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[Ansopedi]

Ssssorta?  It detects gravitational disturbances, in the same way that radar detects steel disturbances.  Actives and Radar both have to send out a ping to get a reading.

As an aside... what other sorts of EM signatures could be put out by a ship besides actives or shields? Is it only active systems that can be detected by EM, and if so, does this mean that stationary silent ships are pretty much invisible to all but actives?

Exactly. Add a high-end cloak and you can have passive sensor ships with pretty big sensors being only detected at <=6-missile-detection range. Sneak one of these into a system and you'll know whats going on till it breaks apart due to maintenance.

[Girlinhat]

Stealth is a possibility in this game.  Here's the breakdown:
Thermal signature is given off by colony populations and by engine thrust - default is 1 thermal per 1 thrust, but defensive systems let you reduce that.  A large engine throttled down to nearly nothing will consume extremely little fuel and produce extremely little thermal, allowing you to 'creep up' somewhat easily.

EM is given off by colony populations, active shields, and active sensors.  The strength of the shield and the strength of the active sensor will generate a larger signature.  This cannot be mitigated by any tech - if you want better shields/actives, then you're going to have a larger signature.

Actives detect mass of vessels, and the effective sensor mass can be mitigated using cloaking technology.  This functions similar to modern day radar-absorbing material.  You have a full sized jet, but only appears as a small owl on radar.

Additionally there is electronic warfare, ECM on a defending ship will reduce the attacking ship's active sensor power by a percentage when used against that particular ship.  If you have an ECM of 2, and they have an ECCM of 1, then you should have a 2/1 advantage and reduce their lock on range by half.  This doesn't help you avoid detection usually, but it does help you avoid fire.

That's how you can defend.  Thermal masking, lower speed, shields and sensors turned off.  But what do sensors help you see?
Thermal sensors will let you see colonies very easily, and will let you see any vessels that are moving around the system - particularly you'll get a good glimpse of all the ships in the system that are moving.

EM will let you see any ships with shields on (most are off by default, since shields burn fuel) and any ship with Actives on will shine like an EM beacon.  If you're being hunted or if there's active military patrols, your EM sensors will show what ships are currently looking to point their guns at you.

Actives are required to get a weapon lock and fire.  They really won't detect anything that you haven't already seen, but they're required to start firing.  Thermal signature might be detected across the whole system while active lock is only in the 10mil km range.  You shouldn't turn on Actives until you're prepared to fire.

My ending suggestions?  Thermal sensors are very important.  EM is good supplementary.  Actives mainly need increased power when you're anticipating incoming missiles - large ships are easy to spot, it's mainly good to be able to see missiles at long range and get your lasers firing on them as soon as possible.

[QuakeIV]

I usually roll with my actives on at all times.  IMO its a horrible idea to do anything else, but thats my own school of thought.  Typically I can sense things with actives before my passive stuff picks up on it, but I usually don't invest in large passive sensors, just rudimentary things.  Also I usually have a range of at least 130mkm or so, with a resolution of 2000-4000 tonnes.

Also, EM sensors can pick up colonies easily as well.

[iceball3]

Thank you girlinhat, now i can start developing sensors on a more mindful level. I think at this point i've researched like, six different sensor designs in anticipation of different uses but i keep confusing myself!

[iceball3]

Doublepost intended, i'm suddenly having a really big problem with civilian vessels. The were working fine earlier, moving infrastructure from one colony to another, though i canceled the supply/demand orders and replaced them with research lab components. They then started freaking out -

They've been doing this over a year now, and i'm getting rather frustrated having my timejumps interrupted by it. Using Clear Orders in the shipping line screen doesn't seem to help. Anyone know how to rectify this?

[Girlinhat]

Do you have and supply/demand orders that can't be fulfilled?  I had it to 'ship 10 terraformers' from earth to mars, and then set them to build.  The civilians didn't wait, immediately went to Earth, and complained there was nothing there.

[Kanil]

I'm getting kind of annoyed with my current game, but a couple questions before I start a new one.

Is there a way to limit the size of shipping lines? My shipping lines have about 140 ships, with a combined 6 million tons. Given that I have million+ ton freighters, and their "huge" ships are still smaller than my tiniest (175,000) freighters, I'd really like to see them build larger ships... alternatively, I'd be okay with them just not building ships at all and sparing me the lag generated by their paltry efforts. Is there something I can do to get either of those results?

