Sensor Range - details

[Jak Nazryth]

Under the Sensor range chart, it is pretty specific about the level of details... minimal, etc... "hot or cold, tonnage of ship, general shape/hull type of ship" etc..
But if you are a long ranges, say in your "minimal" range for visual / IR in the 50,000+ ranges...
AND you roll really high on your skill because of stats, skill ranks, and factors like signal processing etc... WHICH makes your roll in the 16+ range. (one of our PC's rolled a 20 on sensors)
Do you get MORE information because your sensor score is so high, as in "effect" or can you still only get the most basic information... listed on the chart within your range catagory "hull size and shape"...etc... ?

As in, the bad guys roll a 18+ (natural 12 on the dice, plus skills/stats/advanced processors) and you are in the 100,000 km range, will they get "400 ton blockage runner"
Or will they get you tail number, nation of origin, serial number, and what you had for breakfast?

In essence, does a high number on your skill check give you more information than what's mentioned on the range table?

Thanks.

 

[SSWarlock]

My thoughts/opinions on this are...
1) An Effect of 6+ on any attack that does damage is essentially a critical success ( Core Book, pg. 158, "Critical Hits").
2) Using the above as a precedent, I'd say if a sensor operator gets a critical success on Sensors task roll, then the sensor reading results are one level better. That is, minimal results are upgraded to limited and limited results are upgraded to full. Sensor readings can only be upgraded one level.

 

[phavoc]

At best (ref discretion) you might provide a bit more detail, but in this case you are talking about a physical limitation. If the data isn't there then a positive critical roll should just tell them that for sure the target is hot.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You could provide more detailed range information, e.g. instead of "range band Distant" you could tell them "range is 250000 km ±25000km".

 

[steve98052]

To elaborate on previous answers, there are always going to be physical limits on information available. For example, the optical resolution of a sensor is limited by the physics of light (which extends up and down the spectrum of all electromagnetic radiation, not just light),* so a ridiculously gets you the answers sooner or with greater confidence, rather than exceeding the detail allowed by physics.

The physics of optical resolution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_resolution

* The rules even apply to imaging that uses something other than electromagnetic radiation. For example, an electron microscope uses a beam of electrons for imagining, with effective resolution better than X-rays.

Traveller technology includes gravitic imaging, but to conform with physics its resolution is very poor; to spot a System Defense Boat hiding in the ocean through its gravitic profile would require many orbits of imaging, and knowledge of what the ocean looks like when the SDB isn't there. Maybe Traveller gravitic imaging can be better than understood physics allows, but maybe not, because hiding SDBs in oceans is a technique recognized as effective in canon.