FTL: ON TOPIC!!!

Samuel Penn writes:
@:) In message <8625650F.00690B5A.00@notes.vastar.com>
@:)	      "Chris McCurry" <CMCCURR@vastar.com> wrote:
@:) 
@:) > But thinking about it, I can only think of three truly different
ways to
@:) > travel at high speeds in S.Fiction.  Every thing else is just a
variation
@:) > of one of those themes:
@:) > 
@:) > 1) hyperspace / warp space / worm holes / etc.
@:) > 2) Folding / warping (changing the reality of space time)
@:) 
@:) I'd say wormholes fall more into category 2, and how is 'warp
@:) space' different from 2 as well (it's name suggests it's warping
@:) spacetime at any rate).

  Just to throw my spare change in on the matter, I think I would
categorize this stuff as follows:

  Fast: you go where you're going quickly.  Maybe you ignore
relativity, maybe you just travel sub-light, whatever.	You are moving
through normal space.

  Hyperspace: means you are moving, but not in normal space.  You're
in some kind of alternate dimension.  This includes Star Wars
hyperspace, Warp / Sub space, and B5 hyperspace, although that has
something of the portal effect to it as well.

  Portal: includes wormholes, Iconian transport devices, the Stargate,
etc.  Folding space would also be included in this category.  You step
into something and come out somewhere else.  You feel like you are
moving through normal space at all times, but in fact you cross some
kind of discontinuity that gets you where you're going.

  Quantum: you simply increase your probability of being somewhere
else to more than your probability of being here.  Voila.  The
Infinite Improbability Drive worked this way.

  Teleportation: you convert yourself into a signal and transmit it.
The signal is received somewhere else and your are reconstituted.
Just make sure you are deconstituted at the sending end or all kinds
of annoying legal problems will ensue.	Star Trek beaming is exactly
this kind of system, in fact Riker actually got duplicated.

  I'm not sure whether I consider systems that leave you where you are
but move the universe to be any different than ones that move you
around.  I don't know what to do with the Stainless Steel Rat "big"
drive that somebody mentioned.	The time travel idea is interesting,
although it's obviously not _really_ space travel.  It did occur to me
that if you just travelled in time, never moved at all in space,
everything would be somewhere else (since everything in the universe
is moving).  You could possibly use this technique to travel to a
select set of destinations.  Similarly, it might be interesting to
find a way to stop yourself completely from moving (this statement has
no meaning in an Einsteinian universe but this is fiction we're
talking about) and let the stars come to you.  Again you don't control
where you're going with this technique.

  OK, so how can this possibly be on topic?  Because it could be used
as the basis for a set of FT rules.  Right now there's one way to
travel interstellar distances in Full Thrust.  For a strategic game,
it might be interesting to have multiple methods of travel, to add
variety.  In particular I think it would be cool if aliens did not use
the same methods to travel FTL that humans do.	So I think if a
general enough set of travel techniques could be assembled, they might
make an interesting rules addition.

-joachim