Sensor tower

The sensor tower is a terran building to be featured in StarCraft II.

Overview
A sensor tower uses passive and active thermal and electromagnetic scanning along with input from seismic sensors and Doppler analysis, enabling it to pinpoint any target within range. Even foes hiding behind terrain features can be detected, although they won't be identified without visual verification. The multi-spectrum output enables foes to easily detect the presence of a sensor tower and identify the location of the base that holds it.

Game Unit
The sensor tower has a passive radius which exposes enemy movement. Said units are revealed on the minimap as red exclamation marks. It cannot detect cloaked or burrowed units.

Other players can see the radius as a colored circle on their minimap, revealing its location.

Strategies
Some strategies revolve around "spoofing" the tower with decoy units or simply staying outside its range. Terran commanders have been known to counter by erecting sensor towers in fake base locations just to keep enemies guessing.

Development
Missile turrets used to rely on sensor towers to detect enemy units. However, by the GDC 2008 build missile turrets could detect by themselves.

The sensor tower was canceled and in the WWI 08 build had the name changed to the radar tower. However, it has been brought back.

The sensor tower has oscillated between being a detector and not a detector. In early May 2009 it was not a detector, but in the Seoul Ap-Gu-Jung, event from May 21, 2009 it was a detector. By November 2009, however, it had lost detection.

Building Abilities
The sensor tower could be salvaged.