NPC scanners in 1.8

[Cmdr Wyvern]

It seems the good guy NPC - escorts, hunters, and vipers - have longer ranged scanners than the player.
Often they're reporting bad guys over the comm and moving to attack, well before I see the bandits.

I can be practically on top of the viper or hunter squad when they do it too, and if I turn and fly with them, it takes several km to make radar contact with the bandits.

[Neelix]

It seems the good guy NPC - escorts, hunters, and vipers - have longer ranged scanners than the player.
Often they're reporting bad guys over the comm and moving to attack, well before I see the bandits.

I can be practically on top of the viper or hunter squad when they do it too, and if I turn and fly with them, it takes several km to make radar contact with the bandits.

You don't by chance have Norby's the telescope OXP installed do you?

I've had a group of assassins track me down after leaving them behind with injectors and taking evasive action at jump drive speeds.

At the time, I had the telescope OXP installed but I hadn't bought the equipment in game.
I tried the same manoeuvre after uninstalling the OXP and assassins never showed up.


- Neelix

[Cmdr Wyvern]

You don't by chance have Norby's the telescope OXP installed do you?

- Neelix

No. Which is what leads me to believe the behavior is in the core game, either a bug or by intent.

[cim]

It seems the good guy NPC - escorts, hunters, and vipers - have longer ranged scanners than the player.
Often they're reporting bad guys over the comm and moving to attack, well before I see the bandits.

It's possible some OXP ships have longer scanner ranges, but no core Cooperative ship has extended scanner range. (The extended scanner range on Thargoid warships now works properly, though). They're also somewhat better at scanning within their scanner range than they used to be, which might be making them seem faster than before.

If the bad guys are fleeing it might be a while before you see them too even if you only started a couple of kilometres out of scanner range.

[Neelix]

It seems the good guy NPC - escorts, hunters, and vipers - have longer ranged scanners than the player.
Often they're reporting bad guys over the comm and moving to attack, well before I see the bandits.

It's possible some OXP ships have longer scanner ranges, but no core Cooperative ship has extended scanner range. (The extended scanner range on Thargoid warships now works properly, though). They're also somewhat better at scanning within their scanner range than they used to be, which might be making them seem faster than before.

If the bad guys are fleeing it might be a while before you see them too even if you only started a couple of kilometres out of scanner range.

The assassins who tracked me down after I injected away, hit the jump drive and hung a left at jump drive speeds were all bog standard cobby 1s and cobby 3s I don't have any ship OXPs installed.

- Neelix

[cim]

The assassins won't have been using scanners to track you down, necessarily. There are plenty of OXP assassination missions where the mark shows up on the ASC... (in practice, I think that particular behaviour was an AI bug which I've fixed)

[Cmdr Wyvern]

I have no special mission oxps, and the only ship oxps I' using are Griff's ships for 1.8. I'm fairly sure Griff didn't set any custom scanner ranges.

I recently flew with a viper squad to be sure. NPCs are definitely seeing each other on radar a few km further than I do.