[Arkcon]

inigma said: "I was also wondering about sat placement. Currently I try to place them in 6,6 - usually the star of the system, 'cause at LRIII you can see everything up to 5 spaces away which only leaves the sectors on the edges of the system in fog."

The anti-cloak sensor works for the whole system, no matter where its placed. As for the long range scanner, assuming your opponents don't use scatter armor, you'll want to place in intelligent spots between lanes of travel between warp points.

"Also, I was wondering in PBW games if empires make mutual neutral zones and allow the others to establish monitoring satellites there - does this happen often?"

Depends. If people are friendly, I'm more likely to give them a tiny breatheable planet, in exchange for one in their space. Sort of an embassy, for mutual security.

what have been the traditional uses for satellites in PBW? do ppl ever put up recon sats?

One problem with SE4 is that cloaking is that advanced cloaking technology is much more expensive than the needed anti-cloak sensor. Cloaking is so easy to defeat that there's almost no point.

Now maybe in the various Star Trek mods, something more like Star Trek happens -- the Romulans get cheap cloaking, the Federation get no cloaking and has to spend lots of research to penetrate cloaking. But then you hit the other shortcoming of cloaking in SE4 -- its all or nothing. We all wait, ever so patiently, for SE5, where sensors will have a range within a system

As for recon sats in PBW, I've seen people drop an uncloaked sat in some out of the way spot of an enemy system. Yes, he knows its there, but will he divert a ship, just to shoot it down? And when he does, does that mean to real assault fleet is finally on its way?

'Course, you can always drop a sat in a cloaking storm, and see out of it just fine.