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

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.

Currently, recognized possible types of sensor functionality for units in unit.csv are: NONE: Spherical projection - all tracks look the same way TRUE: Spherical projection, Friend-or-Foe THREAT: Spherical projection, Friend-or-Foe, Threat Assessment BUBBLE_THREAT: Spherical projection with bubble blips, Friend-or-Foe, Threat Assessment, Object Recognition PLANE: Vertical cylindric projection, Friend-or-Foe PLANE_THREAT: Vertical cylindric projection, Friend-or-Foe, Threat Assessment, Object Recognition

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
Ship		Medium if has turrets	Low otherwise	None if unarmed

See also

• Terminology:Electronic_Counter_Measures