Spaceship based telescopes

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by weby

Thus actually I think that the HT values are thus closer to the values you need to for the game mechanics to work without kludges.

The game mechanics don't work right for unaided vision without kludges. Fix that and the sensor problem fixes itself.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by weby

The standard(and enchanted) sensor suites in GURPS spaceships have really low telescopic vision levels.

I would think that there would definitely be situations where having high magnification would be helpful.

Any suggestions on "telescope modules" for space ships?

As in how much a module of what size would do mostly?

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Below is my long explanation/idea for what could be

As example the TL 8 asat interceptor from spaceships 4 has the equivalent of 3lb thermal imaging binoculars from High tech.

Remember the SPACESHIPS include multispectral (i.e., visible, infrared to ultraviolet) with a 360 degree arc. Also, the favorable bonuses for detection of targets in space (p. 44-45) are usually high enough you don't need much.

That said, a purpose-designed telescope could certainly be more impressive: it could exclude the radar and comm systems, and also could be built to look in one direction rather than representing an array of multiple smaller scopes looking in several directions, which should be worth an extra +2 or more.

Another thing is the SPACESHIPS systems are deliberately pretty cheap, and include a fair bit of structure and empty space. If you used UT or real world pricing for military grade, sensors are likely to be about $1,000-4,000 PER POUND of weight (more for something like Hubble, of course, which is a one-of-a-kind thing).