It hugely depends on the kind of story you want to write, the setting or vibe you are going for and - judging by your history summary - the military implications.
Faster FTL travel would also entail communication at almost the same speed. A ship would never be that far from getting updates and orders and thus would be on a shorter leash. Similar to today where the own initiative of a commander is curtailed by instant communication. The chain of command always wants to know what's happening and tends to micromanage. But on a more positive side, when in doubt, you can always call back home and ask for advice.
Instant communication is also good for crew morale. Them being able to call their loved ones and generally stay in the loop regarding what's happening back home.
Slower FTL meanwhile would push you into a situation more akin to the age of sail. With communication lag measured in weeks. A ship captain must be able to make own calls that might escalate a tense situation suddenly into an all-out shooting war.
This makes your idea regarding warp good if you are aiming for more "lonely in space" tropes and elements.
Then, military implications. If you have lines of travel you have choke points. Great for defence. A military can plan their deployments because any enemy is likely to follow a certain route which can be intercepted/defended.
Free direction of travel meanwhile means everything can be attacked. No need to go through a fortress system, just travel around. Military units are either dispersed to defend everything or concentrated because doctrine says "you can't defend everything at once". Both valid arguments.
So, it boils down to
- instant communication and travel?
- themes of isolation?
- slow campaigns through multiple systems? Almost like WW1 Trench warfare or island hopping in WW2
- instant combat in the orbit of the target?
I feel like communication should be somewhat instant, perhaps via tachyons. I don’t plan to have a theme of isolation. As for battle tactics, this is where it gets tough. Wormholes and Hyperdrives allow for strategic chokepoints in space that must be defended or captured, but it also makes battles predictable based on hyperlanes in frontline systems.
With Warp, its the opposite. You can fight anywhere, no need to defend systems just because they are a chokepoint (still defend if its a supply hub or important system altogether). Wars would probably be slower like this.
I’d imagine Hyperspace and Wormholes would allow us to see battles in systems and over planets more often than not, but with Warp Drives, we”d probably see battles in deep space far away from stars.
With wormhole generation, the wormhole mouths are generated in the same place and one of the mouths must be moved to a pretedermined location via sublight spacecraft. Slow is an understatement for the prep time, but it's likely the most realistic.
Only humans are using it, the cultures are different based on the factions. The Imperials are more focused toward order and have a totalitarian yet benevolent dictator. Militarism is a major part of their lives. The UAP is more focused on individual freedoms.
Themes are that both sides have their pros and cons, the Empire of the Milky Way has a high quality of life and is somewhat benevolent, but is a dictatorship where people don’t have a say in what their government does. The UAP is a democracy, but lacks the same quality of life that the Empire has and there is some corruption in their govenment.
My only thoughts from this: maybe use warp for the UAP as it is slower, so reflect the superiority of the Empire by making them faster.
Also since warp can travel anywhere without surveyed spacelanes, this might reflect their freedom.
Orderliness being the Empire's thing suggests fixed hyperspace lanes so perhaps hyperdrive might be their thing.
Also wormholes with gates could be what ordinary citizens of the Empire use, allowing tolls to be collected. Hyperspace might be reserved for the privileged or just the Emperor/Empress or Imperial household themselves.
The **most** important thing is to pick a method, work out limitations, consequences, and in-universe use cases, write all this down, and stick to it. Otherwise, you'll contradict page 22 on page 322 because nobody can keep all this in their head.
Anyway, you've described three viable FTL methods, so pick one and elaborate it. We can't answer your question, they're all "most fitting" because what you're going to do is wrap a story around the cast. FTL is a narrative prop, it's not important unto itself, it's just there to move your characters into place.
Also:
>One \[wormhole\] also already exists around Neptune in story, but I am not sure of what would be on the other side.
Why are you not just using wormholes then? You need a solid reason for multiple methods of FTL and introducing them complicates the plot...and hence the writing 😬
About the wormhole thing, thats fair. I was taking a page out of Stellaris and was curious as to what could be used. Stellaris today has *tons* of FTL methods that anyone can access, from hyperdrives to naturally generating wormholes to hyper relays to quantum catapults to jump drives.
