Listening Posts, Directional Radar, and Radar Satellites
Ship scanners are fine for local work. A scout nearby can scan a neighboring sector or two. When you want to watch a border, guard a corridor of space, or keep an eye on deep space without parking a fleet there, you need something that stays put and reaches farther.
This update adds three sensor options that stack with your existing ships and fleets.
Listening Post
The Listening Post is a fixed station with a 1,000 hex scanner. It sees in every direction from its sector, like a ship with a huge omni antenna.
Build it with a Construction Ship anywhere you can place a normal station. One station per sector still applies, so pick a hex that sits where you want persistent coverage. Good candidates include choke points, sectors your freighters pass through, and sectors you visit often but do not want to garrison.
Compared to ship scanners, which usually reach a few dozen hexes, a listening post is a serious step up in reach without tying up hulls.
Directional Radar
Directional Radar trades full-circle coverage for range and focus. It scans 3,000 hex in a 60° wedge that faces outward from a star.
Placement is the catch. You must build it on a flyable hex next to a star's outer edge, not on the star tiles themselves. When construction starts, the wedge locks to the direction away from that star. Put the radar on the rim hex that points toward the frontier you care about.
That makes directional radar a strong pick for system mouths and deep-space approaches. You can watch a long corridor without paying for full omni coverage you do not need. Because it is still one station per sector, many commanders pair a Hub or Cargo Station near their colony and a directional radar on the star rim aimed the other way.
Enemy contacts and scanned worlds inside the wedge follow the same rules as other scanners. Sectors outside the wedge stay dark.
Radar satellite
Colonies can join the network too. After Planetary Radar research (which follows Tactical Recon), you can build a Radar satellite in low, medium, or high orbit.
While the satellite is active and your Launch site is running, it adds 200 hex of scanner coverage centered on that colony's sector. It is smaller than a listening post, but it is tied to your homeworld and stays on the map even when your ships are elsewhere.
The satellite draws 80 energy per hour while active. Deactivating the launch site shuts the satellite down as well, so keep your orbital infrastructure powered if you rely on that coverage.
How they fit together
These options solve different jobs:
- Radar satellite for everyday awareness around a developed colony
- Listening Post for a fixed omni ear on a strategic sector
- Directional Radar for long-range watch along one approach from a star system
They all feed the same fog-of-war and intel tools you unlock with Tactical Recon, including scanner rings on the map and contact detection in range. Stack them with patrols and fleet scanners when you want overlap, or spread them out to cover more ground with fewer ships.
The Listening Post and Directional Radar do not draw energy yet. Both stations will get an energy upkeep in a future update.
For station stats and build costs, see the in-game Stations page. For the research path to radar satellites, see Science.
Clear skies, commanders.
Ion Space HQ 👋