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!
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.
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.
Does he have any stories of weird/strange things he saw/heard on those small uninhabited islans?