Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world BroBot9000 @lemmy.world 1y ago

Where on the globe would you best be able to sail a very large ship without being detected?

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. 😉🤫

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64 comments

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.
  
  I think a submarine, even of a hostile country, is probably your best option for a 100m-long underwater shadow rising in front of your boat. Much better than any living creature.
  
  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.
  
  How about an NPT-style treaty? The satellites got sensitive enough to detect ballistic missile submarines (or the arctic ice melted so that they can't hide under the ice). Everyone realised that it would be catastrophic for nuclear nations not to have to worry about a retaliatory strike, so the nations made an agreement that none of them would scan the oceans with satellites.
  
  satellites got sensitive enough to detect ballistic missile submarines
  
  HOW?!
  
  Maybe there were so many satellites that at some point two collided and caused a bunch of space debris, which makes sending up satellites incredibly difficult and satellite usage limited to mostly communication?
  
  I dig that concept but I feel it’s starting to take away from the uniqueness of the ship and its capabilities if it’s only undetectable because of an external situation.
  
  You could have satellite detection rely more on using another range in the electromagnetic spectrum since having enough coverage for visual detection is too difficult (think RADAR for example) with the ship providing some unique solution for it. Either like airplanes do to prevent the signals bouncing off it to begin with, or something super high-tech where it analyzes that spectrum of radiation and then calculates what the response would be if it wasn't there.
  
  But that might be getting into too tech-garbled territory.
  
  That’s a phenomenal explanation! A little on the tech talk side as you mentioned but I think most people could probably understand the concept.
  
  Definitely going to keep that idea in the bank.
  
  Well if it was a flying object that was unidentified it was indeed a UFO, but if it went swimming it was a USO or a UDO.
- 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.
  
  Fantastic summary!
  
  Yeah let me elaborate a bit without spoiling the premise.
  
  The ship isn’t being actively searched for but it’s supposed to be undetectable while being as pleasant to travel on as possible.

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