Sensors from Scout Book
- Thread starter asorrells
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alex_greene
Guest
Engineer: "Jump field established, stable at ten kilodrosschers, Sir."
TravellerArt
Mongoose
EDG said:
For this kind of Star Trek bad science & bad plot nonsense I thoroughly recommend the 'Make It So' podcast (its on iTunes). The two guys pick an aspect of Star Trek each week and mercilessly (but somehow lovingly) rip it to shreds. Its very very funny (though NSFW).
lastbesthope
Mongoose
GJD said:
A few select friends and I often talk at work about invoking the Ripley-Hicks protocol. :twisted:
As yet, noone has called us on it.
LBH
alex_greene
Guest
Sometimes the very name itself can be a hint that something big is about to happen.
Calling a scientist "John Osterman," for instance, will make any Watchmen fans sit up with sudden interest.
And handing a player character an Osterhagen Key, or a Lemarchand Box, is just asking for trouble ...
I know we're now three sectors away from the original thread, namely the sensors from Book 3. But those sensors are there to pick out the anomalies the Referee is going to throw at them - so those anomalies might as well have interesting names and backgrounds, and as such they can rightly be discussed on this thread.
Which above paragraph is a most excellent justification for the threadjacking that has been going on here.
Calling a scientist "John Osterman," for instance, will make any Watchmen fans sit up with sudden interest.
And handing a player character an Osterhagen Key, or a Lemarchand Box, is just asking for trouble ...
I know we're now three sectors away from the original thread, namely the sensors from Book 3. But those sensors are there to pick out the anomalies the Referee is going to throw at them - so those anomalies might as well have interesting names and backgrounds, and as such they can rightly be discussed on this thread.
Which above paragraph is a most excellent justification for the threadjacking that has been going on here.
alex_greene
Guest
That's the same protocol I indirectly invoked in the discussion on the "zombies for Traveller" thread, right?lastbesthope said:
If you can find it, these were written up in a decent bit of detail in DGP's Grand Census.
Around 40.00 (sometimes less) on Ebay.
There's one guy selling it for insane like 250.00 prices.
I liken sensors to modern day sensors as on a modern warship.
You can get a passive bearing or go active and get a decent range and bearing.
Or with passive, and some time, you can figure a course track for them, if they maintain straight line.
lots of tricks with all of that... Neutrinos are masked by a sun, so close in, with the sun to your back, N-sensors will be drowned, but visual, you'll cast a long shadow...
A densitometer will get confused in an asteroid belt, etc.
Around 40.00 (sometimes less) on Ebay.
There's one guy selling it for insane like 250.00 prices.
I liken sensors to modern day sensors as on a modern warship.
You can get a passive bearing or go active and get a decent range and bearing.
Or with passive, and some time, you can figure a course track for them, if they maintain straight line.
lots of tricks with all of that... Neutrinos are masked by a sun, so close in, with the sun to your back, N-sensors will be drowned, but visual, you'll cast a long shadow...
A densitometer will get confused in an asteroid belt, etc.
Some sensors are passive only, some can be switched from active to passive depending on needs, while other sensors are active only.Merxiless said:
Remember, if you go active on sensors, everyone else will see you even if they are using passive sensors. And sometimes, going active on sensors is considered an act of aggression.
Use your sensors wisely
Indeed, there have been quite a number of serious real world incidentswhtknght said:
because of this.
For example, Israeli aircraft once locked their active targeting sensors
on a German warship on UN patrol off the coast of Lebanon, and the
captain of the warship seriously considered to open fire on the aircraft.
Had he been unable to identify the nationality of the aircraft by the type
of sensors they used, he would have had to destroy them in order to
protect his ship - with nasty political consequences.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Merxiless said:
This was DGP, and much of the same stuff apeared in MT.
I decided not too far into MT that I really didn't like the Star Trek sensors DGP had introduced into the game. Even before GDW dialed a lot of those back or removed them entirely (in TNE), I was ignoring most of their sillier effects.
(Star Trek sensors are infamous, as has already been discussed, but my favorite bit of silliness was the TNG Enterprise being able to detect a cloaked Romulan ship in system clutter from two light years out.)
