Quite close, and I forgot you haven't got an automatically zooming high tech interface. Just suppose one of your crewmembers is really good with binoculars.
Binoculars? Do you really mean that we're like several kilometers away from that ship?
They sneaked up on you by hiding on a local planetoid(which was suprisingly close to the flightroute). They're about 30 kilometers away, possibly a bit more or less. The fighters are much closer though, and closing in fast.
So yeah, some really good space binoculars.
Oh what. Space is not an ocean. We don't need to see the whites of their eyes to fire them (30 kilometers in space is nothing). Unless we only have visual sensors (which is completely idiotic because we're in space), there was absolutely no way for them to sneak up on us due to radiation and stuff. Finally, planets tend to orbit their suns. That means that unless the 'flight route' (whatever the hell that means IN SPACE) is system-wide, they would have to miss their prey for a large part of the year.
How does FTL work, by the way? Why did we slug along on STL speeds, anyway? And what happened to that merchant?
Meh, PPE'd.
Your sensors are crap. And you critfailed your sensor roll. They hid behind a planetoid, which shielded them from your sensors. True, a lone planetoid just besides a trade lane is rare,(it was probably moved there by the pirates), and you didn't see any harm in it (See, failed sensor roll)
As for why the trade lanes exists, the jump drive is a point to point jump drive(Ie dissappear at point A, reappear at point B). The calculations for navigating with it are extremely complex, hence the creation of the Jump beacon network. These are small spacestations that are always in the same place around the orbit of the main body of gravity(often a star, though in this case a large planetoid). Thanks to the fact that they form some kind of map, and have advanced computing systems on board it allows them to calculate much faster and much more accurate. This allows them to rapidly provide jump calibration information for nearby ships, by having most of the calculations ready and only needing to fill in a few basic things. In order to prevent interference from multiple jumpdrives working at the same time going in different directions, the beacons have been placed quite some distance apart and often operate in pairs to allow 2 way travel. The more civilized systems secure the tradelanes that form between these beacons, or employ advanced beacons to allow multidirectional jumping.
By the way, the sector you're in currently is almost one Light year out of the system.
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Topic: Salvation : A Spaceship suggestion game [Poll] (Read 120350 times)