I forgot who I was talking to about this, I think it was Ishathis from VPR. Anyways the idea was you could scan a 5x5 grid from your ship which is about 10% of the sectors in a given system. the scanner would not give back specific information on each sector it scanned, instead it would just list the ship type and the amount that there are in the grid. It would then be up to the person scanning to triangulate the position of whatever they are looking for.

Interesting. A more advanced AWACS ship-addon or some such... I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'm not against it.
However, to get this thing "balanced" with the current AWACS-type addons (like the group radar addon that costs 50k, takes a large wep slot, and weighs a ton on top of it), it'd be so damned nerfed that it would probably be unusable.

I suggest that we make those current addons usable first. However... what if we combined this idea with the radar mine idea? A scanner for a 5x5 grid doesn't really help much in a chase (who the hell is jumping only 5 sectors away if they are trying to escape you). Actually... how does a 5x5 grid really help you with anything?

W/e. My few cents.

Good for miner hunting.

Lol, it's like mine sweeper! Do it!

Yes, complete with being able to reduce detection by hiding among roids? Say, if you're positioned so that between you and the scanner is a roid, you are not seen unless you're within the 1-grid ring around the scanner - if that is possible. I do not know if orientation and position carry over through sectors, but from what I have seen, it seems like they do.

well when i first mentioned it on 100 the idea was every ship could do this because it would be nerfed enough already that it would only really work for finding people at the new hidden stations that inc is putting in and miners or some one who does not want to be found.

Point taken. A naive approach yields about a 1 in 10 chance of being detected, but in reality it is probably lower.

Why not make this ship a complete AWACS?

A slower Raptor without guns, but with all group/storm radar extender, cargo/addon scanner and neighbouring sectors scanning also?

And how does roid radar occlusion works with it?

Alloh quit highjacking threads. This isn't even about a new ship.

On topic, I think a system scanner of some sort would be pretty cool.
I could see this being helpful for static queen hunting.

Hrm. But doesn't this idea seriously nerf occlusion? Like, say you position yourself damned smartly in a roidfield... now someone can come along in the next sector and know that your ship is in sector X when they never would have known by being in the same sector (assuming that the sector list had been updated to reflect occlusion). To include this functionality as a default thing doesn't make too much sense (but AWACS does, but of course that statement belongs in a different thread)...

I read the OP to only provide the info that your ship is somewhere in the surrounding block of sectors, not what exact sector it's in.

Interesting. Then my concerns are mostly nullified. However, bots should use Miner Moths more often before this happened... otherwise it'd tip the balance towards hunters a LOT.

I still don't really like the idea. but I'm not against it.

atice it is like a 360 degree scan it would not say which sectors ships are in just that such and such ships are in this 360 degree surrounding area then it would be up to the hunter to triangulate the position.

also if you are worried about rp with occlusion just have the 360 scanner be really powerful but unable to focus and target anything and the ships radar stay as is.

+1 to the OP

it plays nicely with the eventually removal of the sector list too.