Densitometers as super-sensors render a huge number of SF tropes completely unuseable, including one of Traveller's favorites: pirates and smuggling. So for my own purposes densitometers retain their MT blindness around artificial gravity, but are also rather short-ranged and "confused" by motion unless it is regular and can be predicted. The range is more a function of resolution, so, for example, a ship mounted Densitometer can scan a ship you've pulled up next to for gross damage and large-scale structure, but it can't tell you what's in the cargo crates unless its within a very few meters. The same sensor can, if allowed to scan for long enough, provide a basic map of the whole system you are in, though it may miss some smaller moons. Smaller densitometers also function as a useful part of a medical scan suite.
Neutrino sensors are, for me, a survey device, not a combat sensor. If by chance you pick up some ship's power plant on one, look out the window, because its going to be big, and its going to be close.
Neural Activity Sensors are fine in older editions. They have a bit too much range in MGT for my tastes, as they are (again) a trope ruiner if they are too good.
I don't have MGT Scouts, but I hope there are countermeasures for these sensors...
For instance, if one can detect neutrinos, one should be able to suppress them ('shielding') or jam them (accelerate/change them so that false readings appear - or emit entirely false neutrino signatures).
BTW - neutrinos come in several flavors (based on which lepton they came from - electron, muon or tau and their anti's) and are primarily produced by atomic interactions (though also atomic decay processes) - such as fission, fusion, and cosmic ray interactions and high energy particle physics.
In Traveller this would mean most starship weapons and probably maneuver drives would create a neutrino signature. Various characteristics - type (handedness), spin (angular momentum), mass (in eV) and patterns (what comes together in what ratios, dispersion, and frequency) - could all provide forensic style data for sensors to determine source type, position and motion of objects (though the latter would depend on characteristic relativistic mass changes).
IMHO This would only work as a passive type of sensor (since neutrino rays would not 'reflect' back very well). It would however, even with today's tech, be very easy to create false signatures.
Neutrinos 'go through' most matter because they have zero charge and very tiny masses (possibly zero 'rest' mass) - they don't have strong interactions - only weak and gravity (they do have relativistic mass - remember (Delta) E = (Delta) MC^2). This means one can't hide a ship behind say a moon or planet - though a star or gas giant should do the trick.
Current observation (esp. of the 'zero mass' of neutrinos) and theory may have disproven some of this (or my memory is really bad - I don't recall ) - I haven't kept up since the late 80's - but I think the Standard Model still remains unviolated...
For instance, if one can detect neutrinos, one should be able to suppress them ('shielding') or jam them (accelerate/change them so that false readings appear - or emit entirely false neutrino signatures).
BTW - neutrinos come in several flavors (based on which lepton they came from - electron, muon or tau and their anti's) and are primarily produced by atomic interactions (though also atomic decay processes) - such as fission, fusion, and cosmic ray interactions and high energy particle physics.
In Traveller this would mean most starship weapons and probably maneuver drives would create a neutrino signature. Various characteristics - type (handedness), spin (angular momentum), mass (in eV) and patterns (what comes together in what ratios, dispersion, and frequency) - could all provide forensic style data for sensors to determine source type, position and motion of objects (though the latter would depend on characteristic relativistic mass changes).
IMHO This would only work as a passive type of sensor (since neutrino rays would not 'reflect' back very well). It would however, even with today's tech, be very easy to create false signatures.
Neutrinos 'go through' most matter because they have zero charge and very tiny masses (possibly zero 'rest' mass) - they don't have strong interactions - only weak and gravity (they do have relativistic mass - remember (Delta) E = (Delta) MC^2). This means one can't hide a ship behind say a moon or planet - though a star or gas giant should do the trick.
Current observation (esp. of the 'zero mass' of neutrinos) and theory may have disproven some of this (or my memory is really bad - I don't recall
) - I haven't kept up since the late 80's - but I think the Standard Model still remains unviolated...
alex_greene
Guest
What's A Neutrino?
Neutrinos on H2G2 - sorry, Wikipedia
And neutrinos' mass is negligible, but still non-zero.
Neutrinos on H2G2 - sorry, Wikipedia
And neutrinos' mass is negligible, but still non-zero.
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