Subsystems: Sensors[]
Sensors are a starships eyes. They allow it to detect not only phenomena visable to humanoid sight, but an enormous number of electromagnetic and physical phoenomena which humanoid sense cannot perceive. Every starship has many differnt types of sensors (explorers, scouts, reearch/laboratory vessels tend to have more or better sensors, for obvious reasons), divided into four types: long-range; lateral (or short range); navigationa; and specialized.
Sensors are rated for three charaterisitcs: the range over which they work accurately; their gain, or strength and efficency relative to their power input; and their strength, or ability to overcome interferance.
Caveat: Standard Starfleet Sensor technology, as extremaly sensative as it is, does not detect some 15,000 substances. The regular senros settings do not include certain unusal, rare, and / or exotic materials. It excludes these from the standard analysis rountines because they occur so infrequently that it's inefficient to search for them all the time. Crewmembers can recalibrate sensors to detect many of these substances, but this usually requires them to blind the senros to dosmthing they normally register. Detecting the other types of exotic particles requires special sensor equipement and / or analysis programming.
Acitve Sensing[]
Active scans require the ship to project some form of energy, the read what happens to that engery (how it reflects back to the ship or dissipates) to locate and track objects and phenomena. Active scanning gives a ship a a control over what it's detecting (or trying to), but reveals the ship's position to other ships. Active senors scan pulses typical travel at warp 9.9997. At this speed it takes about 45 minutes to perform a lon-range scan at 17 light years.
Passive Sensing[]
Passive scans, on the other hand, involve receving and analyzing forms of energy or other phenomena which come to the ship on their own. The energy proejcted by a star, fore example. Ships have less control over what a passive scan can detect (if the target of the scan is not emitting any radiation, the ship can't preceive it), but don't run the risk of detection just for sitting there with their eyes and ears open.
Subsystem: Long-Range Sensors[]
Power Cost: 5 per round of use
The long-range sensors, located behind the deflector dish, include narrow and wide angle active electromagentic scanners, a parmetricsubsapce field stress sensor, a gravimetric distortion scanner, and electromagnetic flux sensor, a lifeform analysis interument cluster, a passive neutrino imaging scanner, a thermal imaging arry, and a gamma-ray telescope.
Long-range sensors usually involve active scanning. They work beter at high resoulation but this limits their range to five light- years. Their maxiumum range (at medium-to-low resoulation) is typically in the 14-17 light-year range. The arc of detection is usally about 45 degree in front of the shi, though this narrows slightly at longer ranges.
The accompanying table indacates the ranges, gain, strength, for sensor packages.
Subsystem: Lateral Sensors[]
Power Cost: 5 Power per round
Lateral Sensors, socalled because their sensor pallets are usually located along the edges or side of various parts of a ship, are short range system which can detect a wide range of phenomena from any direction around the ship. The indvidual sensor pallets are located all over the ship's hull to maximize signal gain and system flexibility, and to provide redundancy in case some pallets are damaged. On most starships standard Starfleet sensor pacakges occupy the majority of a ship's lateral sensor pallets, but the remainder are open for mission-specifics sensor packages. The standard Starfleet science sensor array consists of six pallets, each containing one to six specific sensory devices.
Lateral sensors are both active and passive. Among their many uses, are employed extensively in combat situations to monitor enemy movments adn activites. Their maximum active range is approximately one light-year.
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Power Cost: 5 Per round of use
Navigational Sensors, which help the flight control officer steer the ship in the proper direction and avoid debris, include a quasar telescope, passive subspace multibeacon receivers, stellar gravition detectors, a Federation Timebase Beacon reviever, and various IR and UV imagers and trackers. The ship's guidance and navigation (G&N) relay handles the flow of sensor data and converts it into usable information with three and four dimentional flight motion software which feeds directly into the flight control system.
