sideranautae said:
Rick said:
Using modern naval practices as a guide; you could use one ship to actively 'ping', then data-link the targeting information to the other ships, while it relocates hurriedly!
Yep, that's what this set up is. Just using hidden radar pods. Passive radar acquisition.
The costs to cover the entire system with them would still be gigantic as any form of light lag between the target and the next pod would disrupt the target lock. And even if you only go for detection, the maximum range for active radar in traveller is 50k kilometers, so you need to drop at least one pod every 100k kilometers in every direction if you want a full net of them.
I am sure someone can calculate how many you need to cover the solar system as example with that density.
Don't forget that you also have to maintain such a net and I am sure you will have eventually ships crashing with some of the pods when they come out of jumpspace in addition to the usual micrometeorites, etc. You would probably need several ships working fulltime to maintain the net.
Instead, such a system still could only cover key points. Inhabited planets would have enough own radar stations to not need extra hidden pods. It works well for gas giant or free fooating station defense, though