Of course, if people don't want to build them it's fine - nobody forces them. But then there might be those who simply want to use all the possibilities a game offers them to their advantage, whether the AI can do it or not. I guess vs. a Human player will we see AIs that lack in one field or the other for quite awhile still...

It's an artificial limit to me not to build sensor ships when the game offers the possibility to build them. When I remember past GC II games having sensor ships did never seem the primary factor for me winning a game, much more important was to get a well running space empire up that can deal with any challenge. For example if I allow my opponents to get ahead too much in research or economy sensor ships won't save me.

Maybe it is, but until it gets changed that way I see no reason to stay away from building what I see as the best option or approach to deal with a certain issue.

A shipyard building a sensor-only vessel cannot build a combat vessel at the same time. Could be not significant depending on the exact situation, but there might be situations as well when you need to get firepower, not sensors.

And yes, knowledge about the enemy *is* a huge advantage. That's the primary reason to have recon/early warning drones, aircraft and ships these days. Even when there are still smaller countries which don't field anything comparable.

Quoting GalCivius,

reply 51

Large text mass...

Well... I think we just feel different about how to play games... me personally like a challenging game and abusing loopholes in the mechanic to gain huge advantages is something game balance can fix as is the case here... if it is done then you don't have any "artificial" limits anymore and need to adapt to the new situation. You can still use sensor scouts just with more reasonable range. It is for the same reason I play my games without any tech-trading. I would like tech trading to be a bonus you get when trying to develop something a trading partner already knows, that would make more sense and be more balanced as it benefit the one with lower tech than someone with better technology.

I play on insane maps with super slow game speed and tech progression and I can build an army of scouts long before I ever need or have time to build a single military vessel. On a smaller map and normal game play things might differ though. But smaller sensor scouts with two or three sensors are still more important early on than any combat ships. If you know the strength and make up of pirates or enemy ships you don't need to produce as many warships to counters their fleet. I see no scenario where I have a few sensor boats in the water spying on the enemy before I have any military ships available. Early tiny ships are basically produced one per turn anyway even on super slow speed... so I don't see the problem. larger sensor ships are not necessary until a bit later.

I really don't see how one can't think that a single ship being easily able to cover an entire sector with sensors are NOT a balance issue, especially when the AI don't get that benefit.

I'm not sure the AI cheat or rather know where your ship last was seen and so head in that direction. It is rather hard to tell, but I hope the AI don't cheat in that way.

Nerfing sensor boats does not eliminate its tactical importance it just BALANCE the game so there is not such a huge player advantage... a human player don't need it... we are smarter than any AI anyway. 

If anyone like to use them that is fine by me, I don't care... for multi-player we might as well lift the fog of war altogether since most such games are played on relatively small maps. 

Bottom line for me is they can nerf sensors if they choose to do so and I will play on. As long as I can build them I will build them. I like em.

As far as I know, there are no diminishing returns on any of the weapons or defensive components. [Ship rating] = round([component count]*[component rating]*[bonus]) is a setup where you will ALWAYS see an increase in the appropriate ship rating if you increase the number of components mounted. Therefore, it's not a diminishing returns system, at least not in the way proposed for sensors. The ship rating for sensors is sensor range; if you put diminishing returns on the range granted by sensors, you will have something like [sensor range] = round([component count]*[component rating]*[bonus]*[scaling factor]^[component count - 1]) or like one of the formulae I gave in the earlier post which you responded to. In this sort of situation, there are values for [component count] where you gain absolutely nothing except wasted effort from some of the components installed.

Optimizing leftover space because you get a size discount or something like that does not concern me, it's when you have to strip out components from a design because those components quite literally do nothing for you now that you've improved your technology that is the problem in my view.

I think that a cap on the number of sensors on a ship would be good. Ether a hard limit or some sort of increasing size as you add more... probably just a hard cap, maybe 3 or 5 or something. That way you actually have to get more advanced ones.

True, but that is using a very small focal point, not an overall detection. Now, you COULD argue that fixed point assets like planets or star bases COULD be seen in greater detail, but to say you would see a small ship or fleet light years away with a telescope would be a bit much IMO. Now detection based on fleet size could be interesting, but then again would probably just be cheesed by human players.

<Edit> Of course, by the time any of the things in this game are remotely possible, we will all be dead No one while know who was right </edit>