ideas for fed sensors

posted on May 26th, 2010, 6:35 pm

i for one love the venture's sensor special (progressive scan)

but it seems kinda similar to the nebula's sensor special.

i am suggesting making them different.

for the venture:

alter the special so that it doesnt give massive line of sight any more. let it keep its ping, but not advanced (green) ping any more, just normal (blue) ping. after all it is only a wee scout.

maybe the special could do a front cone effect. so instead of giving a massive circular sight line, give it advanced sight, but only in the direction it is pointing. and for less time than now. right now the venture is an uber scout since it can see for miles.


for the nebula:

i'm hoping that the different types of nebula we have seen will be made 

so this suggestion will work for the current nebula, or for the sensor nebula (the one from tng, called the phoenix).

make its special more powerful, after all this is a sensor beast. have its normal sensor radius larger than normal ships. and its special will behave as now, but will give a slightly larger range, and will give off several green advanced pings. right now the nebula isnt fantastic like the steamy. this new nebula would be amazing for recon. and its decloak would be awesome. you will be happy when you get a nebula sensor variant from the warpin.

maybe it could get a second special as well:

the new special would basically have the sensor nebula scan a target really thoroughly. perhaps spotting some weaknesses so allied ships do x% more damage to that one ship. if the nebula ranks up (which isnt too likely lol) this special has more effect and x gets bigger.

so this special could be large x and consumes lots of energy, or small x and consumes less energy allowing multiple uses. i prefer the small x with multiple uses.

of course this nebula would no longer have pulses, just a phaser.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 6:40 pm

I agree with the Nebula, but not the Venture.

alter the special so that it doesnt give massive line of sight any more. let it keep its ping, but not advanced (green) ping any more, just normal (blue) ping. after all it is only a wee scout.

I prefer it the way it is; size doesn't effect the level of tech it has and being a scout would make it more likely to have advanced sensors. Same with line of sight.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 6:43 pm

acutally i like those ideas

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:08 pm

I agree with the Nebula, but not the Venture.
I prefer it the way it is; size doesn't effect the level of tech it has and being a scout would make it more likely to have advanced sensors. Same with line of sight.

i understand your position that scouts are most likely to have good sensors, but i prefer to think that they couldn't fit enough sensors on a small ship like that to give it such a range. i mean if we look at voyager's sensor array, its pretty big, several times the size of a shuttle, i guess you could counter that voyager was a science ship. but look at the size of the phoenix's array, it was massive  i mean if bigger array didnt do more "sensoring" then why would they build 'em so big? i also just dont like the fact that the scout is so good right now. its got the advantage of being fast and targetted last by the AI. and humans sometimes wont notice it.

[Tyler]

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:11 pm

Last edited by Tyler on May 26th, 2010, 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The Venture loses weapons and engines when that's active, which implies they transfer all power from those systems to increase sensors to the maximum they could be without overloading them.

If transfering power did nothing, then doing that would be pointless.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:26 pm

true but transferring a little power still means you have a little power

i mean how much power can a venture class generate? i just dont like the idea of it getting massive sensor boosts for long durations. maybe short (like a second or two) pulses. but long duration long range sensors seems starship tech to me. thats my personal opinion though, its not terribly overpowered as its only a scout.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:33 pm

It apparantly has a warp core, and matter/antimatter reactors, so my guess would be 'A LOT'.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:37 pm

enough to fly a ship that's not really big lol. shuttles have warp cores to run themselves. yet they dont just hook up the shuttle to the mothership for power. that could possibly be oversight though lol.

[Tyler]

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:38 pm

Last edited by Tyler on May 26th, 2010, 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Transfering power from 2 systems give sensors the power of 3 systems combined, which is still around 3x what it would normally have (depending on what the power cost of those systems are).

Ventures can likely generate as much as a Danube, which can destroy a fully-shielded Jem'Hadar Destroyer with Defiant-level ease (even hitting the weak spot, they had to get past both shield and hull integrity). Each phase lasts 10 seconds and then you have to wait another 10 for the next one, any less and the ability could lose some of it's usefullness.

Venture Class (FO version, not sure about movie one) seems more of a Runabout, which is a small starship (even down to having its own name and number). Even a Type-6 Shuttle can see an impressive range.

Trek never uses shuttles unless they're not needed (Nemesis).

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:42 pm

3x a little is still not much 

in my opinion ships that small shouldn't have such powerful sensors. it doesnt bother me a lot, just a little

i would just prefer the long range sensors for the ship with the massive dish on its back

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:46 pm

Enough to push the sensors to their limit.

They're not powerful (much), just pushed as far as they can go without breaking. When not pushed, the range is similar to a typical scout. It's no different to putting more power into the other systems to enhance them.

Just make the Phoenix-varient even longer range.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:51 pm

lol that would make sense, but then people could say that the phoenix neb is way too powerful. much more range and you will be able to look around for ages, especially on small maps.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:51 pm

Personally I don't see what the issue is with calling the Venture what it is in Fleet Ops - a dedicated scout. All its resources are dedicated to that function. It's like saying an AEGIS Cruiser is smaller than an aircraft carrier, so thus the aircraft carrier should have a better sensor suite. We don't know what ships are "designed for" in Star Trek (though we do know what they are for in FO). It's just nitpicking.

Go back to your ideas!

posted on May 26th, 2010, 7:56 pm

two points of rebuttal:

the venture may be designed as a scout, but if the ship is juts too small for a sensor array then it wont have a long range.

also the idea that scout implies massive sensor range deserves challenging. we know scout implies speed, and scout implies that the enemy will not be terribly motivated to attack your scout. i would rank a large sensor range as a low preference for an effective scout. i mean the nebula has a large sensor range but we cant call it a scout because its too large and slow and the enemy will om nom nom it first chance they get.

posted on May 26th, 2010, 8:15 pm

the venture scout can only have so much usage for such a small ship, its idea is to SCOUT not to find cloaked ships, but the addition doesnt make any different until its needed. the current idea is sound enough, the special energy usage isa bit too high though, but its engine shutdown is a good side effect.

at first i was skeptical of this idea because there is a stationary sensor station which does nothing but suck up resources which are desperately needed elsewhere an no other way of detecting them and an excessive supply amount to find cloaked ships, no doubt romulan , even so it is ok. i would much prefer the stock a2 tachyon scan for the scout then to the current system any day.

the nebula variant, i am not gonna speculate on your speculation until the FO team confirm these variant nebula class ships.