detectable to active sonar... which is what torpedoes use.

You might have greater "stealth" success with an airship, provided you have a very cool engine and a small profile.. however.... visual detection is a thing... and balloons are large... so you will be getting shot at with Adv and CRAM guns

[FourGreenFields]

Agreeing with An Ning here.
Currently, this is the closest I got:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=793820008
It still gets detected by visual sensors, and missiles and especially torpedos are likely to home in on it.
However, when employed in groups (and possibly mixed with a version that uses two long-range missiles instead of its 4 torps), it's capable of fighting DWG early on (at highest design difficulty and growth, but without damage multipliers), and probably OW during bad weather. Possibly also usefull to help bigger designs, which attract missiles and torps.

Stealthy stuff about it:

• No active sensors, relies on IR, passive radar, and a reflection sensor
  
• Alloy hull, lowers itself into the water when moving, causing very low radar signature, and lowish visual signature.
  
• Low(-ish?) IR signature. Not the bottleneck when it comes to stealth anyway.
  Also periodically fires a single flare to distract IR-seeking missiles.
  
• Fights at the maximum range one can set with naval cards. Would probably work better with Lua making it fight at even longer range (may require redesign of its torps)

My experience with stealthy designs is that they need to be so small that they can only be special purpose.
It might be worth it to design one torpedo boat, one missile-boat, one anti-torpedo-boat (dropping decoys, and possibly fireing torpedo-seekers), and one anti-missile-boat (decoys and missile seekers), and only use groups with at least one or two of each.

Even then, you'd have trouble with lasers (and good luck fitting a proper smoke system in there). On top of that, you'd probably need to increase the combat range somehow, and would be entirely screwed if a hostile is faster than your ships.


Or you could use submarines. Much harder to detect with cameras, water helps with lasers, and you could drop the anti-missile design (would still need an anti-torp-submarine obviously, and a missile-submarine). Will suffer in shallow water though, and feels a little cheaty as at least OW and DWG have little to no anti-submarine capabilites.

[minerunknown]

Thanks for all the suggestions and comments, and yeah I think ill just design a bunch of special purpose boats, or maybe attempt to make a sub.

[colonelmustardgas3]

Light Alloy is the best material for stealth craft, as it gives low radar return. Passive sonar and radar, retroreflection cameras, and wireless Snoopers, are good for tracking with low detection against you.

If you want to go way off the deep end, try using as few wireless transmitters as possible, as these are detectable by Snoopers. On smaller stealth craft, I have a single AI string, such that there are no wireless connections on the craft.

[Berserk Knight]

Wireless transmitters don't matter. Only the intravehicle(which should be "inter"vehicle since it transmits between vehicles) transmitter.

[colonelmustardgas3]

Originally posted by Berserk Knight:

Wireless transmitters don't matter. Only the intravehicle(which should be "inter"vehicle since it transmits between vehicles) transmitter.

The Wireless Snoopers says it detects "vehicles with wireless transmitters and receivers". I assume thateans both intravehicle and the wireless. I don't know though

[rditto48801]

Wireless Snooper, IR Camera, Passive Radar/Sonar, Retroreflective.
Alloy all the way, at least 'outside'.

I also include at least a single radar buoy and sonar buoy, with an ACB set to activate them if any enemy is detected (enemy range > 0m). That way I get 'active' detection going if a battle occurs, while still keeping the vehicle with just passive sensors of its own, and to also hopefully decoy radar missiles and torpedoes. Similar ACBs are setup to deploy (some) flare launchers, so those annoying stealthy IR Seeker/APN bombs don't sneak by and wreck stuff when the AMS fails to do anything.


If you have concerns over a hot engine exhaust from a fuel engine, there is one trick I use to cut down on exhaust heat that seems to work for me.

