It's probably already been suggested but I'm going to put my two cents in anyway.

If you had a separate slot for scanners you could have different types: targeting, mining, mapping, etc. They could have upgrades as well. They could have different imaging functions as well, like thermal, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, etc. They could have increasingly better ranges.

I don't think it would effect live gameplay as much as maybe make mining a little more interesting.

Good idea!

It makes no sense that a scanner would take up a whole weapons slot. A weapon requires space and weight for ammunition, and needs to be able to dissipate a lot of heat from firing.

A scanner, on the other hand, would likely be an electronic/optical device that requires little power, little space, and emits very little heat. So it should fit on a much smaller space and not weight much. Kinda like a spotlight mounted on a truck.

The devs said this is coming soon. Read In Progress, at the bottom.

I've been wanting this for ages, since long before we even had scanners, but I've been patient about it because I know that it would be best to wait on introducing 'device slots' until we had at least a dozen different types of devices - and not just scanners.

If you introduce device slots before you have a reasonably large selection of devices, everyone ends up with the same stuff on the ship.

but i am all for an 'infrared camera'. it would simply replace normal HUD space view with red / green / blue blobs as from an infrared camrea. instantly tell which roids are hot and wchih are not.

btw some 'scanners' are bulky. think airplane radar. hubble telescope. maybe certain astrophysics types could fill us in so we dont come up with something too stupid