wminsing wrote:1. While submarine warfare is one model of commerce raiding, prior to the introduction of the submarine commerce raiding was HUGE part of the Age of Sail. So commerce raiding doesn't have to rely on stealth per see (though detection ranges in the Age of Sail were obviously much less than they are today, or SiS), just the ability to get your ship into areas were enemy shipping would be plentiful. Whether that's possible in the SiS technological framework I'm not sure.
In a game which has actual strategic terrain for units to maneuver on (like in Civilization or Galactic Civilizations), you can send ships into enemy territory, avoiding bases, and possibly catch enemy commerce vessels in transit between ports. But in SiS (which uses the MOO movement system), there is no literal strategic terrain; units in transit can't interact with other units until they arrive at a star system, so the only way to attack enemy commerce vessels is to catch them in an enemy base, where the raiders can clearly be seen and counterattacked by the base defenders. So yes, you could potentially attack trade vessels if you send a fleet into an undefended enemy system, but once there you can do a lot worse than raid shipping, since fleets can bombard and destroy planetary settlements. So if the enemy can't stop you from putting fleets in his systems, he's not worried about his shipping; he's lost the game.
Even in a system like Civ or GalCiv in which you can send fleets into the space between bases, commerce raiding has limited usefulness due to the issue you mention: detection range. The Nazis tried to use their surface combatants for commerce raiding, but they were detected, caught and destroyed by the British fleet.
wminsing wrote:1a) So what are the technological assumptions for SiS FTL drives? I see some of the fluff refers to them as warp lanes, but given some of the later techs allow you to redirect fleets mid-transit it obviously can't be a literal path in space like a wormhole. Can ships warp right up to planetary orbit (seems like yes given you can warp out of combat) or is there some sort of 'hyper limit'?
The fluff in this case is purely secondary to the play mechanics. The idea is that hyperspace travel is only possible along "lanes" between stars, and the speed at which a ship travels along that lane has to do with how well it is "connected" to that lane. The lane dumps you out of hyperspace at the edge of a star's gravity well; you can't warp right up a planet, or warp out in the middle of empty space. During the "dark age" just prior to the beginning of the game in which hyperspace travel was essentially impossible, the lanes were inactive. Better tech allows a ship to better attune to a lane, allowing to travel farther and faster. The ability to change course mid-transit would explained as changing lanes in hyperspace, but that is of course a logical stretch... it's a gameplay concession rather than a natural outgrowth of the fluff.
wminsing wrote:1b) Given there appear to be plans to create systems that inhibit FTL movement in various ways, one possibility, as echo2361 discusses, could be a system that allows you pull an enemy ship into 'realspace' with you, providing a way to catch freighters between systems.
Again, this is primarily a gameplay limitation, but there's not currently way to select empty space as a destination for a fleet, or to wait there for passing enemy ships. Such capability could be added, but then there would be a whole host of consequences that would have to be addressed. You could send a huge warfleet next to an enemy system and just sit there, threatening the enemy, waiting for a chance to attack, and yet invulnerable to counterattack.