Needs:
X4 Foundations v7.50 or above.
2x2x2 Plot
Station Manager
Blueprints ; Standard Solar Panel (or Terran SP if you have the resources to build them) / Boron Medium Storage / Boron 1 Pier dock / Standard 3M6S dock / new Wide Area Sensory Array blueprint, available from most friendly Representatives.
Just plop it in the middle of a sector for best coverage (See 3rd screenshot below)
Why?:
I wanted to cut down on how many Advanced Satellites I had scattered around ..
.. And - BUC sectors which aggresively purge the sector of Adv' Satellites, can now be monitored with one of these.
BUC Prometheus hiding from me in Pious Mists IV are now easier to pick on
BUC eventually do try to poke it, so if they are endangering the station just add a disc defence and turrets / shields.
Notes:
You dont really need everything I put on this, a 2x2x2 plot with just the new Wide Area Sensor Array module will do.
I added the Solar Panel, Medium storage module, Basic 4M6S dock and Pier just for immersion.
It doesn't output much in the way of Energy Cells (depends on the sectors sunlight too), so it will be a very slow earner.
You can also add another Solar Panel easily in the 2x2x2 plot, directly underneath the one already included you can attach another to the side of the 1 Pier dock.
When you land on the 4M6S dock and look up, you can see the Sensor Array animation as it slowly rotates back and forth on its swivel joint.
Tips from the Developers :
If you wish to put more of these Wide Area Sensor Arrays on one station, the station will still only have one radar coverage area. So its not going to be a performance hog with multiple coverage areas in the same space doing calculations for what each Array can detect (imagine if you dropped 4 Advanced satellites in the same spot, you would have 4 radar coverage areas, that is not the case for 4 Sensor Arrays on the same station). The extras are just visual extras for the station.
I asked because I wanted aesthetically to make a station look like it has all angles covered (the sweeping animation of the Array only goes back and forth about 110 degrees, so to me it looks like a station would need an Array pointing in the opposite direction to detect everything in the first Arrays blind arcs). As far as the game is concerned the Array is doing 360 degrees coverage, for me it was just an immersion thing to add more on bigger stations.
Its known that scattering too many Advanced Satellites throughout the X'verse makes the game performance decrease, replacing them with just one station which has a Wide Area Sensor Array can aid the games performance slightly .. Only trouble is your list of stations in the Properties tab of the map will increase.
But dont just take my word for it, here's one of the Devs comments ..
Do what you wish with this, its not really anything special. I'm a Boron freak and like how this looks, but feel free to change the style etcetera.
In Path to Profit my Shipyard is in the centre of the sector, so I just added a Wide Area Sensor Array module to that station and got rid of all my Satellites there.
Same wherever I have other stations. My PHQ in Ocean of Fantasy now also has one, and a large Solar Power Plant in Great Reef now has one ..
. Built .. . Station editor .. . Radar coverage .. .
Download: Copy the download to Documents\Egosoft\X4\Constructionplan\ <- in this folder.
Make a 2x2x2 plot, then when in the Station editor use the Import button to import "Sensory Array"
Then choose the "Sensory Array" plan in the dropdown menu.
You should see what I have in screenshot 2 above.
