Van Ropen
Angry, angry about elves.
Err...did that change at some point? Because we definitely used to vote on what was happening next quarter (since the theoretical standard was one update per quarter).
Last edited:
Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
- Location
- canada
Wow that is comprehensive. Would augmenting logic give more research dice? Or would that be what increasing R&D do? In fact, what does increasing any of the science based skill would do? give bonuses towards that type of research?
@Hoyr Note that the research tab in our Finances sheet is incorrect (the one on our tech sheet is correct): our newest lab is on Elysium, so we have that administrator modifier to deal with. Our real total is 210d10 + 5d10 + 700 + (30d10 + 110) * 15/100, or *20/100 if "improving existing mass effect technologies". QUESTION: would our Improved Starship Warhead count as an improvement to existing ME technologies?
Ooh, shiny. Definitely something to look at in the future.
Anyway, as much as I'd love to pick up the Mark II suit, our bigger priority for now is anti-starship weapons, and anti-hacking measures (read: AI License Prep). That space-AK attack was far more dangerous to us than this most recent attack, and we're still too vulnerable to actually risk travelling in space at all right now; that a huge problem that we need to address first, before we invest in otherwise shiny things like a better Iron Man suit.
Last edited:
Van Ropen
Angry, angry about elves.
I agree that both of those are things we want now - but can't we pull the Mk. 2 to this quarter as well, effectively at the expense of pushing Advanced Xenobiology back a quarter on the timeline? Especially given that bonus RP is something the timeline doesn't take into account and which should make up the difference?
You know what I have no clue. Like I said this confuses the crap out of me. The early dating has been really... yeah, scrambled (or non-existant). I've always worked with the idea that the quarter marked is the quarter the action were attached to. So: Okay we just enter Quarter X of YYYY, how should we allocate our resources boss lady?
I suppose it was because the date was only ever marked at the top and the vote didn't say that is was for the quarter after that. In-post dating was something I added.
Frankly as long as everything is indexed the same things will be fine.
Well... that's complicated. These kinda two systems being used here. The company system and the personal skills system (looted from Shadowrun). The Science skills, the R&D skill are mostly just fluff from the company level research system I included them because why not? The bases system had the Knowledge skills so I filled that out and then said hey there should be a an R&D skill.
That said there is some correlation Logic is augmented by the ANI and having that ANI gives +5 RP per "Person" 10d10 on the company level.
That said the Logic Attribute should be maxed at 7(10)/7(10). R&R is at 7/7, but skill augments are rare and hard to come by in SR so don't count on those at all. R&D + Logic is supposed to represent your BS 40d10+25 Research Dice.
Increasing the science stats... not much that sort of your I have this memorized off the top of my head knowledge (and I'm sort planning to auto-increase them as techs get done), R&D is what makes the BS tech happen. There used to be a get a degree personal action, Its now [ ] Study (Subject). You could learn about new and interesting people, get new tech ideas. Or just learn neat things.
Gods damn it all!
Right I'll work on that though the dating on the thing confused the crap out of me.Edit: Think I fixed it.
And yes it counts, they exist on market already, you're making them better.
Last edited:
I suppose we could, but really I'd rather go for Warp Barriers if we're pushing for good ground-pounder techs. That would have been a good way to shred our little super-Nova Vanguard character: make him charge right into a biotic detonation.
Heh, yeah, the tech document is a planning document, so it's based around what we are projecting to have completed for a given quarter, not what we are researching for that quarter. So, right now it's the end of 2173-Q3; we're planning out our research dice for 2173-Q4 in order to see what techs we'll have available for actions in 2174-Q1.Gods damn it all!
How's your headache?
Eeeexcellent. So, we definitely want to have Captain Hwang working on the anti-starship missiles this quarter.
Any updates on this?
I guess we also need to think about the whole Treasure Hunt on Intai'sei deal. I really want to send Revy along, but first off it's unsafe, secondly it's probably going to take too much time off of research, and third we can't do that and do the PR Charm Offensive that we kind of need to do with so many people bad-mouthing PI and the Alliance and headhunt a good Commander-hero for ParSec, which we need to finish getting off the ground.
