NationStates Jolt Archive

This (of course) refers to space nations which use faster than light technology for inter-stellar or inter-galactic travel. This thread is all OOC and people wont be able to use it against you in any RP's, but I figure it would just be nice to know what everybody else has and uses. So, post your method for breaking the speed of light.

My Faster than Light technology: Sub-Space (1 light-year per minute)

While travel into Sub-Space is enabled via ship-borne devices (called “subspace engines”, “cores”, or “motivators”), it’s long been known that Sub-Space itself is a naturally-occuring phenomena.

In simple terms, Sub-Space is an N-Dimensional tunnel between one point in the universe and another. A vessel can travel through this tunnel in a matter of minutes, making a journey that might otherwise take decades or even centuries at light speed.

A Jump-Drive causes a ship to vibrate in multiple dimensions until it's modulations are in perfect synchronization with the Sub-Space Continuum. A vortex opens, creating an aperture from an infinitesimally small point in the Cosmos, enabling the vessel to cross the Sub-Space threshold.

There are essentially two modes of Sub-Space travel, inter-system and intra-system.

Intra-system Sub-Space travel is nearly instantaneous, and requires relatively little energy input to enable. Most of Klonor's advanced fighters are equipped with intra-system jump motivators, allowing them to travel at will within a given star system. There is little or no restriction on the beginning and end points of such a Sub-Space “hop,” except that they be in the same star system.

Inter-system travel via Sub-Space is another matter entirely. The end points of inter-system Sub-Space jumps are limited to the naturally-occuring focal points of Sub-Space, also known as “nodes.” These nodes were initially discovered by Prof. J. Whiteside (see McPherson’s Multipaedia (2557 ed.), pp 1132-1140). Only between two Sub-Space nodes is the fabric of Sub-Space strong enough to support inter-system travel. The defense of the physical locations surrounding such nodes proved to be a central part of the 14-year Terran-Vasudan War.

In addition, such massive amounts of energy input are required to open an inter-system node, that only the largest fusion pile reactors in existence are able to sustain it. As a result, inter-system Sub-Space travel is almost exclusively made by the largest vessels in production. This fact has made the Orion-class destroyer/carriers a pivotal and crucial part to Klonor's tactical forces during the T-V War.

Needless to say, the ability to deliver ships of war to nearly any pinpointed destination has forever revolutionized the concepts and long-standing tenants of space combat.


Currently Located Jump-Nodes

http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/kmap2.jpg

Jump nodes. Basicly the same thing you use, Klonor

I use the Libby-Shefield drive. (taken from Heinlien)

It propels the ship into an alternate dimension called Nth-space.

(Not space yet, but soon)

In a sense something similar (using vibrations) but to a diffrent effect.

Buy creating vibrations so low the "superstrings" of the universe themselves begin to move. Requiring most of the ships power and taking several minutes to reach the proper amplitude and frequency this is a slow process, but well worth it.

As it reaches the desired setting the space around the ship begins to fold-bend (primarly in the front as that is where most of the amplification goes). Using sublight engines the ship enters into the rift-bend in space and then literally rides along the "superstings" to its destination.

You may think that it would still take time, but given that the strings are the Beginning and the End of the physical univers they exist at all places at once. Because of human perception time does take place, but it can be measured in minutes at most depending on the "jump". However, till we fully scout out routes we have to utilizie a two ship system, a smaller one leading the larger one (its complex won't get into it here) telling it which string to ride for how long.

Beside the power and time needed to use this it also must be done outside of any major gravational fields, meaning the ship usually must enter/exit above the solar plan.

We aren't a space nation, but here's some possible FTL technology:

Virtual Compression
Move into a parallel dimension that corresponds with our own, except the points where you are and where you want to travel to are contigeous. This must exist according to the infinite dimensions theory (whose exact name escapes me right now). (see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri -- n-space compression)

Higher Geometry Warp
Follow an n-dimensional trajectory that allows you to jump over annoying restrictions of 3-space. (see A Wrinkle In Time)

Probability Drive
Manipulate probability fields so that your ship is instantly teleported to your destination.

