How do you use ELINT

[nakorkren (OP)]

Although I occasionally station an ELINT spy ship trailing behind an enemy planet, I have mostly neglected to use ELINT in combat or pre-combat situations. Do you guys regularly use ELINT for anything other than gathering population intel?

[kilo]

I think ELINT is in an extremely weird state. It is useful when it comes to recon in general and can easily identify planetary features. When it comes to the use against ships, it is pretty useless though. It takes too much time to analyze sensor characteristics of enemy vessels, while it is pretty hard to shadow the enemy at the same time. Staying undetected and within ELINT range of a hostile vessel is something I have to master myself.
When the next version lands, I will try to build a diplomatic vessel, which will be a ELINT ship in disguise. Maybe that will work and the aliens will keep their cool.

[Jorgen_CAB]

If you want to simply spy on someone you are not at war with you need to make sure it has commercial engines so the ships is not thought to be a military ship. The AI classify ships based on it's engines basically not what components you have on it.

You also can stack ELINT modules so you have a much higher passive EM strength, this means you also can stay much further back to listen to enemy active sensors even in a war situation. I think that stacking them also make the faster at analyzing enemy sensors too if I'm not mistaken.

[alex_brunius]

You also can stack ELINT modules so you have a much higher passive EM strength, this means you also can stay much further back to listen to enemy active sensors even in a war situation. I think that stacking them also make the faster at analyzing enemy sensors too if I'm not mistaken.

Based on the initial design at least it sounds like you can stack them to increase range, but not to increase the speed:

"Their primary function is to gather electronic and signals intelligence on alien populations and active sensors (and I will add ground forces at some point). Increased strength, through research or multiple modules, can increase the range at which intelligence is gathered but the base rate is fixed. Multiple ships cannot increase the intelligence gathered from a single source, although a single ELINT module can gather intelligence from multiple sources."

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=C-Ship_Modules#ELINT_Modules

[Jorgen_CAB]

You also can stack ELINT modules so you have a much higher passive EM strength, this means you also can stay much further back to listen to enemy active sensors even in a war situation. I think that stacking them also make the faster at analyzing enemy sensors too if I'm not mistaken.

Based on the initial design at least it sounds like you can stack them to increase range, but not to increase the speed:

"Their primary function is to gather electronic and signals intelligence on alien populations and active sensors (and I will add ground forces at some point). Increased strength, through research or multiple modules, can increase the range at which intelligence is gathered but the base rate is fixed. Multiple ships cannot increase the intelligence gathered from a single source, although a single ELINT module can gather intelligence from multiple sources."

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=C-Ship_Modules#ELINT_Modules

Question then is if you are not better of just adding a better EM sensor rather than stacking several ELINT modules to the ship then?!?

Have not tried if that works... At least the ships EM rating is increasing, but I don't know if the ELINT module itself still uses the EM of the ship or the stacked modules.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

I've used ELNIT on my combat ships, cruisers and battleships, all of which fought in missile and beam combat with aliens, and I've never gotten anything from it. Staying within range of enemy ships for 100 days is not something that usually happens in my games. Even if you cumulate all the combat together, by the point it's done, it does not matter much anymore, because you've dealt with these ships enough to know what they're made of.

Also, the lack of feedback on its work makes it even less desirable on my ships.

I'm yet to build a dedicated ELINT ship... feel little need for it.

[Demetrious]

This is an awfully good question. I have yet to have the opportunity to build a dedicated fleet-support ship with an ELINT module - i.e. a small hull with generous deployment duration, adequate protection and an ELINT module who's sole purpose is to accompany the primary battle fleet in order to gather signals intelligence on enemy sensors.

In terms of realism, characterizing hostile sensors should require far less data than long-term espionage of an entire planet. This is precisely why real-world military ships and aircraft practice EMCON (Emissions Control) religiously even in peacetime and why nation-states are always sending "fishing trawlers" to lurk around the edges of other nation's major naval exercises. (Incidentally, I always designate my AGIs as the "Soviet Trawler" class and name them after Russian cities. ) This is one of those things where a simple tweak in ratios can make a big difference in practicality and given that most people probably get into their first big scraps before they have the yard space/funds to spare to get a support ship or dedicated corvette tonnage ELINT hull into the fleet it's definitely something that Steve would lack feedback on. You may have just found something important.

Eventually Steve's updates will slow to the point where we don't ditch games to jump to a new version with tons of bugfixes and exciting new features but given how the man works that might not come for a while yet. Before then, we will have to test things.

[Droll]

In terms of realism, characterizing hostile sensors should require far less data than long-term espionage of an entire planet. This is precisely why real-world military ships and aircraft practice EMCON (Emissions Control) religiously even in peacetime and why nation-states are always sending "fishing trawlers" to lurk around the edges of other nation's major naval exercises. (Incidentally, I always designate my AGIs as the "Soviet Trawler" class and name them after Russian cities. ) This is one of those things where a simple tweak in ratios can make a big difference in practicality and given that most people probably get into their first big scraps before they have the yard space/funds to spare to get a support ship or dedicated corvette tonnage ELINT hull into the fleet it's definitely something that Steve would lack feedback on. You may have just found something important.

I usually use a dedicated ELINT ship with cloaking bays to spy on alien homeworlds. Over time the intel on said homeworlds accumulate but I also noticed that my ELINT ship was uncovering the properties of various active sensors being used by the enemy like their resolution. So ELINT does work on identifying actives on ships but I've never really uncovered anything else about the enemy ships.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Steve have a few times said he wanted to make a more interesting electronic warfare model in the game. The ELINT module was just a basic attempt at doing something in the interim.

I'm pretty sure we will see some changes or addition to these mechanics when he get the urge to improve on it down the line.

it would be quite fun to see some new mechanic around stealth, cloaking, ECM/ECCM and the like. The current mechanics are a bit binary and could be a bit more involved and fun.