Topic of the Day: Interstellar Travel

[Caelphon]

Interstellar Travel! This means Bluespace and Warp, and even sublight stuff. What do you think about it? Do you think it needs an update? What would you like to see if it were updated? 

[Marlon P.]

Rules of thumb on travel. A map with travel times between major systems. Just to see if it takes days or weeks to get from somewhere.

[ImmortalRedshirt]

Right off the bat, having two methods of FTL is like, twice as much as most other sci-fi settings have, so that's a win. As for the methods itself, I do like the differences between them as well as some parallels it sets up with the real world. Bluespace is extremely powerful and can get you anywhere in developed space in a decent amount of time, but relies on a finite and incredibly volatile resource that could throw the world into chaos were it to ever run out hey wait a minute, this is just oil! 

Some things I do feel need to be addressed are:

a. The Coalition. It's a big place now, and some ends are extremely remote from each other. I do remember there being something about warp travel through a certain space making subsequent trips quicker, but it got retconned for some reason.

b. Communications. Is there some quick, reliable, and omnipresent means of FTL communications or is it limited by how fast ships can travel. If we had to choose, I'd lean towards the former because it makes things much less of a headache.

c. Sublight, as you mentioned. Ship lore is pretty rare across the board, with few exceptions. How do they get from place to place when not tearing the universe a new one? I'm sure this might finally get addressed when NBT rolls around, though.

[OffRoad99]

 

ImmortalRedshirt's started asking some great questions, and I wish to continue with some of my own:

 

1. The newest Suzuki-Zhang Hammer Drive pioneered by Einstein Engines: several lore articles as well as the Sol Alliance page on the wiki explicitly say that its "capable of rivaling the best phoron-fueled bluespace engines", though this statement's been declared false by several lore developers on Discord, citing something about "propaganda" (even if it's written on the wiki, outside of the IC perspective of a newspaper article) and being marginally better than conventional Warp drives. Is it possible to know whether this new Warp drive is able to compete evenly with a bluespace drive or if it's really slower?
2. On-Board Artificial Intelligence: are AIs common on civilian ships? What about military ships?
3. Training Requirements: how "easy" is it to learn how to fly a ship? Real-life pilots train for years, and that's to just fly a very specific airplane and know their systems/computers like the back of their hands, and the same applies for military pilots, whereas in many other sci-fi universes (like Star Wars) it's just much more easier: everything looks standardized and is definitely more immediate and comprehensive. Which philosophy is used on our server-lore?

[Lucaken]

2 hours ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

a. The Coalition. It's a big place now, and some ends are extremely remote from each other. I do remember there being something about warp travel through a certain space making subsequent trips quicker, but it got retconned for some reason.

You're thinking of Zaurghis, which, unless I missed a very important conversation, is still canon. It's on the wiki and all, you just have to go to the CoC main page - it doesn't have a page of it's own, and probably doesn't need it, either. I think it's pretty easy to explain away transport logistics in the gargauntuan Coalition with it - but it could still use expansion. For example, how 'chaotic' are these wormholes in terms of their destinations? Are there any legends of smuggler runs (à la Kessel Run)? What are the most stable ones, and where do they go? Just some neat details. 'Zhaurghis Smuggler Culture' is something I see a lot of potential in, even if the obvious Star Wars cliches are easy to fall into.

As for my own piece, I'm mostly just repeating an opinion I staged earlier on Discord - I think the amount of rivalry the Suzuki-Zhang Hammer Drive pushes is woefully undercut by the fact that in-game and in recent lore, we see very little of it's impact. It ends up sort of bypassing the entire Phoron Shortage as a story beat - one of the more comical examples of this being that both shuttles that the station employs daily are still running on bluespace, despite the obvious waste. I recognize that this is all likely to be tackled with the coming of the NBT, but it still bears repeating.

[Captain Gecko]

I think the Interstellar Travel lore is pretty good so far. Could it be expanded upon? Sure. In what way? I don't... Really know, but we can always start brainstorming about this if you want. Although it's missing a couple things... Mostly related to "space geography"... After all, you need to know where you are/you're going to know how the travelling goes.