Space Oscillator
Essentially "bust" space-time so that you "skip" on the surface using precisely modulated wave patterns. (see a sci-fi book I can't remember the name of right now)

Philotic Compression
Information-based transferral of things by interspace, massive, intellegent neural net. (see Xenocide)

Interialess Folding Drive
"Fold" space over on itself in a series of bubbles so you get an infinite amount of energy plus a network of intertia dampers. Note that this will only cause you to move at exactly one c.

Contraction Drive
Accelerate a starship at high enough speeds that spacetime is destroyed in front of the starship, thus creating a sort of "reverse snail trail." (see Star Trek)

Space??? who cares. It's all about fashion and death. Any1 who doesn't wear the rite thing here DIES. We're the best country around.

Get out and push.

Millions of hamsters on wheels.

Millions of hamsters on wheels.

Hmm.. that sounds better than ours. How much are you wanting for the designs?

Hyperdrive.

-----------------------------------------
"But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality."
Free your mind! (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/comanarchism/whatis_toc.html)
I like big butts!

http://www.angelfire.com/mo3/terrapvlchra/images/steatopygia.jpg

We use a hyperspace drive powered by a Xenium implosion reactor.

Essientially, the XIR provides the 'hyperdrive' with enough power to, when properly focused, cut a small hole in space-time. This hole leads to a place called 'quasi-space' or 'hyperspace' where the ship can then choose its point of exit from quasi-space. Distances in realspace are nonexistant in quasi-space (So a ship that started in Sol could end up in Alpha Centauri instantly) but, there is an odd time dialation effect that occurs. From the Crew's perspective, only a moment or two pass before they emerge at their destination. But in the real universe, over two hours have past (it can be more or less depending on the amount of energy funneled into the hyperspace drive.) This is obviously extremely disorienting to the crew, but there are no other major side effects known at this time.

Also, the targeting system (for entry and exit of quasi-space) needs more power when accuracy requirements increase. So to get anywhere near where you're trying to go, you need to put lots of power into the navagation systems, kind of difficult if your reactor is damaged. This is why, for a second or two after exiting quasi-space, a CF ship usually can't defend itself. Only low-level shields are still operative.

CF Ships are capable of making small, tactical 'jumps', but the time dialation is still in effect (Usually fifteen minutes for a short jump), so you can't really jump in and immediately fire upon an enemy. You'd most likely be shooting where they were fifteen minutes ago.

I know it isn't too well writen, but I'm really tired now and I didn't want to lose this thread before I had a chance to reply.

Right now, all of our ships use warp drive (Star Trek), but we are in the process of outfitting all of our newer ships, and moving onto our older ones, with Jump drives, this technology is very fast, travel is almost intentanous, but the trajectory coordinates have to be very precise, even a decimal off could leavee the ship stranded in some unkown region. The only other drawback is it creates a massive drain on energy, and so a ship can only Jump again after the engine has had time to recharge.

Hyperdrive, but that's only for a few of my ships, as I'm Sol system only.

And if a non-FTL ship wants to leave the system? No colony ships for us. We can open a hyperspace conduit with a Hyper-Gate. ANy ship entering can move out at any time, but if you want to get back, you need another one wherever you end up.

