Posted by: ZimRathbone
« on: April 06, 2010, 08:06:51 AM »Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I must admit I never really liked the new designations of the sensors, as Thermal sensors should in fact be Electromagmetic Sensors (with a limited wavelenth) - I'd prefer the "Thermals" to be EM & the EMs to be GPDs - you still have a prob;em in that theyre both FTL in the game, but we've been handwaving that one since we began!Quote from: "The Shadow"EM sensors are used to detect hostile sensor emissions so it stands to reason they would be the receiver portion of your own active sensors. It's just the name that is misleading. They used to be called gravitational pulse detection (GPD) sensors but they were combined with EM sensors (which were used only for detection of shields and planetary populations) to simplify things a little. The EM label stuck rather than the GPD label. The GPD lable is more accurate but EM sensors is more real-world-familiar for new playersQuote from: "sloanjh"EM isn't really EM - it's passive gravimetric (or gravitic or whatever you want to call it). In other words, it is the passive equivalent of the active sensors.Huh! That's definitely not obvious, but it makes me feel better to know. Presumably the reason why it isn't used in Aurora is that the gravitic "EM" is so much better. It seems to be superluminal for one thing, but I'm not EVEN gonna open up that can of worms!)
Steve