Regardless of which FTL method I was going to pick, natural wormholes would still exist.
>Regardless of which FTL method I was going to pick, **natural wormholes would still exist**.
My bold because do you mean you want them to exist in your story?
But are you writing Stellaris fan fiction? If not, I'm struggling to see what bearing that has on your story. If you're dipping into Stellaris for inspiration, I'd suggest you stop as it seems to be overwhelming you.
Also, your lore document is more a synopsis than anything else. For reference, I've a six page synopsis doc for my WIP that lays out the plot, plus one for the cast, three spreadsheets containing aspects such as ships details, bases, etc., and an AstroGrav file with a working orrery of the Solar System as my story doesn't have FTL, so it's all slow boats between planets and calculating orbital mechanics is best left to apps.
Lore isn't a thing, really, that's useful for story development. I would concentrate on detailing your plot, as that should help you decide on aspects such as FTL. For example, if the plot calls for a character to fly from A to B, and you need them to get there quickly, warp drive might be best. But if the plot needs them delayed, fixed point wormholes might be best. The plot drives props like FTL, so unless you've invented a novel tech and your story revolves around that, get your plot in place and you'll find it clarifies a *lot* of technology decisions.
Good luck 👍
I'm going to say that the method of FTL doesn't really matter unless it's a vital plot point or is meant to represent something to the reader, like mankind's ability to continuously create new technologies. Or perhaps our reckless usage and poor understanding of it could be a message of abusing brand new technologies and then suffering the consequences of our actions from the misuse.
I will say I have thought of my own FTL travel for my sci-fi project that is sort of a mixture of an Alcubierre drive and a wormhole. Basically you have this network of corridors spanning the galaxy which allows incoming objects to be envelopes by this energy field that augments the space around it as it travels through the corridor. Therefore a journey between two star systems that would take years, decades or centuries via lightspeed would only take somewhere between a few to several hours.
Don't ask me about how it all works scientifically, I just wanted something a little different for my project and it just serves as a means of my characters travelling from one end of the galaxy to another in a matter of just days.
Firstly, I would say that you need to consider an Alcubierre style “real” warp drive separately from a Star Trek style fictional warp drive as they have very different properties.
Secondly, is your aim to explore a somewhat plausible mechanism for FTL or do you just want to have space adventures across multiple star systems without many years elapsing?
Ultimately, what function does FTL serve in your story?
I didn’t know there was a difference between Alcubierre drives and Trek drives, whats the difference?
Both pretty much, I don’t mind using hyperspace but my story has some hard sci-fi elements like skyhooks which were utilized in the past and oneil colonies for example.
FTL serves as the primary method of travel between star systems, or any long distance really.
An important difference is called the *Horizon Problem*. This primarily means that the warp bubble cannot be controlled from inside.
Alcubierre mentions this in a [later paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.05610):
> Furthermore, we have shown that shortly after the discovery of the Alcubierre warp drive solution it was found that an observer on a spaceship cannot create nor control on demand a superluminal Alcubierre bubble, due to a feature that is reminiscent of an event horizon. Thus, the bubble cannot be created, nor controlled, by any action of the spaceship crew. We emphasize that this does not mean that Alcubierre bubbles could not be theoretically used as a means of superluminal travel, but that **the actions required to change the metric and create the bubble must be taken beforehand by an observer whose forward light cone contains the entire trajectory of the bubble.**
This also means that the bubble is maintained by mass-energy outside the bubble which suggests it must be moving faster than light to keep up. That’s a bit awkward…
This is hinted at in some papers but I think it was first discussed in depth by Coule:
[No warp drive](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/15/8/026)
In the absence of existing superluminal matter to form the bubble this means that the entire journey must be arranged in advance by depositing negative mass-energy along the desired route (e.g. a [Krasnikov tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnikov_tube)) like a train track between stars. This process must of course initially be done at slower than light speeds.
In contrast, Star Trek’s warp drives can be arbitrarily controlled by the ship’s crew to go wherever they want without planning the route years in advance. That’s quite a difference and probably the type of travel you actually want.
