Then we are back to the "hypothetical" idea with the missile.

If they added a second missile tech identical to the one we have with the only difference the new missiles do twice the damage. You would be OK with that because it is a choice whether you use it or not.

Comon... you don't balance game feature like that... you simply don't.

It is a similar problem... thus "hypothetical"

Oh... and please give a serious answer to one of two options.

1. Why should there not be a good game balance between ship and station sensors?

2. How do you balance ship and station sensors?

With that I rest my case and turn the judgement over to Stardock development team to decide for themselves. As I said... I can live with restricting my own game play for my own enjoyment.

1/2 There should be, the station should have much more powerful sensors than ship sensors, like 5 or 6 times the range and I would probably use starbase sensors at that point.

Regarding your last statement if you can play the way you want without any issue, why are you arguing so hard to change the way everyone else does?

If you are exploring out of range of your starbases it makes perfect sense to have a few ships stacked with a few sensor modules.

Because the choice is up to the player,  not the damned Nazi Gestapo Gamers!

The sensors arguably fall into the realm of believability when you consider that the tech they are using is 300 years in the future. It does not break any laws of physics that I am aware of. It is just beyond our ability to do it today.

It is a science fiction game and we are always asked to turn off our denial of believability to some extent. The very premise of the game, the hyperdrive, breaks laws of physics more than the possibility of long range scanning. When you consider that we are in the process of cataloging every comet and asteroid in the solar system at this moment, who is to say what is possible in the future. We already know more about surrounding stars and their planets than we are allowed to know in the game.

Never mind all that, the devs will tell you quick that they value game play over reality every time and the sensors are about game play.

The most important thing, and my, by god, last word on the subject: 

If they choose to leave the game as is, you will not be forced to play our way, you will just have an option.

If they change it, those of us who prefer to use the sensors will have an element of our enjoyment taken away. We will be forced to play the game your way, and there will be no option.

That's just wrong.

Actually I think it's just a bit over powered at the start on bigger maps, really helps you find those important first colonies.

And personally I'm fine with sensors as is.

I will provide you with numbers because you asked, but I will not endorse any particular balance argument. It is my opinion that sensor ships are perhaps a bit on the strong side but not an issue of the proportions which you and several others in this thread appear to believe. Targeted exploration with fast scouts is still a viable alternative to wide-area exploration with sensor ships.

Now, algebra:

A ship with sensor range R can see a number of tiles N at the start of its turn, where

N = 3*R^2 + 3*R

not including the tile in which the ship resides. A ship with sensor range R can reveal a further number of tiles Q with each move action, where

Q = 2*R + 1

though it should be remembered that Q is not the same as the number of tiles for which the ship's movement has revealed new information. A ship with sensor range R and move actions per turn M can therefore provide you with current knowledge of up to T tiles per turn, where

T = N + Q*M

It should, however, be noted that the information thus obtained is not guaranteed to be unique, nor is it guaranteed to be new. Assuming a static map, the maximum amount of new information a ship with a sensor range of R can obtain per turn is Q*M. If you have two ships with sensor ranges R1 and R2 and movement per turn M1 and M2, then if N1 > N2 but M1*Q1 < M2*Q2, it will take t turns for ship 2 to surpass ship 1 in terms of number of tiles revealed, where

t = (N1 - N2) / (Q2*M2 - Q1*M1)

It should be remembered that this is not, strictly speaking, a good measure of how useful a ship is for exploratory purposes, as this doesn't evaulate whether or not the tiles revealed are tiles that you already had all the desired information about or not.

A ship (ship 1) with M1 moves per turn, R1 sensor range, and an x turn head start on some ship 2 with M2 moves per turn and R2 sensor range can begin exploring tiles that ship 2 cannot reach yet after y turns, where

y = (R1 - R2 - x*M2) / (M2 - M1)

under the assumption that both vessels are moving along the same path and started from the same point. To put this in perspective, the survey ship that you start with on turn 0 can by turn 8 or so begin exploring areas that a sensor ship which was rushed on turn 0 and became available on turn 1 cannot yet reach, while the scout ship you start with on turn 0 can do so by about turn 18, assuming that the scout/survey ship and the sensor ship both follow the same path. Movement bonuses can shift the time slightly in a way which favors the faster ships, and being smart and not sending your ships all out along the same path will also help out (a move-2 ship with 4 sensor range which you start with will begin to reveal areas which the sensor range 24 sensor ship you got on turn 1 didn't cover starting on turn 10 if the two ships are traveling on paths which are sufficiently different from one another, i.e. the scout is not paralleling the sensor ship from well within the sensor ship's sensor range; speed bonuses will improve this somewhat).

