FTL Jumps and making it tricky...

Ok, the jump points are just gravity well'less points in space that
folks 
jump to and from. Presumably the civil ships will jump from System to 
system so as to be near some lanes of travel  if something goes wrong. 
Military ships could do the same or be more risky and take routes that 
pass through points where there "aint nothin out there". 

This leads to a few questions. Do all battle occur at some point just
off 
a star system or are there battle that occur further out in the 
interstellar deep reaches?

How do you protect a system? Can you have some sort of early warning 
system that will tell you someone is in FTL travel X hours away?

If not, what about placing interdictor ships like used in StarWars that 
will generate a Gravity well to drag a ship suddenly out of FTL on
likely 
avenues of approach to a system and warn you of their impending
approach. 

It would work something like this tactically...(assuming there are
finite 
approach routes to a system via FTL...or your grav wells were
suficiently 
sized to protect a system). 

System Omicron has several Interdictor craft positioned around it. They 
are staffed by minimal if not robotic crews way way way out from a 
system. There are allowed approach corridors to a system that craft
could 
take. 

A Red Taskforce makes an FTL approach to Omicron and runs afoul of the 
Interdictor ships Artificial Grav well. They may be able to destoy the 
Interdictor ship easily (good reason to staff it with computers). But
the 
Interdictor ship sends a robot courier to the system to warn of the 
impending Taskforce's arrival ~4 hours hence. Remember FTL drives take a

bit of time to recycle after a jump. 

Blue force can send renforcements to the location of the I Ship, or 
just use the time to get everyone to GQ and be waiting for the Red guys 
to show. 

Sure the Red Force can send a ship in to see where the interdictor ships

are placed this week (they can move around to keep the red force guys 
guessing), but then redforce has shown their hands by sending a scout
in. 

The questions are:
 How big would the interdictor system be? Should be pretty damn large
and 
expensive, but doable. 50 Mass system (FB Mass size)
 What are the deleterious effects of dumping out of FTL due to an 
Uncharted Interdictor ship?
 Can you really place enough ships around the system to really make a 
fence/tripwire that the Red Force guys will trip and show their hand?

As far as ships transiting in and out of a system normally, they could 
be given clearance through certain paths or they could jump to the 
I-Ship location and transmit the correct codes to get it to drop the 
Grav Well after they've recycled their jump drive.  

Thoughts, comments?

------------------------------------------------------------------
- Ryan Montieth Gill		DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
- ryan.gill@turner.com	    I speak not for CNN, nor they for me -
- rmgill@mindspring.com 	     www.mindspring.com/~rmgill/ -
- '85 Honda CB700S  -  '72 Honda CB750K  - '76 Chevy MonteCarlo  -
------------------------------------------------------------------