Game in the Brain

Scanning Limitations of Technology

I was doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations with regards to scanning. So TL10 is 10,000 times better processing than our own computers to weight in TL8. Still, the scanning area of ships are incredible. I was imagining a ship entering a system in the default of 5AU from final destination in Traveller and i was wondered what was the base sq area of a cone with the height of the diameter of the entire system and with a arc of 90 degrees.

One can imagine that it needs more than 10,000 more processing power than a server cluster/ data cabinet worth of computers if you consider that every object in that volume of the cone has to be tracked second by second, identified, updated, analyzed for threats, and etc.

In fact, if you consider the 20min turn in GT space combat with the processing power of what may be a mainframe with 500k passmarks x 10k or 5B passmarks the best resolution would probably be 3-20 min updates. Each object is given a probability halo just to compensate for the slow processing.

I begin to see the proficiency in manipulating this in a different light. I realize statistics and programming is PART of the standard skillset of a sensor officer, particularly sub fields and formulas specific to scanning operating systems. These operators master how to optimize their machines through the gestalt of these skills, natural affinity or augmentation.

Transhuman terrans with their cyber augmentations can specialized and optimize themselves for these tasks. As for Vilani, i think castes specific to ship operation and their family backgrounds give them genetic and early learning advantage. I think i should start considering family / eugenic lines for vilani professionals and their castes.

Ill maybe have to make my professional templates Talent packages for vilani. Ill have to figure out how to add that in the char gen process.

Oh and i also forgot to mention how this data mess is great for stealth tech. If you dont know where to start, even with the inefficiencies of stealth tech there is just so much crap to sort through.

Another mental comparison is how sparse the data we get now, even if you increase what we can process in a day 10,000 times it not enough considering ships that enter systems have to work. There is a serious hard limit by which we can process data in a system, even if we work with maps and high density data compression.