Sensor types

I wish that it wasn't just a case of "hit or miss" on cloaking - either they see you at any range within their scanners or they don't. Cloaking ought to play a part in combat and on the system screem, to reduce the range of detectability.

I wonder - is it possible to use a formula whereby the effective scanning level is reduced by 1 tech level per sector range? IE - Tachyon Scanners level 4 can see as a level 4 scanner in the sector the ship is in, a level 3 scanner for all 6 adjacent sectors, a level 2 scanner for the sectors 1 further out, a scanner level 1 at its max range? At least this would allow for a cloaked ship to sneak up - instead of someone with a level 21 tachyon scanner being able to see there's a ship with a 21 cloak 20 sectors away. A level 20 cloak ought to be able to hide the ship well enough to get as close as 1 sector in between him and the ship with the 21 tachyon scanners.

Both Sphinx's and Astroshak's ideas makes logical sense and would be pretty interesting in human vs. human play, but I suspect it would make programming the AI even harder. I'd love to see these implemented, but they should be selectable options when creating a game.

I'm particularly interested in changes that can help us make different race types (organic, psychic, etc.) feel significantly different in play.

How would it be difficult in AI? The way I understand it, AI never uses cloaking, and it equips the best sensors it has whenever it feels like it.

If that's how the AI handles the current ones think how much harder it would be to make the AI use the improved ones properly is what was being said