Newcomer / Intro What is the point of the radar?

Damnaged

D
When moving with the frame drive, it shows icons for various things.
When moving at sublight, it's just a blank circle with nothing on it.
I'm not understanding how to use it when it only works when travelling at 1,290c.
I'm currently trying to track down a signal source for a courier mission. When I'm travelling at 1c+, it tells me the signal is detected. When I slow down to find and orient myself to the signal, there's just nothing anywhere. Even the icons on the main screen are gone so I'm left just looking at stars and hoping I pick the right one (1 in 10,295,299 chances).
 

Morbad

Morbad
It's always working, but most sensor contacts are only shown on the main sensor display when they are within a certain time-distance (40 seconds for ships) for example based on current velocities.

When trying to find a signal source or the like, you want to target it in your navigation pane.
 

varonica

varonica
RADAR, moves at light speed and follows the normal laws of spherical signal degradation, ie; every time you double the distance you reduce signal strength by four times, so to effectively use radar you need to be relatively close to objects. Of course it's a game and we can assume there's some sort of FTL magic involved when you are actually traveling FTL so you can detect objects a law way away, some sort of FTL pulse like the system honk, but once you drop below 1c that no longer works, so you are stuck with actual physics.

But as Morbad says, even if you can't see the signal source on your radar below 1c it will still be present in your nav panel no matter how far away, well as long as it is in the same system, radar sublight speeds is only good for really close objects, like enemy ships trying to blow you up, mats for scooping, when you drop into a wreckage site or NSP it works fine.
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
I don't ever recall a courier mission asking me to go to a signal source....

Missions will usually give you a target system. When you get there use the FSS to resolve all signals in the system. Mission relevant signals are usually orange in the FSS. Alternately scan the system nav beacon - that will also resolve all (current) signals.

With signals resolved you should be able to locate your mission signal source in the Nav Panel (and lock onto it).

This is good for various things besides doing missions....
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Radar = the small circle up and left of the
Scanner = the big circle in the center of the command console

Radar shows the (relative) direction to your selected target.
Scanner shows targets within scanner range, which varies with speed in Supercruise. In real space, scanner range is determined by various factors, including your sensor rating, any sensor engineering and the target's heat signature.

Neither of these two will show you a mission signal source (SS). A SS is a region in space inside a system. You can usually find it by either scanning that system's navigation beacon or FSSing that system. If you're close enough, it will also pop up on its own. In either case, you'll see it listed in the navigation panel (left side HUD), highlighted in blue if you use the default colour scheme.

Once you've dropped inside the mission SS, you should (usually) see whatever you're supposed to pick up on your scanner. Be aware, though - if you fly out of scanner range (e.g. because some baddies turned up), it will be very hard to find it again - better just return to SC and look for another mission SS (they will respawn as long as you haven't picked up all mission items).
That popup telling you that the mission SS was detected is 🐮:poop:, though. Ignore it.
 

Habu2u

Habu2u
Check out the game manual. It's old and a lot of it is outdated, but a lot of basic information is still valid, such as how the sensor disk works and what it displays. The link to the manual is in the upper right of the launcher, under your name.
 

Markov Chaney

M
Stand back, because I am going to actually address OPs question rather than shooting holes in it...

The scanner has three things you need to know.
1. It does different things at different times, and that's all designed to ensure it's useful for something 90% of the time. If it's blank a lot of the time that suggests there's something up with yours. Which brings me neatly onto...
2. It's logarithmic by default - which means the centre of the scanner will show you a lot of detail about how close and far things are when scooping and such, but the edge of the scanner can still also show you things that are well out of the range of one bunch of max boost.
3. "By default" - you can override it here: Ship menu -> Pilot Preferences -> Sensor Scale Type

(there is no thing called a radar - and the lore reason for that is like people already said, kinda hard to do radio ranging when the entire way you move the ship involves screwing up the way radio travels through free space, on purpose.)
 

BetaToaster

B
Also, when at sublight speeds, the range at which other ships get detected depends on your "Sensors" core internal module.
If you're doing combat, try an A-rated one. Otherwise, D-rated is short, but probably sufficient. Feel free to experiment, tho, you can always sell modules back for the full purchase price.

If/when you have access to engineering, lightweight A and long-range D offer comparable performance with a different weight/power tradeoff, and are usually considered the sweet spot for general-purpose ships. Long-range A is for long range combat builds. Explorers use lightweight D. I've recently switched to wide-angle D on traders, to collect scans while hauling.
 
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