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Maintaining a civilisation spread across many star systems and vast gaps of interstellar distance requires the ability to travel faster than the speed of light. There are two well-known methods of breaking the lightspeed barrier, and only one that is widely understood. There are also some more esoteric or theoretical technologies that may be able to break the lightspeed barrier or allow for long-distance travel, but these are nowhere near as well-developed as the primary two methods.
Warp Drives have been in use in one form or another for thousands of years - indeed they were the primary method of expansion and power projection for each of the four Factions that dominate the Orion Sphere. Warp Drives function by manipulating the fabric of space-time in a bubble around the starship using the drive. The emitted bubble's shape creates a compression wave effect in the front of the ship, and an expansion eddy behind it, propelling the ship forward along the surface of spacetime itself, while preserving normal spatial conditions inside the bubble.
Warp drives of one variant or another have been invented several times at different points, by most early Faction powers as well as several other smaller powers. One of the earliest known drives was said to be the Ikunkuma Shunt Drive, which allowed their itinerant flotillas to make contact and trade with several other species in the America Sector. Many of the specifics of these early drives have been lost to time, or their innovations integrated into various newer drives as the technology improved. Some rare ancient warp drives are highly sought after by collectors, technologists and historians.
The first true ancestors of the modern warp drive were developed by the Polity of Sol (the precursor to the Terran Ascendancy) used exotic particles harvested from the Sol star, circulating within complex spiral-shaped magnetic bottles to project their reality manipulation field. Designs since then have branched off into several different methods, and speed and efficiency has improved drastically. The core material for the drives are still typically these exotic stellar particles, which are emitted by most main-sequence stars. Specialised collectors on most starships collect and store these particles when close to a star to power their warp drives, and running out is rarely an issue for most starships operating in standard parameters.
Modern warp drives are capable of tremendous speeds, and are now mostly limited by the size of the vessel. There is a relationship between the size and mass of a vessel that requires a larger and larger drive to obtain very high speeds. While a small personnel transport can attain speeds of 25,000 times the speed of light © with only 10% of its volume being occupied by the drive, a vessel the size of a large warship would need to be over 50% drive to attain the same speed. As a result, larger freighters and military vessels are typically fitted with slower, but more space and power-efficient drives, while smaller, faster ships are used for time-sensitive assignments. As such, a fast vessel can cross a single sector (1000 light-years) in a few days, while larger ships might take over a month.
Within a star system, the effects of stellar gravity and particle emissions constrains Warp Drive speeds, as they interfere with the formation of a stable warp bubble. Much of the drive's capabilities are dedicated to maintaining bubble stability, so in-system speeds are limited to prevent a vessel shaking itself apart under tidal forces. Even under these restrictions, in-system warp is still significantly faster than conventional impulse engines, although spinning up the warp drive requires shutting down other propulsion and weapon systems. Spinning up the warp drive for in-system travel is fairly rapid, and can be done in a few seconds by an accomplished crew in a well-maintained ship, so it can be used in various ways to surprise opponents or escape combat as needed. When free from a star system's gravity and higher particle density, typically beyond the orbit of the outermost planets, modern warp drives can unleash their full capabilities. Preparing to go to maximum warp typically takes a few minutes, as computations are performed and the high-distortion warp bubble forms, but once the drive is engaged at full power, a ship will zip out into the interstellar void in moments. Similarly, when arriving at the edge of a system, a warping ship will need to disengage their drive before arriving in the system proper, lest their high-distortion warp bubble catastrophically implode.
Piloting a ship at warp speed requires concentration and attention, as machine detection systems cannot “see” outside the warp bubble. Micrometeors and other small objects are usually dealt with via a ship's energy shielding, but large stellar bodies must be navigated around. Light does pass through the compression fringe, and although it is highly distorted, it is possible to apply optical means to allow a pilot to perceive phenomena such as rogue planets and star systems that could intrude upon the warp corridor. A good pilot can pick up the distorted light signals emitted by an object thousands of years in its past and extrapolate them to a current position, allowing them to change heading to avoid the hazard.
An entirely different and far more mysterious technology, the Jump Drive is used exclusively by the Spacer Collective MegaCorp, and they keep its secrets close. Only Spacer Collective ships, and possibly Stations, are equipped with Jump Drives, although some reports have suggested that it is possible for them to deploy a “Jump Ring” around a conventional ship to grant it the temporary capability to make one or more Jumps. When the ships that would eventually became known as representative of the Spacers first made an appearance in 3627PT, they would vanish shortly after being encountered - this is now clearly known to be the Jump Drive in action. Although the Spacer Collective eventually made formal contact and offered their communications services to the rest of the Orion Sphere in 3735PT, they only allowed use of their Jump Drive technology for transportation, and even then in an extremely limited fashion, in 3818PT. The Spacers have made an appearance at each of the MegaCorp or Faction-hosted special events, which are attended by small crews and groups from across the Orion Sphere - at these events they have allowed crews to hire their vessels or Jump Rings for limited timed “slots”.
