Pre-alpha codex — written from the build in internal testing. Systems, numbers and features can change before launch. · Join the waitlist

The Sensor Array is the first building of the sub-orbit layer — the moons and station extensions hanging off your orbits. Sub-orbits never produce anything; they change what a system can do. This one does something no mine ever will: it sees.

Building it

• Unlocks at System Administration L4 — the level the Administration building always kept in reserve.
• One array per system, on any sub-orbit. Three levels, each one buying a deeper look.

What it sees

Without an array, you see nothing incoming — no warning, no countdown, no courtesy call. That is the doctrine, not a gap: your warning system is a thing you chose to build. With one, hostile fleets heading into covered space appear as contacts, and each array level earns a deeper reveal:

• Level 1 — something approaches. That is all you know.
• Level 2 — and you know when it arrives.
• Level 3 — and roughly how strong it is.

Reach grows twice: higher array levels watch further along your lanes, and every level of Intelligence Service research extends all your arrays by one more hyperlane hop. The research screen shows the exact numbers.

What it does not see

Spy probes. They are too small to register — espionage stays viable, and catching spies is a different discipline (counter-espionage research, on the roadmap). Arrays watch for fleets that come to fight, nothing else.