These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
Previous page12
 

Thermal Signature Scanning

First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#21 - 2014-09-11 01:06:44 UTC
Gebe wrote:

Maybe idea to let a active cloak drain cap?

I am 100% against this idea.

The idea isn't to make cloaking more difficult or have a time-limit but to add a bit of risk and 'submarine' style cat-and-mouse.
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#22 - 2014-09-11 01:14:10 UTC
Donnachadh wrote:
Mike Voidstar wrote:
@Donnachadh, Not to stick real physics in our beloved fluidic space game... But the amount of heat generated would in no way be insignificant or hard to spot. Space is awash in various radiations and is a fairly harsh environment. Our atmosphere does a lot more for us than most realise-- and EVE space is presumably worse since it disintegrates unprotected ships, cans and various other things in about 2 hours. If you had something just absorbing that radiation and not bouncing it, or radiating what it is itself generating (I assume those engines and semi sentient computers use energy and produce some waste), it would indeed get fairly hot in fairly short order.

Not that I disagree with you that cloaks should be huntable... I have myself argued they are far too safe, safer even than being docked in some stations.... But what is the primary purpose of the idea if not hunting down cloaked ships?

If that's it, then it still gets +1 from me, but I am curious what other function you feel this would serve.


Interesting thoughts, but you are wrong on one important point.
As a cloak pilot on another character I do not want others to be able to hunt me down and force a de-cloak. In it's basics the whole idea of being able to scan a cloaked ship is well crazy. I am told by many old timers(think from the beginning of the game here) that cloaked ships could be scanned at one point. CCP changed this so it is obvious that they intend cloaked ships to be hidden from view with no way to scan or locate them.

I agree that the amounts of heat generated by our ships if they were real would be significant, but the OP theory was faulty and that is what I was trying to point out. Space by any definition contains vast amounts of nothing and you cannot heat up nothing no matter how long or how much heat you apply to it.

It was posted that heat waves are essentially the same as light waves and any cloak that was capable of bending light waves to hide a ship could easily bend heat waves to achieve that same affect rendering a ship completely hidden and un-scanable. Yet as you point out this is a game where real world physics does not always apply and there is always a give and take, a balance of sorts to be had and to be fair. It is in that spirit of give and take that I offer the alternative to the OP.

Scan us cloaked ships? yes because nothing is ever perfect so a tiny heat signature would still be detectable.
Scan us to the point that you can get a general location within the system? I am OK with that as well.
Scan us to the point where you can warp to us, or get an actual location based on d-scans and I say no as that breaks CCP's obvious intent for cloaked ships.

WELL, there are already areas of space that have different temperatures. Yes they are minute differences but differences still. In fact there is still detectable, residual heat left over from the big bang.

Arguing physics in a game that ignores physics in many of it's basic functions is kind of ... well ..dumb, not to mention I don't really know the RP reasons of how the cloak works. Light and ifrared are both radiated energies just different wavelengths. If we assume that the cloaks work by bending the visual light spectrum from external sources then why is it so far beyond the typical scifi realm of possibilities that the cloaks cannot trap the radiated infrared radiation forever?

I NEVER suggested that a thermal scanning ship could warp to a ship. I suggested that a thermal probe result would only give a grid and from there the hunter would have to decloak and thermal d-scan to get a general location.
Petrified
Old and Petrified Syndication
#23 - 2014-09-11 05:15:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Petrified
The radiation that prevents you from normally scanning me down includes thermal radiation.

ie: if you cannot scan me down based on the visual spectrum or higher or lower wavelengths, then thermal won't work for you either. The tech is specialized enough to blend the thermal output in with the general radiation in the area.

Plus any decent cloaking pilot would need to do is ensure they have a safe near the systems star. The thermal output of the star will more than mask any leakage anyways.

But if they added some skill based on some star trek named device to allow scanning of cloaked ships then something like that should require a minimum of 3 months hard training past tech 2 scanning capabilities just to be passable in skill. Don't want this to become something trivial.

Cloaking is the closest thing to a "Pause Game" button one can get while in space.

