[Dark Hunter]

I always thought the "charge up sound" was the ship vibrating. If you read FS2's tech room entry on Subspace, it says jump drives operate by vibrating the ship in harmony with subspace.

[Colonol Dekker]

I says that in FS1 as well, Oscillation would be a better choice of word if it were up to me, but thats besides the point, If the jump drive is a capacitro fo sorts it would need to charge, if it doesnt store a charge and simply "vibrates the craft in question into subspace via field convergence/generation then surely it would be a matter of warming the drive up til the resonance is achieved?

[Agent_Koopa]

We are now tracking the vessel through subspace. We have vectored its course to your immediate vicinity.

It just ran a blockade. So it was observed entering.

I don't see how tracking technology is necessary for following ships in subspace. The subspace tracking technology was only necessary for being able to track ships in subspace from outside of subspace. Remember in the end of fs1, they learned two things, which was how to track ships through subspace, and that the lucifer's shielding didn't work in subspace. Nothing even close to tracking technology is necessary for physically following a ship into subspace.
And nightmare, what a horrible consensus technology you described as necessary for subspace tracking. What's the difference between a larger vessel witnessing a ship going into subspace versus not witnessing it going into subspace.
FighterPilot: sir a ship has jumped out using the knossos...track that ****er.
Command: ok well, since we, the bigger ship didn't witness it, we can't use our heavily advanced technology to track it.
FighterPilot: i witnessed it, it's going to the ****ing nebula beyond the gamma-draconis knossos here
Command: well kudos for you
A bigger ship needing to watch a ship jump out to be able to track is next to bull**** nightmare
Something rings of being able to use you're own head to figure out where a ship is going versus bogus technology. Why can't subspace tracking be like normal radar tracking? Except that it'd probably make use of quantum mechanics being needed to track a ship outside of normal space(effectively tracking a ship outside of space time and pretty much in a different dimension of space).
You know in fs1, when the taranis was captured, the only shivans present to witness that was the disabled and downed comm. of the taranis. That **** got tracked through subspace by the shivans without witnessing it no problem.

Here's the breakdown. Every single time you have been warned there is an inbound enemy vessel it has just run a blockade and/or was engaged with GTVA forces at the other end of its jump; at all other times they arrived unannounced. (Ships in the nebula did not jump in under most circumstances, but instead used no-warp to create an impression of just entering sensor range; hence the AWACs forewarning is not valid.) We've never been forewarned of an enemy ship's arrival that wasn't watched entering subspace by other GTVA ships. This actually makes a good deal of sense.

Subspace is n-dimensional. We don't know what "n" is, but it's safe to say it's pretty large. (Otherwise you could simply dispatch multiple wings to check each and then send in the strikefore once you know the right one, in Good Luck, thus invalidating the tracking technology.) A ship that jumps at the same place as a previous one will not end up on the same subspatial dimension as the one that jumped before it (otherwise the tracking technology is again rendered moot); so far as we know there is no way to effectively "follow" another ship into subspace without the tracking technology (or possibly their having communicated their drive settings to you). You can enter after them from the same place, exit after them at the same place, but you won't be in the same place in subspace as they are. This randomization effect means one of two things: either we're screwing with things we don't really understand and can't control, or it's an intentional tactic. If we could not control it somehow then Good Luck is an impossiblity; hence it must be intentional.

It's furthermore dimensional; this implies very large barriers, ones impermeable to sensor technology. Our understanding of the subject is limited, but it may well be that once in subspace it's not truly possible to "change course"; no matter which direction you go in subspace you're going to end up at the end of your plotted jump. Once in subspace you are gone. There is no sign of you in normal space. You have to be seen entering your jump corridor; the tracking technology probably has more to do with analyzing the entry signature, vector, and speed, then actually physically tracking the ship.
 
Shivans subspatial tech > GTVA subspatial tech. That's a given. So, faulty analogy.

