Sensor Array rework

[woeful spoke]

The sensor array is a very one dimensional part. You place it down, assign crew, and it immediately becomes irrelevant in terms of management. All you need is a reactor, a crew quarters, and the sensor array... Grants additional radar range, which is all it does.

The nice thing about the Sensor Array is you can place it down and forget about it.
The problem with the Sensor Array is that the benefit it provides is really only useful in career, and even then its pretty mediocre at best, which is extending your radar/fog of war range, to be specific, visual and signature range. For visual range, it doubles it, and for signature range it increases it by ~33%.

My issue from this stems from: if its early enough that you cant take fights, then why are you spending crew and resources on this thing (its 10k which could be spent on weapons), if you're around mid game, then, again, you could be spending more crew on weapons. 6 crew is an entire HE or EMP missile launcher, and if you're late game, then it wont really make a difference and is extremely sedentary when compared to the rest of your ship.

From what I know, its pointless in PVP (which is fine since manip beams are also pointless there but are incredibly useful in career).

The point I am making is: its a very forgettable part that doesn't really add much. It's something you very much slap down to get a minimal benefit and then forget about, or something to waste crew on.

I use this thing a lot, but its because I have nothing to spend crew on when I'm memeing and mostly goof around, and I don't take career very seriously anymore.

The most I can see this being used for is playing evasively or for ships that are harvesting and can't take fights, but even then its a bit situational as why would you not stick by the harvesting ship and help it?

Another argument I can see if taking a peek at what a ship is before engaging/playing defensively, but if you're struggling with ships at the tier then I'd suggest a rebuild and not the sensor array.

There is an argument to be made about taking fights more aggressively in career but unless you have a mod that increases the amount of pirates then I find it situational as you can just patrol around the system regularly without the sensor array. I play decently aggressively in career and I don't really think it makes being aggressive easier, as I can just put my ship to go around the system and tab back in when it spots something. I will not speak for everyone here as they may play differently.

I actually am against massive changes or something that changes how you place the part, as that would ruin a lot of built-ins. What could happen is having it stack, making it cheaper, or something to make it somewhat more interactive or make it a part that can actually have impact instead of a situational benefit, but I am not here to actually propose a change directly. I'm just kind of with the idea that it needs one.

In its current state, I find it niche and pretty forgettable as well as highly unnecessary

[urban fossil]

it's extremely helpful for scouting to get an idea of what you're fighting to minimize losses, and is damn near necessary for efficient mining of asteroid fields and belts

it's also aesthetically helpful to counterbalance CRs

[woeful spoke]

I was actually gonna say a very acceptable change would be to just make it the same weight as control rooms as its somewhat heavier

the number is oddly specific at 11.54

[urban fossil]

also highly useful with long-range weapons, HE, longer rails, and EMPs all have longer range than default visual range

[woeful spoke]

HE barely get any range right? i think the benefit is marginal

let me check

[spice path]

Thats because it has a circle shaped turret.

[urban fossil]

450m, default visual is 400

[spice path]

It marginally improves range

[woeful spoke]

default range is 400 and it goes to 450
eh i suppose thats an increase

[urban fossil]

it's not much, but it's definitely notable

[woeful spoke]

I was gonna mention how it improved EMP range but i forgot

[urban fossil]

~12% increase i think

[woeful spoke]

12.5%

yea

that also depends where you put the missiles though

[urban fossil]

rail range (8+ accels) has +50%, while EMPs have like +75%

[woeful spoke]

it does increase asteroid belt efficiency i will say its dencetly good at that
asteroid fields feel a bit odd since you can go around the field but if its in a gas cloud i can totally understand that

[woeful spoke]

it is actually decently good at starting a fight with EMP since EMP gets higher range if the enemy doesnt have point defense
rail accel is a good point too. more range on railguns = better

[spice path]

Id say the sensor is very strong in career. Miners get bigger coverage to detect valueables or enemies and combat ships get earlier detections for enemies. That info is well worth a single weapon slot.