Support better localization for the Japanese Community.
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#24 - 2014-09-11 17:59:53 UTC
Petrified wrote:
The radiation that prevents you from normally scanning me down includes thermal radiation.

ie: if you cannot scan me down based on the visual spectrum or higher or lower wavelengths, then thermal won't work for you either. The tech is specialized enough to blend the thermal output in with the general radiation in the area.
If that's truly how Eve Cloaking tech works then I'd like a link to that info so I can possibly modify my suggestion using that information.

Petrified wrote:
Plus any decent cloaking pilot would need to do is ensure they have a safe near the systems star. The thermal output of the star will more than mask any leakage anyways.

But if they added some skill based on some star trek named device to allow scanning of cloaked ships then something like that should require a minimum of 3 months hard training past tech 2 scanning capabilities just to be passable in skill. Don't want this to become something trivial.
Training scanning skills from start to finish is a few months, iirc, and adding the two proposed skills and training them to five might be a month and a half if I remember how long it took me to max out those two skills.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#25 - 2014-09-11 21:20:22 UTC
Petrified wrote:
The radiation that prevents you from normally scanning me down includes thermal radiation.

ie: if you cannot scan me down based on the visual spectrum or higher or lower wavelengths, then thermal won't work for you either. The tech is specialized enough to blend the thermal output in with the general radiation in the area.

Plus any decent cloaking pilot would need to do is ensure they have a safe near the systems star. The thermal output of the star will more than mask any leakage anyways.

But if they added some skill based on some star trek named device to allow scanning of cloaked ships then something like that should require a minimum of 3 months hard training past tech 2 scanning capabilities just to be passable in skill. Don't want this to become something trivial.



A restriction that cloaked ships must remain in certain areas to be safe from being scanned is, at least to me, a perfectly reasonable compromise.

Of course, that area must be something contained enough that it can be swept and patrolled--- cloaks should not be 100% safe under any circumstances outside a non-faction war dock.

Thus an actively hunting ship is at more risk away from the Stellar Corona/Nebula Cloud/Debris field, whatever... but is in a position to gather better intel or launch an attack, or else it cannot be actively scanned, but can be searched for.
Komi Toran
Perkone
Caldari State
#26 - 2014-09-11 21:42:22 UTC
Question: How are you detecting thermal signatures? I mean, if you want to be all sciency about it, infrared is light, and so still limited by the speed of light, which means it will take 8 minutes for that thermal signature to reach you if it's only 1 AU away. As there are systems that are easily 100 AU across, I want to know how you are getting your thermal data in less than 6 hours and 40 minutes.

Second Question: How is the space around the craft getting hotter? What matter is there that's absorbing this heat to make that occur? The only way this remotely makes sense (requiring a lot of rephrasing and adapting to real-world physics) is if the probes need prolonged exposure time to discern the heat spot from the rest of the background noise. Are we adding an additional hour or so onto our 6:40?
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#27 - 2014-09-11 21:42:34 UTC
Donnachadh wrote:


Interesting thoughts, but you are wrong on one important point.
As a cloak pilot on another character I do not want others to be able to hunt me down and force a de-cloak. In it's basics the whole idea of being able to scan a cloaked ship is well crazy. I am told by many old timers(think from the beginning of the game here) that cloaked ships could be scanned at one point. CCP changed this so it is obvious that they intend cloaked ships to be hidden from view with no way to scan or locate them.


My apologies, I had meant that later portion of my post for the OP, but I realize I didn't tag him as I did you. I disagree with the concept however. I think a cloak should raise the bar on being engaged, but at the moment it comes at an absolute trivial price for near complete immunity to interaction of any sort. I feel it's completely sane to assume that active effort counters active effort---that conflict of cloaking and scanning be determined by skill and maybe a small random tie breaking element, or defaults ties to the hunter.

Donnachadh wrote:


I agree that the amounts of heat generated by our ships if they were real would be significant, but the OP theory was faulty and that is what I was trying to point out. Space by any definition contains vast amounts of nothing and you cannot heat up nothing no matter how long or how much heat you apply to it.

It was posted that heat waves are essentially the same as light waves and any cloak that was capable of bending light waves to hide a ship could easily bend heat waves to achieve that same affect rendering a ship completely hidden and un-scanable. Yet as you point out this is a game where real world physics does not always apply and there is always a give and take, a balance of sorts to be had and to be fair. It is in that spirit of give and take that I offer the alternative to the OP.