Van Ropen
Angry, angry about elves.
I'm not exactly desperate for the Mk. 2 either. Honestly, if I had to pick I would go with Miniaturized Energy Weapons - a single cheap tech that yields a market-ready product, something the Alliance would love, something that would improve our personal abilities since we would be able to mount the things on our rigs, and its only a matter of time until someone else does it so I'd rather we were the first. But I think people are getting anxious about the suit.
Don't forget that the Mk II will also let us use our biotics while armored up; we kind of can't right now. OTOH, there are a huge number of things on our tech tree that are "a must"; it's hard to pick just ~1888 RP worth for the quarter.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
well what can sell for the most for the least industry input?
How's your headache?
Actually that made things go away.
I'll give you the details next update.
I'll give a summery of what's there though. A large amount of Confusing, a tad bit of useless, a major helping of too bad its been 50,000+ years, a couple of relay transit codes, some neat items for Prothean sociologists, and not much else.
You could borrow some one else's stuff. Like the Alliance's they own you a favor or five and you are kinda important. Though they are involved that "War on Piracy" thing. Or a PMC or something*.
*Reminds me Give your PMC some love: like a commander, and some units. It needs those.
Intai'sei is an Alliance colony. For the low low price of also being able to look in the box I'd be they'd be willing to loan you a few ships. (*cough*Cruiser flotilla*cough*) To top that off it a place a few military types retire at.
As for time off research... I'll tip my hand a bit and say barring everything going wrong the time investment should not impact research.
With humorous sarcasm: But what do I know I'm just the GM don't take my word for it.
I believe that means I'm doing my job right.
Last edited:
It'd mean the "quests" would happen in the latter part of the quarter, but sure you have enough brain power that I can let that sort of thing go. On occasion only and let me know in advance that's what your thinking 'kay?
Van Ropen
Angry, angry about elves.
Yes, the plan @TheEyes has outlined was constructed with both in mind. The long-term goal is the ship, with crucial tech gated behind the Flawless Blackboxing and regular completion of at least one major tech per quarter.
Though yeah, with 200 RP already pooled we can totally bring the Mk. 2 up to the current quarter.
Though yeah, with 200 RP already pooled we can totally bring the Mk. 2 up to the current quarter.
A TIR shield is simpler then a TIR stealth system. A TIR shield is a single layer of mass decreasing dark energy*. A TIR stealth system is a TIR field covering an entire ship and a second layer projected around that with a gap. If you have stealth you have te shield, but if you can make shield you don't have to have the stealth.
*Needs to be a few millimeters thick and to be a very strong but that's it.
I was wondering if it was worth breaking them up and offering the TIR shield much cheaper. You can after all jury-rig one using an FTL drive, a bit of know how and about 5-10 seconds of work. This would be a formal piece of gear that worked separately from the FTL. This might be interesting because a TIR shield is a very effective anti-laser defense. To the tune of let's not bother with lasers any more
Yeah, it's not like we could have this special event go balls-up like our last one...
Yes, TIR laser shields are essentially nothing more than projecting an FTL-level dark energy field... without going to FTL. The tech you're thinking of would make the shield system a bit more practical because the NME (Negative Mass Effect) field will only be in a layer around the ship, whereas a normal FTL field envelops the entire ship, subjecting the crew to the same weird physics (see @Yog's paper for details) when you don't have to.
There are, however, two problems with this "naive" TIR laser shield:
- Lasers don't get in... but neither does any other part of the EM spectrum, which means that your sensors don't work. This is why we need the gravimetric sensors tech before we can make any practical use of TIR shields.
- EM can't pass through in either direction, which means you are sitting inside a giant perfect mirror, just you... and the fusion/antimatter plasma torch you're using to maneuver. The enemy won't need to roast you with gamma rays; you'll be doing that just fine by yourself. This is why we need the Repulsor--or I guess the Normandy's weird gravity-based Tantalus drive--before using TIR laser-shields.
This post is a bit nerdy and involves some amateur science and engineering though hopefully number light and understandable.
