Talk:FTL Travel

Faster than light travel is a tricky business, but there is what it boils down to in game balance terms. Please keep these in mind when writing fluff.


 * The Gate Network is point to point, and all working sections of it throughout the Second Age can be mapped with a hex map, with ships passing from one hex to the next. Hexes cannot be skipped, and must be crossed at sub-light speeds.


 * Gates orbit the centre of gravity of the system, and are at fixed points in space relative to each other. They are point-to-point, with each gate leading directly and solely to one other gate.


 * Gates are a physical object with a fixed diameter. As such, ships can only get so big and still be able to go through them. This is the Archaeo-max specification. See Panamax for examples of how this kind of limitation has affected modern ship design.


 * Transit between gates is not instantaneous, ships spend time in hyperspace between gates.


 * The new FTL Drives built at the start of the Third age currently have exactly the same limitations as the jump gate system, the only exception being the lack of a maximum size as dictated by the gates. Travel is still point-to-point from the far edge of one star system to the nearest distant edge of the next closest system.

Nagebenfro 09:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)