Sensor documentation

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Mods and Modding
#1

Since my last thread like this got good info, how about this one? I’ve long been slightly mystified by the three senor types, visual, primary, and secondary. The wikis say these things about them:

VisualRange
PrimarySensorsRange This value is the radius of detection around a ship, represented by the blue spherical area in the Sensor Manager. You can completely observe enemy activity within this range.
SecondarySensorsRange This value determines the radius of detection beyond the primary sensor range, and is not represented in the Sensor Manager. Smaller ships do not appear in secondary sensors.

visualRange = :
prmSensorRange = : Range of the primary sensors, shown in the Sensor Manager by the blue sphere.
secSensorRange = : Range of the secondary sensors. This range is always greater than the primary sensors range. Secondary sensors are not shown in the Sensors Manager, and not all enemy ships appear in the secondary sensors range.
detectionStrength = Detection strength used on ships in visual range.

So I’m trying to get a handle on the exact differences, and also their interactions with cloaking and sensor distortion. It seems implied that you can only detect cloaking ships inside visual range, but not in primary and secondary, but that’s only an implication. It mentions that smaller ships aren’t shown in secondary, but where is that determined? Is that the visibleInSecondary flag? The description of that had always led me to believe that had to do with mesh rendering in the sensors manger rather than in detectability, was that in error?

And then sensor distortion. Does It apply to all types of detection, or just the sensors detection leaving visual out? Does sensor distortion only apply if the detected ship is in it’s radius, or if the detecting ship is? Both? Either? Does it stack with cloaking? Does detection strength fall off any with distance?

Most of this is stuff I might be able to divine with rigorous enough testing, but I hope someone else can fill in at least some of those blanks.

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#2

the way I have interpreted it it is that ships with a higher sensor value can see a higher cloak/sensor distortion value. Primary seems to be the blue sphere and secondary as dots outside the sphere. However it seems to me that ships won’t automatically attack unless things are in visual range or another ship has ‘spotted them’

I think visible in secondary is limited to showing the mesh

#3

Sensor Tunables:

  • visualRange controls the radius the ship can see without sensors; They are not represented in the SM. The distance a ship can see will never be less than this value; If you want a ship to rely entirely on its sensors set this to 0.

  • prmSensorRange controls the radius of the primary sensors; These are represented by the blue blob in the SM. Ships that have SMRepresentation not set to “none” and who are uncloaked and/or not under the effects of sensor distortion will always appear in primary sensors.

  • secSensorRange controls the radius of the secondary sensors; These sensors behave just like the primary sensors but aren’t represented in the SM. To see these sensors in action set them to have a larger radius than prmSensorRange.

  • visibleInSecondary controls whether a ship is detectable by secondary sensors or not; Set this to 0 to make a ship invisible to secondary sensors and 1 to make it otherwise.

  • detectionStrength controls the cloak detection for the sensors. A cloaked ship will remain undetected unless the scanning ship’s detectionStrength is equal to or greater than iCloakNumber in the cloaked ship’s AddAbility declaration.

Effects of the SensorDistortion multiplier on sensors:

The SensorDistortion multiplier modifies the receiving ship’s effective sensors; The way it works is like this:

DetectionRadius = Max(Self.prmSensorRange, Self.secSensorRange) * Enemy.SensorDistortion

Consider the following example:

hgn_ecmprobe.ship

AddShipMultiplier(NewShipType,“SensorDistortion”,“OwnShipsWithinRadius”,“Linear”,0.6,0.6,6000);

vgr_scout.ship

NewShipType.prmSensorRange=8000

When the Vaygr scout enters the radius of the ECM probe its effective sensor range will be modified by the probe’s SensorDistortion multiplier:

Scout Effective Detection Radius = 8000 * 0.6 = 4800

Therefore the Vaygr scout will need to move within 4800 units of the ECM probe in order to detect the probe.

Setting sTarget in AddShipMultiplier to EnemyShipsWithinRadius reverses the effect: The enemy ship will have full sensor effectiveness and this ship will experience reduced sensor range.

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Do distortion probes work?