I think good sensors are an essential for a good ship and it drives me up the wall that there is only one method of increasing ones sensor range that is incredibly vaguely written. so I have written this as a potential alternative.
Aftermarket Sensor equipment:
Starship scanners are often installed stock as an near afterthought but thankfully multiple manufacturers offer upgrade packages to these essential starship components.
HP Required: 2
Encumbrance: 0
Price: 1500 x silhouette
Rarity: 4
This attachment can be applied to any starship of silhouette 4 or larger.
Base Modifiers: Increases a vehicle’s passive and active sensor range by one range band.
Modification Options: 2 Additional sensor range band Mods.
rate this mod 1 (poor)-5 (excellent)
2 HP is a bit much for what it does, but at the same time it also does kind of a lot. I think it should only cost 1 HP, and I’m wondering if you shouldn’t drop one of the mod options. It could take a ship with Short sensors to Extreme sensors.
I’d recommend dropping the Sil 4 requirement.
Does this let you add sensors to a vehicle that, hypothetically, lacked them stock? If that is the intention (or you want to enable that), you need to adjust the wording of the Base Modifiers.
The only other thing I’m unsure about is the silhouette modifier on the cost. What is your thinking behind it?
I have another idea for a gadget that is like the quintessential gun wall that reveals its self when a switch is flipped or a sconce is turned. The idea is it is a 10 encumbrance piece of furnishing that holds basically all of the groups weapons and related incidentals like extra reloads, stimpacks, holsters and mods (regardless of quantity as long as they are personal weapons.) that is a hard difficulty perception check to find. I was thinking optional sensor shielding, locks and better concealment as optional mods.
To address your questions,
I went with 2 hp because the Mobile Listening Post costs 2 and this is a variation on that theme. While the aftermarket sensor equipment does lack the fancy caff maker the Mobile Listening Post offers it is more powerful.
I went with price based on silhouette to make it more expensive than the Mobile Listening Post and to reflect that there is more work and material upgrading larger ships. The Sil 4 requirement is to prevent fighters with extreme range sensors. I think the best Fighters should be able to do even if they are a radar dish with ion engines welded to them is long range.
I had no thought about adding sensors to a ship that had none when I wrote this, but that can be added to the text.
Those are all very reasonable points. I prefer my recommendations, but you’ve thought through it well. The only place I would quibble, is with there being more work and material involved in upgrading larger ships. While generally true, ship sensors don’t scale to the ship in the same way as something like armor would (at least in my mind). If you have a sensor unit that does X, it’ll do X regardless of the size of the ship it’s on.
The gunwall is cool, but isn’t that already covered by Smuggling Compartments? To me, it sounds like a narrative description, rather than something functionally unique.