Hello, my fellow Galactic Conquerors,
I have two questions related to the this thread title. So I've encountered some precursors. I've found about them as they spotted me with an active sensor (S105 R83). I've shut down my engines and remained stationary. It is the second time I'm employing the following tactics and so far it seems it is working. The precursors zipped in my direction, but very soon they stopped. They are now around 3 million kms from me. If things go as in my previous encounter, in a month or two their planet base would move away, and hopefully they will do the same thing, allowing me to skip the premises unobserved.
Q1: 3 million kms should put me in their radar range. Why aren't they blasting me off? Am I tricking them by playing dead?
Q2: What is the usual procedure for using a active sensor? Do you wait until you spot something with thermals or electromagnetics, and then try to pinpoint with an active sensor? Or do you periodically fire your AS to check for uninvested guest?
Really good questions!!!
The important thing to be aware if is that none of the signatures are fixed - they all depend on the properties of your ship.
If your ship is smaller than the resolution of the active sensor (R83 in your case), then the detection range goes down like the square of the ratio of your ship's size (in HS) to the resolution. So if you've got a 2000 ton ship (40 HS), then their range will be reduced to (40/83)^2 ~ 23% of its maximum of (IIRC) 8.715m km (= 105*83, expressed in thousands of km), which is roughly 2m km. This is probably why they aren't picking you up on their actives.
Thermal sensors pick up power from your engines - the faster you go (and the bigger your ship), the more power you use. When you cut your speed, your thermal signature went tiny and the thermal sensors that had picked you up in the first place lost you (at which point their ships stopped). What I tend to do in these situations is "creep" away - set my speed to 10 or 100 and head for a waypoint away from the bad guys, once you're twice as far away, you can double your speed, since thermal detection range is proportional to speed.
EM sensors pick up shields or active emmisions - if your shields are down and you're not active, you shouldn't show up.
Question 2:
I usually have active sensors from PDC running all the time - especially the anti-missile (resolution "0") ones. I figure that the population is going to be showing up on sensors anyway, so I'm not giving anything away by staying active (unless the bad guys have ARMs). Similarly, if I have a fleet that I know has already been detected, then I usually go active with the minimal number of ships to get both anti-shipping and anti-missile detection (typically one or two ships).
If I'm trying to avoid detection, then I remain passive until I'm ready to fire missiles (at which point I have to detect the target with at least one active sensor somewhere - not necessarily on the firing ship or with the firing ship's TG). I think some players leave their anti-missile actives on all the time, since low-resolution sensors are also low-power (i.e. small signature). If you assume the enemy will have equally capable thermal and EM sensors, then you should try to limit the strength of such anti-missile sensors to the thermal signature of your highest-signature ship.
John
