Enclosed Telescope

The Enclosed Telescope is a Science Building used to reveal unexplored tiles on the Starmap and help advance space exploration. It serves the same broad purpose as the standard Telescope, but it can operate without being fully open to space, making it easier to fit into compact or partially sealed builds. Telescopes are necessary for studying space, and they support rocket travel to other worlds.

Unlike the ordinary assumption that a telescope must be completely exposed, the Enclosed Telescope can remain functional as long as it has a valid line of sight to space. Solid blocks can obstruct this view, but Window Tiles, Airflow Tiles, and Mesh Tiles do not block it. A simple rule is that if a tile would fully block light, it also blocks the telescope’s sightline. In practice, this means it can work in enclosed rooms if the surrounding geometry still leaves a diagonal path to open space. It is also functional inside rockets, where it does not require any sky visibility at all.

The telescope reveals Starmap tiles in a clockwise pattern, beginning from the tile up-left of its current position. Once it completes a ring, it expands outward and continues scanning. It can reveal unexplored hexes only within a limited range, up to four tiles away in the planetoid-based behavior and three hexes when used in rockets. A Duplicant normally needs 300 seconds to reveal a new tile, and higher Science improves this rate.

The building has several notable practical advantages:

• As a Science Building, it gains a +10% efficiency bonus when placed inside a Laboratory.
• It can be used in enclosed builds as long as the line-of-sight requirements are met.
• It provides a safer working setup than a fully exposed telescope, since it can shield the working Duplicant from 50% of radiation while operating.
• In rocket interiors, it works regardless of placement and ignores normal sky-visibility checks.

For enclosed-space builds, the important constraint is sightlines rather than total openness. A telescope can be placed in a room if the tiles it checks are not blocked by solid structures and there is open space in the required direction. This makes Window Tiles especially useful for radiation-safe observation posts, since they preserve visibility while helping protect the operator.