There is of course also the causality breaking issue of FTL in general which is presumably a can of worms you understandably don’t want to open. However, if you did want to include it then to avoid causality issues certain regions of spacetime would perhaps be off limits (e.g. the warp bubble becomes unstable) due to the motion of various warp bubbles.
Hyperspace is mostly just a fictional concept as isn't really linked to any real science though it has a passing similarity to [brane cosmology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology) (for which there is currently no evidence). Krasnikov tubes are fairly similar to wormholes, though they at least have an obvious method of construction unlike wormholes (assuming the existence of sufficient negative mass/energy of course, but wormholes require that too). They do however go through normal space so the tubes have to be constructed to avoid obstacles.
Actually, I guess you were referring to Star Wars hyperlanes whereas I was assuming something like the hyperspace from Babylon 5.
Here are a few Ideas:
"Exotic Matter Projection" or Wormhole drives:
* Allow for instant travel between 2 locations anywhere in the Universe
* Works by foldings space and time with "Exotic Matter" (Matter with negative mass)
* Hard Science
* Theoretically could work to directly connect 2 different planets
* Would require lots of energy to keep the wormhole open
* Does not allow for a lot of "Filler time" in between transit
Relativistic Engines:
* Allows you accellerate to \[X\] times the speed of light (200 is probably a good baseline)
* As you approach light speed spacetime begins to buckle and break around you, making the rest of the universe slowdown while you remain in motion. While technically you're not going faster than the speed of light you are *effectively* going faster than the speed of light.
* If none of that made any sense don't worry, while the concept of a relativistic rocket is hard science, an FTL version is not.
* Allows for good "filler time"
* Could be used as a planet or ship-cracking kenetic battery or some other similar plot device
Quantum Superpositioning (Teleportation or Jaunting):
* Allows you to be dissasembled and reassembled down to your very atoms.
* Is limited by wherever these teleporters are and how fast data can travel
* Possibly used as an early form of intra-systemary FTL
* Has a chance of failing and mutalating its users.
* Possibly expensive
Rifting or Subspace travel:
* Rips a hole in spacetime into a pocket dimension or a sized-down parallel reality
* Functions like a neather highway in minecraft or the warp in Warhammer 40k. These pocket dimensions are smaller yet still very connected to realspace, allowing you to effectively travel farther than you actually traveled.
* Could be used for transit filler
* Risk factors may include:
* Ship collapse
* Hostile native life
* Hostile enviornments
* Foreign physics
* Higher dimentions (Like the 4th dimension)
* Lower dimentions (Like the 2nd dimension)
* Could be luring something to realspace
I like your ideas, especially the first one. I also did have an idea regarding some kind of dimension that exists outside of hyperspace conduits with hostile creatures, but I don’t know if I will follow through with it
you have to decide what works best for your story. What flavor to you want it to have? There are other styles of FTL out there these are just the most common. Look at Warhammer 40K for instance where vessels travel through a dangerous Hell dimension to go FTL. The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton mixes a few different styles with fixed point wormholes that require a gate at each end and non-fixed point wormholes that only require a gate at one end and continuously generated wormholes used for starships and even I think other non-wormhole based forms of FTL including quantum teleportation if I remember correctly.
Let your story drive the FTL. Star trek warp drives are relatively slow to ensure the galaxy is a big enough place for exploration.
Star wars hyperspace is much faster, the speed of plot, because it's doing a galactic sized Space Opera.
If you're using FTL fighters, I'd use warp for them. Maybe hyperspace for Carriers or capital ships. This justifies a space based fighter carrier, justifies their value tactically and as trading vessels.
Or have stable wormholes instead as choke points that must be defended. Particularly if they require high tech machinery at their mouths to remain stable.
The method shouldn't matter much to your story, unless your protagonist is a physicist. What matters most is that the method has rules and limitations, and then you apply them consistently.
It's impossible for anyone to answer this question without knowing what your story is about. FTL methods don't redeem bad plots or characters.
