Author Topic: Active Sensor Design  (Read 8843 times)

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Offline jseah (OP)

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Active Sensor Design
« on: July 02, 2012, 06:12:03 PM »
One thing I often like to do is design a size 50 active sensor as there is nothing quite like knowing where things are.  They find use on a 6kton scout ship (with lots of armour) and on homeworld PDCs. 

However, at fairly early game tech (EM11, active 16), I have a size 50 res 1 sensor with a range of 88 mkm.  This pretty much means nothing gets into missile range without me seeing it. 

Additionally, it did cost 8k research, and that EM tech doesn't raise the design while active sensor strength does.  Which leads me to conclude that it may actually be worthwhile to keep EM sensitivity +1TL over active strength...


Thoughts?  Does anyone actually use size 50 sensors?
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #1 on: July 02, 2012, 09:44:24 PM »
Not sure what you mean by "EM tech doesn't raise the design" since EM tech level is part of the calculation for range. 

As far as using size 50 sensors I don't use them.  At least not outside of PDC's. 
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Offline Ziusudra

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #2 on: July 02, 2012, 11:22:26 PM »
It's missing a word: "EM tech doesn't raise the design" cost.
 

Offline Theokrat

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2012, 02:53:41 AM »
EM tech also does not increase the active emissions, potentially making a high-EM-tech sensor more difficult to detect for passive EM sensors. Not that it matters for a size 50 sensor.

Anyway, I am curious: Why resolution 1? A range of 88m km is not that much - certainly there are missile designs with a longer range that this.

Resolution 1 is usually used for AMM sensors, but that would seem over the top. Yes you could spot incoming missiles from 10m km away, but what is the net effect of that? You can fire at the same incoming salvo with your AMM launchers more often, which of course is nice. But on the other hand the same could be achieved with more AMM launchers, which would very likely be cheaper. A size-1 launcher is just 1 HS, so if you used a size-10 (AMM range of 2m km) sensor instead, you could also have 40 more AMM launchers. This would likely be cheaper and more effective in an AMM role.

On the other hand, if the sensor is intended to spot hostile ships, the resolution could be increased quite a bit. Even a small fighter is unlikely to be smaller than 200t=4HS. So if you used a resolution-4 sensor you could extend your range to 350m km. And this would really be a very usefull range to spot any ship before it moves into range. And, as a sitenote, this sensor could still spot missiles at 2m km, which is a workable AMM range...
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #4 on: July 03, 2012, 04:32:56 AM »
Rather than one huge sensor I normally go for three sensors based around anti ship, anti fighter and anti missile. I normally design the anti ship around a wide coverage and then the others around the respective missile ranges plus about 20%.
 

Offline jseah (OP)

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2012, 09:13:07 AM »
Sorry, I meant design cost. 

My AMMs were designed with a 6mkm range (turned out to be 6.3mkm), so I do need the sensor range to detect incoming missiles early.  This gives me lots of interception chances so I can use 40-50% leak per interception instead of 10%, which saves more AMMs by less overkill and results in lower leak chances. 

Additionally, beam PD gets bonus to-hit the longer the missiles have been detected (max bonus raised by tech). 

Also, this is for the dedicated sensor ship, which is built in far less numbers than AMM ships (which are also much cheaper), while being nothing but armour + engines + sensors. 

It also shuts down cloaking hard, but that's a minor effect. 


Yes, I do understand that ASMs with ranges longer than 88mkm do exist, but at my tech level, designing one of those is pretty impossible.  Would have to be a two-stage design or a drone. 
As missile ranges increase, so does sensor range. 
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #6 on: July 03, 2012, 09:46:10 AM »
For me one of the big reasons of having very long range ship sensors is to provide coverage for my fighters. That way I can leave the figther squadrons with just MFCs and no need to have an active sensor fighter along with them. I typically aim for a 1bil sensor range to give my strike forces plenty of time to hit incomming hostiles a couple of times beofore they close to their own missile ranges.
 

Offline Shininglight

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #7 on: July 03, 2012, 11:23:12 AM »
My sensors tend to come in 4 sizes, 1 HS for destroyers and fac's, 2HS for cruisers, 5HS for destroyer leaders and missile cruisers, and 10HS for command boats, generally this allows for greater redundancy if the command boat get's taken out as well as multiple layers of coverage. All sensors are either 100 res or 1 res.
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Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #8 on: July 03, 2012, 01:21:56 PM »
I have used size 50 sensors.  I usually have a res 1  design that I build into pdcs.  I also tend to have a res-5 design that I use for mobile ships.  Lately however I have been switching to a size 25 active sensor and putting either a size 50 thermal or em on my smaller scout ships, my larger heavy cruiser scouts will have both passive sensors.  The combination has been good for sneaking up on enemy ships with fighters and only turning on the active sensors when the fighters get into range.

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Offline Nathan_

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #9 on: July 04, 2012, 12:30:13 PM »
I build size 10-20 active sensors for my sensor craft/PDCs, size 1 sensors for warships who I want a backup on, size 50 passives for my intelligence cruisers, and smaller than 1 for the occasional fighter. typically res 1 or res 100.  I tried out size 50 active sensors but it just seems like a waste.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #10 on: July 04, 2012, 01:40:30 PM »
I obviously seem to have a much different view on the sensors than most... ;)

My surveillance Cruiser (at 42kt) have one size 48 resolution 360 for a gigantic range to detect enemy capital ships and one size 24 resolution 120 for smaller escort ships.

My recon frigate has one size 12 resolution 120 for detecting escorts and above and one size 6 resolution 20 for smaller crafts, these ships are pretty common and weighs in at about 3500-4000 tones.  