Xanthal uses something they call Slipstream, which basically cuts a temporary subspace "tunnel" through normal space, allowing the ship to move faster than light. The more powerful the Slipstream drive, the "lower" into subspace the ship can decend. The lower it decends, the faster it travels. Currently Xanthal's fastest Slipstream drive tops out at five hundred million times the speed of light, but that's so fast that no Human can dodge the obstacles that they encounter (ships travelling in Slipstream can still crash into things in normal space). Because of this, Pilot Chobits have to be carried aboard all Xanthalian ships that wish to achieve this monumental speed. Pilot Chobits are highly advanced, sentient androids; and carry the only processor known to Xanthal fast enough to successfully navigate at top Slipstream speed. Even Pilot Chobits must slow the ship down in densely packed regions of space, however. Slipstream itself is highly reliable, and since the "tunnels" it forms dissipate less than five seconds after a ship creates them, it carries a very low risk of causing problems for other vessels. Slipstream drives consist of a set of emitters that open the tunnel, placed fore on the Slipstream-capable ship; and a set of emitters that hasten the closing of the tunnel, placed aft on the ship. The forward and aft emitters are powered by the Slipstream Core, which eminates the specific wavelengths of energy needed to create a subspace tunnel. This core's size depends on the mass and volume of the object it must carry to Slipstream, but is generally one to two meters in diameter and about 90% of the ship's largest dimension (length, width, height) in length. The core itself is powered by the main power source of the ship (in most Xanthalian vessels the Infinate Energy Core), and draws 450 terawatts of power when running at full capacity (the bottom of level nine subspace or 500,000,000 c.). This immense pull is facilitated by a cluster of fifty power conduits, each of which can accomodate a power flow of up to 10 terawatts.

We travel in 'jumpspace' for FTL, basically hyperspace with a different name, travelling much faster in the sort of alternate space because the laws of physics are different; of course it doesn't really matter since it doesn't really exist. The speeds range up to 12000c (12,000 times the speed of light).

Teritora uses the Gersta Drive which forms and subspace bubble around the vessel causing it to enter an subspace called Gersta space. The Coorinates have to entered correctly and be accerate otherwise one could come out in the heart of an sun, in the middle of an astriod field or other unpleanant to deadly locations or end up so far off course the vessel may never find its way back. Its generally not an good idea to go exploring an Gersta drive. In Gersta space weapons such as subspace mines are an deadly threat as shields can not be rised in Gersta space so ships generally have gunners trained to handle not just star fighters but space and subspace mines as well.

OOC: Posting for Capsule Corporation, who is currently forum banned.

Current Capsule Corporation FTL Technology:

All larger Capsule Corporation ships, also known as the FoldShips, are equipped with a Space-Fold Drive. This drive consumes a great amount of energy, which we've only been able to provide with the Chlorophusion Power Technology, to pull two points in space together and allow instant teleportation between two points. This is called "Space-Fold" because it is much like the analogy of drawing two points on a piece of paper, then literally bringing the two points together by folding the paper rather than drawing a line between them. Obviously this ability grows significantly harder with distance, which is why our largest, most efficient Space-Fold Drive is only able to reach a maximum of 500 light years.

For long range travel, all Capsule Corporation Ships (with the exception of the production short-range fighters) are equipped with Hyperdrives. Hyperspace ((this is the Star Wars type hyperspace I am speaking of)) is a plane of easy movement that exists slightly beneath normalspace. Energy created within your ship propells you at high speeds through a "tunnel" of hyperspace. Also, the better the hyperdrive the faster it goes. "Hyperdrive Multipliers" is a scale relative to the average corvette... usually fighters can make a coefficient of 1, hot rods can make .5, and big capital ships can make around 6... Hyperdrive Multiplier=x1 = roughly 1,000,000c/1... as a simple rule, just divide 10^6c by the multiplier number. Also, another note on the fold drive is that when it folds, a "bubble" surrounds the ship, and anything in that bubble gets sucked into the fold with it.

Recently out of the research stage is a mixture of the Hyperdrive and the Space Fold Drive, called the Cascading Hyperspace Fold Drive. This system is being installed on every FoldShip, and will allow mini fold jumps INSIDE hyperspace, allowing very rapid travel for FoldShips at about 10 Million C (1200 ly/hour) relative to realspace.

