an EYE can see a star on their retina from thousands of parsecs away... (it really can V762 Cas, the furthest star that can be seen with the naked eye, is 4,908 parsecs away!) so not 100% sure what your point is, you seem to be comparing apples with grapes
The point is that a beacon designed to send a distress call can be detected by any ship's sensor within the stellar system, because both the beacon and the sensors would be made to standards that facilitate the detection of a Signal GK.
This is My point exactly. The detection range for a signal is effectively unlimited. Same way you can detect a ship exiting jumpspace in the Galactic Core from Regina. You won't detect it until the speed of light can travel that far, but by the rules, you still detect it.
A one parsec range radio beacon is a little silly. The chance it is still an emergency 3 years later is nil, either it has been handled or you died. Now you still may be marooned on a habitable planet at that time but it stopped being an emergency and is merely a severe problem.
The signal doesn't stop. You can't just turn it off after 2 million kilometers. The signal keeps going and will still be detectable. Remember. It is an emergency beacon. You want it to be detected over an area the size of a whole star system and to be detectable by anyone with basic sensors. That means that anyone with better sensors will be able to detect it from outside of the system that it was transmitted from.
I agree. How many ships do you think jump in just the Deneb sector every day? The sensors at the starport can detect all of them at lightspeed. They will detect the jump flash (as long as it is not a ship with Stealth Jump) from a jump that occurred 100 years ago, 100 light-years away.
The cube law says that the beacon will be immensely reduced at interstellar ranges.
It sort of defies the definition of emergency, if it is still happening after 3 years.
This.
An emergency low berth in an escape pod with a Sterling Fission power plant will be good for a minimum of twenty years. Just designed one. That means an emergency might last quite a while.
Like said above, the signal strength drops with distance using the cube law. As we don’t know the actual strength, it’s hard to guess what that would mean really.
What we do know is that anything less than a system-wide signal and it will be fairly useless for system traffic. We also know that every ship can detect Signal-GKs. Also, An EPIRB has a range of 400 nautical miles, omni-directional, (through an atmosphere UWP Code 6) and is only 5 watts. That is using TL-7 technology. 100% detection rate and gives your exact location to within 100 meters.
I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think I’m on board with unlimited in system detection range for even an emergency beacon. It’s too much.
Why is it too much? The human eye can detect a 100w light bulb 2,000km away unaided. Does it overpower the game in some way?
And there is the key. It needs a big receiver to get that effect.
To a dedicated, massive receiver array that knows precisely where to look.
