Ground Truth - Environmental & Tactical Instrumentation

Ground Truth: Environmental and Tactical Information Systems

Threshold Dynamics, Survey and Assessment

Sensor blocks that tell you what is actually happening around you. Radiation, weather, atmosphere, life - and now, who else is out there.

No tech tree, no research, no unlocks. Build them, read them, wire them to whatever you want to happen next.

The instruments

Radiation Monitor How much radiation is hitting this spot, and how long you can stay. Knows the difference between sunlight you can hide from and planetary radiation that needs a sealed room.

Weather Station What the weather is doing, how long until it clears, and what it is doing to your solar panels, wind turbines and breathable air. Warns you when a storm can actually hurt you — some of them do 40 damage, and some quietly remove your oxygen.

Habitat Monitor Is this room still sealed? How long has it held? Small enough to mount inside the room it watches.

Bio Systems Scanner What is alive nearby, what kind, how far away and which direction. Counts robots and armed humanoids separately from wildlife.

Rotating Antenna A working antenna that is now also your ship's tactical sensor. It hears every ship whose antenna or beacon reaches you, and it picks up anything within 2 km whether it is broadcasting or not. See Tactical displays below.

Every block comes in large and small grid.

Screens

Pick a Ground Truth app from any LCD's script list. No name tags, no setup — each panel finds its instrument on its own.

There are four dedicated panels, one per instrument, and two that show everything at once:

• Overview - all four systems, rearranging itself to fit the screen it is on, from
• a cockpit display to a full 2.5 m panel.
• Strip - built for corner LCDs, where the others are unreadable. Small
• labels over large values, so a glance from across the room says what is measured and how
• much to care. A pressure breach is the one thing that clears the screen and blinks;
• everything else keeps its place and explains itself.

Every screen writes its options into the LCD's Custom Data the first time it runs - each one with a note saying what it accepts. Fill in a value after the = and the screen follows it. Nothing to look up, no syntax to guess.

Tactical displays

Put a Rotating Antenna on your ship and three more apps come alive:

• Contact List - every ship the sensor knows about: name, class, range, bearing
• and whether it is closing on you. Sort by range, bearing, closing speed or class.
• Tactical Radar - a plot of everything around you, ship's-nose-up or north-up on a
• planet. The outer ring is as far as the sensor can see, so the edge of the screen is the
• edge of what you know.
• Target Track - one ship in detail: range, bearing, elevation, speed, closing
• rate, size and how long you have held it.

What the sensor knows, and what it does not. A ship broadcasting on an antenna or beacon is identified by name and faction - as soon as its signal reaches you. A ship running silent shows only as UNIDENTIFIED, and only inside 2 km. Your own ships are always known. The sensor sees as far as the world's view distance.

Tracking. By default the track follows the nearest enemy and says so. Pick a different ship from the antenna's terminal, or put Track next contact, Track previous contact and Track automatic on a toolbar or button panel and cycle through them without leaving your seat.

Alarms and automation, without scripting

Ten new options appear in the vanilla Event Controller. Pick one, choose a sensor, and wire it to anything.

• Seal breached — shut the doors, sound the alarm
• Radiation building, or shelter lost
• Dangerous weather started
• A specific weather type began — sandstorms, thunderstorms, whatever your planet has
• Solar output dropped — start the reactor
• Outside oxygen dropped
• Wildlife detected
• Something that is not wildlife detected — robots and armed humanoids are counted apart

They fire once when something changes, not over and over, and they do not go off the moment you build them. Change the threshold and they fire right away if the new setting is already met - which is how you test one. The Event Controller's info panel shows what each sensor is reading and which output is active.

They work on dedicated servers and straight after loading a world, with nobody needing to open a terminal first.

Some things you might not know the game does

• Rain and thunderstorms reduce your radiation exposure. Standing in a storm is
• safer than standing in the open.
• Alien fog removes all breathable oxygen, not some of it.
• Hailstorms, sandstorms and electrical storms can injure you directly.
• Wind turbines produce more in a storm than in clear weather.

The instruments read all of this from the game itself and simply tell you.

Playing with other mods

Ground Truth measures and reports. It has no opinion about what the readings mean, adds no progression, and overrides nothing.

If you use a research or progression mod, these readings are available to it. If you write Programmable Block scripts, everything on these panels can be read from code - from the moment the world loads, on single player and dedicated servers alike, with no setup.

Scripters and modders: full API reference and integration guide on GitHub — https://github.com/UnsayableStorm/GroundTruth

Tell me what is wrong with it

Feedback is genuinely wanted, and acted on. Most of what is good about this mod came from using it and finding something awkward.