I agree with ngtm1r's interpretation, except that vector and speed are irrelevant during a warp-out. Fighters and ships are perfectly capable of warping in any direction, and speed can be anything above a certain level. I think that tracking technology analyses the glimpse of subspace we get when warp-out is activated and the ship disappears into subspace. I don't believe that intra-system jumps are instantaneous; wasn't it stated that long journeys now take only a couple of minutes? Perhaps the jump time is random, to a certain extent. That would explain the time reinforcements, both fighter and capship, take to arrive, but not support ships. I think that tracking incoming unobserved vectors is also possible by reading subspace ripples or something as technobabblish. Perhaps the closer a ship is to the end of its jump, the more obvious its destination? Also, fighters need not see each other during a jump; they need only share their exit coordinates and exit vectors to arrive in formation. The Bastion obviously transmits the information to you before you jump to intercept the Lucifer, and this information is needed to "find" the Lucifer in subspace. This contradicts Derelict, which is of course fanon, because the pirates have no trouble finding you in subspace even though they go into the node way before you and you're not jumping in specifically to intercept them and are therefore probably not on the same wavelength of subspace (so to speak). Interestingly enough, ships only approach nodes from one end and only exit them from the same end. Wouldn't it be tactically smarter to jump out in random directions when you know a node is blockaded? For that matter, why don't we park our ships behind a node and blow them to pieces without fear of retribution from forward-facing and side-facing beam arrays? I'll shut up now.


Also it was a nice thread and I didn't want it to die.

[aldo_14]

I agree with ngtm1r's interpretation, except that vector and speed are irrelevant during a warp-out. Fighters and ships are perfectly capable of warping in any direction, and speed can be anything above a certain level. I think that tracking technology analyses the glimpse of subspace we get when warp-out is activated and the ship disappears into subspace. I don't believe that intra-system jumps are instantaneous; wasn't it stated that long journeys now take only a couple of minutes? Perhaps the jump time is random, to a certain extent. That would explain the time reinforcements, both fighter and capship, take to arrive, but not support ships. I think that tracking incoming unobserved vectors is also possible by reading subspace ripples or something as technobabblish. Perhaps the closer a ship is to the end of its jump, the more obvious its destination? Also, fighters need not see each other during a jump; they need only share their exit coordinates and exit vectors to arrive in formation. The Bastion obviously transmits the information to you before you jump to intercept the Lucifer, and this information is needed to "find" the Lucifer in subspace. This contradicts Derelict, which is of course fanon, because the pirates have no trouble finding you in subspace even though they go into the node way before you and you're not jumping in specifically to intercept them and are therefore probably not on the same wavelength of subspace (so to speak). Interestingly enough, ships only approach nodes from one end and only exit them from the same end. Wouldn't it be tactically smarter to jump out in random directions when you know a node is blockaded? For that matter, why don't we park our ships behind a node and blow them to pieces without fear of retribution from forward-facing and side-facing beam arrays? I'll shut up now.

Intra system jumps are near instantaneous;

There are essentially two modes of subspace travel, inter-system and intra-system.

Intra-system subspace travel is nearly instantaneous, and requires relatively little energy input to enable.  Most of the GTA’s advanced fighters are equipped with intra-system jump motivators, allowing them to travel at will within a given star system.  There is little or no restriction on the beginning and end points of such a subspace “hop,” except that they be in the same star system. 

Inter-system travel via subspace is another matter entirely.  The end points of inter-system subspace jumps are limited to the naturally-occuring focal points of subspace, also known as “nodes.”  These nodes were initially discovered by Prof. J. Whiteside (see McPherson’s Multipaedia  (2557 ed.), pp 1132-1140).  Only between two subspace nodes is the fabric of subspace strong enough to support inter-system travel.  The defense of the physical locations surrounding such nodes proved to be a central part of the 14-year Terran-Vasudan War.

It's not clear how fast inter-system is; the fail debrief for the 2nd last mission in FS1 describes the Lucifer as reaching Earth around 40 hours after entering Delta Serpentic - it's not clear how much of this time, natch, is transit time to the node.

[Dark Hunter]

You're given about ten minutes to vape the Lucifer once you enter the node... and another ten minutes to get to the node in the first place in the previous mission. This leads me to believe that inter-system jumps take somewhere around twenty minutes to complete, varying perhaps on the distance between stars.

[aldo_14]

You're given about ten minutes to vape the Lucifer once you enter the node... and another ten minutes to get to the node in the first place in the previous mission. This leads me to believe that inter-system jumps take somewhere around twenty minutes to complete, varying perhaps on the distance between stars.

Subspace is non-relativistic; it's possible time passes differently inside compared to the outside, as well as travel distance being altered.