Neutrino Detector

Up to date for latest version, 0.98a.

	Reconfigures the fleet's drive field to act as a neutrino detector, allowing detection of human-made artifacts - and occassionally fleets - at extreme ranges. Normal space High-emission sources such as stars, planets, jump-points, or space stations produce constant streams. Average sources produce periodic bursts. Low-emission sources produce occasional bursts. Notoriously unreliable and almost guaranteed to produce numerous false readings. Increases the range at which the fleet can be detected by 50% and consumes 1 unit of volatiles per day. Hyperspace Reliably detects the presence of slipstreams out to a range of 10 light-years. Except for abyssal areas, the background noise are such that it is unable to detect any other neutrino sources. When the fleet is traversing a slipstream, the detector is overwhelmed and shuts down.
–In-game description

Overview

Neutrino Detector is an ability available to the fleet. It is unlocked with the Sensors skill, or by accepting Galatia Academy missions where it may be useful.

The ability requires the fleet to have at least 1 unit of Volatiles to activate, and consumes a unit per day. The fleet will also have its detection range increased by 50% whilst the Detector is engaged. While active, a blue circle will surround the fleet that pulses in the direction of celestial objects, regardless of distance. A constant, strong stream will be shown towards large entities such as stars, planets, and orbital stations, whereas smaller entities will occasionally pulse.

As well as showing the directions of entities that truly exist, the detector will occasionally throw up a stream in the direction of empty space. This false positive will appear as an infinite distance away, and can thus be confirmed as a false by attempting to move perpendicular to the reading; false readings will not move/change the angle, whereas a true reading will move in correlation to the celestial object it represents.

Unlike similar abilities, such as Active Sensor Burst, use of the Neutrino Detector does not affect the fleet's mobility and, consequently, allows the use of in-system mobility abilities like Sustained Burn while active.

When used in hyperspace, the detector loses its normal properties and instead reliably detects slipstreams within 10 light-years.

Tips and strategies

The following section contains user-submitted suggestions, these may be inaccurate or outdated.

• The Neutrino Detector can also be used to confirm that a region of a star system does not contain any worthwhile loot. If no streams appear towards a given direction for at least a few seconds, then the region in that direction almost certainly contains no salvage or fleet and, thus, can be ignored in favor of searching elsewhere in the system.
  • If the detector emits no sounds for at least a few seconds, then the detector has no active false positives and, therefore, confirms that a star system does not contain any low- or average-emission objects like derelict ships or Domain-era probes.
  • Note that debris fields cannot be detected by the Neutrino Detector.
• False positives almost always show up as an average-emission stream, or periodic pulses. Therefore, if a stream either is continuous or only appears as an occassional burst, then that stream very likely points to a real object in the star system.
• Neutrino Detector is useful in abyssal hyperspace for detecting Abyssal Lights and Rogue Planets beyond the reduced sensor range.
• If a certain mission has been completed, then the Neutrino Detector can help confirm the presence of certain anomalies hiding around rogue planets in abyssal hyperspace.
  • Active fleets are low-emission sources and, so, can be tracked down by following the occassional blips in the detector.

Conflicts

Neutrino Detector interrupts the following fleet abilities:

• Go Dark

Neutrino Detector does not prevent the activation of these abilities, though activating them will interrupt Neutrino Detector.