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. 😉🤫

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.
- 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.
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
Literally anywhere outside the shipping lanes in the Pacific would do it. Even with satellite coverage, a large ship is still a tiny dot.
- Fair enough. The ocean is fucking huge.
  
  Yep. There is even a part of the Pacific that is on the opposite side of another part of the Pacific. The Pacific is also home to Point Nemo with is the place on the ocean farthest away from land.
  
  Absolutely bonkers how large it is.
Nice try, Mr. Bezos
- Pretty close there. 🤫
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
Maybe some place off the coast of Antarctica? It’s got a very low population of researchers. You could probably find a fairly hidden bay or harbour to park in.
- That’s a strong contender. Could also possibly be a gameplay mechanic with the outside of the ship being freezing and holes possibly let that cold in.
  
  Overall I’m leaning more towards it being set in warmer waters for the sake of some elements like being able to coral dive in the surrounding waters for potential puzzle solutions.
Point Nemo. It’s the farthest point from land in the world.
- Ironically, this would be a terrible place to try and hide. Since it's the furthest point from land, it tends to get visited by private ships pretty often, just so the people on board can say they've been to it.
  
  And any deorbiting space hardware is aiming in your direction.
  
  Point Nemo sounds really cool but you bring up an excellent point.
They use silver nitrate injection to control hurricanes then travel in their eye
- Travelling in a hurricane’s eye is pretty damn awesome.
  
  Realistically wouldn’t a 24/7 twister in the ocean not draw a lot of attention? Or do those exist?
  
  They only need them when they need to travel.
  
  The trouble then becomes crossing the equator since (a) there’s probably a lot more satellite coverage at the equator and (b) hurricanes don’t cross the equator
Most of the ocean you won't be detected in. There's just nobody looking for anyone out there. So stay away from eezs and littoral zones and you ll be alone in no time.
- Thanks! Haven’t heard of those. I’ll look em up!
It would be invisible to radar once it’s over the horizon, but ships are always visible to satellites, the larger the easier to spot.
- Was going to say...it's impossible to not be seen by space.
  
  But expensive sci-fi technology could make that problem disappear 😏🤫
- Yeah… that’s where I’m looking to use some sci-fi elements to bridge the gap in believably.
  
  Possibly some kind of light bending stealth technology. One of the goals would be to disable it. Or something like that. 🤔
  
  Or you could simply paint the ship in the color of the sea?
Thought this was a play on that "sovereign AI ship" article from earlier.
- Do you have a link to that?
  
  Been working on this idea for a while now and am starting to make the assets in blender.
  
  The first AI nation? A ship with 10,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs worth $500 million could become the first ever sovereign territory that relies entirely on artificial intelligence for its future
I don't think the north and south poles have much satellite coverage due to how orbits work, so maybe in the arctic or antarctic oceans, but they're pretty treacherous, so probably somewhere in the Pacific or southern Indian oceans?
- Those seem the most recommended.
  
  I’ll have to look up what the coral situation in the South Indian Ocean is like.
Russian oligarchs super yacht captains wanna know
- 😂 but the other guy was closer
Part of it would depend on whether or not it has, as required of all self propelled ships above a low threshold GRT, an AIS transceiver. If it's got one, and it's on, I can find the ship in seconds (access to multiple large terrestrial and satellite AIS systems at work).

But I guess if they never intend to go anywhere near Port State Control, they could just turn their AIS off. People do it all the time to violate sanctions, avoid pirates, etc.
- Ok that’s a lot of info I wasn’t aware of. Thanks!!
  
  So this ship doesn’t want to go to port so to remain as hidden as possible. I’m imagining smaller vessels would deliver supplies to the ship along its route. So any laws won’t be really an issue if no countries know about the ship.
I suspect the motive of the protagonist will affect the answer to your question. What are they doing out there? If the goal is to catch fish, for example, maybe don't go somewhere with no fish, right?
- I’m really trying to be reserved with the details as much as possible right now but I do want to try to fill in a few blanks.
  
  You’re quite close with the current working opening where the protagonist is indeed out fishing.
  
  Hence why I was holding back a bit from setting it in the arctic.
underwater?
Point Nemo
What are you trying to smuggle bruh?
- Just trying to have a fun time without interruptions. 🍾🎊
The classic bermuda triangle.
Most of it but point nemo is probably idealic for a video game setting
HL3 confirmed

64 comments