Scan us cloaked ships? yes because nothing is ever perfect so a tiny heat signature would still be detectable.
Scan us to the point that you can get a general location within the system? I am OK with that as well.
Scan us to the point where you can warp to us, or get an actual location based on d-scans and I say no as that breaks CCP's obvious intent for cloaked ships.


Yes and no. Space isn't really empty, It's just not very dense compared to anything else. Particles are widely spread but not actually non-existant.

In fact, given the sparse medium of space to disperse heat in, something that was containing the heat build up in the ship would argue more for a timer and forced downtime for cloaks than anything else.... you simply could not keep it up. As the heat got more intense it's entirely reasonable that over time there would be leakage in the surrounding area, and any addition to local ambient radiation levels should be able to be detected.

I agree on the accuracy of that scan. Getting on grid should be possible. Some form of finding a ship you are on grid with given some time and skill should be possible (active evasion should have a chance to work vs. active. Warping directly to something cloaked should be the worst kind of bad luck.
Komi Toran
Perkone
Caldari State
#28 - 2014-09-11 21:47:56 UTC
Mike Voidstar wrote:
In fact, given the sparse medium of space to disperse heat in, something that was containing the heat build up in the ship would argue more for a timer and forced downtime for cloaks than anything else.... you simply could not keep it up.

Fortunately, there is already a forced downtime for cloaks in the game. It occurs the same time each day and takes around 30 minutes.
Mike Voidstar
Voidstar Free Flight Foundation
#29 - 2014-09-11 22:00:48 UTC
Komi Toran wrote:
Mike Voidstar wrote:
In fact, given the sparse medium of space to disperse heat in, something that was containing the heat build up in the ship would argue more for a timer and forced downtime for cloaks than anything else.... you simply could not keep it up.

Fortunately, there is already a forced downtime for cloaks in the game. It occurs the same time each day and takes around 30 minutes.

LOL, sure. ZING!!!! you got me.

Not remotely serving a purpose for this discussion, but thanks for the laugh.

Of course, I don't actually support such a timer. I support a way to reliably play cat and mouse games with cloaked vessels such that a single low cost high slot module does not make you safer even in enemy space than hiding in POS Shields.
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#30 - 2014-09-12 05:11:05 UTC
Komi Toran wrote:
Question: How are you detecting thermal signatures? I mean, if you want to be all sciency about it, infrared is light, and so still limited by the speed of light, which means it will take 8 minutes for that thermal signature to reach you if it's only 1 AU away. As there are systems that are easily 100 AU across, I want to know how you are getting your thermal data in less than 6 hours and 40 minutes.

Second Question: How is the space around the craft getting hotter? What matter is there that's absorbing this heat to make that occur? The only way this remotely makes sense (requiring a lot of rephrasing and adapting to real-world physics) is if the probes need prolonged exposure time to discern the heat spot from the rest of the background noise. Are we adding an additional hour or so onto our 6:40?


First Q: Thermal or infrared is a wavelength of radiant energy. WE (humans) can't SEE it but it's always there. Anything that either stores or generates heat (pretty much anything) gives off infrared energy. The ability to detect that 'signature', in this case, would be to use some new combat scanner probe variant that is sensitive to thermal energies. As far as the time/distance issues you bring up, I think you could bring up the same question with scan probes. This game does not conform to known physics in many cases.

Second Q: The post just after your's kinda explains it. Basically, space isn't truly empty.
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#31 - 2014-09-12 05:16:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Quesa
Mike Voidstar wrote:

In fact, given the sparse medium of space to disperse heat in, something that was containing the heat build up in the ship would argue more for a timer and forced downtime for cloaks than anything else.... you simply could not keep it up. As the heat got more intense it's entirely reasonable that over time there would be leakage in the surrounding area, and any addition to local ambient radiation levels should be able to be detected.

This is precisely how I envision it. Eventually the trapped thermal radiation would eventually need to be bled off or it will bleed itself off, thus the thermal signature. If the ship stays motionless that thermal radiation will grow in that area instead of being more evenly dispersed if the ship is moving and I would think the dissipation would be better the faster the ship is moving.