And finally, for communication, Subspace Transceivers allow a ship to transmit a message through subspace, an actual plane of existence completely beneath realspace. Lightspeed is almost instantaneous here, and thus, transmissions can be almost instantaneous. The average heavy Subspace Transceiver has an active range of about 5,000 light years.

http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/ccsig.jpg (http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/ccdex.htm)

I utilize two FTL modes of travel. The first is the Tachyon Drive, which works in a way not completely understood by Skeelzanian scientists. As best I can figure it uses tachyons to propel the ship at around 14 times the speed of light. This makes the drive relativly slow and only suitable for system patrol ships and local merchant shipping.

Most long range military as well as commercial vessels mount hyperspace drives purchased from CorpSac. According to his explanation, this physical plane is on the outside of a sphere that was created following the Big Bang Explosion. There are certain risks involved such as being trapped within hyperspace, but these can generally be avoided. Originally he had a thread that went into this in some depth at his storefront, but it seems to have been removed.

All Moontian ships utilise the same technology as Capsule Corp's, having bought a couple of dozen hyperspace engines from them many RL months ago. So far, the speeds produced in Moontian ships has been much lower than those of Capsule Corp, but these speeds are gradually being improved.

OOC: Posting for Capsule Corporation, who is currently forum banned.That boy just don't learn... :?[/hijack]

This nation doesn't use FTL anymore (sorta), but it did previously.

(Brief history: Abatoir was a space nation hundreds of years ago, the leader found space getting too crowded and moved to underwater, as ain't nobody there. Since they could handle space, handling extreme underwater pressure is mostly jusr semantics.)

Anyway, they still retain knowledge of how they did it, and still could, if they needed to. Okay, enough exposition. On to how:

Abatoir makes use of an aspect of string theory to attain FTL speeds (this is currently just theory, but I'm saying it works, because I can). The theory states that the laws of physics works differently around so-called superstrings, and that these can be used as "intersteller highways", as the speed of light is faster along the string.

Since this is confusing (and since I can't seem to explain for crap today), allow me to toss an example.

Okay, so let's do some rounding and use 300million meters/second as the speed of light. An Abatoirian ship can travel at about .9c. The ship's speed, like the speed of light, is constant. However when you hit one of these "superstrings", let's say the speed of light becomes 500million meters/second. The ship is still going .9c, thus it can go faster, as the limit has been raised, and is effectively going faster than the speed of light.

There are certain limitations to this method. Chief amung them is finding those superstrings. Abatoirian scientists spent a good deal of time and money developing devices to detect these string, and then mapping them out. Consequently, someone using this type of travel requires one to map out their trip carefully before leaving, and will involve bits of very fast travel, and bits of not so fast travel. Also, not all strings affect c the same way. One might be 500M m/s, another might be 100M m/s (obviously, you'd want to avoid those). Luckily, these strings are reasonably stable, so my old maps are probably 70-80% still accurate.

In other words, plotting a long distance trek using this method, is very complicated, and involves selecting the proper strings to use, and often involve a rather round-a-bout course that covers more actual space, but allows you to go faster. Kind of like going out of your way but using the expressway to do it. 8 more miles, but 20 less minutes.

Anybody still following me?

This is what I get for basing tech on an article I read months ago, on seem to only half remember. Maybe I should just wank my FTL, heh.

DarkSith (and the Martian Colony, of course) use two ways of FTL.

The first is the Starcraft Hyperdrive, similar to that of Star Wars and Star Trek. This one is used only in one class of ships: the Helios-class battlecruisers (Terran Starcraft battlecruiser). As at the beginning we couldn't build our own spaceships, we purchased battlecruisers from Tersanctus and had to treat the hyperdrive as a "black box". Some time ago, Tersanctus stopped production of the Helios, but they gave us the tech, plans and production rights over it.

