Terminology:Sensors
 Terminology
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Sensors is the general term for systems allowing a vessel to detect other objects in space.
Contents
Usage in Vegastrike
What does it do
Sensors detect and recognize other objects as well as provide missile targetting. Military sensors also may have Terminology:ITTS capability, in which case they only provide targetting data - to actually aim a weapon 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
Currently, supported possible types of sensor functionality (recognized for units and upgrades in unit.csv) are:
| Type | Projection | Friend-or-Foe | Object Recognition | Threat Assessment | comment |
| 0 (FALSE) | Spherical | no | no | no | all tracks look the same way |
| 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 |
Displayed Projections
There are several different display modes, currently 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 functions
Track color-coding 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 |
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| Ship | Medium if has turrets |
Low otherwise |
None if unarmed | |
