Surveillance Drones and NPR reactions.

[spoongoon (OP)]

New player here.  Greetings to everyone.  Here is my question.
I want to launch a Surveillance drone at a habited planet, it is a one stage missile with active, thermal and em sensors.  No warhead.
Will this be considered a hostile act and will they shoot it down?
On broader topic what will and won`t start a war with them.

[Icecoon]

Welcome  

I guess until you doesn't destroy some of their ships, it should be ok.

War can be started by:
1. Destroying their ships
2. Landing ground units/attacking their planet
3. Colonising a planet in a system under their control (They won't attack at first, but it will deteriorate their opinion about you)
4. Using active sensors around their planets/ships too much (It may take a while until they attack because of this, so don't worry)

[Sharp]

Hmm, I don't know how NPRs react to missiles/buoys if not at war. They should be able to realise the missile is not a ship and technically missiles don't have transponders and it's also not possible to positively ID that a missile is coming from one race unless you can see it being launched from the ship/PDC. I would think they would destroy missiles/buoys if they could, if they only do so when hostile with you then it sounds like a great way to detect any treachery early on but then also possibly a bug then.

[Cocyte]

The use of sensor missiles & buoy is *most of the case* not considered as a truly hostile act.
In most of those cases, the buoy don't last very long if you throw it near the homeworld of an alien race.
I have a few of those in orbit of colonies for years now, registering all passing civilian vessels, and the locals didn't considered it useful to send a military ship to destroy those.

HOWEVER... There is also this single occurence when launching such a missile on a jump point prompted an hostile response from the locals... The fact that they were already at war with a neighbour might be the reason.

[Sharp]

The use of sensor missiles & buoy is *most of the case* not considered as a truly hostile act.
In most of those cases, the buoy don't last very long if you throw it near the homeworld of an alien race.
I have a few of those in orbit of colonies for years now, registering all passing civilian vessels, and the locals didn't considered it useful to send a military ship to destroy those.

HOWEVER... There is also this single occurence when launching such a missile on a jump point prompted an hostile response from the locals... The fact that they were already at war with a neighbour might be the reason.

Can be other factors as well, did they detect the missile/buoy? You need your AMM active sensors on to really detect them and self-propelled sensor buoys will normally have a slow efficient engine so hard to detect by passive sensors as well. If they can't detect it they won't kill it. Of course you might be right and they might detect it and not care as well.