Posted by: Sharp
« on: July 23, 2014, 12:13:26 PM »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.