id like to take it up a step

a ship that ends its turn in a nebula has a chance of getting lost (10%)

a lost ship will choose a random direction and travel in a straight line for that turn

if it is still lost at the end of the turn it will choose another random direction and travel until the end of its turn etc

when it gets out it rejoins your ships as usual

for small nebula's this would mean pretty much nothing but for larger nebula's this could make you wonder if its really worth trying to cut through it.

there could be some ways to affect this as well a space station with a specific module N.P.S. (nebula positioning system) could eliminate this chance in its area of effect or a ship outside of the nebula with a similar module its also possible that an enemy or ship could confuse your own sensors increasing the chance to get lost

They are talking about putting a resource inside these nebulae.

I'd think inertial guidance systems of the 23rd century would be much better and reliable than todays, so I would guess it would take some kind of electrical discharge from the nebula to damage the inertial guidance system (which, of course, should be well protected from such an event), so perhaps the chance of failure resulting in getting lost should be a bit lower, say 1%. Also, since such a system is so critical, I would think there would be a good deal of redundancy and protection built into it.

If the inertial guidance system gets damaged, it may be appropriate to have a ship miss some turns while trying to repair it (maybe 1-5 turns), with a high probability of being able to repair it (say 99%, since such a critical part would prompt any ship's master to insist in sufficient spare parts to ensure being able to repair it.

After being successful in repairing the IGS (my own made up acronym), it would be reasonable to assume that the ship may have lost its sense of direction, but would be better able to maintain directional control once the repair was completed, allowing the continuation of their exit from a nebula less random somehow.

After being unsuccessful in repairing the IGS the ship would attempt to exit the nebula as described by androshalforc.

Once the ship suffering the IGS failure exits the nebula, I think the ship should stop immediately to get its bearings, taking maybe one turn.

True.

Actually it's an interesting question as to what sort of sensors ships use to navigate while at warp speeds? Electromagnetic sensors such as visual sensors would be useless. In fact you'd probably have to caculate and lay in a destination before hand and hope you didn't hit anything.

I read an article once by a physics student who had worked out the math for a warp drive and concluded it would be possible if you had enough energy and some negative mass matter.

He had looked at the issue of bumping into things because you literally couldn't see where you where going and suggested pinching of an area of space by warping it, that would contain the ship. The opening of the area of pinched of space would be the size of a proton then that area of space is moved along by the warp minimising the chancee of fatal collision with gas particles and micrometors.

Of course sci-fi generally ignores this issue.

Any Shield or hull that could withstand particle collisions at those relative velocities would be impervious to most combat weapons from the start.

Not to mention that while our current understanding of physics does not rule out warp drives and wormholes, it does suggest energy shields of the type seen in sci-fi are impossible with the exception of plasma curtains which we already have, still I'm happy to overlook that since force fields are fun, (basicly fields don't work in the way sci-fi force fields would need them too).

Shields that created a bubble of sorts around the ship I agree is highly unlikely. Our current understanding is that it could never happen but knowledge does change and grow over time...remember...earth was flat at one point. Any who one thing that is possible is my reference to creating something right on the fringe of the metal to buffer or deflect. Maybe that is why the little green men fly saucers....oh the mystery...

I don't see a metal strong enough to deflect would be strong enough to withstand direct beams of energy, large concussion weapons, or doom rays. If the metal that the ship was created out of wasn't resistant enough to at least buffer against such weapons or space debris then it would only take one shot from any weapon to just sear through the entire ship and blow it up. Which I guess in reality a spaceship would be like a paper airplane flying through a hail storm of epic doom.

Why.The nebula stops sensors so why would signatures outside stop it.This is not detection with a looking glass or on a flat plane.

If your ship sensor range is bigger than the nebula why would it stop seeing past it? Like I said this is not eye vision but more like Radar.In my opinion a nebula being like some sort of big land mountain is stupid.

