Nyogtha wrote:

So I read the basic sensors in EP main book and I am little confused as the senors rules seem rather lite and limited, but surely there must be other types of sensors. So can some one help me with what senors can do in EP? Can they detect life signs (ie biological chemical activity at range? and if so how?) Do they have the equivalent of a "tri-corder" etc?

"Life signs" are pretty ill defined - it is not as if there is a magical life field you can measure. However, if you detect moving non-metallic objects between 273-313 K warm surrounded by an atmosphere with within 5-30% oxygen and a ~100 kPa pressure, with water, small amounts of methane and other unstable organic compounds present, then you are probably betting rationally it is something alive. But if could of course be a synthmorph. The trick is to do sensor fusion: that something is 300 K warm is not on its own a sign of even terrestrial life, but when you combine the different pieces of information (temperature, atmosphere, movement, appearance, chemistry etc) you can rule out alternatives pretty well. The problem comes when you are confronted with the aquatics (hydrosphere instead of atmosphere), cyborgs and pods, nanomachines, not to mention weird alien organisms (could look like almost anything, could have almost any chemical composition - the only way to be sure is to study them and see if they reproduce, have some form of 'metabolism' and whatever other criteria you use to define 'life'). What I expect the sensor suite AI (if there is one) to do is to have a library of categories and try to fit the input into it. So it will be pretty able to detect humans (through e.g. heartbeat vibrations, body heat, appearance, sonar or lidar reflections, sounds, mesh insert traffic etc) but will be uncertain if they deviate too much (weird morphs, exsurgent horrors). It might have some "life detection" algorithms that for example tries to estimate if it looks like a survivable environment with terrestrial organisms. But the generic life detector will not exist. I can definitely see a tricorder-like device: Multisensor identifier A portable device that contains a sensor suite or links into all available sensors, stores measurement data and tries pattern-matching algorithms to identify what is being observed. The device itself contains a things like an IR spectrometer, t-ray or lidar imaging, radiation measurement, pressure sensors/microphones, broad-spectrum imaging (from UV to IR, with different models going into gamma and up to radio), electromagnetic field sensors, etc. Most identifiers are specialized to certain environments and professions: vacworkers, electronics, Titan surface, exoplanet exploration, security inspection or spacecraft quality assessment. The key piece is the analysis AI. It can be told to look for certain targets and/or to report conclusions as they are made (especially rapidly developing events that might be of survival relevance: "Sir, the radiation count has been increasingly exponentially over the last minute and will reach vacworker professional exposure limits within 30 seconds.") It has Perception [sensor fusion] 60, Interface 40, Profession: Sensor Interpretation [Relevant field] 60. Analysis AI is compatible with a wide range of skillsofts for recognizing particular classes of objects, such as plant species, minerals, medical conditions, weapons or languages (most broad fields have skill level 40, but get pretty good bonuses for the direct sensor access). If they have mesh access (and the owner subscribes to the right service) they can also download new categories on the fly, upload data to safe servers or even (as a premium service) have an on-line expert help analyse the data. Cost: Moderate (Assumes a Moderate cost AI, and sensors with costs up to Moderate. More advanced models with better AI or wider sensor range are High) Does this make sense?