But before this happened DartkSithian scientists discovered another method of FTL travel, the Kearny-Fuchida Jump Drive( from BattleTech). This is the most spread method of FTL travel in Darksith and all of its colonies. This one lets you jump instantaneously from one point to another, as long as you have the ending coordinates. It is partially affected by gravity, so the most safe way of jumping in is using the Zenith and Nadir Points of a planetary System. Also, it is totally useless for in-system travel. Once in a system, you need more conventional methods of moving. (Hence the BattleTech duality of JumpShips for system travel, and DropShips for planetary travel)
If the system you jump in is very very well mapped, you can locate and use alternate, "pirate" jump-in points, much closer to the planets, but in some systems instable and dangerous.
In the Sol system, home of the Empire, DarkSith built two fortresses for fast recharge and protection. So any ship coming from outside Earth using K-F drives appears at the gunsight of one of my fortresses.

Oh, incidentally, all DS-built starships are secretly equipped with the Burroughs Drive, that lets you jump between alternate universes. It has two uses: the gathering of IC information about any strange/alternate universe or race (so we know ICly about Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune...) and as an antigodmodding weapon, as it let us jump to alternate realities of DarkSith and multiply by any number any force present in an engagement (incidentally, we can even bring ANY starship a sentient mind is able to imagine, not build).

The gathering of IC information with this method about a culture has a drawback: you can collect information about an alternate universe of that culture and mistake it as the original. So you can think that the "original" Star Wars Universe is the one where the Empire crushed the Rebel Alliance with the first Death Star, and reach all the wrong conclussions if you meet someone from the Lucasarts official timeline. It has actually happened to me. :)

We don't have FTL yet, but when we do it'll probably be a dimensional-jump sort of thing, where we travel to a dimension of reality where a mile there is a lightyear here, and then travel back. Simple, easy, and almost foolproof.

Initially The Mindset used Jumpnodes, and was for the longest time the official regulator of the Jumpnode Network, a vast network of artifical nodes connecting starsystems. Since the Empire's abandonment of the network, others have begun using it to their own advantage - Klonor and Atlantean Outcasts, for example.

Now, The Empire uses a technology known as "voidholes". Inititally developed to connect planets to planets, voidhole technology is now being applied to our latest ship designs, soon to be completed. Voidhole generators rip holes in the fabric of spacetime, allowing for near instantaneous travel between two fixed points in space. While jumpnodes travelled at 1 lightyear per minute, about 700,000x the speed of light, voidholes allow travel at a maximum speed of 2,270,526,812,000,000 km/h, about 7,573,662,216 times the speed of light. (This limit is theoretical, ships cannot travel this fast currently, due to stresses created on the hulls.) Voidholes are small and irregularly shaped rips in the fabric of time and space, and only allow one ship at a time through. They require immense power to operate. Voidholes have a distance limit of 200 lightyears, meaning after this distance is passed, ships have to drop out of voidspace and reenter it, and cause damage to the fabric of space - meaning, after a voidhole is opened, another cannot be opened in the same location for a few hours.

Initially The Mindset used Jumpnodes, and was for the longest time the official regulator of the Jumpnode Network, a vast network of artifical nodes connecting starsystems. Since the Empire's abandonment of the network, others have begun using it to their own advantage - Klonor and Atlantean Outcasts, for example.

I don't suppose you would sell me the tech to be able to edit jump nodes now that you don't use them, would you? We'd be ready to pay you hansomly.

Initially The Mindset used Jumpnodes, and was for the longest time the official regulator of the Jumpnode Network, a vast network of artifical nodes connecting starsystems. Since the Empire's abandonment of the network, others have begun using it to their own advantage - Klonor and Atlantean Outcasts, for example.

I don't suppose you would sell me the tech to be able to edit jump nodes now that you don't use them, would you? We'd be ready to pay you hansomly.

Naturally. The technology was made freely available to all when our empire abandoned it over five hundred years ago.

Vagari drives work by jumping the ship to a parallel 'proto-dimension', which has less actual volume than the universe, allowing for quicker travel. For even quicker travel, you can jump to the next proto-dimension (layer) up, which is even smaller in volume, and so on. The drive-rating of a Vagari drive indicates the maximum number of proto-dimensional layers it can jump through, thus indicating its speed. On average, they manage about 1 light year in five minutes.

