Why do larger ships require larger sensors?

Zeropathic

Z
Now, the Sidewinder gets by on sensors weighing less than a ton. The Imperial Clipper (a bug allowing it to equip sensors smaller than class 5 not withstanding, which I have reported) is fitted with sensors weighing around 20 tons. While the 20-ton sensors seem to have an edge in range, it's an extremely small one.

Why does one ship require sensors twenty times as heavy to do the same thing? Not to mention the Anaconda with the B8 sensor weighing as much as 256 tons.
 

xDreadnoughtx

X
Zeropathic said:
Now, the Sidewinder gets by on sensors weighing less than a ton. The Imperial Clipper (a bug allowing it to equip sensors smaller than class 5 not withstanding, which I have reported) is fitted with sensors weighing around 20 tons. While the 20-ton sensors seem to have an edge in range, it's an extremely small one.

Why does one ship require sensors twenty times as heavy to do the same thing? Not to mention the Anaconda with the B8 sensor weighing as much as 256 tons.
Click to expand...

Oh, I don't know.

Let's say hull mass interference handwavium?
;)
 

heartorhead

heartorhead
Just to don't make big ships OP ;)

Only reason which comes on mind is that sensor module is not only the scanner but sensors around the ship that detect impacts (colisions) etc. But even then sensor is a small thing (like parking assist in a car) that does not have to weight tons.
 

Shanaeri

Shanaeri
I've wondered this also. Maybe there is more mass and area to exclude from the scans? Pretty poor computer power in 3301 though, as witnessed by the docking computer taking up so much space for such an unreliable function ;)
 

Karaaz

K
Let's just say it's because of the massive interference of the larger ship's systems. It's all metaphysics and game balancing anyway.

If I can accept my Sidewinder in a vacuum being unable to yaw better than it pitches (it really should, with thrusters further from the center of mass), I can accept large sensors on large ships.
 

Daneelas

Daneelas
This issue somehow [slightly] upsets me as well. For me, one of the nicer aspects of ED (as it was the case for me about Frontier and FFE) is realism. I love the presence of 400B stars, realistic star systems, somehow proper lasers, lack of artificial gravity etc.

But when I think about a 250 ton sensor basically doing the same task as a 1 ton sensor just to balance the gameplay, I am sometimes feeling "meh".

Do not get me wrong. This doesn't make me hate the game, I love it. But a bit more attention to realism and these kinds of details would make me love this game even more.

I imagine game design is something quite hard and fun factor is more important than "realism", but still I think whether it would be possible to balance the game without designs similar to this sensor issue.
 

Thomas Jefferson Jones

Thomas Jefferson Jones
alpermat said:
This issue somehow [slightly] upsets me as well. For me, one of the nicer aspects of ED (as it was the case for me about Frontier and FFE) is realism. I love the presence of 400B stars, realistic star systems, somehow proper lasers, lack of artificial gravity etc.
Click to expand...

In the case of artificial gravity they're basically just namechecking it, - our pilots wouldn't survive without some sort of inertial dampening, which is not part of FD's tech lore. I imagine when ship-exploration is implemented we won't get smashed into goo while floating around our maneuvering ships either.

And can you imagine the weird gravitational forces present across most of a Coriolis' exterior buildings? Even if you consider the buildings being constructed 'upside down' the shifting forces everywhere except the area lined up with the station's center of rotation would need gimballed floors, or people content with the furniture sliding back and forth all over the flat...

So we just gotta let it go.
 

Chevy66

C
sensor arrays covering the whole ship, extra sensors for turret hardpoints, sensors for point defence, all sorts of made up reasons :D
 

mdlman

M
Because there is no coherent design under the hood which allows ships to be properly balanced. There is no apparent rhyme or reason. Just accept that all things in elite are arbitrary unconnected items and don't hurt your head trying to find the logic.

Ships seem to be done backwards, starting with the result they want and everything shoehorned in (with iteravtive changes) rather than having an underlying system where you decide on point vales for components.

It's why fuel costs more for some ships (per ton of fuel) and why wear and tear is all over the place, IMO.
 

Simon Darkstep

Simon Darkstep
I'd love to turn this into a feature request, that larger sensors and avionics systems start to include additional capabilities.

I don't believe it would be game breaking to have large sensors with a frameshift-range telescope, for example, or to retain already-identified target information as long as it's in the same island.
 
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