Spaceship based telescopes

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Anthony

True. It's also useful in radar -- aircraft are reasonably likely to be a blurry blip, but you can usefully aim at the center of the blur as long as they're in midair.

A lot of the problem with statistics is that figures like 'magnification' aren't actually meaningful -- you can magnify by as much as you want. What you want is resolution.

The magnification number is just a colorful but inaccurate way of tracking bonuses to the roll; the real number of import is the bonus.

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?