Choose a 90-minute route that still makes sense
Prepare The Observatory's Lost Signal for 90 minutes, compare its four checking intervals with the longer route's six, and preserve a verified correction when tonight's survey must wait.
Choose a route before creating the session
Open Prepare for The Observatory's Lost Signal and select 90 minutes. Use “Download my complete ZIP” there to obtain the selected plan, GM book, player materials and state sheet. The short route starts with the receiver strip already available and four careful verification intervals. The 120-minute route provides six intervals and begins without that starting card. These are preparation choices, not a promise that every group finishes at an identical speed. An existing GM session keeps its own duration and resources when preparation options change.
Know what the ordinary four-interval plan can accomplish
The apparent warning comes from a local hill station, while two mirror labels are reversed. At the Optics bench, compare the factory marks; in the Receiver room, read Elva's temporary repair board. At the Hill-view terrace, compare the live lamp with the receiver strip. Establishing the local source costs one interval. Explaining the crossed labels at the receiver costs another. At the Guarded mirror gantry, pinning the frame and correcting the labels cost one interval each. All four are now spent, but returning to the receiver and resuming the corrected survey has no additional interval cost.
Use reconstruction to change the result, not the arithmetic
Suppose a needed observation is missing. Jin can cross-check retained records at the Optics bench for two intervals. In the short route, that leaves two. Spend one establishing the local source, then close the shutter and publish only the verified correction. This closure does not require a repaired frame and costs no further interval; one remains. The town learns that the message concerned replacement parts, while tonight's survey data is lost. The longer six-interval route can afford the same reconstruction plus all four ordinary verification-and-repair costs.
Protect the closing time and carry the real state forward
The short plan reserves five minutes for opening and ten for closure, with activity blocks of twenty, twenty, twenty-five and ten minutes. Keep those final ten minutes for the outcome and follow-up rather than using them to invent extra checking intervals. If the origin remains unverified, hold the report entirely; do not publish the local-source explanation as established. Export session JSON before changing devices and restore it into the same adventure edition. Original-edition saves use their separate resume link. Record whether the survey resumed, a verified correction was published, or the whole claim remains under review.