The action of a Vagari drive is termed 'Dimensionwalking', which I stole from Dark Conspiracy, because it sounds cool :)

It seems like most people are using some variant on "hyperspace"...

Initially The Mindset used Jumpnodes, and was for the longest time the official regulator of the Jumpnode Network, a vast network of artifical nodes connecting starsystems. Since the Empire's abandonment of the network, others have begun using it to their own advantage - Klonor and Atlantean Outcasts, for example.

I don't suppose you would sell me the tech to be able to edit jump nodes now that you don't use them, would you? We'd be ready to pay you hansomly.

Naturally. The technology was made freely available to all when our empire abandoned it over five hundred years ago.

eh? 500 eh? Then why wouldn't you sell it to me back in August? :P

We are experimenting on a way to create two points in space simutaniously thus creating an artificial wormhole.

Utilizing negative ion pulse waves, a ship can compress two points in space into one, thus creating what we refer to as an 'inter-stella skip'.

The illusion is instantanious travel. However since time AND space are compressed the journey does take time, depending on the distance between the points. But is is quicker than simple interstella travel.

The only problem is that the two points must remain in sync, otherwise the object traveling through the phenomenan will simply rip apart!

1. Alcubierre warp. A ring of negative energy supports a spacetime bubble within which the ship is contained. The bubble is accelerated to superluminal speeds, leaving the ship stationary inside. Velocity is arbitrarily high, and therefore travel time is dependant only on how much energy you pump in.
2. Spherical wormhole.
3. Krasnikov tunnel.
4. Visser wormhole.

#tagged...

Much like CC's ships we to use fold systems but ours are equiped in a variety of levels. In the massive planetary assult carrier she carries the most powerful drive and it slowly lowers in power as ship classes lower. And only a very small amount of fighters have fold drives at are one time uses. Though the larger the drive the more range it has and smaller ships can move close to a large ship and be "warped" to the next location within minutes. But the fold drives once used can take up to 13 days to recharge after a use.

Well...

I'm not even going to bother trying to explain my FTL...

Mostly because I haven't the foggiest idea how it works, just that it does. :shock:

The Star Empire of Thunderstraat ((currently my base nation)) uses a variant on "hyperspace" technology - an engine uses a burst of realspace energy to move the ship to a dimension with energy where this one has void. The energy from hyperspace as well as the heightened lightspeed limit enable the ship to travel at extremely high speeds.

The United Planetstates of New Jupiter, a former Thunderstraater colony, uses a more primitive version of this. Its engines are slow and prone to breakdown, but most New Jovian ships get where they want to go.

The Commonwealth of Roseway, and the gigantic multidimensional Empire behind it, uses just about whatever FTL it wants, including most of what was mentioned here, but most commonly uses a bizarre technology to rip space-time open permanently, and simply fly their ships through the hole.

The Emirate of Sanctus Rio, and the advanced, independent City of Jaundice, use their dimension's singular properties to walk wherever they want to.

The merchant-prince Angel Elvish family, currently based a mile beneath Jaundice on the Sacred River, is rumored to have adapted the dimension's energies into engine-sized machines for their merchant and pirate ships.

And the Ghost Dance uses a different system of travel entirely...

And this was another double post brought to you by the stupid idiots in General who fill up the site with their stupid rantings.

This (of course) refers to space nations which use faster than light technology for inter-stellar or inter-galactic travel. This thread is all OOC and people wont be able to use it against you in any RP's, but I figure it would just be nice to know what everybody else has and uses. So, post your method for breaking the speed of light.

My Faster than Light technology: Sub-Space (1 light-year per minute)

While travel into Sub-Space is enabled via ship-borne devices (called “subspace engines”, “cores”, or “motivators”), it’s long been known that Sub-Space itself is a naturally-occuring phenomena.

