Cadet I/Signature
| ← Miner defense | Forward deployment → |
What is signature?
The signature indicates how visible you are to enemy sensors, using a measure in percentage. A 100% signature means that you can be seen at 100% of the scan range of enemy sensors. You are visible to the opponent when you have "eye". The "eye icon" appears in the top right corner of your HUD.
Example My bomber has a 350% signature. A probe, with a scan range of 1000m (fictional value), is nearby. The probe will be able to detect me at 3.5*1000 → 3500 meters. So if I fly at 3500 meters or closer to the probe I will be detected by the probe and the entire enemy team can see me.
Items influencing signature
Every ship you fly has a base signature, i.e. what it is when you have no equipment active. There is some equipment that will raise your signature when you equip it, and some which raise your signature when you use it.
Note Anything located in your cargo bays cannot influence your signature.
Mounting your shields and missiles will greatly raise your signature. This is why any stealth fighter/bomber and troop transport will fly with its shields and missiles in cargo, unless the situation requires otherwise. Any ship that doesn't wish to be seen must keep both its shields and missiles in cargo.
Even as a regular bomber you'll want to remain unseen if at all possible. Therefore, keeping your shields and missiles down would seem like a good idea. On the other hand a bbr is likely to undergo heavy fire and fully charged shield would be nice. Therefore, simply unmounting your missiles is a good compromise. In some situations, such as a prolonged bombing run, you can't afford to take a rack of ammo out of cargo (to make room for your missiles) and thus you would launch with missiles mounted. You need to balance between trying to be stealthy (in one of the most unstealthy ships) or having a fully charged shield right at launch.
Note Bios bombers should nearly always launch in stealth mode as they can use their heavy cloak to launch truly devastating stealth attacks. A veteran Bios bbr pilot can get a couple of k into an enemy sector before being detected.
Actions influencing signature
In addition to equipment, performing certain actions will raise your signature.
Firing your weapons and boosting are the two actions that will reveal you to anyone nearby. This is why turret gunners must NEVER fire unless the bomber is detected. Certain operations, such as a Galv run or miner hunt, require that all the pilots restrain from firing their boosters until they are detected - quite different from the usual flying pattern, where if you're going somewhere you're boosting! As soon as the lead fighter is detected he will say so via voice chats and the entire fleet will engage boosters.
Engaging your cloaking device, if you have one, will lower your signature at the cost of energy. Keep in mind that it takes sometime for the cloak to fully charge so you may still be eyed for some time after you use it, and that it takes sometime to unengage and stop using energy.
Knowing your stuff
If you wish to know by how much does an item raise your signature, simply place your mouse over it in the ship's loadout window (F4 in stations only) and the signature will be indicated among all the other properties of the item. The ship loadout window gives you all the information about everything.
Tip: In most ships you should always fly with your F4 cargo screen displayed. It makes equipment and thus signature management easy.
Optional: TEK (Tigereye's Knee Pad) is a program that you can use to explore the core's code. With it you can pick a ship/faction/equipment and see the actual values for your signature, TTK (Time to Kill Values), etc. You do not need this to play the game. But if you are curious and wish to learn more, download the tool HERE. There is a .PDF file with a brief tutorial also.
Making a difference
Keeping your shields and missiles down makes a huge difference. Let's take the example of the stealth fighter. Fully equipped, a stealth fighter will have a signature of approximately 200%. However, taking shields and missiles down will reduce the signature to 50%. Then, you can cloak, which can reduce your signature to as low as 12% approximately, enabling you to pass by probes and interceptors as close as 100m. This is why, after destroying a target like a miner, a pilot takes his shields and missiles down and cloaks, allowing him to remain undetected even though he's surrounded by enemy defending ships. You can also use a heavy cloak, taking your signature to levels as low as 7%, almost having to collide with the enemy before being detected.
Using enemy sensors
If you're defending a miner, chances are you won't be detected by the enemy. If, however, you suddenly become detected (an eye appears on your HUD), you can tell that an enemy scout or stealth fighter has probably entered the sector and is relatively near. If you really know your stuff and remember the enemy's ships' scan ranges by heart, you can even use your signature to calculate the maximal distance that the enemy is from you. If you're only human, however, get ready for possible combat, and call for help if you feel it's required.
Similarly, if you wish to verify enemy presence in a sector, you can raise your signature using your weapons and boosters, and see if you become detected. If not, surely there is no enemy nearby. If you get an eye, the enemy has either a probe, ship or station nearby. This is also useful for certain tasks that require you to remain unseen. Since GigaCorp can (or at least used to be able to) use luxury fighters to drop teleport probes, the crafts would fire all their four weapons and their boosters, raising their signatures close to 1000%, in order to find a spot where they could go undetected despite such signature-raising actions. They would then use the spot to drop the high-signature teleport probes, which were hard to find for the enemy. This is basically a way to scan for enemy sensors.
In the forward deployment lesson coming up signature does become important.
Note We are going to go a bit indepth here on actual scan ranges, formulas and information. It is not necessary to know this material indepth. It is entirely optional for you to know. Many veteran pilots do not. But it is offered up here for those who would want to go more indepth with the actual math behind the game. TEK is the best tool (at this stage of your learning) for doing this on your own. It can be found on the download page (along with a basic guide) on this site.
Here are a few basic scan range figures for you. Please note these are generalized numbers to cover all factions.
| Scan Ranges | |
| Garrison | 3600 |
| Starbase | 4500 |
| Tech base | 2400 |
| Adv. Tech base | 3000 |
| Refinery | 2400 |
| Outpost | 2400 |
| Teleport | 2400 |
| Scout | 2400 |
| Advanced Scout | 3000 |
| Early Warning System Probe 1,2,3 | 500, 600, 700 |
| Pulse Probe | 5000 |
| Rescue Probe | 1000 |
Your scan range is 2400 (3000 if Adv. Scout) as an example.
| Signatures | |
| Bomber** | 200% |
| HTT | 100% |
| Miner, Con | 200% |
| Enh Miner/Con | 175% |
| Advanced Miner/Con | 150% |
**Bomber - This is assumed the bomber does not have his shields or missiles mounted. Otherwise it will increase accordingly.**
So with a Sig of 100% a Garrison will eye you at 3600 meters If you have a Sig of 90% multiply 3600 with 0.9 and you have 3240. Please note that this are only basic numbers and GA's and Faction perks/nerfs count too. To be sure keep a safe distance.
| ← Miner defense | Forward deployment → |
