[Captain Kwok]

Not an exploit or unfair advantage?!

Hello, it's a 40% bonus for both attack and defense Ratings! 40%! That is a significant advantage and anyone who plays Space Empires knows that it's all about the modifiers in strategic combat.

The major difference between that combination and say stealth armor + ECM + scattering is that not all races can use such abilities!

The original intent of the Sensor Array (and other similar comps in the Mod) was to give races a space saving by combining combat sensors + ecm + long range scanners into a package of 30kT rather than 40kT it would cost to put them separately. As I mentioned before, the big problem is that you cannot prevent stacking if players choose to add the traditional sensors (or at least, you can prevent one from stacking but not all of them).

My suggestion is to make the Sensor Array and other components like this 0kT and 1 per ship with the long range scanning ability, plus some modest 5-15% combat bonuses for attack + defense. It would simulate the original intent of the components.

Another option would be to make all combat bonus modifiers race specific, but that's a lot of extra work that isn't really necessary.

Atrocities, there's no need to add a Romulan one. Just make the current components more as they should be.

And yes, I would be worried about engaging the Federation at such a disadvantage. It doesn't cost them much at all to build the combination of sensors or at least it is not nearly proportional to the advantage of the stacked bonus. Who wants to go up against at least 80-90% bonuses when they can only max out at 40-50%? If it was a difference of 10-15% it wouldn't be such a big deal, but we are talking like a 2:1 hit ratio at best - and let's face it, the Federation's ships and weapons are no slouches without the extravagant modifiers either.