05-22-2015, 02:36 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: In the UFO
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Quote:
A 800x magnification = +8 (or +16 with narrow focus). If that represents a hubble/KH-11, the question is whether that is sufficient? The range penalty for 250 miles or so is -32. If you have an analyst with skill 14 and a +16 bonus and perhaps a +2 time spent bonus you end up with effective skill 32. If the range penalty for 250 miles is -32, this gives a 0 chance of success. Anthony, this suggests that 800x cannot - in GURPS terms - adequately represents a telescope of hubble sized (KH-11) pointing down. What am I missing?
__________________
Is love like the bittersweet taste of marmalade on burnt toast? |
|
05-22-2015, 04:32 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Quote:
|
|
05-22-2015, 05:48 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Quote:
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
|
05-22-2015, 06:14 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: In the UFO
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Good point about the +10.
Sounds like an odd ret-con to me - are you sure it's intended to apply to sensors? I have to admit I don't understand that. Isn't that what the "double the telescopic vision" bonus was for?
__________________
Is love like the bittersweet taste of marmalade on burnt toast? |
05-22-2015, 06:24 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: In the UFO
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Quote:
If I may ask again, could you follow up more on the scaling factor? I'm still not sure whether you meant to say the "square of the magnification" for weight is a good relationship? The relationship I'd been assuming is: 1x = +0 = 1 x weight 2x = +1 (+2 if zooming in) = 4x weight 4x = +2 (+4 if zooming in) = 16x weight 8x = +3 (+6 if zooming in) = 64x weight 16x = +4 (+8 if zooming in) = 256x weight 512x = +9 (+18 if zooming in) =262,144x weight (Actually, I might assume 8x or below might actually be roughly linear in weight due to the extra effort needed to miniaturize - plus the weights of scopes given in HT support that - and the 4x for each +1/+2 only kicks in at 16x and up). If you think a different relationship - SPACESHIPS uses roughly 1-3-10 for every +1/+2 - is better, let me know!
__________________
Is love like the bittersweet taste of marmalade on burnt toast? |
|
05-22-2015, 06:59 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Quote:
It is certainly a retcon, but most new GURPS rules material is.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
|
05-22-2015, 07:19 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Enhanced Sensors came long after UT/HT, for one. Secondly, as David said, the important thing in GURPS is not the color text, but the game effect. The suggestions in HT come from trying to figure what it would take in game terms to do what they claim, being generous in terms of how they would likely be used in an adventure game. Applying heavy science to those figures is likely to leave you frustrated.
|
05-22-2015, 07:23 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Quote:
If you make your mirror wider you need to make the backing material thicker to keep it stiff under gravitational or inertial loads. There are thermal issues too. The Keck design with its' geometric array of smaller mirrors might be a way around the "one big mirror" limit but it's not obvious that what you save in total weight from thinner mirrors you don't make up in the gear to finely control them. It's hard to say much about competing mirror designs for large astronomical instruments. Every blessed one of them is a prototype. There are no production models and whatever design gets chosen is in the hands of whoever raised the money and set up the fabrication shop. The choice selected probably represents that person's individual preferences and experience. Still, as a mirror gets bigger it would have to increase in weight by the square as a minimum and more likely the cube.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
|
05-22-2015, 10:24 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
It actually goes up somewhere between the square and the cube, because bigger mirrors are designed differently.
|
05-22-2015, 11:46 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: In the UFO
|
Re: Spaceship based telescopes
Quote:
If a 16x optical sensor is 2 lb. (about right for a telescopic sight sort of thing, yes?) then a 800x sensor is 50 x that; if it's square, that's about 5,000 lbs. Hmm. That's not too bad - IF - we make the assumption that HIGH TECH was talking about "total bonus" rather than "levels of telescopic vision". If we try to match 12-16 levels of TV, we have a sensor that is off the charts in weight. If it's scaled down to 1x sensor, however, we get 0.004 lbs. which seems a bit small for a TL8 cell phone camera... Incidentally, overall weights for active sensors like radar seem to also scale with about the square of the range. (Not the fourth power, as we're talking total system, and increasing the overall weight of the systems simultaneously increases both system power and system antenna diameter, rather than just one of these.)
__________________
Is love like the bittersweet taste of marmalade on burnt toast? |
|
Tags |
spaceships |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|