Standard Transit bindness duration

[jseah (OP)]

I know about the transit blindness and I know it is around 30s-1min for squadron transits.  But I seem to be running into strange problems in the Battlestar challenge. 
Anyone know the exact formula (probability curve) for the time a 0% crew bonus ship spends blind after doing a standard transit? 

Issue is that I standard transit a scout frigate with a giant size 50 thermal sensor then go rocketing around the system searching for contacts. 

I have the range circle for 1000 sensor detection around the frigate on my system map and often I only notice populations or large ships when they have already entered sensor range.  Thermal 6000 population inside the 1000 strength detection circle when I should have seen it 6 times further out. 
I haven't lost any ships to that yet, despite one time going right past a precursor base (I think it was) with a thermal 8000 and only noticing it on the way back. 

The only thing I can think of is sensor blindness.  But even standard transit blindness wears off after a day right?  I mean it's often more than 24 hours (sometimes even a few days) before I even get contacts when I really should have noticed it from the jumppoint itself. 

----------
Off-topic: the speed thing is working so far.  Found two potentially hostile aliens and simply backed my scout probe out of the system. 
The NPRs try to catch my 13kkm/s scout frigate with their crawling 2kkm/s ships.  Lol. 

[dooots]

Quick search shows that standard transit is only 120-180 seconds so that is not the problem.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,2480.msg24501.html#msg24501

What increments are you using to scout?  Maybe sub pulses are not interrupting on passive sensor contacts correctly.

[jseah (OP)]

Ah, that could be the problem.  I often hit 1 day, it takes literally forever otherwise since I'm scouting two systems, observing two, grav. surveying one and geo surveying another.  
The temptation to micromanage is incredible if you go in 8 hour chunks.  

When you have a fleet of 20+ grav surveyors that run at 11kkm/s, even the huge systems get done really fast.  But it appears that the system I started in is a junction system that leads to at least two other junction systems with no life (+1 more with an NPR)

EDIT:
Doesn't explain why I didn't notice the precursor thing with 8000 thermal until I was on my way back.  That was at least three days and far far more than one increment.  Furthermore, I never actually left the range at which I would see it, since I can see an 8000 thermal from across the entire system.  

[Brian Neumann]

Thermal signature is also dependant on the ship generating it moving.  If the precursor was stationary untill it spotted you then it whould have a thermal signature of 0, not 8,000.  Somehow I don't think they have anywhere near as good of a passive sensor to spot you with.

Brian

[sloanjh]

Ah, that could be the problem.  I often hit 1 day, it takes literally forever otherwise since I'm scouting two systems, observing two, grav. surveying one and geo surveying another.  
The temptation to micromanage is incredible if you go in 8 hour chunks.  

I have an SOP for scouting a new system: Save Early, Save Often

1)  Before I explore a new WP, I save.  My probe ship transits at 1km/s using squadron transit.  I have a scout ship on the friendly side with actives going, in case something eats the probe and transits back.

2)  Once the new system is generated, I save again.  If not, the RNG will produce a different system if I need to roll back time.

4)  I bump the scout's speed to 100, and move back and through the WP using 30s increments (corresponding to 5s sub-pulses).

5)  Both probe and scout transit using standard transit at 1km/s (scout turns of actives first).  BTW, these are weak anti-missile actives, not system-search anti-shipping actives.

6)  Set a waypoint ~100 MKm away, bump scout's speed to 1000, and give scout orders to go to the WP and turn on actives.  Save again.

7)  When scout reaches WP (~1 day later), bump its speed to max and give orders to visit each planet.  If it's starless, tell it to make a tour of a few select grav-survey points to get some sort of coverage of the system.  Save again.  (Yes, AFAIK there won't be any bad guys in a starless nexus, but my naval planning commission has several Weber fans on it who've read In Death Ground, and they don't know that. )

8 )  At every 5-day, or when something that takes a lot of wall-clock time happens (like entering orders), I save.

The point of all this is that if, due to the 1/2-hour sub-increments of a 1-day update, you end up with a contact deep within your sensor envelope, you can simply roll back to the last save and re-run the same orders with a smaller increment.  Note that I've got a window with Aurora open and a window with my save directory open, so saving consists of ctrl-c in one window and ctrl-v in another window (plus clicking the "stomp the file with the copy" dialog).

John