Depends on how big the particles are. Mass may not have as much of an effect as velocity on the collision energy, but there's a big difference between hitting a 0.1 kg object at 0.9c and hitting a 1 kg object at 0.9c. Regardless, if the vessels truly are moving at relativistic velocities in real space, they must have hulls, shields, or both which are capable of withstanding such impacts, or which can deflect particles away from the vessel's path before the particle becomes a threat to the vessel. Otherwise, relativistic travel velocities are incredibly risky, especially considering just how expensive the ships are to build.

Regardless, it isn't necessarily true that the ships are capable of moving at relativistic velocities; they certainly didn't appear to be moving at relativistic speeds in combat in GCII, though there are certainly reasons why vessels might not move at high fractions of c during combat.

It depends on how your sensors work. A sensor which operates on a line-of-sight principle could easily be unable to see past an obstruction, or at least have a blindspot even if it can diffract around a region. Regardless, a region that interferes with the sensors of vessels within the region should at the very least interfere with sensors looking into the region, unless the interference is along the lines of 'we have dirt on the lens again'.

It also depends on how the nebulae and ships represented on the game map translate to 3D space. Nebulae are incredibly huge compared to anything you can build in GCII and presumably in GCIII; if your vessel and the sensor target are on opposite sides of a nebula in 3D space, then you're looking at an incredibly long trip for the sensors to look 'around' the nebula rather than through it in most cases, even if whatever the sensors detect is capable of bending around obstructions, which would tend to suggest that there would be a blindspot behind the nebula if you're looking 'around' it rather than 'through' it.

Of course, there's also the likely possibility that the sensors work on the same principle as the drives, and somehow bend the space between the detector and the observed region, which would cover why sensors and drives are similarly affected by nebulae, but not why a ship which enters a nebula takes 2 moves per tile while sensors present on a ship outside the nebula detecting tiles on rays which enter or pass through a nebula appear to be unimpeded by the nebula. Basically, if the sensors operate on the same principle as the drives and are affected by being in nebulae in a manner identical to the manner in which a nebula affects a ship's drive, it is reasonable to assume that whatever form of radiation or whatever particle the sensors detect will see nebula tiles as 2 tiles rather than 1 tile for the purpose of sensor range.

We very clearly are not using any real-world sensors in the game, anyways, so I don't really why the time requirements on the radar is important. It's possible that real-world sensors might be used in combat, since that appears to take place at ranges where EM radiation detection methods could be practical, but it's rather unlikely that such is the case for general navigation given that our vessels' sensors can detect other vessels as soon as those vessels move into sensor range (or nearly so, since each turn is nominally 1 week long).

It depends on how you assume warp travel works. You appear to be assuming that travel in GCII/III has the vessels moving constantly, which is possible and reasonable. It is nevertheless possible that warp travel works by fixing the current position in space through some means or other, taking a short jump in a specified direction, and recalculating the current location, and then taking another jump, and so on. Given the information shown within the game, either of these methods of travel are supportable, and in the second case sensors which detect EM radiation are a potential navigational sensor, as you really only need to be able to identify a sufficient number of important stars and their apparent location relative to you, and an adequately powerful computer could then work out from that information where you currently are in the galaxy.

Regardless, the game clearly includes sensors whose operation depends on a detectable particle or form of radiation which propagates at a rate greater than the speed of light, or which propagates through something akin to Star Trek's subspace in a way that makes something light-years away detectable less than a week after the body enters sensor range. These sensors would additionally appear to be usable for warp travel, as there is no difference in the sensor range of a ship which has used up all of its moves this turn and an identical ship which hasn't moved at all this turn. Whether or not the resolution is fine enough for avoidance of high-velocity collisions with particles or debris is not really answerable with the information presented by either game, but indications are that either the ships have a sensor with the requisite range and resolution, or the hulls or navigational shields of the ships are sufficiently strong (either alone or in combination) to take no significant damage from any collisions which do occur, since there are no random events in GCII (and currently in GCIII) which cause damage to ships due to navigational mishaps.

Why would they loose the UP? The Yor have subspace communications for about 225,000 years, while the Arceans (and through them all the other races) have it for about 1000 years. In other words, instant interstellar communication already exists at the start of the game.