TL;DR: I think you can get around those issues. But the real question is would you find it useful if the techs were split up and you could get some of the benefit cheaper (and thus possibly earlier)?
This is (mostly) true. TIR leaves a tiny hole that get increasingly smaller the more powerful the field. For example a 5000c field*, covering a 20m radius sphere (the front of a frigate?), leaves a hole with a 4mm radius. Ironically the center of the hole is always located at the place where a line from you to the field would make a right angle with the field (yay light geometry!). Thing is UberJJK has mentioned before and I can see his reasoning that said holes could be exploited to give vision assuming they aren't too small. Thus some sight at FTL at least. Careful creation of TIR barrier geometry and camera placement may produce an odd, limited, but still (hopefully) useful picture. On the other hand the attacker at lets say 10km needs to be able to line up a shot with 0.000046 degree accuracy. And it just gets worse further out. I'm not sure of the limits, best I'd heard is ~0.00014 (amusingly from a company called PI), for medical scanners.
*which we can be 100% sure at least some ME ships can make, though some other estimates give much larger numbers 110,000c for example is the one I use for the maximum of normal Citadel tech. That hole is 0.18 millimeters in radius. (0.0000021 Degrees accuracy at 10km)
TIR isn't perfect, it's just really damn good. And when what the enemy need to get around that is something they don't have? Then really damn good is good enough.
Now double layering should hopefully close those holes, but covering them thus making TIR stealth work. I'm not going to claim to be a geometry expert here, but Yog claims the leak should be small enough for stealth. I think that after enough time the amount of energy in the "gap" will get to high and even that tiny leak would still be an issue. However I'm not sure how to approach this issue mathematically.
With a continuously active thin layer shield this is an issue. The field will reflect emissions back, as the ship is in a low C zone and is surrounded by a high C one. You'd need some way to drastically reduce heat output (eg Reactor + Repulsors).
However I sort of put a joke into my observation about FTL systems. "You can after all jury-rig one using an FTL drive, a bit of know how and about 5-10 seconds of work." Those 5-10 second are literally only for the time it takes to turn the thing on. (Well plus or minus boot up time and any safeties, but w/e) I wasn't exaggerating for comedic effect. Having an FTL field covering the ship provides a TIR field meaning the Jury-Rigged version is actually immune to this problem. The emissions begin inside the high-speed field and thus aren't blocked. Its only out-field to in-field that's blocked for a high C field not the reverse.
So yeah those are less of an issue then you'd think. Now draining you FTL time maybe an issue though that depend on engagement length. Also the question of shield-FTL compatibility.
Spit balling some engineering solutions for the TIR Shields tech here:
The first problem is an issue anywhere you can see they can shoot, so barring other work arounds, (Grav-wave sensors, QEC probes, and maybe Other things?) the question becomes, is a a hole large enough for sensors an issue and can you mitigate that? (See above) Also should be noted that you only need to cover valid vectors for a laser shot not the entire ship. That's a case of the detection game though and losing is (possibly) lethal.
If you're really crazy you might be able to pulse the field (or its intensity at least) and get snap shots visuals. Depending on a lot of factors including pulse rate and camera ability, this could at least reduce laser damage by a significant margin (for long/many pulses) if not out right block most (or all) of the shots (Shorter pulses). Then you need to fire laser shots in turn with the targets shield frequency. Which sound very startreky. Of course you might be just producing a warp (no not the startek one the ME one) so I'm not sure that'd fly for an effect that was in contact with the sip.
The second you can possibly get around by doing funny things to shield geometry. Buy hugging the shields and having the Radiators be (partially?) inside the field they can still emit safely. The Drive torch maybe a complicated issue most of the heat from that come from inside the ship, after its been shot out (and past a hugging field) that's less of an issue. The internal heat would need to go to a radiator anyway. So... Meh.
Also if you can get away with partial coverage...
My thought would be that you institute a partial coverage scheme, and project the field away from the ship in a thin layer. Then to keep an eye on the enemy so you can only cover the right vectors you'd pulse the shield, assuming (quite reasonably I'd think) that getting good combat visual coverage using the right angle holes is an issue. You'd then vent you heat out the other side. Down side is that it not perfect or even nearly perfect and if you're surrounded you start building up heat like a no tomorrow.