The big sensor ships are good at exploring lots of area quickly, but they're not necessarily that good at exploring the right areas quickly. You know roughly where the planets are because you know where the stars spawned, and if those stars are more than a certain distance away you'll find out what's there more rapidly by using a faster scout ship with more limited sensor range than you will by using a slower scout ship with a larger sensor range. Sensor ships are therefore good for exploring regions close to the shipyard rapidly and for efficiently searching large regions, whereas fast scout ships are of greater value for rapidly searching distant areas of limited size which are expected to contain something of value (e.g. the area around a known distant star).

Well, it was not quite the math I was asking for but, sure... a fast scout can reach stars further out faster that is a no brainier. But a transport can be both reasonable fast and have great sensor at the same time so that point is moot and I really are not arguing the scouting validity here. I can easily have a transport with 20-30 sensor range 6-10 speed and a good range in a few turns from start by quickly researching interstellar traveling. It makes scouting even on insane maps trivial for colonization purposes.

I was more asking about how to balance sensors of stations and ships so they both are an option to use.

Here is a more simple way to put it with numbers.

A tiny ship with just three basic navigational sensors cost 40 manufacturing points to build and have a maintenance of 0 and a scanning range 8, a basic station has 5 scanning range.

With interstellar traveling you get the perimeter module for bases that give them +3 sensor range of a total of 8 for the cost of a constructor at a manufacturing cost of about 80-120 (depends how you design them). At the same time you can now build tiny sensor ships with three sensors at 8-11 range for 40 manufacturing for no maintenance cost.

You now get a sensor platform that is cheaper, have better sensor performance AND is mobile?!?

This is the sort of balance I'm debating here...

The easiest way of you like to mod in a diminishing return of sensors is to make each sensor a one per ship only. Then you can only place one of each category on a ship which essentially becomes a diminishing return of sensor strength. That and boosting the sensor strength of stations... pretty easy to do with a mod if you really like to. I have no doubt someone will make some kind of "realism" mod that make such a change in mechanics for both sensors and engines.

It does however not address the official game and the balance between station and ship sensors.

Because ships in a fleet would have more than one sensor that would cover more space. Just like real life sensor arrays do.

So what? An AWACS is cheaper than an airfield and generally offers better radar coverage than a ground-based installation. The only issue you bring up that bothers me at all is the lack of a maintenance cost, which I view as more a problem of tiny ships than of the sensor ships versus space station sensors question specifically.

Also, if you park a dedicated sensor vessel on a space station, you're reducing the size of the fleet you can park there by the logistical cost of that sensor ship. It's not much of a trade off against building constructors to upgrade the station's scanners, but it's there.

There are real-life sensor arrays which all get mounted on a single vessel, you know. They tend to be rather more common than the arrays mounted on several separate vessels all working together, too.

One of the reasons to increase a space station's sensory range is to get alerted more sooner in the case of hostiles coming closer.

Now the problem here is that a ship can do this better in every single regard than what's offered by the space station module. And you don't have to park that ship directly onto the station, in many cases you can anticipate from where the enemy will near so your sensorship can move a few hexes into that direction further increasing your efficiency. Or you let it circle around that station. No logistical points taken away at all. 

You can also withdraw that ship if the hostiles are too strong and will destroy that station, upgrade it to a better design etc... practically these ships only need to be placed at the border of your territory, and also, only if a threat could arise from there. If you're expanding these ships will move with you while modules on spacestations stay and have to be rebuild on new stations. The latter is much more expensive to do. If you factor that in you might as well build a sensorship based on a bigger vessel that totally outclasses any starbase module.

There's just so many additional possibilites, there simply is no reason why anyone would attach an inferior sensor module on a spacestation.....