At the exhaust exit point, I place a 6 way exhaust, and 1m section facing outward on the other 5 points, or if it's in a tight spot, a single strait pointing strait out, and 4 corner sections also 'pointing' in the same direction.
This means there are 5 exit points of equal distance from that 6 way, so the exhaust gets 'split up', along with the heat. So you have many 'warm' spots, instead of one 'hot' spot. At the very least, flares will have an easier time distracting IR Seeker missiles, and using the 4 corners pipes, a partial enclosure of alloy to help cut down its radar signature from the 'sides' of the exhaust setup.
With one large engine I made, I actually split up the exhaust into 6 seperate pipe sections (1 per 4 cylinders), each with the 5 point exhaust setup. That's 30 exhaust exit points for what is basically a 24 cylinder engine setup. Even when the engine is running full out, I don't recall the exhaust temp getting much over 90c.(it quickly shoots toward 200c with a single pipe exit point per 4 cylinders)

[Obscure]

Boats have trouble with stealth as they can be detected by both radar and sonar. Airships and planes are atleast immune to sonar. Subs immune to visual, radar and infrared.

Submarines are only detectable to sonar and wireless snoopers. A sub with a hardwired AI control would only be detectable with sonar. The sonar profile can be reduced with smoothed lines and also with a smaller build. But still you would have ships with a prow detection range of 700m or so. So you would have to have a lengthy engagement range.

[Deleted Profile]

A note on torpedos: if you build a ship that has very little surface area in contact with the water you can mostly avoid them.

[An Ning]

Originally posted by Y.:

A note on torpedos: if you build a ship that has very little surface area in contact with the water you can mostly avoid them.

unless they have 3HE warheads and a proximity fuse set to 2m...

[Berserk Knight]

Originally posted by colonelmustardgas3:

Originally posted by Berserk Knight:

Wireless transmitters don't matter. Only the intravehicle(which should be "inter"vehicle since it transmits between vehicles) transmitter.

The Wireless Snoopers says it detects "vehicles with wireless transmitters and receivers". I assume thateans both intravehicle and the wireless. I don't know though

I stand corrected. For some reason, I was remembering that wrong. :P


Subs are the only way to do stealth in any plausible manner, since everything above water is rather easily detected by visual cameras except at night and during storms.
Retroflection works through all three (night, storm, water) so subs can exploit that to kill above water targets that use visual cameras.

IR is capable of detecting everything, including underwater targets as long as the camera itself is above water and the target isn't deep enough in water to mask the heat signature.
On that note, heat signature from engine exhaust is directional. For subs, put exhaust pipes on the bottom so the topside signature (that can be detected by above water IR) is unaffected.
I can personally testify to killing a fully submerged SS Black Current with only IR cameras as my detectors due to it having a rather large heat signature from all the shields (plus the engines to run it).

Radar and Sonar use the same mechanics. It's really one or the other, and with all the other detections in mind, being underwater and detectable to sonar (and partially to IR) would be a lot better than being above water and detectable to radar, visual and IR.

Be sure to use smoke even if you're going full submarine, because if the enemy happens to have a laser rangefinder (which works on everything except smoke) and gets lucky enough to get a lock with it via sonar or IR then you're screwed.


Unless the enemy is using Lua and effectively cheating with guidance, torpedoes will be using torpedo sonars, and they can be detected using passive sonar (instead of munition warners) and shot down if needed.

[KyMurk]

I have put together a stealth aircraft for what it's worth. You can check it out here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3166965188

It does not have any armor, only rubber blocks to cover sight to the internals and highly detectable blocks from axial orthographic perspectives.
Struts are invisible to all detectors, so those are used to give pitch controllers additional distance from the center of mass, and by extension, greater leverage.

[minerunknown]

Originally posted by KyMurk:

It's been 7 years.
Very cool design though.

[Raj]

The necro of a lifetime holy

[KyMurk]

Originally posted by minerunknown:

It's been 7 years.
Very cool design though.

Thanks I spent a long time on it- that said, it's already been updated too. I realized it was kind of mediocre against high speed jet aircraft ~double the material cost. It should at least maybe stand barely a chance against them now.

It's definitely just a cheap vehicle that relies *heavily* on the naval force and energy supply of allies.