The other solution of course is to just have a full ship TIR (aka FTL field) and some really complicated camera system thingy, whatever-you-call-it.
My real question since a TIR stealth system is a two layer system and a TIR shield only needs one layer (either a thin one if other think that'd fly or full ship one if not), if I split it into two techs, with TIR shield being IDK some thing like this:
TIR Shields [400-600?]: By altering the speed of light Mass Effect FTL fields bend the path of the light. Mathematically this is identical to refraction in light traveling though a medium, and some theories conclude that the why behind this is the same. Regardless if the speed of light in the two volumes of space is too different an event known as Total Internal Reflection (TIR) occurs. Using a TIR event light can be reflected protecting a ship from lasers and other photonic weapons. Unfortunately this leads to issues with a ship's sensors and heat build up, tough other technologies may be able to compensate if they can't be solved tough cleaver engineering. Unfortunately this will be incompatible with other active shields, though that doesn't prohibit multiple shields being installed, merely requiring only one be used at a time.
and then had TIR stealth requiring it and being discounted by the price of TIR Shields, would that influence any decision making on when to pick up TIR shields/Stealth? Maybe buying it earlier for fighters/missiles? If you'd still get it at the same time then it doesn't matter (well there's a one quarter gap but ignoring that), but if you'd pick it up earlier then it maybe useful to you to split (which is the only reason I'm suggesting the split). Stealth in space and fuck lasers (mostly), are both destinct enought that they can be ther on techs.
Of course the engineering (and additional techs?) involved in making it work properly are still up for debate too.
(Partial?) Blindness sucks, the safeties are a pain (for FTL hack), and no one uses major combat lasers anyway? (And since you can only have one shield on at a time you pick the one that block the worst weapons?) Personal watsonian head canon tells me that the no one use combat lasers thing and the no one use TIR shields thing are sort of a chicken and the egg deal in military tactics. (FTL came first) (Of course there's a Economic/Efficiency argument and other bits too) Of course Doylisticly it's that the writer(s) didn't envision the advances in laser tech and/or setting style choice.
But that's just sort of my try at explaining mass effect canon when it makes no sense. (Now to contemplate why a cheap barrier is enough to stop an FTL strike!)
TL;DR: I think you can get around those issues. But the real question is would you find it useful if the techs were split up and you could get some of the benefit cheaper (and thus possibly earlier)?
This is (mostly) true. TIR leaves a tiny hole that get increasingly smaller the more powerful the field. For example a 5000c field*, covering a 20m radius sphere (the front of a frigate?), leaves a hole with a 4mm radius. Ironically the center of the hole is always located at the place where a line from you to the field would make a right angle with the field (yay light geometry!). Thing is UberJJK has mentioned before and I can see his reasoning that said holes could be exploited to give vision assuming they aren't too small. Thus some sight at FTL at least. Careful creation of TIR barrier geometry and camera placement may produce an odd, limited, but still (hopefully) useful picture. On the other hand the attacker at lets say 10km needs to be able to line up a shot with 0.000046 degree accuracy. And it just gets worse further out. I'm not sure of the limits, best I'd heard is ~0.00014 (amusingly from a company called PI), for medical scanners.
*which we can be 100% sure at least some ME ships can make, though some other estimates give much larger numbers 110,000c for example is the one I use for the maximum of normal Citadel tech. That hole is 0.18 millimeters in radius. (0.0000021 Degrees accuracy at 10km)
TIR isn't perfect, it's just really damn good. And when what the enemy need to get around that is something they don't have? Then really damn good is good enough.
Now double layering should hopefully close those holes, but covering them thus making TIR stealth work. I'm not going to claim to be a geometry expert here, but Yog claims the leak should be small enough for stealth. I think that after enough time the amount of energy in the "gap" will get to high and even that tiny leak would still be an issue. However I'm not sure how to approach this issue mathematically.
