Dude there has about 6 post on this look for them if you want more INFO!! It would also help to Watch the Streams on Friday or catch them later on youtube!

EDIT This post will not be received well.

Really? It's required? You just gotta have a single ship that sees out 120 hexes, you couldn't possibly manage say a handful of ships that have a vision of 25 instead?

Are you sure you heard the devs talking about doing for the AI? I'm pretty sure they just know where stuff is, their constructor and colony ships b-line it for resources/planets without ever having explored there before.

And I got news for ya, not every map is insane in size so what works for it shouldn't ruin the game for any other size.

I don't recall him every saying that. However, I do recall him stating in the last dev stream that they are going to implement diminishing returns for sensors.

Oh noes, your 200 ship empire fleet might need more than 1 scout!!

No

Well, for one thing it's a multiplayer game too. But even if it was SP only, I wouldn't agree.

People like games to be balanced. When one option is overwhelmingly better than others (like in this case, one sensor barge is way better than 5+ tiny scouts) picking other options is just silly. I don't doubt most people use sensor stacking - it feels dumb not to when the option is there; that doesn't make it a good mechanic.

In this case, we're talking about a 4X game; eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. Generally in that order. The current sensor mechanics render that exploration stage moot for all but the larger maps. It hurts gameplay by taking away what I would expect to be a game mechanic - choosing where to scout, how many scouts to build, etc.

Let's say it was another feature: Let's say Kinetics did 20x the damage of beams, cost half the price, and had the same mass requirement. At the high end, Kinetic would do so much damage that 1 weapon is enough to 1-shot a Medium ship. Is that a problem?

I think it would be. It would eclipse beams - and what if I like beams? Well tough luck. 

Most people who see that situation would say 'eh, super kinetics are fun, but we really should keep the different game options in line with eachother'. So, either buff up all other weapons (this brings its own problems) or nerf kinetics. Such is life.

It's really not increasing my enjoyment of the game, and I (and a lot of people, actually) think less powerful sensor stacking would be more fun.

And once it's changed, it won't have to hurt you. You don't even need a mod! Just open the console and type 'fow'. You clearly don't like having to deal with the Fog of War anyway. I don't see why anyone would have a problem with using a console command in a solo game, after all.

Shouldn't the FoW just be off by default? It's mostly annoying.

See... I think if you can understand why the FoW shouldn't just be off automatically, you're 90% there to understanding why people don't like sensor barges.

Pretty much. Ship range already does, so there's no real reason that sensors don't. 

The fact is, sensor stacking is OP; no-one argues with that. No ship should ever reveal the entire map by itself (which a huge sensor barge does even on insane maps). But it shouldn't simply be abolished, as that's breaking the game on one setting to fix the game on another. Very, very large maps are so big that the default sensor ranges are meaninglessly tiny and you MUST stack at least a few sensors on early ships; a game-breaking number of sensors on a low-tech explorer in a tiny map is my usual lowbie scout. On my present map, I have half a dozen medium-hull, 49-range sensor boats dotted around my influence just to have full sensor coverage of my own empire. That's why just disallowing stacking outright is not the answer.

Diminishing returns combined with map size scaling would be a good way to go about it. The diminishing return means that sensor stacking ceases to be viable, and the map size scaling would prevent it screwing over one map size or another.

True; however, I'd be careful about catering much for a map size that the game itself categorizes as insanity.

I don't agree that sensors should scale with map size.  (I'm all for diminishing returns, and have called for such since Day 0.)  Giant maps need to come with challenges that aren't necessarily as much of a pressing concern on the smaller maps, and the added need for a more populous sensor network is one such challenge.

Right on TurielD, I was about to say the exact same thing: people that don't understand enjoying a rewarding challenge and balanced game play use the word "nerf"

As I said in my first post; ship capacity shouldn't be the primary factor for sensor range. Sensor tech level makes sense to me but maybe another modifier based on map size is the solution. 

It would certainly be easiest to balance. While part of me agrees with Node that larger empires can afford to spend a lot more on building up their sensor network, the simple fact is building up and re-positioning sensor ships ISN'T FUN. It's mindless busywork. I'm not sure I'd want to see engines limited to 1 per ship (maybe just increase their mass a lot to make stacking impractical), but with sensors it makes sense.

Although I'd be fine with a cap on engines per ship (space empires still friggin rules) I don't really have a problem with the current system, it seems pretty balanced  (unlike sensors) they take up a fair amount of space and they get costly quick so if you do want a ship with tons of moves/turn it's going to take a lot longer to build and be far less effective in combat. It works for me. 

LOOK the dev team already said they will be adding Diminishing returns  to the sensors,....... the whiners got there way!!

Enough on this subject!!! Stop beating the dead horse!!!

Yes Franco they have and Paul said he will be doing more to them. Atlease that is the way I took what he said about it. Best I can guess I lost about 40% on each of my sensor boats I had. No since in having them if the are going to be nerf that bad!

It is easy to mod the sensors in ShipComponentsDef in a game file and plug it into your docs as a mod, (see below). I changed the range to 4 and the mass to 6. This is probably a little too much. You can build a sensor boat on turn one with about 35 range. I usually build one colony ship in addition to the starting colony ship so I get the 3 constructors. I upgrade the constructors to colony ships and then I build one sensor drone. I do not rush it usually. It only has 25 range and it will usually take 9-10 turns to build. I sometimes rush it about halfway for abour 1000 bc.

That is usually the only sensor boat I build until about T100. I might build a couple of more at that point.

Navigational sensors

<EffectType>SensorRangeMass</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
<Value>6</Value> (Was 8, you probably could leave this one as is)
</Stats>
<Stats>
<EffectType>SensorRange</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
<Value>4</Value> (Was 1)