1) Make distances more understandable. A "travel time" indicator wouldn't matter too much considering that depending on the ship and the kind of drive, travel time already differ a LOT. Make a distance indicator in Light Years between most important places, or just one bar at the bottom for scaling. We can already assume the length of some travels considering that IRL Earth is roughly 11 LY far from Tau Ceti, which means that a square on this map is roughly 1.08 light years. But I assume that most people wouldn't go to such lengths to do such a thing, so... Yes, make distances easier to understand.

2) Tell us WHERE THE HELL THE BLUESPACE GATES ARE. And if you already are, DO IT IN A PAGE DEDICATED TO THIS... Like on the INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL page. I've been playing, and been feeling involved in this lore for a year now, and I have NO IDEAS of where Bluespace Gates are supposed to be beyond Sol and Tau Ceti. We had an old map that showed it, but things might have change, after all we changed maps... Like, Do I have to go through a 2 month trip to do a Biesel-Moroz trip? Or is there a gate leading there, or just in the way to shorten the trip? There's some character (that I love) that repeatedly speaks of an alliance between the CoC and fisanduh which seems logistically impossible considering the distance between the two, unless... There's a Bluespace Gate bringing the two more or less together? Because there's that too, the ability of turning a several month-long trip into something that is basically instant IS very important commercially and politically speaking. Also, since this also means literally creating a tiny artificial border WITHIN your territory with what could a nation you don't nescessarily like, that means that may be a lot of tension involved, in other words, a Bluespace Gate changes a lot geopolitically (or... "spatiopolitically"?) speaking for any nation involved, and by extent, more interesting stuff for lore and articles...

 

PS: Guess I'm making a lore/map proposal to fix that eventually.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Captain Gecko

[Marlon P.]

There was a few competing maps but none ever got published i think.

 

Also we have 3 types of ftl? Hyperspace was something made a few years ago too. New ftl methods come and go every now and then. I think icly theyre always busts

Edited December 13, 2021 by Marlon P.

[WhatsUpBrotendo]

I don't think current lore mentions hyperspace as a viable method, the EE page mentions it but their attempts have been failures and no ones willing to volunteer for testing it. Right now the two established methods of FTL travel are warp and bluespace, with warp being the cheaper but slower alternative.

I'd like to see warp, bluespace (and bluespace gates) see a glow up on the interstellar travel page, mostly to address the question of how the phoron scarcity has affected things. Most of the points made here already are things I think should also be discussed such as pilots and travel times, but I'd like to see warp be changed/retconned slightly so that it's a bit more viable than it currently is. Not to the point where it's competitive with bluespace mind you.

The Suzuki-Zhang Hammer Drive should definitely be looked into again since in my opinion it just skirts around the whole point of there being a phoron scarcity in the first place, with it being described as being able to rival bluespace travel.

 

[OffRoad99]

10 hours ago, WhatsUpBrotendo said:

The Suzuki-Zhang Hammer Drive should definitely be looked into again since in my opinion it just skirts around the whole point of there being a phoron scarcity in the first place, with it being described as being able to rival bluespace travel.

I always thought that it's kind of cool to see Einstein Engines, on its own, having invented a reliable way to completely bypass and compete evenly with Bluespace drives, as it leaves the entire SCC in the dust and forces them to work hard on R&D and find fresh Phoron deposits (like what we'll be doing in the NBT?).
But yes, I too would like some clarifications and/or updates about this, as till this moment I've been getting conflicting information about its worth and efficiency.

[Kintsugi]

19 hours ago, WhatsUpBrotendo said:

The Suzuki-Zhang Hammer Drive should definitely be looked into again since in my opinion it just skirts around the whole point of there being a phoron scarcity in the first place, with it being described as being able to rival bluespace travel.

Phoron has more uses than bluespace drives. While the SZ Hammer Drive is very effective for a warp drive, it is nonetheless still considerably slower than bluespace drives. This means it is a viable alternative instead of a cheaper downgrade, which is what warp drives are. You must also consider that a big part of KotW was making EE a more powerful lore entity, and their new drive is a big part of that.