Maximum speeds [FT]

A number of interesting points were made. What are sensors in FT? If they are
grav sensors that detect engine cores or something, then I'm sure they have a
long range. If they are standard visible spectrum sensors, then their range is
much more finite. Passive further than active, except that active is a far
better solution.

Anyone on the list have any practical idea of what might be the limitation of
radar style active sensors (lidar or radar or maser or whatever)? Presumably
since the volume of space covered increases as a
function of radius, and the energy density in a non-linear fashion, and
there is a maximum amount of power you can probably jam through an array (even
if it is hideous by today's standards), the sensors if they are
not fancy sci-fi PSB sensors, must have a maximum range.

I think the range in the book is probaby for ship sized targets. A fast moving
asteroid with a small cross section and no powerplant might well
not be detected until it was inside of 25% of the range for ships - and
it might do enough damage to destroy small vessels and mess up large ones bad.

Anyway, maybe you figure with your PSB that you can see people anywhere in the
system. That's a little too high tech for my taste. I like standard active and
passive sensors (even if they are gigawatt lidar arrays...). And they probably
have a detection threshold. And you don't fly so fast as to put your ship at
risk. If my enemy did this, I'd tend to try to guess where he's coming and
pollute that area of space a bit. He wouldn't be able to dodge.... he'd be
going to fast.

I take Tom's point about the size of your target object. Small objects could
be dodged with ease, others not so. With no scale except an arbitrary one we
like for time or distance, and no real idea of sensors, we pretty much have to
fit our own tastes. I don't mind fast ships... I mind suicidal captains. And I
too like a reason to have scouts out front, though if you played on a map of
the solar system, a scout with a 72" radius superior sensor would still need
lots of friends even to make a dint in that vast body of space. As the HHGTTG
pointed out, the distance to your corner store is peanuts to space.

Anyway, I just like a sanity limit on speeds that allows tactical options, but
not to the point of silliness. And I like the idea of small ships being able
to go faster due to better manouvreability. And I like the thought of ships
with better sensors going faster too. So it just suits my PSB.:)