We all use words to communicate, hopefully with a standard "unpacking" from symbols to meaning. However words should not be used as a restriction of what can or cannot exist in the mind.

Awareness to me, is what your body, sense organs know from your own viewpoint. Consciousness allows an input of that awareness in addition to other people's awareness. If you made a game where a monster made decisions based upon his/her own threat system, it would be acting according to its own awareness. However when it considers the threat system of its own threats, it may make decisions otherwise. In other words, it may have a chance of doubting its own awareness in favor of another awareness, or in the case of partial blindness, increase its own vision beyond what the eyes/ears etc can see. Consciousness is far more complicated than simply processing the outside world, it is a merging of multiple words into one. (Assuming the merge does not have contradictions, one is seeing beyond what one can see and know directly. And in the case of contradictions, this leads to the capacity of disagreement.) Also to note, a conscious object is formed, as a context of learning and is critical to rapid improvement. A conscious object can contain the spatial graph of many three dimensional spaces, forming a kind of invisible (non sensory) 4 dimensional space. One other thing a conscious object can do, is project one's position into a different one, allowing one to imagine what the sensory experience would be if one were to occupy that position. Eventually the conscious makes decisions in a three dimensional space, but this is a kind of quaternion map back down to three dimensions, or a complex number mapping onto a real number (in analogy).

Another thing about consciousness is that it appears to allow the input of thought streams of other people (communication) into one's own (communication object) bringing about the concept of symbolism. Why would we have symbols if there wasn't another mind to receive them? Symbols appear to play a conscious role in thought generation outside one's current awareness.

Also note, sometimes when we think of emotional pain, we think of social rejection, possible through a conscious view. The more we understand how the brain handles conscious problems, the more we can figure out what we call a "bad conscious" which can increase fear exponentially higher than simple awareness of a threat, aka someone else knows you are afraid at the same time you are afraid. Therefore I think that my fear, related to my awareness, is heightened by others fear, and is experienced as a different kind of thing in the mind. That is to be conscious comes with both its great strengths and menacing daemons. We can also have empathy for other people's awareness.

Sentience however to me, is the ability to take in not the thoughts of another (could be wrong) but the thinking of another (could be even wronger) and is far more complicated. Instead of thoughts coming in from different people, we see thought machines instead. We see the conscious of another, that is, the threat is not person A, but person A + B + C + D if an event were to occur, social grouping up on a person for a thought. The conscious can form a social thought police. Sentience however leads to war.

The terminators do not see the human's awareness, but their conscious and deem the human race incapable of the necessary brain power to form sentiance, that is the terminators calculate a cruel salvation for man-kind.

Another way to think of sentiance is again by refelcting on consciousness, consciousness allows us to override our own awareness, if another's awareness takes priority, aka our pain because another needs us - because the pain for another is calculated as worse pain, we may sacrifice our selves for another. Sentience on the other hand, can override our conscious, because the solution to the conscious problem is deemed poor, it seem extremely cruel. Awareness bubbles up to conscious, and a conscious problem bubbles up to sentience. Sentience solves the moral dilemma of the conscious, but a person who has a bad "sentience" can have a whole new tier of emotional pain, that of evaluating the consciousness of a group and deeming the entire 4 dimensional space as a poor solution to a perceived larger sentient problem. Actually leaders usually must be sentient, because they seem to override people's conscious all the time, and can be seen as even more evil, yet trying to make a larger sensation work. That is they will fire you, despite your conscious of your family because the whole company is suffering.

And yes there are layers beyond that, but somehow it is about how we make decisions. A general rule is that when there is more than one of something, we need description for selection, unless nature decides for us.

One such other layer, which I think is a diplomatic layer, increases the mind to the point where we can see something like a world war, and realize how destructive it is. It isn't enough to say that someone was hurt (awareness of another in our conscious layer) but the way it also hurts other people, including the person hurting the other (awareness of the conscious results - sentience, we feel somehow about it. More complicated thinking) But the entire war as hurting a larger social fabric, possibly even the world itself. In other words to be diplomatic is a something more complicated than sentience. Not everyone can be diplomatic. A diplomat, might see the general problems in an organization and realize that while it makes sense to fire a man connected to his consciousness, the sentience of the company is connected to the social fabric and produces more negative problems for the company later on. However it has to be going through even more complicated processing.)

I would say that the solution of the terminators was not very diplomatic to say the least.