[woeful spoke]

Combat ships are a bit niche unless you're playing defensively as usually taking fights is what you want to do as of right now, and avoiding them isn't doing too many favors unless you're injured.

The mining part is actually very fair though the point of a combat ship staying beside it still stands in terms of enemies.

Thank you for the feedback about it. It's changed my opinion about even though I am a mostly career player ATM. My only proposed change now is to lower the mass to be the same as a control room (i'm not sure why its 11.54 or what it has to do with a circle shaped turret, please excuse my incompetency/explain). I'll probably keep this thread open or close it depending on how I feel. Thank you again

[spice path]

Even combat ships benefit a lot from it as knowing what youre up against and choosing a strategy accordingly before the fight even starts is valueable. Its like a built in scout except its more crew efficient and easier to micro.

Not to mention sensors are a must have for railgun ships

[spice path]

Sensors are 9 tiles so normally they would have a weight of nine. The turret also has some weight thought and since its circular its weight is a weird decimal. Thats where the extra 2.54 come from. I dont think thats something walt would change as other parts like tb work like this as well.

[narrow folio]

tbh i think the sensor itself may be ok as it stands, but more interaction with vision range would be good

i know walt doesn't like straight upgrades or sidegrades but in general other types of sensor part would be nice

perhaps sensor poles that extend vision range in only one direction?

[narrow folio]

also hesitant to completely revamp any part because, depending on the rework, it could fuck up every builtin with sensors - which is most of them above 1mil

[woeful spoke]

thats why i suggested against a total rework, more just an improvement to make it more interesting and not you palce and forget about it

[narrow folio]

i think its better to trend towards adding new parts that do new things rather than making old parts do new things

[bold raven]

I generally agree with the author and think that the size of the radar and the number of crew are unreasonably high. In fact, it works in the background and does not need a permanent crew, because it does not take any action in case of radar operation. The situation is similar with the hyperdrive tank. The crew is not needed there either, nor is the sheer size. For these parts, a 2x2 size and no crew would be quite logical

[narrow folio]

could always have different sensor sizes as parallels to the control rooms (for the sake of shipbuilding)

[narrow folio]

i feel like the beacon is excusable because being able to summon reinforcements to your location is pretty strong (its strong enough that there are a few experimental PVP designs that use it, though they're mostly for fun, the fact it's viable at all says something)

[bold raven]

I'm not talking about abandoning the beacon, I'm talking about the unnecessary crew for radar and beacon.

[narrow folio]

sensor, maybe

beacon, i think it needing 6 crew makes some sense

[bold raven]

The crew is needed for what? What does it do?

[narrow folio]

its not really meant for combat ships anyways, but for stations and fleet leaders and stuff

[narrow folio]

most likely the same reason as most weapons needing more than one operator - monitoring the beacon's functioning, and also making sure that something doesn't go wrong

hyperjumping is probably fairly difficult to get right (otherwise you could probably casually jump to any coordinates); fucking up a hyperjump could cause a lot of problems

especially if you consider walt's half-joking responses to questions about hyperium in #ask-walt - this shit teleports you out of existence if you don't handle it carefully

[narrow folio]

which don't really need as large a crew as combat ships

[quartz geyser]

Sensor's crew requirement is reasonable IMO, and it's not like you need to man beacon all the time

Having 4 crew+power for extended vision, which helps your entire fleet in the area, is powerful

[narrow folio]

the 6 crew total is fairly high but it makes sense for something like the hj beacon, imo
also, it costs like 40k entirely by itself - if you're using it in career, you should be lategame enough to not have to worry about the money and fame costs of 6 crew

[narrow folio]

OP's problem is that the sensors just provide a buff once for tying up 4 crew
they're useful and on some ships mandatory but they aren't interesting

[narrow folio]

at least hj beacons have interesting ramifications, and control rooms and hyperdrives scale with the ship
sensors don't do this

[bold raven]

Well, let's try to reason. The factory is engaged in production and since the resources for it are carried by a crew, it needs at least one operator to control it - there is none. Radar detects distant objects and notifies them. Does it need a crew to do that? No, but it does, and in considerable numbers. A beacon is essentially the same as radar, but always in active mode. Does it require a crew? No, and there are plenty of them. As for size, 2x2 is more than enough for all crewless units.

