[quote]adam_grif wrote...
Because they're not. Or rather, only some of them (RADAR) are. For active sensors to be "like a giant searchlight" (in the sense that they give your position away) they have to be giving off easily detectible signals. Unlike the active sensors used on Earth, Sonar for submarines and Radar for the above ground stuff, LADAR does not unless the target has specific detectors for those wavelengths on them.
This was absolutely adressed in my post, and you apparently missed this.[/quote]
I didn't miss it. You dismissed the concept that a scout ship would have a full sensor package, including full 360 full spectrum EM detection.
[quote]There is no horizon to hide behind in space and they already knew the approximate position of the SR1. Automated scanning and tracking of space objects is already trivial with contemporary technology. One of my professors last semester built such a thing in the early 1990's for automated tracking of satellites in orbit.[/quote]
You have not established any knowledge of the Normandy's position other than perhaps at the point it exits FTL. Your professors managed to build a tracking device to track something that is on a known, fixed path, always covering exactly the same path in the sky never changing course. Congrats to him. Can the same find and track random specific asteroids?
[quote]They require such sensors existing in the first place (it is noted that "most ships don't have optical sensors" in the codex) and spotting them when they dropped out. IR sensors are long ranged but you have to be looking in the general direciton, the window of opportunity for detection is quite small. It's entirely possible that both ships have been in close physical proximity before and never noticed each other for this reason.[/quote]
There is no good reason for scout ships not to have them. There is every reason for a stealth vessel to have them since as has been pointed out, LADAR is standard issue in short range scanner packages. It is useful to know if you have been spotted, don't you think? Considering the energy from a LADAR projector does diminish over distance, the stealth vessel so equipped might be able to detect a base scanning for it before the base saw the scout. Note I specificly use a base as an example because it doesn't have a bright shiney main drive to spot.
[quote]Excuse me? Stealth capability? They were directly in front of a major celestial body, obscured by the sun. If the Normandy had dropped out of FTL on the other side of the planet, the two ships never would have seen each other unless the SR1 flew around the other side of the planet.
Whatever the justification, the SR1 did not detect the Collector ship until after it had detected the Normandy. [/quote]
You seem to know rather a lot about the relative positions of the ships. Where, precisely, are you getting the information that the Collector vessel was obscured by anything? How were they spotted at all then? Wouldn't they take a direct course from the sun to the Normandy, with the sun behind them all the way? Not to mention if they can house the hundreds of thousands of people on Horizon, then they might have been large enough to be noticable against the sun anyway.
[quote]I'm laughing out loud right now. Apparently you think that any craft with no stealth is instantly known to everybody else within a gajillion miles, as opposed to only being detected when the IR sensors actually capture images of the region of space they are in, then again a few seconds later, and notice that they have moved. Because that's how IR detection works! They can't scan the entirety of space around them in real time, although they can scan reasonably fast (with real life technology circa 2004, a full detail scan takes less than 24 hours but in Mass Effect it is apparently much, much faster, on the order of tens of seconds). You also apparently failed to take into account that there could possibly be any other reason for not immediately detecting something, like giant sunrise that they flew out of in the cutscene which inevitably occlude IR sensors.[/quote]
You can laugh out loud all you want. Passive sensors have a much greater range than active sensors, both because the active sensors would have to put out more energy than the drive to be brighter, and because energy does fall off with distance. Any active signal has twice the distance to travel. Regardless, everything you suggest might work would also work for the Normandy seeing the Collector vessel. Again, I remind you that SR stands for Scout-Recon.
[quote]They do know where it is to within a fairly small margin of error, and they will be firing numerous laser beams all over the region in very short spaces of time. LADAR is by definition capable of IMAGING objects, i.e. rapid scans all across a region.[/quote]
You really don't understand how big space is and how small the Normandy is in comparason do you... you also continue to dismiss the codex, which states that active sensors are SHORT range, whereas the Normandy detected the Collector vessel at LONG range.
