enderra said:However, my earlier objection was based on the impossibility to suggest that there is any form of ftl detection. That breaks not only everything we know and hold dear, but it also breaks the setting. (If you can detect anything FTL, you can also build an FTL radio.)
It's not a sensor that provides results FTL, it's a sensor that detects an active stutterwarp by it's interaction with the ships sensors, whatever form you want that to be. As I said, the results still only propagate at the speed of light, so if a ship 2 light hours away turns on it's stutterwarp, you get those readings two hours later. Of course, by then they they have probably outpaced their own sensor wavefront and the first thing you know is when they arrive.
enderra said:As for detecting a starship, should be easy based on the radiation it's giving off. Lots of infrared, if nothing else. Plus, the intermittent nature of the signal (it skips space as it travels) should set it apart quite nicely from any conventional or natural source (a question of resolution of the sensor I guess). So you can track it quite nicely while it's in your system, but before it arrives and after it departs, you can't tell where it's going or coming from etc.
The grav sensor doesn't detect a starship in any really useful form. It quite clearly cannot be used for targeting or identification, or even ranging and course, just notification that somwehere, sometime there was a ship. As I also said, you'd get a lot more information from a basic optical scope.
G.