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

BroBot9000@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 66 points –

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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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

That’s true. Could be some kind of emergency system or a last minute resort when they are on the verge of getting caught.

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.

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?

It needs to be a more elegant and luxurious solution whenever possible.

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.

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

Oh damn!!

Not quite what I’m thinking with my game but that certainly gives me some inspiration.

Thanks!

Do keep us updated!

Oh certainly! Really appreciate all the help!

I might have a small post about the game on mastodon but I don’t want to give away too much here 😏🤫

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.