With a continuously active thin layer shield this is an issue. The field will reflect emissions back, as the ship is in a low C zone and is surrounded by a high C one. You'd need some way to drastically reduce heat output (eg Reactor + Repulsors).
However I sort of put a joke into my observation about FTL systems. "You can after all jury-rig one using an FTL drive, a bit of know how and about 5-10 seconds of work." Those 5-10 second are literally only for the time it takes to turn the thing on. (Well plus or minus boot up time and any safeties, but w/e) I wasn't exaggerating for comedic effect. Having an FTL field covering the ship provides a TIR field meaning the Jury-Rigged version is actually immune to this problem. The emissions begin inside the high-speed field and thus aren't blocked. Its only out-field to in-field that's blocked for a high C field not the reverse.
So yeah those are less of an issue then you'd think. Now draining you FTL time maybe an issue though that depend on engagement length. Also the question of shield-FTL compatibility.
Spit balling some engineering solutions for the TIR Shields tech here:
The first problem is an issue anywhere you can see they can shoot, so barring other work arounds, (Grav-wave sensors, QEC probes, and maybe Other things?) the question becomes, is a a hole large enough for sensors an issue and can you mitigate that? (See above) Also should be noted that you only need to cover valid vectors for a laser shot not the entire ship. That's a case of the detection game though and losing is (possibly) lethal.
If you're really crazy you might be able to pulse the field (or its intensity at least) and get snap shots visuals. Depending on a lot of factors including pulse rate and camera ability, this could at least reduce laser damage by a significant margin (for long/many pulses) if not out right block most (or all) of the shots (Shorter pulses). Then you need to fire laser shots in turn with the targets shield frequency. Which sound very startreky.
Of course you might be just producing a warp (no not the startek one the ME one) so I'm not sure that'd fly for an effect that was in contact with the sip.The second you can possibly get around by doing funny things to shield geometry. Buy hugging the shields and having the Radiators be (partially?) inside the field they can still emit safely. The Drive torch maybe a complicated issue most of the heat from that come from inside the ship, after its been shot out (and past a hugging field) that's less of an issue. The internal heat would need to go to a radiator anyway. So... Meh.
Also if you can get away with partial coverage...
My thought would be that you institute a partial coverage scheme, and project the field away from the ship in a thin layer. Then to keep an eye on the enemy so you can only cover the right vectors you'd pulse the shield, assuming (quite reasonably I'd think) that getting good combat visual coverage using the right angle holes is an issue. You'd then vent you heat out the other side. Down side is that it not perfect or even nearly perfect and if you're surrounded you start building up heat like a no tomorrow.
The other solution of course is to just have a full ship TIR (aka FTL field) and some really complicated camera system thingy, whatever-you-call-it.
My real question since a TIR stealth system is a two layer system and a TIR shield only needs one layer (either a thin one if other think that'd fly or full ship one if not), if I split it into two techs, with TIR shield being IDK some thing like this:
TIR Shields [400-600?]: By altering the speed of light Mass Effect FTL fields bend the path of the light. Mathematically this is identical to refraction in light traveling though a medium, and some theories conclude that the why behind this is the same. Regardless if the speed of light in the two volumes of space is too different an event known as Total Internal Reflection (TIR) occurs. Using a TIR event light can be reflected protecting a ship from lasers and other photonic weapons. Unfortunately this leads to issues with a ship's sensors and heat build up, tough other technologies may be able to compensate if they can't be solved tough cleaver engineering. Unfortunately this will be incompatible with other active shields, though that doesn't prohibit multiple shields being installed, merely requiring only one be used at a time.
and then had TIR stealth requiring it and being discounted by the price of TIR Shields, would that influence any decision making on when to pick up TIR shields/Stealth? Maybe buying it earlier for fighters/missiles? If you'd still get it at the same time then it doesn't matter (well there's a one quarter gap but ignoring that), but if you'd pick it up earlier then it maybe useful to you to split (which is the only reason I'm suggesting the split). Stealth in space and fuck lasers (mostly), are both destinct enought that they can be ther on techs.
Of course the engineering (and additional techs?) involved in making it work properly are still up for debate too.
