Ship Sensors

Federation starships and shuttlecraft are fitted with a suite of scanners and sensors. Scanners are active--they send out faster-than-light subspace pulses and analyze the reflection. Sensors are passive--they analyze incoming particles and radiation. What follows is the type of information that could be gathered by someone using the Electronic Operations (Sensors) skill.

This page is a work in progress.

Federation Starships

FEDERATION STARSHIP SCANNING/SENSING IN ACTIVE MODE

kilometers	lightyears	Parsecs	Potential Information
5x10^15	500	150	number of ships and speed
1 000 000	0.7		general size of ship
500 000	0.3		shield status, fire control active, silhouette, and warp signature
200 000	0.13		power utilization curve
140 000			almost all facing weapons can be identified
80 000			interior specs
60 000			life form readings, weapon arming status

It generally takes about 20 seconds to complete a scan around a vessel. Taking extra time improves results by one range category. [GSS 44]

Federation Shuttlecraft/Fighters

FEDERATION SHUTTLE SCANNING/SENSING IN ACTIVE MODE

kilometers	lightyears	Potential Information
2x10^13	2	number of ships and speed
350 000		general size of ship
200 000		shield status, fire control active, silhouette, and warp signature
60 000		power utilization curve
40 000		almost all facing weapons can be identified
10 000		interior specs
2 000		life form readings, weapon arming status

It generally takes about 20 seconds to complete a scan around a vessel. Taking extra time improves results by one range category. [GSS 44]

Situational Modifiers

• If the scanning/sensing ship is in passive mode, decrease ranges by 75%.
• If the ship being scanned is being stealthy (1.), decrease ranges by 33%
• If the ship being detected is running silent (2.), decrease ranges by 50%.

1. A ship is being stealthy if it is in passive mode, minimum shields, warp 2 or less, and has no weapons armed. Violating any one of these conditions means the ship is no longer being stealthy.
2. A ship is running silent if its sensors/scanners, shields, and weapons are down and it is traveling at sublight speeds.

Discussion

An interesting thing to do is compare the starship range/shuttle range ratio:

Starship to Shuttle Range Ratios

Ratio	Potential Information
250	number of ships and speed
3	general size of ship
2.5	shield status, fire control active, silhouette, and warp signature
3	power utilization curve
3.5	almost all facing weapons can be identified
8	interior specs
30	life form readings, weapon arming status

Note that a starship's sensor/scanner range is about 3x that of a shuttle. Why does it breaks down at extreme ranges?

Q: Why are starships superior at long ranges?
A: At long ranges, sensing/scanning is primarily limited by the linear size and collecting area of a simple course detector. Starships are much bigger than shuttles.

Q: Why are starships superior at short ranges?
A: At short ranges, a greater variety of materials can potentially be searched for (e.g. biosigns, superscience materials, esoteric particle emissions). Detecting these is more a matter of bringing the fullest spectrum of sensor/scanner suites to bear. Starships have them, shuttles don't.

See Also

Warp Factors

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