Newtonian Stealth

[bean (OP)]

The two-day trajectory is more defended because on your two-day trajectory everyone in the solar system sees you and where you are going, so the defensive fleet is waiting for you, or intercepts you. The idea that there exists a solution to "set up your vectors right" so that interception is impossible doesn't really seem to be a valid assumption.

The problem is simple.  The stealth ship in question has to remain undetected until it's too late for the intercept to occur.  The conventional ship has to come in too fast for the intercept to occur.  If the defender can have a fleet on station in 2 days, then the stealth ship must remain undetected until 2 days before it strikes.  Actually less, unless you want to lose the ship.  I find that sort of thing (over a long mission, no less) hard to credit.

I agree that there is a little bit of hand waving, but if you filter out the existing plasma and only let out the helium that have already emitted their photons to leave their excited state then they aren't going to randomly reignite into plasma once they leave the reactor.

The plasma will remain as plasma until after it leaves the reactor.  Your problem is twofold:
1. Filter out only the parts you want to eject (magic).
2. Cool it enough to remove its signature without rendering it useless as an exhaust (even more magic).
This goes way beyond handwaving to the realm of the impossible.

That's not true. If the stealth ship is detected two months into it's journey then it is two thirds of the way there. It fires up its normal engine and gets there in ten days, the stealth system gave it 20 extra days to play with the Sorium harvesters and begin their escape trajectory. Sure the fact that it has a normal engine and a stealth engine may mean that its shields are halfsize, or it doesn't have as many weapons. But how many weapons do you need to destroy undefended Sorium Harvesters in twenty days?

I'm not sure where you're getting this from.  You would get 20 extra days, assuming it takes the enemy 30 days to respond.  But they will take 30 days to respond from the detection of any ship.  Period.  Thus, if I can get a conventional ship to the harvesters within 30 days, I can use it, too.  Based on the above numbers, it takes twice as long to do something with the stealth drive as the conventional drive.  What if I replace the stealth drive with more conventional drives, and use that instead?
And you keep forgetting about this thing called "escaping".  That's going to be an issue for any stealth ship.  
The question is not "can it be made to work under certain circumstances?"  The question is "will it work better then the alternatives?"
(And my alternative involves long-range missiles.  They put the ship at less risk, and don't give any response time.)

Edit:
Two more serious problems occurred to me with the example given:
1. This is Newtonian Aurora, not regular Aurora.  The stealth drive will not have half the speed of the regular drive.  And if you have 20 days left on stealth drive (assuming constant deceleration) then it is impossible to stop at the target within 10 days.  Why?  The acceleration would have to be instantaneous.  Assuming the normal drive has twice the acceleration, the ship will arrive in 15 days, coasting for 5 and burning for 10.
2. You're assuming that you know when you've been detected.  That's not a smart assumption.  And dealing with a stealth ship that thinks you don't know it's there is easy.  Launch a long-range missile salvo at it, and have it go silent for most of the run.  When it gets close, it goes active, and kills the SS.  And since the SS isn't using active sensors, it will probably first learn of the missiles when they come up on thermal, which is usually too close for effective defense.

[nafaho7]

You may express contempt for the discussion, but this entire thread is about how to make stealth more realistic;
[snip] .  .  .   the whole discussion comes down to the following points:

A) Stealth for manned Ships is extremely hard in real space.   So much for the basis. 
B) Stealth in Aurora is too easy to achieve, and excruciatingly boring in that way; Emisions can not only be reduced, but eliminated. 
C) The only way to reliably defend against stealth in current Aurora is absolutely humongous Active sensors, as passives become completely useless as soon as an enemy turns of his shields and stops moving. 

This implies that the following changes could be useful:

A) A revamp of the range collection, lying somewhere between the current linear and the realistic sqrt range falloff.   Maybe half sig=1/3 detection range or something. 
A1) Possibly increase range of passives sightly, maybe only for military ships, allowing hide and seek if one raids civies. 
B) Giving Crew Quarters, weapon systems, and reactors their own heat signature.   While it may be small, and with the current sensor system would still allow to evade detection, it will make passives more useful as theres always a small bit of radiation.   Maybe not enough for someone not actively searching, but certainly enough for an Asteroid-Based DTS. 
Shields might be able to mask it, but emit stronger EM
C) Allow passives, within a fraction of their range, say, 50%, to give a target id, at a steep hit penalty, for non-homing projectiles.   

I have a few Bad Ideas™
[snip]
Perhaps adding a time lag to detect signatures based on 1% chance per sensor per minute + Crew Experience(s) if within passive sensor strength at the target ships signature output. 
[snip]
Cloaking could be made to make a flat negative roll on the chance to be detected.   Or better yet could cost power to produce a field that when the detection rolls say you should have been detected could cost power to make it remain negative.   As well as a flat operation power cost. 
[snip]ships with a hyperdrive could have a component added into the engines to generate a place to vent thermal radiation and unwanted materials.   Heatsinks can become thermal batteries that need to be drained by venting directly into hyperspace.   The downside to this could be that dedicated search sensors such as Deep Space Tracking can detect hyperspace signatures.   A Hyperdump™ can be detected but the presence in system can remain unknown.   Allowing ships designed from the ground up for power capacity, fuel effency and reduced emissions to perform good stealth missions but not much else since size will need to be kept to a absolute minimum. 

Things like these are exactly what this thread should be focusing on.    Potential alterations to the mechanics of standard Aurora to make stealth ships a possibility in a more Newtonian environment.    Not details of the interaction of modern materials science on railguns with muzzle energy ratings best measured in Gigajoules.    Or the precise method by which a ship may attempt to remain hidden. 

Personally, I feel rather taken by options B) and C) from UnLimiTeD's post, as well as Bad Idea™ 3) from voknaar's post.    For the price of yet more research, one can attempt to create stealth ships for quiet reconnaissance, or whatever other sinister purposes our wicked minds can conceive.    Depending on the manner of your target's preparation and countermeasures against outside threats, these stealth ships could sometimes be a good idea, and sometimes a bad one.    Like many options already in the game, a player could simply ignore it if he so chose, and use other tried and true methods of avoiding detection.    A perennial favorite being the elimination of all potential sensor platforms with nuclear fire.    This method generally leads to your forces being detected before it is fully implemented, but one must sometimes make short term sacrifices to aid in long term goals. 

Truth be told, the best in-game method for providing sensor information on enemy star systems without producing much risk or hardship for your spacers would be some sort of cheap drone craft with whatever passive sensor technology can be crammed aboard.    But it could be fun, for roleplay purposes, to have some stealth reconnaissance ships.    These would be most useful in games where a player has decided to impose personal information delay rules of some kind. 


EDIT: I was very recently reminded of a very good reason to build stealthy vessels in this version of Aurora.   For the purposes of navigation, one is best off if the destination system has been fully surveyed.   If one could deploy a stealthy survey ship, one can then more reliably plan and execute offensive operations.   Such as a

drive-by nuclear holocaust

instead of a direct assault by otherwise stealthy ships.

[ollobrains]

Stealth probes are an interesting idea to drop em off have em sit idle until something flies nearby and it might give a partial report given its stealtehd nature