Terminology:Sensors

Terminology

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Sensors is the general term for systems allowing a vessel to detect other objects in space.

Usage in Vegastrike

Sensors are present as upgrades available for purchase on some bases; some ships and other units (such as bases or missiles) may also have built-in sensor systems.

What does it do

Sensors detect and recognize other objects as well as provide missile targetting. Military sensors also may have ITTS capability; in this case they only provide targetting data - to actually have a weapon aimed automatically, its hardpoint must have autotracking system installed.

Tracks of the objects harder to pinpoint than usual - such as ships with active ECM systems and nebulae - has noticeable jitter.

Available Sensor Types

Sensor stats include range, visibility cone (usually, set to full sphere), missile locking cone, autotracking cone, presence of ITTS support and type (which determines the displayed projection and presence of advanced functionality).

Currently, possible (i.e. recognized for units and upgrades in unit.csv) sensor types are:

Type	Projection	Friend-or-Foe	Object Recognition	Threat Assessment	comment
0 (FALSE)	Spherical	no	no	no	All tracks look the same way, so it's somewhat useful only as long as there aren't too many identical dots.
1 (TRUE)	Spherical	yes	no	no
THREAT	Spherical	yes	no	yes
BUBBLE_THREAT	Bubble	yes	yes	yes	Rlaan sensors are designed like that
PLANE	Plane	yes	no	no
PLANE_THREAT	Plane	yes	yes	yes	Good for short-range fighting and gathering, though not so good for sorting out too many targets.

Basic Functionality

Range determines how far the sensor can detect and identify (currently it's the same) ships. Celestial bodies and other "significant objects" (such as bases and jump points), as well as capital ships (ships bigger than physics/capship_size), are exclusion and can be detected and identified beyond this limit, from any place in the same system.

Displayed Projections

Currently there are three different display modes, and they are fixed for given sensor hardware:

• Spherical (Wing Commander style) - two circles, for fore and aft hemispheres. Allows easy orientation on a chosen track, but doesn't show distance at all.
• Bubble - the same, but tracks are displayed as circles, blown more or less to represent objects' velocity. Terminology:Rlaan sensors are designed like this.
• Plane (Elite style) - cylindrical projection, showing the place of a track in the unit's "horizontal" plane (thus making ranges obvious) and "height" from it.

Advanced Functionality

Color-coding of tracks by Threat Assessment has priority over Object Recognition, and that over Friend-or-Foe. I.e. if all 3 are present, all missiles are colored the same way, and all planets are colored the same way, no matter to whom they belong.

Friend-or-Foe

Friend-or-Foe is a basic target assessment capability which discerns (and color-codes):

Capital Ship Ship	friend	enemy	neutral
		or has lock	this includes unarmed enemies if Threat Assessment is present
Cargo Container	Cargo
anything else	normal

Object Recognition

Object Recognition shows tracks color-coded by object type:

Star Nebula	star
Planet Dead Planet	planet
Base	base	enemy
		if it has lock
Jump Point	jump
anything else	normal

Threat Assessment

Threat Assessment shows tracks color-coded for missiles and blinking for objects that has lock on the player's ship - the greater its perceived threat, the faster is blinking:

Missile

missile

Threat level:

Missile	High
Capital Ship		Medium if hostile	Low otherwise
Ship		Medium if has turrets	Low otherwise	None if unarmed
anything else			Low -Hey, cap'n, this cargo box locks on us! -Well, it can't be worse than a heavy fighter.

See also

• Terminology:Electronic_Counter_Measures
• Upgrades:Sensors