Each of my Cruisers (from 35kt and up 65kt) also have at least one Raptor recon craft that has a size 6 resolution 5 and a size 3 resolution 1 sensor. My larger cruisers also have wide area search sensors at size 18-24 with resolution 120-240 (on different ships obviously). The larger cruisers also have fighter hangars and a few dedicated smaller recon crafts, these usually have search patterns at either resolution 120 or 5 depending on what they are needed for.

This is only my active sensors... most crafts also have passive sensors in the sizes of up to 12.

I'm wasting allot of effort into knowing exactly where my enemy is and I like to completely dictate the terms of the battle. I feel that it is easier for me to bring more guns to bear at the right target at the right time and doing so with less total guns overall.
« Last Edit: July 04, 2012, 03:46:23 PM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Rabid_Cog

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #11 on: July 08, 2012, 02:41:48 AM »
I make sure every armed vessel (larger than a fighter) carries at least a basic size 1 sensor package, usually of resolution 50 or 100, with a normal large sensor for a command/intel ship. Just because it really sucks if one of your ships is caught away from another sensor vessel and cannot even defend itself at point blank range because it has no active sensor.

For larger sensors, I find a size 20 or so res 1 sensor gives me sufficient detection range for missiles and is fit on all my larger escort vessels. Some redundancy is a good thing when it comes to surviving a missile strike. A similar sized res 200 fulfills all my capital ship detection requirements at my low tech levels.
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Offline fflaguna

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #12 on: July 26, 2012, 03:20:48 AM »
Every vessel greater than 1000 tons gets a size-1 civilian EM, Thermal, and Active sensor. Even the civilian ships get all these, since they can take size 1. There is no reason not to spend ~150 tons on ensuring your ship is covered in contingency cases. For civilian ships, it also means you get intelligence on enemy ships if they ever come into contact.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #13 on: December 22, 2012, 04:29:00 PM »
Old topic but still on the first page so I would like to compliment my own post above...

Since I have been playing allot lately my sensor configuration has changed quite considerably.

In my last game that was a test campaign with three factions (all played by my self) who fought pretty hard with each other. I did some testing with a few different tactics. The one that seemed coming out on top was smaller recon platforms that flew independently from the main strike group, thus trying to keep the strike group hidden as long as possible... perhaps even after they fired their missiles.

The main strategies that I currently will try to employ in my current campaign with my human faction is a multi layered sensor network using different platforms.

One ship will be a surveillance and command & communication frigate type of ship. It will have a powerful engine with as much reduction to thermal that research will allow. It will mainly have large Thermal and EM passive sensors and a 2000 ton hangar bay. In the hangar the ship will carry a wide array of recon and scout vessels from sizes of 250-750 tons. These vessels will mainly carry active scanners who will follow and guide any missiles toward their targets from any group within range. Missile ranges should in most cases be designed to be way longer than enemy active scanner ranges.

This tactic require more micromanagement to pull of but I find it fun. It works extremely effectively against the AI, almost too well. Against a human opponent it is much harder since the enemy will adapt and start sending interceptors and/or escort ships after your scouts which you in turn must defend with your own interceptor and escorts.

Against the AI you can usually sneak up and paint a target with a really low resolution active scanner without even being detected. Works even better if you focus research into EM technology. EM technology is really key when going with this tactic.

On my larger ships I only put smaller backup sensors with relatively low resolutions so they are not detected by passive EM as easy. In many instances a larger resolution 1 and 5 sensor is all they get. Almost every ship also carry a hangar of at least 250-500 tons with a craft carrying a larger resolution scanner such as 120. So they can launch this and paint a target if they really need to.

My escort destroyers/cruisers also have hangars with smaller crafts, but these carry resolution 1 scanners. The escorts themselves only have basic resolution 1 scanners, usually a size five. Each small craft also carry a size five resolution 1 scanner.
Several ships in a task-group can now send out their smaller crafts and extend the missile detection range in the direction of a threat vector. The major drawback is of course that I need to know the enemy is shooting at me and not shooting from multiple direction at the same time.

The major benefit with smaller more numerous active sensors is cheap research and lower maintenance cost (since crafts in hangars don't cost you any maintenance and sensor are very expensive per tonnage, hangars are not). Small fighter crafts is also quite easy to replace when new technology is available and the ships do not necessarily have to be refitted to get easy access to better sensor technology.

The main drawback with larger active scanners (especially at higher resolutions) is that passive EM scanners will detect them at very huge distances, much further than their scanning ranges. So, such battle groups will tend to be very vulnerable to long range missile and/or fighter strikes. It will also draw the attention of enemy recon crafts that will scan the battle group and the enemy can then assess the threat and respond accordingly.

In my opinion (especially in a human versus human game) knowing where the enemy is and their strength is the most important thing while you manage to hide your own strength and whereabouts.


So, to sum it up....

I only build large passive sensors (size 20-50) and fit these to large capital ships and smaller surveillance ships. Resolution 1 and 5 will get decent sizes (around 8-12) on medium and large capital ships while smaller (around 3-6) on escorts and early warning crafts. Larger resolution scanners is only fitted on smaller crafts whose job it is to illuminate potential targets or just scan them to assess their strength. My recon usually use either resolution 20 or between 80-120 resolution scanners (depends on the composition of the enemies escort ships).
« Last Edit: December 22, 2012, 04:33:36 PM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline jseah (OP)

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Re: Active Sensor Design
« Reply #14 on: December 26, 2012, 09:21:02 PM »
What are the ranges you get on your small scanners?  Won't a fleet with active sensor range enough to find them still shoot down your scout platforms?

FYI a size 50 res 500ton sensor should be roughly the same range as your size 5 res 6000ton sensor at equivalent tech, they probably can launch on your platforms.