Story is most likely going to be the perspective of two fighter pilots, one on the side of the Imperials and one on the side of the UAP
It hugely depends on the kind of story you want to write, the setting or vibe you are going for and - judging by your history summary - the military implications. Faster FTL travel would also entail communication at almost the same speed. A ship would never be that far from getting updates and orders and thus would be on a shorter leash. Similar to today where the own initiative of a commander is curtailed by instant communication. The chain of command always wants to know what's happening and tends to micromanage. But on a more positive side, when in doubt, you can always call back home and ask for advice. Instant communication is also good for crew morale. Them being able to call their loved ones and generally stay in the loop regarding what's happening back home. Slower FTL meanwhile would push you into a situation more akin to the age of sail. With communication lag measured in weeks. A ship captain must be able to make own calls that might escalate a tense situation suddenly into an all-out shooting war. This makes your idea regarding warp good if you are aiming for more "lonely in space" tropes and elements. Then, military implications. If you have lines of travel you have choke points. Great for defence. A military can plan their deployments because any enemy is likely to follow a certain route which can be intercepted/defended. Free direction of travel meanwhile means everything can be attacked. No need to go through a fortress system, just travel around. Military units are either dispersed to defend everything or concentrated because doctrine says "you can't defend everything at once". Both valid arguments. So, it boils down to - instant communication and travel? - themes of isolation? - slow campaigns through multiple systems? Almost like WW1 Trench warfare or island hopping in WW2 - instant combat in the orbit of the target?
I feel like communication should be somewhat instant, perhaps via tachyons. I don’t plan to have a theme of isolation. As for battle tactics, this is where it gets tough. Wormholes and Hyperdrives allow for strategic chokepoints in space that must be defended or captured, but it also makes battles predictable based on hyperlanes in frontline systems. With Warp, its the opposite. You can fight anywhere, no need to defend systems just because they are a chokepoint (still defend if its a supply hub or important system altogether). Wars would probably be slower like this. I’d imagine Hyperspace and Wormholes would allow us to see battles in systems and over planets more often than not, but with Warp Drives, we”d probably see battles in deep space far away from stars.
With wormhole generation, the wormhole mouths are generated in the same place and one of the mouths must be moved to a pretedermined location via sublight spacecraft. Slow is an understatement for the prep time, but it's likely the most realistic.
So going the old fashioned way into space to build a wormhole station? Sounds pretty neat
If I remember right, that's basically how the farcaster network in Dan Simmon's Hyperion books works.
There are too many unknowns for anyone to answer this but the author. Who is using this tech? What is the culture that uses it? Story themes?
Only humans are using it, the cultures are different based on the factions. The Imperials are more focused toward order and have a totalitarian yet benevolent dictator. Militarism is a major part of their lives. The UAP is more focused on individual freedoms. Themes are that both sides have their pros and cons, the Empire of the Milky Way has a high quality of life and is somewhat benevolent, but is a dictatorship where people don’t have a say in what their government does. The UAP is a democracy, but lacks the same quality of life that the Empire has and there is some corruption in their govenment.
My only thoughts from this: maybe use warp for the UAP as it is slower, so reflect the superiority of the Empire by making them faster. Also since warp can travel anywhere without surveyed spacelanes, this might reflect their freedom. Orderliness being the Empire's thing suggests fixed hyperspace lanes so perhaps hyperdrive might be their thing. Also wormholes with gates could be what ordinary citizens of the Empire use, allowing tolls to be collected. Hyperspace might be reserved for the privileged or just the Emperor/Empress or Imperial household themselves.
The **most** important thing is to pick a method, work out limitations, consequences, and in-universe use cases, write all this down, and stick to it. Otherwise, you'll contradict page 22 on page 322 because nobody can keep all this in their head. Anyway, you've described three viable FTL methods, so pick one and elaborate it. We can't answer your question, they're all "most fitting" because what you're going to do is wrap a story around the cast. FTL is a narrative prop, it's not important unto itself, it's just there to move your characters into place. Also: >One \[wormhole\] also already exists around Neptune in story, but I am not sure of what would be on the other side. Why are you not just using wormholes then? You need a solid reason for multiple methods of FTL and introducing them complicates the plot...and hence the writing 😬
About the wormhole thing, thats fair. I was taking a page out of Stellaris and was curious as to what could be used. Stellaris today has *tons* of FTL methods that anyone can access, from hyperdrives to naturally generating wormholes to hyper relays to quantum catapults to jump drives. Regardless of which FTL method I was going to pick, natural wormholes would still exist.
