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I'm not sure how much of FTL travel is canonized yet, so my thoughts:

Hyperdrives//

The bog-standard bloody-everywhere dirt-cheap FTL drive. Used by pretty much any FTL-capable ship, and can be packed into a very small space, increasing efficiency. Hyperspace travel can manage to cross the Milky Way in two weeks travel (going flat-out), and is pretty safe. Hyperdrives will, however, explode violently if activated or deactivated inside a strong gravity well.

Ridiculously precise. You show up exactly where you mean to. Unless you jump blind.

Tunnel Drives//

A military solution to the limits of hyperdrives, Tunnel Drives are not limited by gravitational fields. However, they are rather slower than hyperdrives, and always carry a slight (.0002%) chance of just not working, or outright detonating upon activation.

Tunnel drives allow great precision when exiting FTL, with a 5-10 km sphere of error.

Jump Drives//

An advanced form of FTL, jump drives allow instantaneous transfer between two points of space. They are not limited by gravity, are fairly safe, and are lmiited primarily by range and power cost. These are commonplace among some navies, and are often mounted on escape pods and shuttles. Wormholes drives fall into this category.

Jump drives allow a fair deal of precision, often with only a 250 km sphere of error.

Jump Gates, Warp Gates//

Stationary emplacements that jump ships or create entry/exit points to hyperspace. Allows non-FTL ships to travel interstellar, but are immobile themselves and two are required to transfer a vessel. Used over very long ranges, or to allow hyperspace access to non-equipped vessels. Given the two-gate nature, these are very precise.


NOTE: Activating any form of FTL within an atmosphere, while possible will cause (possibly) sudden pressure changes, massive structural damage, randomized exit points, and/or nothing at all.

So, hyperdrives go boom, tunnel drives might do strange things, jump drives are okay(ish), and other FTL will likely incinerate you or anything near your entry point.

Blind jumping normally ends you in deep space, but there's a 5%-ish chance of ending up inside a star, planet, station, asteroid, whatever. Luckily, space is pretty empty.

Icelandic Perehelion wrote:always carry a slight (2%) chance of just not working, or outright detonating upon activation.

No military in the world would ever allow a failure chance anywhere near that high. That would mean that, on average, a warship has a lifespan of fifty jumps, and then it explodes and kills everyone aboard. That's totally nuts.

Icelandic Perehelion wrote:Jump Drives//

An advanced form of FTL, jump drives allow instantaneous transfer between two points of space. They are not limited by gravity, are fairly safe, and are lmiited primarily by range and power cost. These are commonplace among some navies, and are often mounted on escape pods and shuttles. Wormholes drives fall into this category.

Why the hell would you mount teleporters on your escape pods and not the ship itself?

Icelandic Perehelion wrote:Blind jumping normally ends you in deep space, but there's a 5%-ish chance of ending up inside a star, planet, station, asteroid, whatever. Luckily, space is pretty empty.

Space is way more empty than that. Way, way more empty. The chance should be more like 10^-30%.

Blind jump, as in completely and utterly randomized exit point. You could even not move. And escape pods, as in "eject the pod, jump towards nearest planet, crash land on nearest planet". A tiny little one-shot drive.

And the %2 was an asspull, but there need to be SOME risk in high-power FTL, or everyone uses it and nobody has any advantage.

Wr could handwave in a bit about the "2% if used inside a gravity well, otherwise safe".

There is no chance, it just has potential to detonate if not used correctly.

Icelandic Perehelion wrote:Blind jump, as in completely and utterly randomized exit point. You could even not move. And escape pods, as in "eject the pod, jump towards nearest planet, crash land on nearest planet". A tiny little one-shot drive.

And the %2 was an asspull, but there need to be SOME risk in high-power FTL, or everyone uses it and nobody has any advantage.

Wr could handwave in a bit about the "2% if used inside a gravity well, otherwise safe".

I like gravity wells causing some drives to go derp, but anywhere else it should work 100% unless it's stressed (repeated jumps without cooling down), damaged, or sabotaged.
Instant jump drives could just be fucking expensive, expensive to power, require spin up and spin downs.