In simple terms, Sub-Space is an N-Dimensional tunnel between one point in the universe and another. A vessel can travel through this tunnel in a matter of minutes, making a journey that might otherwise take decades or even centuries at light speed.

A Jump-Drive causes a ship to vibrate in multiple dimensions until it's modulations are in perfect synchronization with the Sub-Space Continuum. A vortex opens, creating an aperture from an infinitesimally small point in the Cosmos, enabling the vessel to cross the Sub-Space threshold.

There are essentially two modes of Sub-Space travel, inter-system and intra-system.

Intra-system Sub-Space travel is nearly instantaneous, and requires relatively little energy input to enable. Most of Klonor's advanced fighters are equipped with intra-system jump motivators, allowing them to travel at will within a given star system. There is little or no restriction on the beginning and end points of such a Sub-Space “hop,” except that they be in the same star system.

Inter-system travel via Sub-Space is another matter entirely. The end points of inter-system Sub-Space jumps are limited to the naturally-occuring focal points of Sub-Space, also known as “nodes.” These nodes were initially discovered by Prof. J. Whiteside (see McPherson’s Multipaedia (2557 ed.), pp 1132-1140). Only between two Sub-Space nodes is the fabric of Sub-Space strong enough to support inter-system travel. The defense of the physical locations surrounding such nodes proved to be a central part of the 14-year Terran-Vasudan War.

In addition, such massive amounts of energy input are required to open an inter-system node, that only the largest fusion pile reactors in existence are able to sustain it. As a result, inter-system Sub-Space travel is almost exclusively made by the largest vessels in production. This fact has made the Orion-class destroyer/carriers a pivotal and crucial part to Klonor's tactical forces during the T-V War.

Needless to say, the ability to deliver ships of war to nearly any pinpointed destination has forever revolutionized the concepts and long-standing tenants of space combat.


Currently Located Jump-Nodes

http://www.bateshome.com/jordan/kmap2.jpg

You must have a lot of freespace up there :wink:

Greymon heavy industries is somewhat like DarkSith, in that we make use of multiple FTL drives.


Most of our Space faring vessels have a classic Star Wars/Babylon 5 Hyperdrive/Jumpdrive. (as the physics are similar, they're interchangeable for us.) Most of our military Fighter craft have this type of drive (as they're generally too small to mount any others), and there isn't a single carrier vessel built by us that lacks one. (save, of course, when the thing gets destroyed.)

Some of our larger warships however, have GALACTICA/BattleTech style FTL. (for Andromeda fans, it's Tessaracting) Where the ship pretty much teleports from one point in space to another. Needless to say, these types of drives are limited in use to either dodging missiles, or for rushing to a well-known, well-mapped location.

We experimented with Hyperspace fold drives for a few years {after a lucky accident caused one of our warships to collide with a ship using these drives}, but we quickly grew tired of dragging everything within roughly 1500 feet along with us. You'd be surprised how much junk we managed to drag about. We do, however, still use them in our Deep-space Mining vessels. (The Teleport out, then fold back into local space with a few Asteroids. Needless to say, this can make for a very nasty weapon) and Fleet-Tenders. (as they need a small horde of ferry-craft deployed in order to do their job, best to just Fold in with them allready deployed)

Most civilian ships have either/both a Hyperdrive/Jumpdrive, or a Warp-drive.
Warp drive is wonderfull for in-system travel, but proved a bit too delicate for a warship's Primary or Secondary FTL. Thus, we gave it to the civillian markets.

While these are all grand methods of travel, our greatest is simply called a Dimension Door. And only Flagships, Dreadnoughts, and 1 model of scoutship have it installed
It works similar to a Jumpgate, save that the portal is allways a sickly purple-green color, only "jumps" to an alternate reality where the spatial coordinates are completely wrong (measuring from the galactic core, with Andromeda, Betelgeuse, and Anthrax galaxies as Axii) (we have had ships wind up in Gas Giants this way), has a nasty habit of melting the thinner portions of a ship's armor, and burning out power relays/computers/nearly-anything-electrical.

