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Am I missing something or do the weapons outrange sensors easily?
Sensors have the same range categories as weapons (short/5 hexes, medium/10 hexes, long/20 hexes). They have a passive range of twice their range category and an active range of five times the range category, with a cumulative –2 penalty to associated checks for each range increment beyond first.
Weapons, on the other hand, can fire at up to 10 range increments...
Is that intentional? How do you fire weapons at targets you don't see? There seems to be no provisions for attacking blindly for starship weapons (which would make no sense for non-tracking weapons anyway because of the distances and angles involved).
I noticed that, too. Unless you houserule something like "spotter" ships tightbeaming their sensor readings to allies who are farther away, long range weapons won't be able to use their farthest increments.
Which may be intentional and even realistic. That makes short range weapons at least theoretically useful at most/all combat sensor ranges, and makes long range weapons the most accurate at all sensor ranges even if they can't take hail mary shots at their longest theoretical effective range.
It's also realistic within the conventions of the genre. Plenty of sci-fi has beam weapons that can theoretically hit targets very far away, but light speed lag on the sensors means they can't use that range because the target won't be there anymore by the time the weapon arrives.
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I thought it obvious that multiple allied ships would share sensor data, allowing one ship to shoot at an enemy outside its sensor range thanks to a spotter ship or something.
Still, would have been nice to have had that spelled out clearly in the rules.
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It gives probes / launched satellites a reason to exist - a remote controlled spotter ship, if you will.
You could use long range weapons to bombard a planet from out of sensor range of ground-bound defense installations or satellite weapons platforms.
There may be some missing assumptions in the rules or something that got cut.
Sensors operate in two modes: passive or active. In passive mode, sensors automatically scan the ship’s surroundings. Passive sensors detect visible or unhidden objects in a 360-degree field around the ship at a range of up to twice the sensors’ range category while in space or in the Drift (no skill check required), though local conditions may affect their range.
Active sensors are far more discerning, and they are required if the science officer wishes to scan enemy vessels and learn details about them during starship combat (see page 325). The modifier listed in the table below applies to some checks attempted by the science officer in starship combat as specified in the science officer’s actions (see page 324). Active sensors can discern information about a target up to five times the sensors’ range away from the ship, but such checks take a penalty of –2 for each range increment beyond the first to the target.
What's explicitly stated is that passive sensors automatically sense anything within two range categories, active sensors can scan enemy vessels and learn details about them within five range categories. But they seem to assume you already know the ship is there. Maybe the missing concept is that active sensors always detect anything within the full 10 range increments, but at the cost of giving you away to anyone in passive mode if you're also within 10 range increments of them?
I thought it obvious that multiple allied ships would share sensor data, allowing one ship to shoot at an enemy outside its sensor range thanks to a spotter ship or something.
That would favor enemies over players who are unlikely (though not impossible) to have another starship.
Still, would have been nice to have had that spelled out clearly in the rules.
There is a whole bunch of missing Captain/Science Officer options for coordinating actions between ships.