(Partial?) Blindness sucks, the safeties are a pain (for FTL hack), and no one uses major combat lasers anyway? (And since you can only have one shield on at a time you pick the one that block the worst weapons?) Personal watsonian head canon tells me that the no one use combat lasers thing and the no one use TIR shields thing are sort of a chicken and the egg deal in military tactics. (FTL came first
) (Of course there's a Economic/Efficiency argument and other bits too) Of course Doylisticly it's that the writer(s) didn't envision the advances in laser tech and/or setting style choice.But that's just sort of my try at explaining mass effect canon when it makes no sense. (Now to contemplate why a cheap barrier is enough to stop an FTL strike!
)
Last edited:
Well, I'd want it, but not for starships. I'd want to use it for eezo mining. @UberJJK had the notion awhile back of mining new supernova remnants for eezo, which is a great idea except for the radiation problems of mining around a supernova remnant. His idea was to jump in and escape with a decent-sized asteroid, but that has a few unknowns, among them trying to take an asteroid to FTL, and would be slow. Something like this would let us mine the asteroid while it's still in orbit around the supernova.
I still really don't get where people claim that ME ships are invisible while at FTL, when we are told in both the game that Normandy is detectable at FTL due to her emissions being boosted beyond what the system can store and that fact that everyone uses wolfpack frigate squads to detect passing FTL ships and they communicate with their cruiser to avoid being blindsided.
We are in fact told that only reason why ships can get the jump on anyone via FTL is they themselves outrun their own emissions.
We are in fact told that only reason why ships can get the jump on anyone via FTL is they themselves outrun their own emissions.
Warning: FTL and Sci-fi science tangent!
Eh? No sure how this relates but I'll take a stab at it. A ship at FTL is totally invisible to everything currently in front of its light wake. Like you said it out runs its own emissions, by a lot. You can back track a ship by its light wake. But while the ship is at (and stays at) FTL it's "invisible" in the most literal sense to a fair portion of the universe. It trail is not invisible though. It's not some kind of cloaking effect. In short you can't see the ship's "now" you can only see the ships "then" making its current position invisible (possibly guessable though). Not sure how to latin up not-currently-visible-but-will-be-later.
Hopefully that made some sense and explained something.
Eh? No sure how this relates but I'll take a stab at it. A ship at FTL is totally invisible to everything currently in front of its light wake. Like you said it out runs its own emissions, by a lot. You can back track a ship by its light wake. But while the ship is at (and stays at) FTL it's "invisible" in the most literal sense to a fair portion of the universe. It trail is not invisible though. It's not some kind of cloaking effect. In short you can't see the ship's "now" you can only see the ships "then" making its current position invisible (possibly guessable though). Not sure how to latin up not-currently-visible-but-will-be-later.
If you want a more understandable comparison look at the sonic boom of a super sonic aircraft. Similar enough effect, now pretend your blind and can only track the aircraft by sound. The "Boom" will always be late, the best you can do is say where it was. It not stealth sneaky invisibility (they'll know your there.. eventually), its combat targeting invisibility. It now total invisibility is "were I am now invisibility". You can find out where I am now... later. Any FTL ship that doesn't have cloaking effect will be traceable... eventually, if your behind it. However in a fight and for negating surprise, you need something better than it was here a tenth of a second ago and in your face or way past your detection.
You can try to think of it as trying to attack (and defend against) someone using postcognition only and the closer they are to you the closer to now your postcognition is. (Which is a pretty accurate explanation really)
Lets say your a frigate trying to guard your Cruiser. The distance between you and the attacker's closes approach you you will determine how quickly you spot him/her. Say the attacker is going 5000c and passes within one light second of you (space is pretty big so that's pretty close). That gives the attacker the ability to be 5000 light seconds away from you before you even know he's there. Thankfully ME ship's don't engage in FTL warfare for... reasons. So lets say the ship is going 1.0c as it pass it closest approach and decelerating to 0.1 at some of the guesstimated ME decelerations. If it's >~4.06 light seconds away from you at closest the Cruiser will find out about it before you do. A second issue is that ship to ship comms are not guarantied to be FTL. Knowing about a attacker doesn't help if hell get some were before your message does.