Now, this would mean that ships using prototype cloaks would be more easily detectable in a shorter amount of time because they are moving much slower while ships like BlOps, which get a speed bonus to cloaking speed, would be more difficult.

The system would not allow those ships that just cloaked to immediately be visible, it would take time for that thermal radiation to build up.
Petrified
Old and Petrified Syndication
#32 - 2014-09-12 05:30:07 UTC
Quesa wrote:
Petrified wrote:
The radiation that prevents you from normally scanning me down includes thermal radiation.

ie: if you cannot scan me down based on the visual spectrum or higher or lower wavelengths, then thermal won't work for you either. The tech is specialized enough to blend the thermal output in with the general radiation in the area.
If that's truly how Eve Cloaking tech works then I'd like a link to that info so I can possibly modify my suggestion using that information.

Petrified wrote:
Plus any decent cloaking pilot would need to do is ensure they have a safe near the systems star. The thermal output of the star will more than mask any leakage anyways.

But if they added some skill based on some star trek named device to allow scanning of cloaked ships then something like that should require a minimum of 3 months hard training past tech 2 scanning capabilities just to be passable in skill. Don't want this to become something trivial.
Training scanning skills from start to finish is a few months, iirc, and adding the two proposed skills and training them to five might be a month and a half if I remember how long it took me to max out those two skills.



Not certain how you think cloaking can work anyother way.

My point about this skill not being trivial is that on top of current skill training, the additional skills required to use such probing techniques should take several months to train to be passable in skill.

Mike Voidstar wrote:

Of course, that area must be something contained enough that it can be swept and patrolled--- cloaks should not be 100% safe under any circumstances outside a non-faction war dock.

Not really an of course. Cloaking should be 100% safe baring stupidity on the part of the pilot. The further from the sun you are, the more likely you should be detectable with any new tech. The closer you are to any orbital body, the less likely you are to be detected because of thermal radiation from each and every orbital body.

Cloaking is the closest thing to a "Pause Game" button one can get while in space.

Support better localization for the Japanese Community.
Petrified
Old and Petrified Syndication
#33 - 2014-09-12 05:46:24 UTC
Now. If you really want to talk about how this should work...

Despite any leakage of thermal radiation, even from venting, you will not be able to get a precise lock on the location. At best you can get into a warpable range dropping you within 15-30 KM from the cloaked ship, but you won't be able to land right on top of them. Naturally this range increases the closer you get to an orbital body (Planet, moon, and asteroid) and, in particular, a sun. Trying to create some artificial limit as to where you can drop a bookmark near a sun would be silly at which point you may as well pretend you didn't suggest this feature.

Either way, if you have the technology to completely cloak a ship's Electromagnetic presence (thermal radiation is EM radiation) then logically it stands that the engineers figured out how to mask thermal output - especially in covert ops vessels. Considering how much is turned off when you are cloaked, your thermal generation is also going to be very low. They don't have covert ops battleships for a reason (outside of balance concerns) as the ship is simply too big to effectively mask everything and allow you to warp cloaked.

You can have your cake... you just can't eat it as well. Blink

Cloaking is the closest thing to a "Pause Game" button one can get while in space.

Support better localization for the Japanese Community.
Komi Toran
Perkone
Caldari State
#34 - 2014-09-12 05:58:07 UTC
Quesa wrote:
First Q: Thermal or infrared is a wavelength of radiant energy.

Yes. You have a knack for restating what someone else already stated. Very good.
Quesa wrote:
As far as the time/distance issues you bring up, I think you could bring up the same question with scan probes. This game does not conform to known physics in many cases.

You could bring up the same question with scan probes. The difference is, you would get an answer. We know all ships are equipped with active FTL transmitters: this easily explains why you instantly know a ship is in local once it enters system. Additionally, we know from lore that warp drives produce forces that create drag on ships trying to move through space conventionally. Combat scan probes could be detecting the effects of either of these, which are not limited by the speed of light.

Core scan probes, on the other hand, can easily be working within known physical laws: wormholes and relic, data, and combat sites are static places, and who knows how long they've been sitting around before your probes detect them.

Meanwhile, your thermal probes are explicitly using a phenomenon that is limited by the speed of light to detect something that is not static and routinely exceeds c.
Quesa wrote:
Second Q: The post just after your's kinda explains it. Basically, space isn't truly empty.

