I believe it's been stated that various Imperial systems are able to detect a ship approaching or at least translating into their system. If this is true and can indeed be done, how would it be done and what would be needed?

1) Strait up psyniscience seems incapable of preforming such a task as psykers usually can't tell you if there's been a warp breach two continents over much less an AU away. So, what kind of personnel would be needed to sense this and would they need any special equipment?

2) What range would such individuals and/or equipment have?

3) Would pirates, say the pirates of Inequity be able to do this and, if so, would they routinely set up such watchers in systems that attract any kind of traffic or do they just piddle about hopping to randomly run into anouther ship out there in the void (kind of like hopping to find a needle in the Sahara)?

4) Would other Imperial or Pirate ships be able to detect other ships translating from the warp into real space and, if so, what kind of specialized personnel would they need for such a task if any and what kind of range would they have?

Sorry for this deluge of questions, but in setting up this weekends game, i came across a situation where answers to these questions would be very helpful and a lot better then me just making things up that work for the story then finding that I've opened some kind of Pandora's Box with repercussions i hadn't thought of.

Though it is not included in the rules per say in fluff all vessels (at least military grade ones) have sensors that can detect the rip coursed in realspace/warp when a ship translate into or out off the warp. the range on this is debatable but I think that it is something like system scale.

there are ways to cheat this, the easiest being to emerge from the warp farther away and then proceed with slower-than-light-travel.

1) Navigator with the "Gaze into the Abyss" powere on Adept or Master level.

2) The Navigator power "Gaze into the Abyss" have a range of 100 kilimetres times his Perception Bonus or 1 VU times his Perception Bonus in Space Combat.

3) Yes pirates would have this their behavior when using it would be up to you as GM, their range would also be up to you. You could say that it have as much as system wide range or as little at 10 VU or something. that depends on how you wants to run the enounter.

Pirates ussually have somewhere they consider their base of operations but rather than wait for prey to come to them they will usually await in ambush along often travelled routes or at the outskirts of a populated system especially if they can hide amongst asteroids or dust coulds.

4) As said the range would be up to you. no special crew beyond the bridge crew and perhaps a techpriest or heretek would be required to operate the equipment as far as I know.

Hope it helps.

Tactically I can't see too many pirates lasting very long if they go strictly after other vessels, for sure they'll jump on an unescorted frieghter or anything else they figure they can take down... most everything else would be a case of running up 100% and get outa town. Simply because damage as an illegal operator without major backing is next to impossible to repair, even if you do win then it might be a calculated risk that neither of you are going to be able to jump and then you're truly boned.

A much more savvy operator wouid minimise risk by going a-viking, find planets, bases, stations etc... without much in the way of protection, send in attack ships and just pillage the crap out of it. Smaller craft are cheaper to replace, so are for that matter boarding troops and mercenaries, so I can see hit-run ops with those being also quite a popular tactic as well as being able to picket areas for a bigger sensor spread, then just radio it in if something worthwhile pops into real space.

I don't know about repairs as the RT rules allow you to make quite a lot of repairs in space. There also must be ports where the pirates can go for refits. Finding a small station around a deserted star or in deep space would be very hard. One suspects that some systems have governors who get so little Imperial trade that having pirates come to port is a net gain even if they attack shipping in the system.

That said as a GM most of the pirates in my games rarely attack unless they greatly outgun the PCs, and run if they take much hull damage. Also a fair number of the pirates in my game are carriers. They either shake the ship down for passage, or do smash and grabs for cargo and parts. That way the main pirate ship stays out of combat, and all they risk is a bunch of converted shuttles.

As far as detecting when a ship emerges from the warp.

1)Astropaths in various sources have proven able to detect ships emerging from the warp. In some cases hours or even days before. (Generally foreknowledge only occurs in the case of hive fleets, massive warrrggghs, and horrible chaos things.)

2)Daemons, and other warp creatures can detect vessels in the warp. A warp witch, sorcerer, dark adept or the like could certainly use various divinations to determine where and when a ship will emerge. One can image a warp witch guiding the ship via a guresome compass charm thing.

3)Many 40k sources describe areas of space where ships tend to exit the warp. A pirate ship could hang near one of those places in space.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=123&efcid=3&efidt=253304&efpag=0#253415