Oolite Bulletins

I (not an NPC but a player) can detect all sorts of things beyond my scanner range - I can see laser fire in the distance, I can see icesteroids, I can see large ships, et cetera. I can also see stuff silhouetted against the sun, and see things better when the sun shines on them.

Telescope Extender OXP formalises this, with ships of various sizes being detectable at various distances beyond scanner length.

For example you can see:

Adders at 32 km,
Vipers and escort ships around 50 km (2x scanner range),
Anacondas, Boas, Cobra MkIIIs and Pythons about 100 km (4x scanner range),
Rock Hermits in almost 500 km (if not visible from the Main Station then fly around),
Coriolis Stations at 1000 km (right from the witchpoint).



But what about NPCs?

The impression I've formed is that they can detect nothing beyond scanner range unless it has a beacon which they can pick up (eg Rock Hermits, whose beacons I can't pick up!).

Is my presumption true?

And if it is, is there any way to increase the detection distance of NPCs?



I've found nothing relevant either here or on our wiki, but then I don't know the technical jargon for any of this, sorry!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 12:46 am

Is my presumption true?

Looks like it. See wiki: Shipdata.plist - scanner_range

Sets a custom scanner range. Standard is 25.6 km, thargoids have 50 km. Only applies to NPCs. However, at least since oolite 1.65 all defined scanner ranges are limited to 25.6 km, even for thargoids. This means it only makes sense defining shorter ranges than the maximum range.

Making it bigger would definitely require (a) a source code change, and probably (b) AI routine changes.

phkb wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 1:10 am

However, at least since oolite 1.65 all defined scanner ranges are limited to 25.6 km, even for thargoids.

Is this because if an NPC is fired upon by a ship not on its scanner then it does nothing?

If so then that's unfortunate as some interesting stuff could be done by restricting faster ships in particular to smaller scanners.