How exactly does one do ELINT vs. sensors?

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

I've got aliens. Probably spoilers, since they're a couple large apparently stationary craft parked over a mostly empty world on year 18 of the game.

My scout fighter found they had a GPS 189 signature. I want to know more about that, naturally.

So I built a <1000 ton ELINT ship and sent it in close enough to get the planet inside the "vs ELINT signature 100" circle on the map. As others have reported, this doesn't result in the alien ships showing up as contacts. (The ship has no actual sensors - it's just an ELINT package with propulsion and crew compartments.)

I've had it hang around for a few days now. I can't figure out how to tell whether it's actually doing anything.

I could move it even closer and try to get the colony in range, since I know where there's a display for population intelligence points. But I'm afraid that experiment might be prematurely terminated by irritable alien defenders.


Can anyone cast some light on what's happening and what I need to do?

[skoormit]

I've got aliens. Probably spoilers, since they're a couple large apparently stationary craft parked over a mostly empty world on year 18 of the game.

My scout fighter found they had a GPS 189 signature. I want to know more about that, naturally.

So I built a <1000 ton ELINT ship and sent it in close enough to get the planet inside the "vs ELINT signature 100" circle on the map. As others have reported, this doesn't result in the alien ships showing up as contacts. (The ship has no actual sensors - it's just an ELINT package with propulsion and crew compartments.)

I've had it hang around for a few days now. I can't figure out how to tell whether it's actually doing anything.

I could move it even closer and try to get the colony in range, since I know where there's a display for population intelligence points. But I'm afraid that experiment might be prematurely terminated by irritable alien defenders.


Can anyone cast some light on what's happening and what I need to do?

Currently ELINT modules don't actually work as sensors.
If you put an actual EM sensor on the ship, you will start to gain intel points on any EM contacts in range.
(Look on the various tabs of the Intel window to see how many points you have accrued vs a given population or scanner type.)

Since this is a bug, I work around it by having one design that I build, which does not have an EM sensor, and when my ship gets to where I want it, I SM-add a different design that contains a sensor with the same power, and SM-delete the original ship. Good enough for now. Remember to swap your commander before deleting the ship.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

So 'they don't work as sensors' seems like burying the lede to me - the more important fact I'm seeing is that you can get intel without needing to care about the (broken) ELINT strength, because another EM sensor can do the detecting in their stead?

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

So 'they don't work as sensors' seems like burying the lede to me - the more important fact I'm seeing is that you can get intel without needing to care about the (broken) ELINT strength, because another EM sensor can do the detecting in their stead?

You need a working EM sensor paired with the ELINT sensor to make it work.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

So I SM-edited in my current compact EM sensor (and took out a big chunk of the fuel allowance) on my intel ship. It detects the targets. I'm still not seeing any evidence of intel points accruing after a few (grindingly slow) days of time advancing. The wiki claims the expectation should be one point per day?

The population intel points are still reporting zero. I'm not sure where I'd even find the points counted against "AS #8", but I'm certainly not seeing any reported.

Going to try flying away and then flying back, though I would be a bit surprised if that helped.

[Demakustus]

I didn't have any troubles using the ELINT sensors, but I've started some testing, just to be sure. And oh boy you're right, the ELINT sensor doesn't detect anything on its own. But if you detect the thermal signature, it will start detecting the EM signatures as well. Active sensor doesn't help, it needs to be passive (EM or thermal, either of them seem to work).
My ELINT ships have thermal sensors, that is why it worked with populations, but I probably missed many active sensor contacts when I didn't detect their thermal signatures. Thanks for pointing that out.

I agree, that we could use an indicator of intelligence points about sensors. And some better way to indicate that an ELINT sensor is gathering data from a source, would be useful. Perhaps just some text under the population's readout, that it's being monitored. It's just slightly better than checking it for intelligence points change, so probably a different approach would be better - maybe a toggle on the map view, to put a suffix after the EM source, something like EM 40 321 ELINT-5 (with the sensor sensitivity after the dash). Both would probably be best. Maybe someone has a better idea?

So I SM-edited in my current compact EM sensor (and took out a big chunk of the fuel allowance) on my intel ship. It detects the targets. I'm still not seeing any evidence of intel points accruing after a few (grindingly slow) days of time advancing. The wiki claims the expectation should be one point per day?

The population intel points are still reporting zero. I'm not sure where I'd even find the points counted against "AS #8", but I'm certainly not seeing any reported.

Going to try flying away and then flying back, though I would be a bit surprised if that helped.

I've tested that SM-ing sensors on a ship in orbit, I didn't need to move it around. If your ship has only passive thermal sensors and the ELINT sensor, and you detect the EM signature of something, that probably means you're getting the intelligence data from it.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

I've tested that SM-ing sensors on a ship in orbit, I didn't need to move it around. If your ship has only passive thermal sensors and the ELINT sensor, and you detect the EM signature of something, that probably means you're getting the intelligence data from it.

My ship isn't in orbit. If it was in orbit, it would almost certainly be a debris field on account of being at range zero of 30,000 tons of alien hulls. I wouldn't think that's making the difference, but who knows.


I put an EM sensor on my ship, not a thermal sensor. (The targets have very little thermal signature and my thermal sensors are much more primitive.) And the result appears to be that I got no intelligence at all. I can't be certain about sensor intel since there seems to be no display of it, but I also remained at 0 for the population intel.

Has anyone tested collecting intel from spoiler populations? It occurs to me that they might have 100% xenophobia and thus never produce any points.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

Update: I sent the intel boat back (having quit the game overnight the turn times are much improved, not sure what's up with that) and in a few more days of dogging the planetary orbit, the sensors are now identified as resolution 1. So that worked!

Still 0 population intel reported, so I'm definitely leaning towards the absolute xenophobe hypothesis on that.


...Also this means they've been watching my intel boat sit 4m km away for their planet for these many days and done nothing about it at all. That seems a bit odd, but who knows with these aliens.

[skoormit]

...Also this means they've been watching my intel boat sit 4m km away for their planet for these many days and done nothing about it at all. That seems a bit odd, but who knows with these aliens.

Maybe not. Just because you detected their sensor does not mean that they detected you.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

...Also this means they've been watching my intel boat sit 4m km away for their planet for these many days and done nothing about it at all. That seems a bit odd, but who knows with these aliens.

Maybe not. Just because you detected their sensor does not mean that they detected you.

It doesn't necessarily. But when I know the strength of the sensor and its resolution, the only missing factor for determining the range is the sensitivity. It was very safe to assume that the alien sensor sensitivity was not vastly inferior to my own. So knowing that their sensor resolution was finer than my ship, it was clear that I'd been on their screens.


Two expeditions, one spinal laser based decommissioning, and a boarding action later, I know why they didn't do anything, or at least part of why - they were orbital fortresses, and their longest-ranged armament was AMMs with <3 mkm range. And there's no sign that they had any mobile units to call on. So they really couldn't have touched my intel ship.

[davidb86]

All's well that ends well