RE: FT: FTL Smorgasboard

Some clairfications and additions:

Manticore controls a "junction" that goes to 6(?) terminal wormholes. 
You can travel from the junction to any of the termini, but not straight
from termini to termini.

Another important point - entering the wormhole disrupts the field.  The
degree of disruption is based on the mass of ships entering - 4 megatons
creates more disruption than 2 megatons.  The greater the disruption,
the longer it takes for the wormhole to "reset".  This places the
Manticore junction at a strategic disadvantage since it can only send a
limited mass outward in a given time, but theorhetically an invading
fleet could use all 6 termini simultaneously and be able to transport in
multiple times the tonnage.

For normal FTL there is the grav drive or "impeller wedge" which creates
a super-high gravity field which draws the ship forward and has the
secondary property of being impenetrable by physical and energy based
weapons.  The energy requirement for this is huge and the ships are
dependent on "Warshawski sails" to draw energy from "grav waves."
Hyperspace is achieved by accelerating to a significant fraction of the
speed of light (0.3C) using the grav drive, then engaging the Warshawski
sails.	The sails propel the ship FTL into "hyper bands" named after
greek letters - alpha, beta, gamma, delta etc. with higher bands
producing faster speeds, but requiring more energy to enter and better
shielding to survive the radiation.  Merchant ships can usually only
make the Delta band which provides an apparent velocity of 1,000C with a
true velocity of 0.5C. Military ships can shift up one or two more bands
increasing the apparent velocity by twice or four times that.

Wormholes allow areas that are thousands or tens of thousands of LY
apart to essentially be neighbors and drops the energy requirement to
ship stuff to practically nil.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jerry Han [mailto:jhan@warpfish.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 1:54 PM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: FT: FTL Smorgasboard
> 
> The 'Wormhole Junctions' are limited by requiring an actual natural
> phenomenon.  One of DW's justifications for the wealth of the 
> Manticore
> system is that Manticore controls a wormhole terminus that leads off
> to X endpoints (where X is a number that escapes me at the 
> moment), and
> since travel through a wormhole junction is instantaneous, you can 
> cover hundreds of lightyears very quickly.  The control of 
> the junction
> is even more important because, the junction wormhole is the only part
> of the system that lets you get to any endpoint i.e. if you enter at 
> any endpoint, you appear at the junction terminus, always.  If you
> enter at the junction terminus, you can end up at any of the 
> end points,
> depending on your entry vector and other things that aren't really
> explained.
> 
> However, wormhole junctions are really rare, and most ships travel
> through hyperspace using their grav drives.  There, though, you 
> can take advantage of 'terrain' effects, and, by configuring 
> your drive in certain ways, you can boost your effective speed many
> times over.
> 
> So, in general, commerce travels by the junctions whenever possible
> to get as close as they can, then they proceed on normal drives the
> rest of the way.  From a Manticorian military standpoint, protecting
> the Junction and its terminals is a key part of Manticoran foreign
> policy since, if ships can leave Manticoran space instantaneously,
> ships can enter Manticoran space just as quickly, without warning;
> and having an enemy battlefleet in your home system (in a universe
> which allows high speed ballistic attack) is essentially a death
> sentence.
> 
> JGH
> 
> -- 
> *** Jerry Han - jhan@warpfish.com - http://www.warpfish.com/jhan ***
>	    "Up, up and away, away from me -- It's alright...
>   You can all sleep sound tonight, I'm not crazy... or anything..."
>      Five for Fighting, "Superman (It's Not Easy)" -- TBFTGOGGI