Space Is Big
Space Is Big…
I mean really big, you may think it’s a long way down the street to the shops, but that’s just peanuts to space. (Thanks to Douglas Adams for the quote).
As we say space is big and travelling those distances takes time, real time, to get around this there are a few features in the game, firstly time runs at 6x normal in game, this allows you to experience space travel, but still keep ingame times reasonable. Secondly are the FTL (Faster Than Light) travel methods, both the wormhole gates and Etherspace.
Wormhole Gates (Stargates)
The Stargate network was setup originally by the Federation before the war started, basically they create both ends of a wormhole, placed one end on an E-Drive equipped ship and taking it to the destination. This created a link between the two points without the effects of time-dilation that accelerating the gate to high percentages of the speed of light would have produced. During the war some of those stargates were destroyed and the wormholes collapsed, after the way the Alliance started a program of Stargate building, expanding the original network to cover most of the Faction controlled space, they also developed a way of attaching multiple wormholes to one gate and allowing the appropriate wormhole to be opened. Corporations can setup their own gates and link them to a gate in faction space. Note that you pay the fee for the arrival gate, not the departure gate, to stop corporations setting astronomical charges and preventing players from leaving their space once they’ve jumped in.
Etherspace
When Etherspace was discovered the first colony ship was on it’s way to Sirius, the first ships were still slow, but technology advanced quickly, within 20 years ships were upto E12 and capable of accelerating to 0.01c (1% of the speed of light) equating to 40.96 times the speed of light, now ships are capable of E19 and 20 jumps and accelerating to 0.025c (2.5% of the speed of light) equating to 15,000-30,000 times the speed of light.
Before you can jump to Etherspace you need to accelerate, once in E-Space you have too much inertia to do much more than slowly alter your speed and direction, so you have to aim and accelerate in normal space, this acceleration takes time, however this isn’t a problem since the E-Drive’s capacitors take time to charge, the higher E-Level you jump to the longer they take to charge. There’s a second reason for accelerating and that’s to do with the violence of ripping a hole into E-Space you need to be a certain distance from the hole when you create it, however it doesn’t last for long, and your ship’s E-Shields must be within the hole when it collapses to be transported through, this sets limits on the minimum and maximum speeds at which you can jump into E-Space, your navigation computer will do the calculations for you and nowadays misjumps are rare. Note that the colapse is as violent as the rip itself and if you dont make it through and are too close to the rip as it collapses you’re ship is likely to be damaged or even destroyed.
Deliberate Mis-jumps
It’s perfectly possible to deliberately mis-jump, either by forcing the rip to be created further from or close to your ship than required for your current velocity, however this is frowned upon in Faction space and will generally garner the pilot a fine, however if you have exceptional circumstances you may be able to appeal the fine, note that if an intentional mis-jump destroys your ship your insurance will not pay out.