Hmmm, that does sound like a cheap-knock off of DarkSith's secret FTL doesn't it?
Well, I have had this idea for a few years, (and I'm certain lots of people have as well) But I didn't even know this website existed, and the Dimension Door was based on the Dungeons & Dragons spell of the same name. (and, obviously, Babylon 5, because it was THE show at the time) {And a character I had FOR D&D that could do that very thing, with most of the listed problems}

{{That said, a simple In-game fix is available.

Greymon Heavy Industries is from an alternate universe, where Teleport style FTL was prevalent. A bad accident tossed a colony fleet into another dimension, and they made their home there. Then they made their way to this dimension,(deliberately) and settled on Io.}}

Holy Grave-Dig, Batman!

Anyhow, as said in another thread from about the same time as this (re: 2004), the Orion Empire uses a Spacefold Drive. For an example, take a piece of paper and draw two dots on it. Instead of drawing a straight line between the two dots, which would be the "closest route" in two or three dimensional terms, fold the paper so that the two dots touch. That's a rough example of my FTL technology.

Inversion drive powered by organic cold fusion.

If you calculate speed as a complex number, superluminal travel works quite nicely in real space without violating special relativity. The living ship provides the imaginary number component.

An aside, I have no problem with hyperspace travel but I think saying that you instantaneously enter space right by another's planet is poor sport. I get a bit ill when I read something like this:

Member 1: And we declare war on System X.
Member 2: My armada of 345 superdestroyers punches a hole through time-space and pops into existence right beside the planet. We immediately began bombarding the planet because the travel through time-space takes absolutely no drain on our power resources.

Inversion drive powered by organic cold fusion.

If you calculate speed as a complex number, superluminal travel works quite nicely in real space without violating special relativity. The living ship provides the imaginary number component.

An aside, I have no problem with hyperspace travel but I think saying that you instantaneously enter space right by another's planet is poor sport.

Hence why RPing tact should supercede technology in stories...

I think part of the problem is that there isn't just one FT. There are about three levels of FT. The II forum has a borg thread in which a guy with starships of solid crystal causes them to instantaneously pop through space all the time. He demonstrates his power by causing an asteroid to appear in the middle of space, and then cutting it in half. His avatar cannot die, the race instantaneously knows what any other member does, and he can easily absorb and manipulate any matter he touches.

I honestly wonder what fun it is to role-play creatures that can easily obliterate a star wars or star trek level of technology.

I think part of the problem is that there isn't just one FT. There are about three levels of FT. The II forum has a borg thread in which a guy with starships of solid crystal causes them to instantaneously pop through space all the time. He demonstrates his power by causing an asteroid to appear in the middle of space, and then cutting it in half. His avatar cannot die, the race instantaneously knows what any other member does, and he can easily absorb and manipulate any matter he touches.

I honestly wonder what fun it is to role-play creatures that can easily obliterate a star wars or star trek level of technology.

Well lets address the problems there:

1. It's in II. While that doesn't automatically make it a problem, as there are good RP's in II, I doubt this is a good example.

2. Using copied RL concepts, as completely "ripped off" as "the Borg," is a pretty good indication of a lack of imagination...which leads to...

3. Godmodding: the ability to appear in the middle of space via astroid, being unable to die in conflict, and "absorbing and manipulating any matter"

I'm sure he'll/she'll find it real fun when no one roleplays with him/her anymore.

*lol*

No, this guy is showing the borg how powerful he is. As for the guy with the great powers, I've seen him in almost every space RP. People play with him.

Hey, I spend most of my time in II, and I'm a great role-player. Let me show you:

25 Superstardestroyers
239 V-class corvettes
45 HiHull Carriers
87 Omega Class Ships
54 TriOmega Class Ships
122 V-class defenders.

I'm still working on getting my FTL working. I had a major setback when an error involving antimatter, um, blew up an asteroid.

Where I'm from we shoot zombies.