Steve-Law
Bit of a silly question I suppose, but what sort of sensor profile are we looking at for your average asteroid?
Jerusalem
I think it varies a lot.

They're all pretty damned small though.
ptb
doesn't that depend on your point of view. I mean, compared to a ship most are probably pretty big. compared to a civilian there huges...

but compared to say a planet, tiny happy.gif
Dan Reed
physical size, yes they are usually bigger than a ship - but remember that they are inert lumps of rock (or other stuff) just floating in space, rather than a powered ship with all kinds of emissions. Sensor profiles are not purely dependant on size....

Dan
Archangel
QUOTE
physical size, yes they are usually bigger than a ship - but remember that they are inert lumps of rock (or other stuff) just floating in space, rather than a powered ship with all kinds of emissions. Sensor profiles are not purely dependant on size....


All readers are referred to the URL http://www.solarviews.com/eng/vesta.htm

The opening paragraph follows:

[QUOTE] The Hubble Space Telescope observed asteroid Vesta between November 28 and December 1, 1994, when Vesta was at a distance of 251 million kilometers (156 million miles) from Earth. Vesta has a diameter of 525 kilometers (326 miles) and is smaller than the state of Arizona. It rotates about its axis in 5.34 hours."

The important question is: If we can see a little rock 525Km across from 251 million miles away, the it do we need tech level 10 scanners before the same thing is visible in Phoenix.... blink.gif huh.gif
Dan Reed
that kind of sized asteroid would be apparent on a system scan - several systems I know have immediately apparent asteroids. We're talking about the small chunks of rock of say 1km in diameter - which equates to about 0.00000069% of the volume of Vesta (assuming spheres, an approximation I know), from a powered ship rather than a dedicated telescope

I used volume rather than diameter because sensors in the game are likely dependant on light, mass, subspace resonance and a whole battery of futurisic tech - mass would depend on composition. But if a ship's sensors are exactly as good as Hubble at "discovering stuff" and distance gives an exactly proportional effect to the chances of discovery, that ratio would be equivalent to discovering a 1km asteroid at a distance of about 1.7km

Whatever the numbers work out at, the fact that asteroids are tricky to find also happens to be "good for the game" in my opinion smile.gif It rewards those who make the effort to find them

Dan



Jerusalem
Yup, totally agree with Dan. I spend a lot of fruitless frustrating unrewarding time searching for them. And I get a real thrill when I find one. smile.gif
Sjaak
QUOTE (Jerusalem @ Oct 26 2004, 05:48 PM)
Yup, totally agree with Dan. I spend a lot of fruitless frustrating unrewarding time searching for them. And I get a real thrill when I find one. smile.gif

Nahhhh, not me....

I don't search for them.. I just happen to bump into them so once an while :-)
And I mostly get into problems along the way :-(