Except that it is for the purpose of heat dissipation. What you're saying is that the major way objects dissipate heat in space is through conducction, which is ridiculous. Objects in the near-vacuum of space lose heat overwhelmingly through black body radiation.

Really, don't try to tell the person who likes to point out that there is, in fact, sound in space about how empty space isn't. But just because there is sound doesn't mean that it's meaningful except on a massive scale (like that black hole), just like because there is a tiny bit of conduction doesn't mean that it would be detectable, especially when the thing you would be looking for would be emitting orders of magnitude more energy than the negligible "atmosphere" around it.
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#35 - 2014-09-13 18:10:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Quesa
Komi Toran wrote:

You could bring up the same question with scan probes. The difference is, you would get an answer. We know all ships are equipped with active FTL transmitters: this easily explains why you instantly know a ship is in local once it enters system. Additionally, we know from lore that warp drives produce forces that create drag on ships trying to move through space conventionally. Combat scan probes could be detecting the effects of either of these, which are not limited by the speed of light.

Core scan probes, on the other hand, can easily be working within known physical laws: wormholes and relic, data, and combat sites are static places, and who knows how long they've been sitting around before your probes detect them.

Meanwhile, your thermal probes are explicitly using a phenomenon that is limited by the speed of light to detect something that is not static and routinely exceeds c.

You're whole analysis breaks down when you combat scan probe a ship that is sitting still, not creating 'drag'.

Komi Toran wrote:

Quesa wrote:
Second Q: The post just after your's kinda explains it. Basically, space isn't truly empty.

Except that it is for the purpose of heat dissipation. What you're saying is that the major way objects dissipate heat in space is through conducction, which is ridiculous. Objects in the near-vacuum of space lose heat overwhelmingly through black body radiation.

Really, don't try to tell the person who likes to point out that there is, in fact, sound in space about how empty space isn't. But just because there is sound doesn't mean that it's meaningful except on a massive scale (like that black hole), just like because there is a tiny bit of conduction doesn't mean that it would be detectable, especially when the thing you would be looking for would be emitting orders of magnitude more energy than the negligible "atmosphere" around it.

See, the awesome part is that this is a game and doesn't have to follow what we know about physics or what we can currently detect/measure. Again, if you're trying to inject pure physics into this game and decide whether an idea is worthy or not because of that then, I don't know....lol? Science fiction is not the strict application of physics and science, it's about possibilities and if you're going to try to say it's impossible for this idea to work in RL sometime in the future then, again, lol.

Also, space does have a temperature, it's a few k above absolute 0 but it does have one and we can detect, now, some of the differences.
Komi Toran
Perkone
Caldari State
#36 - 2014-09-13 19:04:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Komi Toran
Quesa wrote:
You're whole analysis breaks down when you combat scan probe a ship that is sitting still, not creating 'drag'.

Your warp drive always creates drag. It's why you can't shut it off, turn on your thrusters, and accelerate to 10,000 km/s. So no, my analysis does not break down at all.

Quesa wrote:
See, the awesome part is that this is a game and doesn't have to follow what we know about physics or what we can currently detect/measure.

See, the awesome part is that this is exactly what you did by talking about heat dissipation in trying to justify your afk-cloaking post. Goose, gander and all that. If Eve doesn't have to follow what we know about physics, then there is absolutely zero sense in talking about using heat to detect a cloaked ship, because thermodynamics doesn't apply.

You know what would be awesome? You actually reading my posts before commenting:

Komi Toran wrote:
Question: How are you detecting thermal signatures? I mean, if you want to be all sciency about it, infrared is light, and so still limited by the speed of light, which means it will take 8 minutes for that thermal signature to reach you if it's only 1 AU away. As there are systems that are easily 100 AU across, I want to know how you are getting your thermal data in less than 6 hours and 40 minutes.
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#37 - 2014-09-14 03:02:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Quesa
Komi Toran wrote:
Quesa wrote:
You're whole analysis breaks down when you combat scan probe a ship that is sitting still, not creating 'drag'.

Your warp drive always creates drag. It's why you can't shut it off, turn on your thrusters, and accelerate to 10,000 km/s. So no, my analysis does not break down at all.