The second question is related to the amount of jump points systems have. In my current game, I've explored 30 systems. 10 of them have had at least 5 jump points, with only one linking two existing systems together, and no dead ends. Just endless fanning out of systems. Is there a way to control the number of JPs systems have beyond just SMing them out of existence? The only options I see apparently don't work with real stars.

Spoiler: One of my test games produced this ridiculous map. (click to show/hide)

All those dead ends right outside Sol. Shame I can't seem to get such interesting maps in an actual game.

[Metalax]

Shipping lines will keep launching new ships as long as they have the funds to do so. Since version 6, there has been a system implemented so that when a new civilian ship is launched, a ship of 10 years or more age without orders will be retired. If I recall correctly if a civilian ship makes it to 25 years of age they will be retired regardless of their current orders. This does act to somewhat limit growth of the shipping lines in longer games. I believe it is also supposed to bias replacements towards the larger classes.

If you are still ending up with far too many civilian ships, you can impound some of them by grabbing them with a tractor beam equipped ship, which switches it to your ownership. You can then scrap it to get rid of it. It is easiest to do this when the ship is loading/unloading, although remember to unload what it was carrying before taking it off for scrap.

As for the jump points, I'm afraid it is pretty much random. If you use real stars then certain aspects of the system generation rules that you can set get overridden.

[iceball3]

Do you have and supply/demand orders that can't be fulfilled?  I had it to 'ship 10 terraformers' from earth to mars, and then set them to build.  The civilians didn't wait, immediately went to Earth, and complained there was nothing there.

I checked around a bit, and managed to find this random Supply 1000x infrastructure i must've put down at some point on earth's Humanoid Shark population. Apparently, there's so much segregation between species that they don't even use the same infrastructure even if it works out, huh. Racism!

[Girlinhat]

Racism against sharks.
Sharcism.

[iceball3]

Oh boy, possible frustration incoming. So i have a rather large multi year research tech that's part of the way complete taking place on sol. Meanwhile i sent some scrap ships to tear apart this wrecked vessel i found, and apparently downloaded some rather advanced chunk of tech data that would've seriously helped me proceed the aforementioned research.
Now the issue i'm having was, there was incidentally a single unmanned research facility in that system, due to ruins exploitation, and as a result, the game decides to download the data straight to the research facility...
I'm now drawing in a breath of frustration upon realizing that tech research progress (the research points) is completely independent between system bodies, or at the very least systems. So it gave me a chunk of research in ONLY a system that i have not even colonists in, and even then the research back in the main system is farther along than it.
Is there any way for me to move the tech points around or am i stuck with a uselessly wasted block of research data that would've seriously set me ahead otherwise?
If i can't move the data around, can wrecks be tractor beamed through jump gates, or tractored at all even?

[Girlinhat]

Try and SM it, because that sounds like something to simply debug and give yourself the tech for free

[iceball3]

Try and SM it, because that sounds like something to simply debug and give yourself the tech for free

I'm actually a bit worried about entering SM mode. Will i accidentally see spoilery information if i don't specifically request it?
In SM mode right now but trying to figure out how exactly i change the RP invested in a project

[Girlinhat]

Try and SM it, because that sounds like something to simply debug and give yourself the tech for free

I'm actually a bit worried about entering SM mode. Will i accidentally see spoilery information if i don't specifically request it?
In SM mode right now but trying to figure out how exactly i change the RP invested in a project

You can't change the RP investment, but you can 'instant' it.  So do a little math and figure "The artifact gave me x, my scientists have done y, so do I have it yet?"

Or just give it to yourself and say "fuck it, it's single player, next time I'll learn my lesson and handle technology correctly."

[iceball3]

Try and SM it, because that sounds like something to simply debug and give yourself the tech for free

I'm actually a bit worried about entering SM mode. Will i accidentally see spoilery information if i don't specifically request it?
In SM mode right now but trying to figure out how exactly i change the RP invested in a project

You can't change the RP investment, but you can 'instant' it.  So do a little math and figure "The artifact gave me x, my scientists have done y, so do I have it yet?"

Or just give it to yourself and say "fuck it, it's single player, next time I'll learn my lesson and handle technology correctly."

Can it really be handled correctly? By the looks of things, unless i can tractor a wreck through a jump point (which i'm not sure if i'm capable of or not) there's still the issue of being unable to actually do scavenging if the tech might be higher than yours.