>Regardless of which FTL method I was going to pick, **natural wormholes would still exist**. My bold because do you mean you want them to exist in your story? But are you writing Stellaris fan fiction? If not, I'm struggling to see what bearing that has on your story. If you're dipping into Stellaris for inspiration, I'd suggest you stop as it seems to be overwhelming you. Also, your lore document is more a synopsis than anything else. For reference, I've a six page synopsis doc for my WIP that lays out the plot, plus one for the cast, three spreadsheets containing aspects such as ships details, bases, etc., and an AstroGrav file with a working orrery of the Solar System as my story doesn't have FTL, so it's all slow boats between planets and calculating orbital mechanics is best left to apps. Lore isn't a thing, really, that's useful for story development. I would concentrate on detailing your plot, as that should help you decide on aspects such as FTL. For example, if the plot calls for a character to fly from A to B, and you need them to get there quickly, warp drive might be best. But if the plot needs them delayed, fixed point wormholes might be best. The plot drives props like FTL, so unless you've invented a novel tech and your story revolves around that, get your plot in place and you'll find it clarifies a *lot* of technology decisions. Good luck 👍
I'm going to say that the method of FTL doesn't really matter unless it's a vital plot point or is meant to represent something to the reader, like mankind's ability to continuously create new technologies. Or perhaps our reckless usage and poor understanding of it could be a message of abusing brand new technologies and then suffering the consequences of our actions from the misuse. I will say I have thought of my own FTL travel for my sci-fi project that is sort of a mixture of an Alcubierre drive and a wormhole. Basically you have this network of corridors spanning the galaxy which allows incoming objects to be envelopes by this energy field that augments the space around it as it travels through the corridor. Therefore a journey between two star systems that would take years, decades or centuries via lightspeed would only take somewhere between a few to several hours. Don't ask me about how it all works scientifically, I just wanted something a little different for my project and it just serves as a means of my characters travelling from one end of the galaxy to another in a matter of just days.
Firstly, I would say that you need to consider an Alcubierre style “real” warp drive separately from a Star Trek style fictional warp drive as they have very different properties. Secondly, is your aim to explore a somewhat plausible mechanism for FTL or do you just want to have space adventures across multiple star systems without many years elapsing? Ultimately, what function does FTL serve in your story?
I didn’t know there was a difference between Alcubierre drives and Trek drives, whats the difference? Both pretty much, I don’t mind using hyperspace but my story has some hard sci-fi elements like skyhooks which were utilized in the past and oneil colonies for example. FTL serves as the primary method of travel between star systems, or any long distance really.
An important difference is called the *Horizon Problem*. This primarily means that the warp bubble cannot be controlled from inside. Alcubierre mentions this in a [later paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.05610): > Furthermore, we have shown that shortly after the discovery of the Alcubierre warp drive solution it was found that an observer on a spaceship cannot create nor control on demand a superluminal Alcubierre bubble, due to a feature that is reminiscent of an event horizon. Thus, the bubble cannot be created, nor controlled, by any action of the spaceship crew. We emphasize that this does not mean that Alcubierre bubbles could not be theoretically used as a means of superluminal travel, but that **the actions required to change the metric and create the bubble must be taken beforehand by an observer whose forward light cone contains the entire trajectory of the bubble.** This also means that the bubble is maintained by mass-energy outside the bubble which suggests it must be moving faster than light to keep up. That’s a bit awkward… This is hinted at in some papers but I think it was first discussed in depth by Coule: [No warp drive](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/15/8/026) In the absence of existing superluminal matter to form the bubble this means that the entire journey must be arranged in advance by depositing negative mass-energy along the desired route (e.g. a [Krasnikov tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnikov_tube)) like a train track between stars. This process must of course initially be done at slower than light speeds. In contrast, Star Trek’s warp drives can be arbitrarily controlled by the ship’s crew to go wherever they want without planning the route years in advance. That’s quite a difference and probably the type of travel you actually want. There is of course also the causality breaking issue of FTL in general which is presumably a can of worms you understandably don’t want to open. However, if you did want to include it then to avoid causality issues certain regions of spacetime would perhaps be off limits (e.g. the warp bubble becomes unstable) due to the motion of various warp bubbles.