[narrow folio]

and let's reason alternatively:
The factory carries out an automated process that never needs to vary, it needs no operators (IRL most factory equipment doesn't have operators anyways - the humans are mostly involved when it comes to transporting the goods and checking for quality, which is what the crew picking up the output are doing - and that's primitive planetbound tech)
The sensor can detect signs of far-off objects which can then be displayed - and crew must be there to see what is being displayed and figure out exactly what it means, relay that information to the command room, eliminate false positives, prevent desync between the sensor readings and the ship's recorded map of the system
The hyperjump beacon must perfectly calculate the exact signals to send for a not-fully-understood technology to then be able to pick up those signals and respond by plotting a hyperjump. Any mistake could cause the ship jumping to end up somewhere else, inside another ship, inside the sun, in interstellar space, or outside existence. They require 6 diamonds, so they probably contain a very fine focusing array similar to an ion core, and fucking that up could also kill somebody. The beacon must also interface with the ship's sensors and command rooms (a system map is visible in its sprite) and this is pretty clearly intensive as it's a full -12 command points. according to its ingame desc hyperium is capable of 'bending spacetime' so that presents yet another Really Bad Result of fucking up a hyperjump - bending a region of spacetime that has somebody in it and probably immediately killing em

maybe a hyperjump beacon could have less crew

but i wouldn't take any risks when its historically been shown that hyperjumping to the wrong location can destroy a solar system

[modest moat]

If we are doing a total rework it would be nice to see them better in PvP as in elim (no fog) they are useless and in dom (with fog) they are still awful

[worthy gyro]

mining laser, manupulator beam, resoruce storages very good for pvp \👍

[worthy gyro]

because it has roof part

just make it buff adjacent weapon range but falling off w/ speed increase

station fix and usage fix

simple as

[round harbor]

I don’t think I’ve ever used the sensor

[woeful spoke]

i only use it because i dont feel like rebuilding my ship and i have crew to waste

[analog magnet]

I have sensor for almost every career ship, starting from mid game

They are currently more of a place and forget thing, just place one and forget about them
I hope they will get more interactions later, like maybe interact with stealth mechanism

[bold raven]

Stealth mechanism - unnecessary after the gas nebulae.

[analog magnet]

But they are cool

[woeful spoke]

Clearly we need a module to create a small gas nebula cloud. This wont reveal your position at all!

[woeful spoke]

This makes it good for stations and standing still. Still overwhelmingly forgettable otherwise as speed in this game is the best form of defense. Sacrificing movement for range is pretty awful imo unless its a pretty decently high number like 50-100%. Good for anti-station cheese but other than that its a nothing stat in my opinion.

It'd also buff rails which I dont think need anything since you could stand still and railfan someone from a greater distance and they'd just be fucked unless they're fast enough.

[analog magnet]

Imagine creating a small nebula and quickly leaving

And the other player wastes all his ammo into it

[woeful spoke]

This smells like a csgo tactic

[analog magnet]

AI ships certainly won't be able to aim into such a cloud

[analog magnet]

Won't fix anti-station cheese though

One can just have a small sensor ship to reveal the station, and another stationary rail out of station sensor range to snipe the station

The small sensor ship can simply hide behind the megaroids

[woeful spoke]

Yea it still wouldn't actually because you could just counter sensor and unless the station has a railgun too then its fucked

[analog magnet]

The station can't attack the rail ship because rail range x2 (1200m) is larger than sensor range(800m)

The rail ship can see the station because the small ship exists, and with the megaroids the station can't really attack the small ship

IIRC walt has said about making sensors stack but with diminishing returns

So it becomes a meaningful choice of how many you put on the ship, and which of the ships should have them, instead of just place one and forget

[woeful spoke]

This is totally fine actually