I’m working on a indie video game that’s set on a large ship and I’m looking to have it be a very hidden and elusive boat. (Speaking vaguely to avoid spoilers)
Where could it possibly be sailing through to avoid detection? Like no radars, land signals, etc…
There are slight sci fi elements that could explain it avoiding detection but want to make the location as believable as possible.
I’m not very familiar with oceans and the technology behind detecting vessels. Would love to be pointed in the right direction if anyone is knowledgeable.
Edit: Oh damn, this got a much bigger response than I expected. Thanks so much for all the awesome suggestions!
Edit2: Wow you guys have fantastic ideas! Just to clarify this is a real game project and not a joke or a cover for gold smugglers 😂
I am leaving hits and teases in my replies. Partially to have fun and build the world a little but also maybe get a bit of a community game going with a bread trail to follow. 😉🤫
The Pacific Ocean is massive and if a ship turns off its transponder it is invisible unless you have satellites in your game. Ships can easily disappear in the Pacific even with modern search and rescues when people really really want to find a ship[ in trouble, they sometimes can’t. I have a friend that sails those waters and there are endless small islands, often uninhabited where he stays in small bays and inlets.
Does he have any stories of weird/strange things he saw/heard on those small uninhabited islans?
Nothing strange about the islands apart from him raving about the stunning beaches, waterfalls, and colorful wildlife. He once found a bale of weed, he kept it and never returned to that particular
island. The strange stories he has all occurred out on the ocean. Swimming in bioluminescent water.
A massive shape nearly 100m long surfaced his bow in the middle of the night and paced him
for hours. It turned out to be a sub.
He has many stories about the ocean, he is convinced he saw UFOs, not necessarily aliens but definitely
unidentified and very unusual crafts and he saw them go into the water.
I believe him, he is not the type to be into conspiracies or make things up. He embellishes his stories a little but
that is just him being a good storyteller. He was in the military and navy for 40 years so he knows the ocean well.
The Pacific Ocean is an enormous space, there are military outposts but due to its size, they are few and far between.
The Arctic is much much more surveilled due to all the big countries wanting a piece of it and with climate change
opening the Bering Strait, this becomes very valuable.
Good luck with your game, may it fare well and be profitable to you.
Damn! Those are some amazing stories. Thanks for sharing.
There will likely be fancy sci-fi technology that would explain why the satellites can’t find the ship. Maybe a light reflecting cloak but I want to make it grounded whenever possible.
You’re given me a lot to think about.
The Pacific Ocean is massive and if a ship turns off its transponder it is invisible unless you have satellites in your game.
So it seems like the key will be some combination of deactivating the transponder, getting away from other ships, being low profile in various EM wavelengths (difficult if it’s also large), traveling with a significant cloud cover (hurricane?), escaping detection by military submarines and other sonar sources, and ending up in a place and condition where they’re sheltered from all of the above. This seems very nearly impossible if everyone is already hunting for our intrepid vessel, but if there’s some reason for people not to be looking right away, I can imagine plausible scenarios where the data takes long enough to come together for the necessary storytelling beats to play out.
Literally anywhere outside the shipping lanes in the Pacific would do it. Even with satellite coverage, a large ship is still a tiny dot.
Anywhere on this map that isn’t full of boats. South Indian Ocean woukd be my guess:
Oh wow! Didn’t know that existed. Thanks for sharing.
South Indian Ocean has been mentioned a few times now. 🤔
Might also want to prioritize areas of low military significance - even if there are no commercial ships, you don’t want areas where spy satellites are likely to be looking around for unknown vessels
Nice try, Mr. Bezos
It depends what you are hiding from. If you want to avoid notice from random encounters, you would want to head out to sea. So long as you’re over the horizon from any shipping lanes, you’re as close to invisible as you can get.
If your goal is to evade an active military search, you want clutter, and a lot of it. Military radar can sweep vast areas quickly. Satellites can spot ships at sea, so long as the sky is clear enough. Islands and coastline can mess with these however. Get into an out of the way bay, and throw up camo netting, and your ship is now just another bit of rock to the satellites, and it’s part of the noise to radar. The cost of this cover is that it is also attractive to random tourist boats, or fishing boats.
These are some very good questions!
The camo netting wouldn’t work on a ship this size.
So let’s say the ship isn’t being searched for but is actively trying not to be spotted on accident or by anyone.
The protagonist won’t have any nearby land to get to.
The camo netting wouldn’t work on a ship this size.
I think it probably could: https://youtu.be/9DSwXZ1esBQ?si=5SRwisQQo4pgRBh3
