Came up while i am running a Game.
Can the internal sensors of a ship be set to detect motion?
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Came up while i am running a Game.
Can the internal sensors of a ship be set to detect motion?
I would imagine that Star Trek sensors can be set to detect just about anything. I mean seriously... they can detect quantum energies and changes in gravimetric frequencies. I am sure that they are constantly detecting motion, temperature, and other mundane things as well as just about anything the captains asks for other crew can think of.
So the short answer, in my game at least, is a definite "yes."
mactavish out.
Yes.
Thanks
When it comes up in the Series, as I recall it, TNG era have no problem of tracking movements. But still, when someone have left their communicator behind, they have a hard time locating the person. The series runs a bit to much on requirements of plot, but if it is effective enough, a simple "Computer. Locate anyone not wearing a com-badge" should have been enough in those occasions.
So I assume fine tuned tracking is a manual task with the sensors, and you need "zoom in" at the right area.
The situation in question was as follows,
After a battle with the Jem'Hadar, the player's ship ( Galaxy Class USS Yorktown) had been badly damaged and escorted back to Starbase. In the running battle at warp before reinforcements could intercept, the pursuing Attack Ships got off 1 final torpedo volley. At the time, unknown to the crew, one of the torps carried a payload of genetically engineered bugs instead of a warhead. The casing stuck and disgorged the bugs.
The bugs were organic but their carapaces were composed of duranium, making it all but impossible for the internal sensors to distinguish them as a life form because the sensors could not tell the difference between the bugs and the hull & therefore undetectable.
Before they realized what was happening, the station and two of the ships in their tactical wing were also infested.
FYI More info on the bugs
Approx. .5 to 1 M in diameter, 6 legged
Metal Eating, able to spit a strongly corrosive acid/enzyme mix
they will shy away from light
nothing less than a phaser on full disrupt would kill them, vaporizing the bug as normal. any lesser setting & the beam would ricochet off the carapace.
Attracted to certain harmonics (internal force fields, humming of equipment)
Sonic weapons will kill them (Sonic Grenades, 23rd Century Klingon Sonic Disruptors, Ect.)
Lifted the bugs from past episodes of the podcast "Star Trek: Outpost". Thought it would make a good Bio-Weapon for the Dominion.
I would probably go for it being possible to recalibrate the internal environmental sensors for detecting a pheromone, or something else their having. Detecting movement would more be like detecting doors opening and closing. But a bug melting their way through a door would count it as still closed.
Then, by pointing other sensors toward the interior, they could sweep an area. But not having something specific to scan for, it would probably be movement. So if the bug is still, it could easily be missed.
Thinking of it, the internal sensors are probably mainly geared to checking if the environment is safe (the air is breathable, no pollutions, no fires, no radiation) and if an area is empty if living beings in case the air must be purged to quell a fire. But that "is empty" is a more of a "head count" and doing a scan sweep.
Not having internal sensors being to efficient is for letting the engineers and science guys being an important part of detecting and dealing with any form of intrusion. :)
In such a case, the ship's internal sensors would probably not be able to detect the movements of the bugs, but the crew might be able to rig up some hand-held movement trackers (like in Alien/Aliens) for short range use. The technobabble way they worked was by "sensing micro changes in air density". Of course, false positives from air circulation machinery and lab animals would be problematic and could be used to great effect by the GM.
"Computer, scan the ship for duranium at .06 second intervals. Compare results and display differences on a map in the Engineering station." There you go.
I strongly encourage you to make the bugs some sort of hive-mind, intelligent enough to vaguely understand ship systems, and motivated by something other than just the command to attack. For example, they might assume that the PC's ship is no different than the Jem'Hadar's, and so trying to break down the ship's engines to prevent it from deploying them to a battlefield where they're afraid the hive-mind will die. Being non-carbon-based (?) they might be eating and digesting ship components to form a nest, or a 'central node' for a hive-mind, without which they are purely instinctual beings.
Star Trek hands the PCs immense destructive power from the get-go, so challenges based purely on the question of 'can we destroy X?' will often be quickly resolved.
I would assume that the bugs are kept in some form of stasis in the torpedo to prevent them from eating thru it and eating the Jem'Hadar ship. I saw them for now being just another weapon, being instinctively drawn to metal and the hum of equipment. The hive mind idea ( perhaps gaining sentience) might prove to be an interesting follow up episode. What do you do with a weapon that does not want to be used as a weapon?Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King