Just yesterday I finished a large piece of test mechanics and programming. The ship sensors' search area is formed from technical parameters, settings chosen by the player, and the sensor's operating mode. The sensor searches its sector for targets according to the detector's parameters. When it detects targets, it creates a list for further processing, analysis, and decisions by the player.
In essence, the procedurally generated shape of the search sector consists of only twelve triangles. But making it means working with vertices, UV mapping, and normals. I managed to overcome all that, and now the area's dimensions and the corner coordinates are calculated automatically.
Every object in the sector has data for radar cross-section, albedo, and other factors. We can process them according to the laws of physics to determine whether the object can be detected. After all, energy falls off with the square of distance. This is where a fairly general formula comes in, covering emission, the antenna, the receiving equipment's sensitivity threshold, and so on.
The result is a physical simulation of radar, lidar, infrared, and optical instruments. Essentially, any detector paired with an emitter, or a detector alone when, for example, the Sun is the emitter.
For example, a phased-array radar with an 800-microsecond pulse and a calculated operating range of 1,000 kilometers would need at least 1.5 seconds to scan a 30-by-30-degree sector, with a 120-kilometer blind zone. That's under ideal conditions. Scanning the entire sector available without rotating the antenna plane would take 24 seconds. And that's with just one pulse at each angular point; several would be better.
In short, the connection between the detector station's parameters and its operation is working. That matters for research and engineering improvements.