Jump drives are almost perfectly safe (1 in 500,000 jumps goes wrong type thing) but are expensive and use a boatload of power, and then some.

And all FTL drives explode if used incorrectly. Like many propulsive devices.

Hyperspace is extradimensional, there are many ways to enter and exit it, and gravity's effect on it has never been mentioned or discussed. My idea is that Hyperspace and Realspace are two planes and subspace acts as a kind of mediator between them, menaing that Subspace is incredibly energetic because it's affected by both. Hyperspace should be relatively moderately simple to navigate, but that depends on the kind of drive used to enter it, traverse it, and exit it.

Hyperspace Gates would require much less time than a normal HS drive because a ship wouldn't have to navigate, it's pretty much a straight shot from gate to gate. More like a bullet than a cruise missile.

Subspace drives are something that can enter, navigate, and exit subspace. They would be advanced, not appearing until the far late part of the third millennium or later. Due to subspace's energetic nature, a ship would be able to traverse long distances in RS very quickly, but with the danger of being the subject of an angry universal bukkake.

Jump drives should include wormhole drives, foldspace, and anything else that allows nearly instant, short-range travel in realspace. They should be limited to a few lightyears and require an enormous amount of energy. They would also be unaffected by extradimensional activity, but more affected by objects and fields in realspace, meaning that they require compensation and adjustment.

Jump Gates would be longer distance than a Jump Drive, but still be more limited in range than a HS Gate and require a huge amount of power.

We should be able to travel the 100,000 lightyears of the Milky Way in about six months using a ship-based drive in 2200-2400, gradually working up to two weeks or a month by 2800.

E: Oh, and warp. Slower than Jump Drive, but you get to have long periods of sustained travel because it uses a fraction of the energy. Mostly used in early FTL and civilian/cruise vessels, but advancements in the technology could be made for use on later warships.

catsonmeth wrote:-snip-

I think you need to look on your dates a bit again. So far, everything has been dated to the 2500s-2800s in the original timeline.
That would mean that the most advanced tech we'd have thought of so far would take a few weeks to properly get anywhere.
I am not saying that is bad, but keep in mind that it would mean drastic changes to gameplay since surprise attacks would be noticed far earlier and response times would be quite long.
Other than that, I prefer your system to that of Error.
Also FTL communications using subspace communications. Which FTL-drives allow in-flight communication would be another important topic.

FTL comms are just messages sent via subspace or hyperspace.

Strigiforme FTL runs on Yttrium, and is known as a Yttrium drive. They operate by transferring every atom through individual portals to different dimensions where atoms can exceed the speed of light, then taking them back through the portals into the target space in the same form as before. The Strigiforme are the only users, and the only ones who truly understand the precise physics behind it. The same technology is also used for Yttrium missiles, although those do not bring the atoms back.

Yttrium drives are marginally faster, about as precise as tunnel drives, can be used in atmosphere with only a longer charge time, and are nearly undetectable when en route because the atoms are spread over hundreds of dimensions. The only way to detect them is to detect the slight change in the state of Yttrium atoms within about 800 kilometers of the target.

You already have OP shields, do you really need OP FTL?

Can I suggest, the faster you go with a Yttrium drive, the more radiation comes out the far end with the ship? As in, you go flat-out, and exiting the FTL causes a burst of (very detectable) raditation?

Balance, man, balance. You can't always be WTFLOLPWN OWLS MURDER YOU ALL.

Error GM word is final word ^^

Not hardly. If the other GMs want to let him OP, okay, but I forsee raigquits.

It's not really OP; if you actually tried to detect it, it's easier than detecting actual FTL, as the only equipment needed is a basic acme science device and a chunk of Yttrium. I just like it because it fits in with the role. The drawback of it is that it has to use Yttrium as a fuel, rather than energy or whatever other ships use.

Icelandic Perehelion wrote:Not hardly. If the other GMs want to let him OP, okay, but I forsee raigquits.

You wanted him, let him do his job :3