Quesa wrote:
See, the awesome part is that this is a game and doesn't have to follow what we know about physics or what we can currently detect/measure.

See, the awesome part is that this is exactly what you did by talking about heat dissipation in trying to justify your afk-cloaking post. Goose, gander and all that. If Eve doesn't have to follow what we know about physics, then there is absolutely zero sense in talking about using heat to detect a cloaked ship, because thermodynamics doesn't apply.

You know what would be awesome? You actually reading my posts before commenting:

Komi Toran wrote:
Question: How are you detecting thermal signatures? I mean, if you want to be all sciency about it, infrared is light, and so still limited by the speed of light, which means it will take 8 minutes for that thermal signature to reach you if it's only 1 AU away. As there are systems that are easily 100 AU across, I want to know how you are getting your thermal data in less than 6 hours and 40 minutes.


Eve has FTL drives, faster than light communication, giant space boxes firing off giant space lasers yet you have some ridiculous notion that heat can't be detected at whatever range.

Got it.

PS. How are you getting probe results from a probe 30au away in 10 seconds?

Oh, that's right, it's not real.


Now, if you have an actual suggestion on how to improve or change this, your opinion has been noted.
Komi Toran
Perkone
Caldari State
#38 - 2014-09-14 04:20:11 UTC
Quesa wrote:
Eve has FTL drives, faster than light communication, giant space boxes firing off giant space lasers yet you have some ridiculous notion that heat can't be detected at whatever range.

Got it.

You were the one trying to bring in science to it. Science says it's not going to happen. FTL? That stuff is actually based on science. See: NASA's research into warp speed. See: quantum entanglement. Your mechanism, where light naturally travels faster than light as a matter of course because f-u, is just stupid.
Quesa wrote:
PS. How are you getting probe results from a probe 30au away in 10 seconds?

Tachyons. Micro-wormholes. You know, concepts actually supported by current theoretical frameworks. Meanwhile, yours is the equivalent of ship communication involving rolling down the window and shouting.
Quesa wrote:
Oh, that's right, it's not real.

Then why did you start this with a scientific explanation? You want to justify your suggestion based on science, but when it's pointed out that your "science" is utter $%&, suddenly it doesn't matter?
Quesa wrote:
Now, if you have an actual suggestion on how to improve or change this, your opinion has been noted.

How to improve your suggestion: ignore it and lock the thread as redundant. There. Done.
Quesa
Macabre Votum
Northern Coalition.
#39 - 2014-09-14 05:09:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Quesa
Komi Toran wrote:
Quesa wrote:
Eve has FTL drives, faster than light communication, giant space boxes firing off giant space lasers yet you have some ridiculous notion that heat can't be detected at whatever range.

Got it.

You were the one trying to bring in science to it. Science says it's not going to happen. FTL? That stuff is actually based on science. See: NASA's research into warp speed. See: quantum entanglement. Your mechanism, where light naturally travels faster than light as a matter of course because f-u, is just stupid.
Quesa wrote:
PS. How are you getting probe results from a probe 30au away in 10 seconds?

Tachyons. Micro-wormholes. You know, concepts actually supported by current theoretical frameworks. Meanwhile, yours is the equivalent of ship communication involving rolling down the window and shouting.
Quesa wrote:
Oh, that's right, it's not real.

Then why did you start this with a scientific explanation? You want to justify your suggestion based on science, but when it's pointed out that your "science" is utter $%&, suddenly it doesn't matter?
Quesa wrote:
Now, if you have an actual suggestion on how to improve or change this, your opinion has been noted.

How to improve your suggestion: ignore it and lock the thread as redundant. There. Done.


Not currently doable, plausible? - science fiction...woo! Just because you can't think of why it works doesn't mean it can't work. How do you know a 1000 years in the future it won't work? That's right, you can't. Unfortunately you just feel that you're science fiction is better than mine, ok great. Is that all?

It's not redundant, as already ruled on by a mod.

e: Also, my 'sciency' bit was how the signature could be detected. How the information, beyond that, wasn't part of the scope. You are somehow caught on that and can't move past it. Also, I'm not sure the FTL drives are gravity/space-warping based, I seem to remember something about vacuum bubbles - or whatever that is.
Previous page12