Thankfully do to that no FTL fighting (for... reasons), a ship will always give a warning as it decelerates. (ME combat speeds are a mystery, but at a guess the cruiser gets at least 1.5 seconds warning, if not 3 or more). Ignoring the ship to ship comm speed thing, every fraction of a light seconfd the frigate out is closer than the cruiser will give that much extra warning time. Downside is that after a point ships become too far out to give good waring (space its big). The exact effects depend on the number of ships (Flotillas have 4-6 escorts + Capital ship). Thanks to this distance the escort ships sighting lag will be to high and you'll have gained nothing. Earlier detection=more ships, an of course you need those FTL comms.
The Normandy is detectible when she drops out of FTL and afterward in light lag like any other ship due to the inability to sink emissions at FTL.
You can try to think of it as trying to attack (and defend against) someone using postcognition only and the closer they are to you the closer to now your postcognition is. (Which is a pretty accurate explanation really)
Lets say your a frigate trying to guard your Cruiser. The distance between you and the attacker's closes approach you you will determine how quickly you spot him/her. Say the attacker is going 5000c and passes within one light second of you (space is pretty big so that's pretty close). That gives the attacker the ability to be 5000 light seconds away from you before you even know he's there. Thankfully ME ship's don't engage in FTL warfare for... reasons. So lets say the ship is going 1.0c as it pass it closest approach and decelerating to 0.1 at some of the guesstimated ME decelerations. If it's >~4.06 light seconds away from you at closest the Cruiser will find out about it before you do. A second issue is that ship to ship comms are not guarantied to be FTL. Knowing about a attacker doesn't help if hell get some were before your message does.
Thankfully do to that no FTL fighting (for... reasons), a ship will always give a warning as it decelerates. (ME combat speeds are a mystery, but at a guess the cruiser gets at least 1.5 seconds warning, if not 3 or more). Ignoring the ship to ship comm speed thing, every fraction of a light seconfd the frigate out is closer than the cruiser will give that much extra warning time. Downside is that after a point ships become too far out to give good waring (space its big). The exact effects depend on the number of ships (Flotillas have 4-6 escorts + Capital ship). Thanks to this distance the escort ships sighting lag will be to high and you'll have gained nothing. Earlier detection=more ships, an of course you need those FTL comms.
The Normandy is detectible when she drops out of FTL and afterward in light lag like any other ship due to the inability to sink emissions at FTL.
Hopefully that made some sense and explained something.
Main reason ships don't fight at FTL speeds seem to be the simple fact that shot travels too slowly (1.3%c for a dreadnought's main gun, compared to 'many times light speed'), so you'd have to observe the forward motion of whatever you are trying to hit and place a round in its path while hoping it doesn't make some minor course correction that makes you miss by thousends of kilometers.
You could do raiding/bombardment attacks at FTL speeds, but only if rounds maintain their FTL velocity after they leave the barrel, which is far from guaranteed. If they don't, they'll do some very hard breaking by shedding Cherenkov radiation, and plow straight into still-very-fast-moving ship they got fired from.
You could do raiding/bombardment attacks at FTL speeds, but only if rounds maintain their FTL velocity after they leave the barrel, which is far from guaranteed. If they don't, they'll do some very hard breaking by shedding Cherenkov radiation, and plow straight into still-very-fast-moving ship they got fired from.
Nope, not really, because the ship is still only invisible at FTL due to outrunning its own emissions. Nothing else is done, in fact their emissions become worse as the Infra Red radiation coming from the ship in FTL is boosted upwards into a higher band and is 'more energised' due to shifting through a ME field, which also surrounds the ship, where all it's entire hull is pumping out IR radiation due to how spaceships work.
So if a ship cranks up an FTL field and stays in the same place, then all they would get is something giving off UV/X-Ray/Gamma radiation or a funky blue/purple effect as dark energy/matter starts warping space time.
Considering that UV/X-Ray/Gamma radiation have a higher detection range than Infra red...