[quote]Based on the assumption that their sensors can even pick up on that specific wavelength, and even exist at all.[/quote]
The assumption that a scout vessel has a full sensor package vs the collector vessel conveniently being covered by the sun or some other convenient natural mechanism, then abandoning that for no particularlly good reason, and being picked up on long range sensors first despite being at close range? Occam's razor. Your version requires more amazing coincidences.
[quote]So you are simply assuming they must have been out of range of any other sensors, because you declare it so, even though that perfectly explains the situation and is what happens on screen?
As for magically accelerating across gargantuan distances, we have never seen or heard of any ship having such an ability in the entire ME universe. "Going to FTL" in the game is like going to hyperspace, you can't just go "a little bit" to get super fast sublight acceleration. "Oh god they suddenly jumped 20,000 KM and are now right behind us" is kind of the thing they would be reporting in the middle of a battle, and if such abilities existed then the entire cutscene at the end of ME1 would be irrelevant because Sovereign could have just pseudoFTL'd past the entire fleet. And combat in the universe would feature unstoppable, uninterceptible super fast missiles and fighters would be useless. And striking targets at long range with guns would be impossible because the distant targets would just pseudoFTL around to dodge all incoming fire.[/quote]
What happens on screen is we see the interior of the Normandy until the other vessel is close enough that it is too late. "Real" space flight for vessels such as as these is rather faster than you seem to grasp.
The speed of light, which is by defintion less than FTL is approx 300,000 km per second. That means that in the several seconds we are still seeing the Normandy's interior, the Collector vessel could have covered a few million kilometers, not the mere 20,000 you seem to feel they couldn't possibly have closed. As for Sovereign, that was a special case due to the Nebula, which, per the codex, forces everyone in it to slow down radically.
Why would missiles and fighters be 'unstoppable?' The ships they are targetting can go just as fast and probably have a much better fuel range. I agree that there are issues with the projectile weapon speeds, but the fact remains that the ships accelerate to FTL, they don't simply engage a jumpdrive, open a wormhole, or anything like that. The main answer to the projectile speed issue is that ships engage at relatively close range. The codex even says essentially that, that sensor ranges are much greater than weapons ranges, so ships normally only fight when they have something to fight over, such as a base or planet.
Why the Normandy didn't immediately ensure sufficient distance is unclear. We do know from the second encounter with the collector vessel (when the find it playing possum), that they can disengage almost instantaneously when they want to (which backs up my case as to how the Collector vessel could close so readily).
[quote]So it is absolutely perfectly plausible that they would run into each other after 2 days of constant patrolling when the collectors are ambushing ships? Glad you agree.[/quote]
How do you get that from 'sectors are multiple systems wide?'
[quote]Long range sensors don't stop being long range sensors if they pick up something relatively close to you.
You're reading too much into the statement, considering the "they were at super long range" basically doesn't fit with anything else we see in the MEverse or this scenario.[/quote]
They say 'detecting a vessel on long range sensors.' They do not say OMG! A vessel just appeared nearly on top of us!.'
Please cite which events in the MEverse contradict me. The codex backs me. You have just cited blind speculation without any actual evidence.
[quote]Well, we all know what the truth is anyway...
FROM: Codex@Bioware.com
TO: Cutscene@Bioware.com
SUBJECT: What is going on with those story boards?
ATTATCHMENT(S): codexexperts.docx
Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that the story boards for the opening cutscene don't really fit with the lore. It's pretty clearly in contradiction with the codex. Could you revise it before it goes into production? I've included the relevant entries and some suggestions in the attached document.
Cheers, Codex department.[/quote]
And yet that can't be called out as bad writing? That said, the writing here isn't neccessarily bad.. the collectors could simply have additional capabilities.
[quote]The only short range sensors they have are active ones like LADAR, which they don't use for primary detection (again, codex). Of course they picked them up on long range sensors. They never actually specify how far away they are, and given what we see on screen...
Even then, it's only "short range" in comparison to the enormous range of IR sensors, whose detection distance is limited only by the thermal output of the craft being detected. [/quote]
But there is no panic, no confusion as to why this vessel suddenly appeared at point blank range, no panic at all until it changes course and starts to close. Your explaination requires a lot more assumptions than mine.
