True to a point. However, the background is that dark, and if you're willing to put a hood over your camera so no sunlight falls on it, you can generally treat space as being completely black.Originally posted by Supplement Four:
It's not always that dark in space. Space combat will take place inside a solar system 99.99% of the time, near a star or two.
Can you see the candle? The 5' stand? Or, just the big bright splotch?
Does it matter? As long as you can see the splotch, you know there's a candle there.
The numbers on those sites are based upon the methods used by real astronomers. In particular, it's a very close match to real-world near-earth-asteroid automated searches.
True, but combat range is usually pretty short, and if you're using beam weapons the pointing accuracy of the beam will be on the same scale as the beam focus, which means if you can hurt it you can hit it.
One more thought: Space is large and for the most part dark. Sensor range is probably incredible. But, it's one thing to "see" a target. It's a totally different thing to "hit" a target in combat.
Now, at ranges beyond a few tenths of a light-second, against Traveller starships, you may miss because of speed of light delays. At a range of 1 light-second, you know your target's position one second before you fire, and it takes your fire another second to arrive, giving the target two seconds to no longer be where you shot at.