[GZG] Re: Was FTL, now FTL comms

Hi Scott,

The basic rules don't mention any 'strategic' stuff, like comms, at all.

I've always been quite comfortable with interstellar communications
moving
at the speed of the fastest courier ship.  Gives a bit of delayed
reaction
for fleet movements so that, as someone else has pointed, a command
system
of pre-plotted moves, such as in Fifth Frontier War, models the
communication lag quite nicely.

> Of course, a lot of that depends on the existence and nature of FTL
commo
and FTL sensor technology. I can't remember off the top of my head what
the
"official" Tufflyverse answer is.  Is FTL commo basically instantaneous
regardless of distance?

Ursula Le Guin's 'ansible' (sp?) communication system was much like a
(very)
long distance telephone call.  So word of the invasion would come
through,
like via telegraph, and then the fleet would be dispatched and would
still
have to move to the point of contact - possibly better for a campaign
where
the players are both strategic commanders and fleet commanders and want
to
know what's happening each move.  If the ansible system required a
gravity
well or very long array (ie orbit diametre) to work, then the fleets
would
be out of contact with the High Command until they managed to hook up
with
the local 'telegraph' office.

>Is it possible/feasible to detect an invading fleet before they drop
out of
FTL?

In one of the back-files, someone coined a lovely phrase for the
bow-wave of
an FTL ship or fleet re-entering real-space - but I can't remember it
  David Weber calls it a hyper foot-print, but I'm sure there is a more
elegant term for it .

The suggestion was that this might be detectable up to several hours
before
re-entry so defenders might begin to react but were unlikely to be able
to
intercept immediately on re-entry (unless unfortunate enough to be right
under the re-entry point).

Regards

David

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