[quote]Because sensors are real world devices, and do not run on magic. Although Star Trek has magical sensors that can "detect lifesigns" and other vague things that don't make sense, in the real world you detect something by measuring an interaction with something else.
Different wavelengths of light interact with different things, microwaves can't be detected in the same way that UV rays are. Lasers can be generated in theory at any wavelength although in practise engineering limits it to certain ones. Regardless, there are huge numbers of possible wavelengths from nanometer length ones up to centimeter or larger. [/quote]
If they were using lifesign detectors, your star trek example might be relevant, but full spectrum EM spectrum sensors also exist in RL. EM sensors see ranges, true, but you are suggesting that any given sensor can only see one particular wavelength. The human eye is more capable than that let alone man made sensors.
[quote]I'm actually quite confused now. Are you saying that the fact that Normandy has curved surfaces means that LADAR is ineffective at detecting it? Light bounces off curved things just fine, and actually stealth aircraft geometry is often blocky and sharply angular, not curved. Even then, the gemotery is only good at deflecting certain kinds of radiation, and does not apply to nearly all of the others (which is why you can still see the stealth aircraft, it does nothing to visible wavelengths). [/quote]
LADAR is not just a matter of light bouncing off. The concept is based on bouncing off and returning directly back to the sender. Light deflected in any other direction doesn't get back to the sender. You can see stealth aircraft, but usually that is because there is relativly omni directional light shining on it (like the sun), or the hanger lights. Shine a flashlight at one and you won't see the same intensity of beam on it that you would if you shine it at a flat wall. LADAR would not so much be rendered ineffective, but of reduced effectiveness and you may even get false readings.
[quote]Since when was the Normandy traveling near lightspeed? Have we ever been given any indication that it can travel at relativistic speeds at all? If the SR1 was traveling at near-lightspeed, it would have been impossible to track, get a target lock and hit with any kind of weapon because of relativistic effects.[/quote]
Again, ships accelerate and decelerate to and from FTL speeds. When a ship comes out of FTL, it is still moving at lightspeed, and slows down from there to whatever speed.
[quote]And if they saw it on IR, they know where it was at that time. Unless the Normandy herself changed course after engaging stealth, even though they can't see it they know where it will be at all points in the future thanks to equations of motion. Even if it did change course with its reactionless drives, there would still be a "range" of possible positions of the ship, based on its performance characteristics (i.e. how fast it can accelerate).
This provides a section of expanding 3D space in which the SR2 "might" be. They don't know its exact performance characteirsitscs so it's more guesswork than usual, but regardless of that, they have significantly narrowed the range of search possibilities.
This implies that they can head in the direction of this area and can look around in it to pick up the SR1 with modes of detection other than IR (since they suddenly disappeared from IR). That is what I have been proposing this whole time, they move to where the SR1 was last seen and look around for its updated position with other sensors.[/quote]
Unless Joker is a complete idiot (which is possible) or a lazy idiot (which is also possible), standard proceedure for any stealth vessel would be an immediate course change after cloaking, for exactly the reasons you give. That would likely happen anyway. It is theoreticly possible that they simply plotted a standard planet approach trajectory and the Collectors guessed right as to which planet, but that still doesn't explain why the Normandy didn't see the collector vessel.
[quote]Um, what? The collectors were ambushing all sorts of ships in the sector, for weeks. The SR1 then came looking for the collectors (they didn't know it was the collectors, but you know what I mean), for the past 2 days. This implies many failed attempts to find them. But they were in the same regions of space at the same time... and you think it's unlikely they would bump into each other?[/quote]
Yes, very unlikely. Especially for the Collectors to see the Normandy first.
[quote]No, according to me the collectors were ambushing any and all ships (and were not after the SR1 specifically, or if they were, they baited a trap for it and it eventually worked), saw the SR1 during its breif window of vulenrability (this was partially luck), and then closed to where it last was while finding other ways to detect it (which they did). I'm also proposing that they were very close initially, it's YOU that proposes they were a large distance away and went undetected.
[/quote]
Actually I am proposing it was a long distance away, but the Normandy was detected anyway. I can give you theories on how.....
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