Re: Sensors

At 6:02 PM -0400 5/29/01, Richard and Emily Bell wrote:
>
>I had heard that it was the opposite.	The plucky brits (possibly
aussies) lit
>up their vessel as a cruise liner and sailed into the middle of a CVBG
(which
>couldn't warn off the "civvie" vessel without violating EMCON). 
>[Naval exercises
>are never over before the CVN is sunk]

Hmm, the CVN captain probably turned it round on the Italians, 
French, and British in the Med.

>
>EMCON in FT is exacerbated by the problems of maintaining cohesion
after a
>jump.	Everybody's FTL drive being slightly different combined with the
fact
>that an infinitesimal error multiplied by several light-years is
probably
>several AU.  Unless there is some method of detecting FTL travel at 
>FTL speeds,
>invasions are probably on the lines of jump for a point that is several
>light-days away from the target, find everybody else, get together and
do a
>short, in-system jump that will only have a small error, so the force
will

Thats what the fluff in the back says that fleets do. Usually its 
individual ships out on their own in the middle of bloody nowhere.

>arrive in some semblance of formation. (assuming that maneuver in 
>hyperspace is
>impossible)

Its my understanding from all of the Fluff that FTL is "you are here 
*blink* you are there".

>
>Not that difficult (depending on how much wizardry is available). 
Passive
>infrared will give a hull temperature and neutrino spectroscopy will
give the
>powerplant output.  These two pieces of information correlate to 
>reveal the hull
>surface.  It is more difficult if it is not radiating its heat
uniformly, but
>not as difficult as not radiating heat into space.

>  > Second is how much passive emmissions do the ships give off?
>>  You know something is there. How far beyond 54" do you know?
>>  (TK drive emmissions are another thing, boy this long range
>>  sparky stuff gets tricky...)
>>
>
>That calculation would require specific scientific units applied to 
>ships' mass,
>turn length, and the length of an MU.

Well, I'm looking for more fluff clarification as opposed to a 
calculation really. Though I know how hard it is to get Jon to hand 
down decisions from on high... :p

I'm inclined to pick something like 105 MU for passives detecting a 
ship that has drives doing basic maneuvers, but that seems pretty 
short really. A large ship doing thrust 3 and 4 burns would likely 
show up like a small comet to any good telescope up to about an 
Astronomical Unit.

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