Space Combat - Did I miss something?

[shirgall]

Pardon me for asking, but can some one explain why passive sensors can detect farther that active sensors? ...

Looking at page 160 of the Core Rulebook, active radar/lidar sensors has more detail than passive at the same range band, and go all the way out to Distant when passive has "None" at Long and farther distances. Passive EM has more range than passive radar/lidar but not as much as active radar/lidar.

 

[TankerMG]

First off, thank you for the quick reply!

Yes I understand that concept of 'seeing' as a passive sensor. An active sensor provides more information on the subject, that a passive sensor. It is more than, 'Yeap, it is a speak of light in the sky", the 'clarify and classify' from the old song and basic points of information. Whether it is radar in the air, sonar in the water, or LIDAR in a lunar lander. The sensors provide information to clarify and classify the contact. Your analogy (if I understand correctly) is that my eyeball and brain (from experience and education) interpret the light points in the sky as stars. It takes another sets of sensors to tell me something about those stars.

Cassini space craft use of radio waves and radar allowed for a better understanding of the topographic information of the moons surface of Saturn, which a passive sensor could not do.

 

[TankerMG]

Looking at page 160 of the Core Rulebook, active radar/lidar sensors has more detail than passive at the same range band, and go all the way out to Distant when passive has "None" at Long and farther distances. Passive EM has more range than passive radar/lidar but not as much as active radar/lidar.

First off, thanks for your quick reply. I saw that in Core Rulebook 2022 update, which started me on this wormhole I find myself in.

But thank you for pointing out to me the chart on page 160 of the Core Rulebook and the difference between passive and active makes sense. Thanks!

Now range.
50Km is not far in spatial terms. CT detection for commercial or ordinary ships at 1500mm (.5 light second) and military/scout ships at 6000mm (2 light seconds) in a game scale of 1mm = 100 Km. So that is 150,000 Km detection range for civilian ships and 600,000 Km for Scouts or military ships. I use to equate that to active sensor use.

I see that MgT 2E HG add two more range bands of very distant and far and defined them. It also redefined distant from 50,000 Km out to 300,000 Km (pg 24?).

Is that the answer?
Or
Take the HG range and extrapolate the distances for 'large ships' sensors for range bands of short medium, long, very long and distant?
Or is the answer, b/c of HG, only distant is change plus the two new range bands?

The later would make passive very short compared to active, while the former is more uniform?

I am just trying to figure this out before I use the GM rule in my game. I don't want the players concepts based on the rule book to be faulty. So before I make a statement in game, it needs to make sense.

 

[Condottiere]

In terms of scale and energy output, a star tends to be rather large, and is undergoing a continuous fusion reaction.

Active sensors create a lot of directed noise, that supposedly when it hits something, can bounce back, partial return noise being more than enough, and I would suppose, lessens squared distance, since anything more, would have fried the target.