Long Range Scaners

Nocturnal · #1 January 31st, 2004, 03:23 AM

I like sending a ship with Scanners 3 (that can scan 5 sectors away) to close orbit around the sun, and from there it can scan every ship in the system in a swoop. Makes a good scout. Memo to self: design small cloaked scanner/sensor spy ship.

Cheeze · #2 January 31st, 2004, 05:49 AM

Long Range Scanners are stopped by Scanner Jammers and the ever-popular Scattering Armor. So remember that you won't get a free peek at everything. Also, you can see what space stations are building.

A Last note, currently if you scan ships you haven't seen before they will appear in your "enemy ships" design list, but only for that turn. As yet, the game doesn't store those designs for you permanently, but I believe a fix for that is in the works.

Kamog · #3 January 31st, 2004, 07:25 AM

What I wonder about is, how can you see the design of an enemy ship, even without sensors, just by going into battle? You find out what all the components make up the enemy design, even if your ship was instantly obliterated in the battle, and even if they have a scanner jammer. In my opinion, I feel that simply being in a battle shouldn't reveal the detailed enemy design if you lose the battle and if their scanner jammer / scattering armor wasn't damaged.

oleg · #4 January 31st, 2004, 08:12 AM

Probably because battles occur at much closer distance. 1 sector is already an interplanetary distance. Like from Earth to Mars. Battles on the other hand, scaled to something like between Earth and Moon. No wonder you can get better readings, scattering armor or not ! As to receiving designs when you lose, why should it matter ? Your ships send continiuos telemetry back to HW by (subspace?)radio or laser. You don't really need hardcopies

narf poit chez BOOM · #5 January 31st, 2004, 08:19 AM

how could you scan something enough to know what every component on it is and still have ecm affect your targetting?

Kamog · #6 January 31st, 2004, 08:29 AM

The other thing is, how can you see the descriptions of components that you haven't researched yourself yet? For example, if you haven't researched quantum reactors yet and you scan one on an enemy ship, why would you know what it does?

narf poit chez BOOM · #7 January 31st, 2004, 08:44 AM

maybe you can recognize it from theory's?

i mean, some of those pre-industrial brainiacs might have been able to figure out the basics of a steam engine just from looking at it.