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Old 09-21-2020, 01:47 AM   #11
Pectus Solentis
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Live in Seoul, Korea and I have never been abroad.
Default Re: [Spaceships, Ultra-Tech] On-board Sensors

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
One thing is that the ship's sensors cover the whole sky sphere all the time. Vehicle sensors seldom have to point very far downwards, and often aren't expected to cover 360-degrees all the time. That means the sensing elements are about twice as big and heavy on a spaceship. The processing components on a ship will also need to be bigger, to handle the extra load this extra coverage means.

Overall, I don't think doubling the mass is far off. Oh, and the UT gear is man-portable or light vehicle installations, so they're not including any cooling, maintenance spaces, etc. in their weight, whereas the Spaceships systems include all that stuff.

EDIT: 'IRL' in this context means "In Real Life".
Well, your explanation seems to make sense. thanks.

Quote:
I don't think doubling the mass is far off.
But what does this pharagraph mean? I didn't understand the meaning of the phrase "far off" and my translator (I used Naver Papago translator and Google translator.) doesn't translate it appropriately.
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Old 09-21-2020, 02:00 AM   #12
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Default Re: [Spaceships, Ultra-Tech] On-board Sensors

My suspicion is that spaceships sensors are cheap and heavy because it's trying to make putting them on an interesting design decision within a resolution of 5% of ship's mass, and that's not a very likely situation. In general there's two methods for putting sensors on a vehicle: figure out what it needs and fits within your budget for the role of the vehicle (which will generally result in a sensor weight that is negligible relative to the vehicle), or you're just building a sensor carrier, in which case you don't care that your sensor costs ten times as much as the rest of the vehicle put together.
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Old 09-21-2020, 02:36 AM   #13
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Default Re: [Spaceships, Ultra-Tech] On-board Sensors

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Originally Posted by Pectus Solentis View Post
But what does this pharagraph mean? I didn't understand the meaning of the phrase "far off" and my translator (I used Naver Papago translator and Google translator.) doesn't translate it appropriately.
Ah, sorry. "far off" means 'far away', and thus 'isn't far off' or 'not far off' means 'is fairly close', both in distance but also in other things (like weight in this case). So what I was saying was that once everything is considered, the Spaceships sensors being twice the weight of the UT ones is reasonable.
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Old 09-21-2020, 02:40 AM   #14
Pectus Solentis
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships, Ultra-Tech] On-board Sensors

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Ah, sorry. "far off" means 'far away', and thus 'isn't far off' or 'not far off' means 'is fairly close', both in distance but also in other things (like weight in this case). So what I was saying was that once everything is considered, the Spaceships sensors being twice the weight of the UT ones is reasonable.
Ah thanks and sorry for my poor English. I understood "far off" as the opposite meaning from what you said.
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Old 09-21-2020, 03:44 AM   #15
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Default Re: [Spaceships, Ultra-Tech] On-board Sensors

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My suspicion is that spaceships sensors are cheap and heavy because it's trying to make putting them on an interesting design decision within a resolution of 5% of ship's mass, and that's not a very likely situation. In general there's two methods for putting sensors on a vehicle: figure out what it needs and fits within your budget for the role of the vehicle (which will generally result in a sensor weight that is negligible relative to the vehicle), or you're just building a sensor carrier, in which case you don't care that your sensor costs ten times as much as the rest of the vehicle put together.
For what it's worth, the fire control director for the main guns with its optical and radar rangefinders, etc. on a WWII destroyer was about 1% of its mass. All the other fire control gear, radars, and so on would've at least doubled that.

Even on battleships, where there were many more rangefinders yet the total percentage of displacement used by them was miniscule, there was a major concern with topweight from sensors. They were also a problem because of the volume and power consumed by the radars, something that's still an issue today (modern warships are often more volume limited than weight limited).
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Old 09-27-2020, 11:37 PM   #16
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Default Re: [Spaceships, Ultra-Tech] On-board Sensors

Eventualy I made my house-rule sensors, Surveyers' Sensors Array, that is PESA, Ladar, Radar, Laser Communicator, Radar Communicator (all of these are the largest ones) in GURPS Ultra-Tech combined. It costs $456K and weighs a little bit light than 0.5ton (which is the weight of one system for SM+4 spacecraft).
I used the rule on GURPS Ultra-Tech p16 to calculate this equipment's price.

It seems to be go well in my SM+4 Planet Surface Exploration Robot, but still I have questions. $456K is much more expensive even than SM+6 Enhanced Sensors Array (which costs $200K). How can I justify this difference?

Last edited by Pectus Solentis; 09-28-2020 at 01:25 AM.
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