Can ships navigate using the sensors of other ships?

Player Questions
1

If there is a specialized ship in the fleet with active and passive sensors, can the other ships in the fleet target their weapons based on those contacts? Or does each ship have to install its own sensors regardless?

2

Yes. Active/passive sensor data is shared between all fleets and ships. Each ship does need its own DFC/MFC though and generally it is a good idea to have at least size-1 backup sensors on all ships (except fighters) but strictly speaking it is not necessary.

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3

EDIT: garfunkel posted an answer first!

As far as I am aware, yes. I have seen posts about people making dedicated AWACs boats for fleets.

Personally I prefer giving all my military ships at least one pair of eyes but I am playing with the idea of loading up a ship with various sensors of different resolutions for the big taskforces.

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4

Note that you can only shoot at targets if they are detected at least one ship’s active sensor. Passive sensors let you know where a ship is, but not well enough to provide a “firing solution” that a DFC/MFC can use to shoot weapons at.

Think of EM and thermal sensors as being more like your sense of hearing or smell. You know there’s something there, and even roughly what direction, but I wouldn’t rely on my hearing or sense of smell to try to hit something with a gun.

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Also something to consider - enemy forces will have a strong tendency to shoot first at whatever has active sensors on, so if you only include one AWACS ship in your fleet and it spontaneously explodes (no relation at all to the 60 missiles that just hit it), and no other ship has sensors…

Yeah, that won’t end well.

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6

You can also use missiles with active sensors onboard.
You can shoot them to a waypoint so enemy ships are within the missile sensor range (i.e., the WP is near the position you foresee those ships should be, when the missiles arrive there). The missiles sensors detect the ships and the missiles target them… but you cannot be sure which ship: it can even happen that all the missiles target only one ship.

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7

As a double bonus, you can shoot at waypoints beyond your fire control range. You still need a MFC but it can be minuscule and you can still fire a missile at a waypoint across the entire system (limited by the missiles range).

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