All that is known to the wider public about the function and capabilities of the Jump Drive is derived from limited scans of Spacer Collective vessels in the field, and from the few crews who have had the opportunity to pilot one of them in recent years. As the interiors of their ships are heavily protected from sensor frequencies, very little is known.
From scans of Spacer Collective ships making a jump, what can be detected is a power spike in the main reactor, followed by a localised increase in the gravity field around the ship, taking a spherical, or possibly fractal-spherical shape. This gravitic spike increases exponentially over the period of a second, after which it exceeds the detection range of gravitic sensors (or registers as infinite?), and then the ship vanishes. The gravitic spike quickly falls, creating a “ripple” in spacetime that dissipates after a few seconds and becomes entirely undetectable.
From the perspective of the crews who have hired Spacer Collective vessels and actually reported their experiences, more information can be gathered about their capabilities if not their function. Firstly, the Jump Drive is capable primarily of long-distance Jumps. As far as can be ascertained, a long-range jump has no limit on distance - a Jump can take you into the next star system, or tens of thousands of light years away, in exactly the same amount of subjective time (near-instantaneously). Long range-jumps apparently require time to calculate their parameters, which is done by the Spacer Collective - but it is not known whether they are calculating a vector to the destination, the power requirements, some exotic dimensional mathematics, or all of the above and much more. All that is known about this step is that “calculation” is required, and it usually takes a minimum of 2-3 hours before everything is “ready”, according to the Messrs Dalliard.
On a Spacer Collective Phobos Class, When the ship and long-distance Jump is “ready”, the crew are brought to one or more specialised compartments on board the ship, without being able to see much of the rest of the ship. The Jump Drive “warms up”, and after a short countdown, the crew feel a short discontinuity, and they are at the destination System. A long distance jump usually arrives at a Jump Point - a location in a system or in deep space where there is a localised higher gravity entity such as a star, dense nebula or, on occasion, black hole. Apparently this is needed for “targeting”. This is often a major surprise for a system's local defences, who generally expect visitors to arrive from the edges of their system rather than right in the middle of it. After completing their mission, the crew and ship travels back to the Jump Point and initiates another long-distance Jump to return them to the Spacer Collective station in the original location.
At these events, the Spacer Collective can also offer the use of a short-range Jump Drive “add-on” or modification, which allows for smaller jumps to be performed within the destination system. These jumps, which are much more limited in scope and distance, do not require more than a few moments “calculation” during which the Jump Drive also warms up. The warming up and activation period appears to create an electronic or sensor distortion around the ship for a few moments, and then the ship jumps and everything returns to normal. These short distance Jumps require the ship's other Drives to be inactive, and orientation is maintained upon arrival at the destination.
Spacer Collective Jump Drive technology appears to have a number of additional applications, that are generally linked to one of their Jump Drive vessels. For example, it is possible for crews hiring a ship to translocate themselves from the ship onto a planetary surface, without an active Gateway or any other apparent means of passage. Additionally, crews on a ship that is destroyed or exceeds its allocated time are generally “emergency Jumped” back to the originating Spacer Collective station, often with a range of unpleasant symptoms derived either from the ship's destruction, but in some cases apparently from the energies of the Jump being directly applied to their bodies in haste. These jump-derived symptoms can include a misplacement of their internal organs, or exposure to various strange and exotic energies.
With the specific knowledge of the Jump Drive's function a closely held secret of the Spacer Collective, scientists across the Orion Sphere have come up with a range of theories as to how they might work. none of hte theories has any real evidence to support it, and most are considered “wild speculation” at best and active conspiracy theories at worst.
The most common form of communications remains the courier vessel - a small warp drive equipped starship that carries data transmissions and occasionally physical objects to other star systems where they can be sent to their intended recipients.
An Ansible is a communications device that relies on entangled particle pairs to communicate between two specific devices. An Ansible is only capable of communicating with its twin, but can do so live and regardless of distance (or at a distance limit beyond our understanding of Etheric Science). An Ansible is a large device, about the size of an archaic gaming cabinet, and requires constant power and regular maintenance. If the device destabilises, the entangled particle it contains may lose its connection to its pair, or simply evaporate, leaving the device a useless box until another entangled particle pair can be transferred into it.
The primary service the Spacer Collective offers is the ability to send communications instantly between any of their stations situated across the Orion Sphere. Communications can take the form of simple messages at the cheaper end, larger text or video transmissions, or two-way holographic communications at the most expensive end. Spacer Collective communications are near-instantaneous, with the only delays being processing the message through the Collective's submission process. The messages do not travel through space in any conventional way that we understand, so intercepting them being transmitted from Spacer station to Spacer station is beyond the reach of any known group. However, the Collective do not apply any encryption themselves, so if you wish a message to remain secret if intercepted, you must provide your own encryption.