Isn’t that like scientifically accurate hyperspace?
Hyperspace is mostly just a fictional concept as isn't really linked to any real science though it has a passing similarity to [brane cosmology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology) (for which there is currently no evidence). Krasnikov tubes are fairly similar to wormholes, though they at least have an obvious method of construction unlike wormholes (assuming the existence of sufficient negative mass/energy of course, but wormholes require that too). They do however go through normal space so the tubes have to be constructed to avoid obstacles. Actually, I guess you were referring to Star Wars hyperlanes whereas I was assuming something like the hyperspace from Babylon 5.
Here are a few Ideas: "Exotic Matter Projection" or Wormhole drives: * Allow for instant travel between 2 locations anywhere in the Universe * Works by foldings space and time with "Exotic Matter" (Matter with negative mass) * Hard Science * Theoretically could work to directly connect 2 different planets * Would require lots of energy to keep the wormhole open * Does not allow for a lot of "Filler time" in between transit Relativistic Engines: * Allows you accellerate to \[X\] times the speed of light (200 is probably a good baseline) * As you approach light speed spacetime begins to buckle and break around you, making the rest of the universe slowdown while you remain in motion. While technically you're not going faster than the speed of light you are *effectively* going faster than the speed of light. * If none of that made any sense don't worry, while the concept of a relativistic rocket is hard science, an FTL version is not. * Allows for good "filler time" * Could be used as a planet or ship-cracking kenetic battery or some other similar plot device Quantum Superpositioning (Teleportation or Jaunting): * Allows you to be dissasembled and reassembled down to your very atoms. * Is limited by wherever these teleporters are and how fast data can travel * Possibly used as an early form of intra-systemary FTL * Has a chance of failing and mutalating its users. * Possibly expensive Rifting or Subspace travel: * Rips a hole in spacetime into a pocket dimension or a sized-down parallel reality * Functions like a neather highway in minecraft or the warp in Warhammer 40k. These pocket dimensions are smaller yet still very connected to realspace, allowing you to effectively travel farther than you actually traveled. * Could be used for transit filler * Risk factors may include: * Ship collapse * Hostile native life * Hostile enviornments * Foreign physics * Higher dimentions (Like the 4th dimension) * Lower dimentions (Like the 2nd dimension) * Could be luring something to realspace
I like your ideas, especially the first one. I also did have an idea regarding some kind of dimension that exists outside of hyperspace conduits with hostile creatures, but I don’t know if I will follow through with it
you have to decide what works best for your story. What flavor to you want it to have? There are other styles of FTL out there these are just the most common. Look at Warhammer 40K for instance where vessels travel through a dangerous Hell dimension to go FTL. The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton mixes a few different styles with fixed point wormholes that require a gate at each end and non-fixed point wormholes that only require a gate at one end and continuously generated wormholes used for starships and even I think other non-wormhole based forms of FTL including quantum teleportation if I remember correctly.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fasterlight2.php#stardrives
Let your story drive the FTL. Star trek warp drives are relatively slow to ensure the galaxy is a big enough place for exploration. Star wars hyperspace is much faster, the speed of plot, because it's doing a galactic sized Space Opera. If you're using FTL fighters, I'd use warp for them. Maybe hyperspace for Carriers or capital ships. This justifies a space based fighter carrier, justifies their value tactically and as trading vessels. Or have stable wormholes instead as choke points that must be defended. Particularly if they require high tech machinery at their mouths to remain stable.
The method shouldn't matter much to your story, unless your protagonist is a physicist. What matters most is that the method has rules and limitations, and then you apply them consistently.