Research Telescope : everything you need to know

[SamLogan]

Hello,

I did a lot of testing with the research telescope to understand how it works exactly, here's what I've found :

Detection zone isn't a cone

Here's the exact detection zone delimited by the wall, over it, it doesn't add detection bonus :

You can add (or not) a wall to the parabolic roof without affect the detection.

The detection area is asymmetric, on the left side, you need 5 tiles of width, on the right side, you only need 2 tiles of width.

The distance from the surface's roof doesn't affect the detection as you can see here :

On both I have 100% detection, given I respect "left -> 5 tiles / right 2 tiles".

We see that the detection is on an asymmetric rectangular.

 

Interferences

For each opaque tile or object, you will loose 9% of detection, here are some examples :

With one tile in the detection zone (91%)

With two tile in the detection zone (82%)

No matter where the tile is, it will reduce the dectection by 9%.

 

Telescope don't like the glass roof

To protect your telescope from the fall of regolith, you maybe would add a glass roof. Unfortunately, it also reduce the detection by 9% per tile !

If you want a roof, you can use Mesh Tile without any malus !

What about the door?

If you want to auto-dig the regolith with doors, note you will have interferences over time. Without regolith on the door, it works perfectly :

But if you have regolith on the doors :

If you unconstruct the doors and let the regolith, you will have 100% of detection.

I hope, it will help you to better understand the telescope.

The visibility percentage is determined how fast you do the research. 9% is really low.

 

[mathmanican]

Another great guide in the "Everything you need to know" series.

[Carnis]

@SamLogan The Doors on your last picture can be cleared by close/open automine.

The clumps of regolith on The doors is not a problem. The tiles of regolith in The doors are.

Useful Post, thanks.

[Saturnus]

10 hours ago, SamLogan said:

The detection area is asymmetric, on the left side, you need 5 tiles of width, on the right side, you only need 2 tiles of width.

Or you could say the detection area is symmetrical centered on the left most tile.

[AndreyKl]

Personally I made bunker doors above and below telescope. When regolith drops it ends up below and doesn't heat telescope. With new robo-miner it is easy to cleanup in such case. Not sure if automatic doors can be used for same 'telescope-basing' purpose, but if they can, they will be faster.

Downsides: You need to make sure your energy supply is stable. Telescope is not operatable due to bunker doors being open below it for some time after 'shower'.

[Bomato]

You can also just stack telescopes atop of each other since they don't block any light themselves.

[Sasza22]

You can just build 4 bunker tiles on top of the telescope and it will still have around 50% efficiency. 0 maintainance and no transparent tile/building exploits. Well you could call that an exploit as well...

[SamLogan]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

You can just build 4 bunker tiles on top of the telescope and it will still have around 50% efficiency. 0 maintainance and no transparent tile/building exploits. Well you could call that an exploit as well...

50% efficiency? Good luck with the new research system of Space Industry where you need to have from 400 to 800 points given you obtain 4-5 pts / cycle with 100%.