Distortion Fields

While the implementation varies from place to place, the fundamentals are the same. Space is condensed in one direction, and expanded in the other allowing the space in between to coast through space faster than light.

The fuel is is a negative energy that comes out ahead of the ship, pulling space into a smaller location while the ships energy systems are typically enough to cause space to expand behind them. The amount of energy is immense, limiting the number of jumps a ship can safely do as well as distance. To help conserve energy the fields are only as large as the ship.

Aduidne Rings

The Aduidne Rings originate with Aduidne Corporation and come as a pair of rings. These rings need to be as large as the ship that they're moving, or larger, since the rings work together to form a sort of bubble around the ship. When these were first being introduced to the market they were sold to large companies, this meant that large companies were the first ones out of system to colonize new worlds and interact with aliens. Eventually these rings made their way to rental space stations. This technology, unlike the Gate tech, was never really monopolized. Once scientist were able to synthesize a negative mass material, the rest came relatively easy. However this negative mass material was very expensive and the amount of it that was required to fuel the rings was quite extreme making operations very costly. By modern times Rings are uncommon, middle class Asida can afford to own one, but seldomly can afford to actually run it. Long distance cargo ships operated by large companies may have attachment points at on their ships that allow them to carry their rings with them, while medium sized shipping companies still prefer to operate space stations that store the negative mass fuel for the rings

Average speed: 20xLS or 1 hex a 28 days

Tia'untha Drones

The Vullities version of this technology was brought into reality in an expected way for them. Every Vullities ship is equipped with drone bays, and ships that expect to travel long distances can pick up their anti-matter fuel at space stations, as well as FTL drones if they don't already have a full array. When these drones are deployed they form two groups, a bow and aft group. These groups then synchronize their systems and begin the condensing and folding of space. The individual drones are easy enough to replace, and even a lost one doesn't carry much fuel. They can also be customized to the exact size required for the ship that's using them. Luxury and long distance trading ships come with these drones as part of their package.

Average speed: 16xLS or 1 hex in 34 days

Monsian FTL

The Monsian Arduin have arguably the best system. Ships that were made before they discovered FTL were adapted to use a drone package similar to the Vullities, but with a single drone for the bow and one for the aft. Ships that were designed after the discovery were built with these systems baked in. Because it is dangerous to manipulate space close to a ship, but the goal is to get as close as possible, the FTL systems were placed into what is best described as a thicker antenna that when the ship begins to start FTL systems, these antenna are extended to a safe range for the ship so that even if there is an issue, the antenna are the only thing destroyed.

With this Distortion Field technology the only substantial obstacles to movement are other objects in space. Smaller things like loose space ship debris, small asteroids and other small things may miss the ship as the condensed space shrinks it, but on the off chance that they still impact it's advised to have thicker hull plating on the fronts of ships. This makes the Vullities approach to building this technology even better, since small debris will likely be destroyed by the drone and other drones can pick up the slack. For that exact reason the Monsian's version of this technology is the most dangerous, if that single drone or antenna are hit, that can force the ship out of the bubble at best, or push it into a weakened condensed version of space condensing the ship only partly while it continues to move forward putting the ship through a cosmic blender. The Asida version of this technology is not as susceptible to being destroyed by micro-debris simply because the ring housing has many redundancies on top of superior hull plating, at least from a reputable manufacturer.

Average Speed: 26xLS or 1 hex in 21 days

Astroxian Rings

Fundamentally the same thing as Aduidne Rings except made in RoA controlled ship yards. There are a few flavors of these within RoA space due to the commercial licenes granted by the RoA but they all work the same way the Aduidne Rings work.

The Republic of Astrox government outlawed the purchase of Asida Rings not long after they entered the market. Some companies were able to purchase them before the ban and were grandfathered in but the number of Asida rings are far fewer than the Republic rings. Republic rings were designed by reverse engineering Asida rings, then provided these schematics to various defense contractors who were able to sell to verified buyers only. This was ultimately limited to government entities, military contractors, large shipping companies and some high value individuals. While the 3 major Ring manufactures of the Republic build all sorts of sizes of rings, they don't offer the same variety that could be found in Asida space. The military rings are designed to break down, they're cheaper and break easier but the hulls of the ships should be able to withstand significant impacts. The military rings break down so that they're easier to store on their ships with minimal fittings adjustments due to the fact that many ship designs were made before they met the Asida, and had no idea they would need to make room for these fittings.

Average Speed: 18xLS or one hex in 30 days

The Republic of Astrox, Arita Confederation, and Volzon Dynasty never discovered anti-matter technology on their own. They all learned it by purchasing the technology from various Compact companies. The Confederation and Dynasty primarily purchase Rings from the Compact, while the Republic has purchased some that was so they could reverse engineer them and build their own.

Distortion Fields are based on, but not identical to, Alcubierre Drives. Unlike Alcubierre drives the vessel does not slip into some other plane of existence nor is a true "bubble" created around the vessel. The space in front of the vessel is simply condensed, and behind is expanded.

If a vessel with an active Distortion Field comes into contact with an object with mass the Dark Matter is not a black hole and will not absorb this mass but will pull it to the center of where the Dark Matter is. The Dark Matter itself is not very large compared to the size of the ship, and if the object is larger than the Dark Matter it will begin to form around it until the object is large enough to make contact with the engine that is keeping the Dark Matter stable, once that engine is destroyed by the accumulation of mass around the Dark Matter the Dark Matter will destabilize and fizzle out sending the vessel forward at FTL speeds into a metaphorical brick wall of unconsidered space.

Due to this fault in the technology FTL into a station is catastrophic to both the station and the vessel, the same is true for bodies without an atmosphere. The heat created by entering atmosphere at FTL speeds is sufficient to destroy all but the largest of ships and even those are broken up into micro meteors.

The only exception to this is a specially designed FTL capable missile built to target cities inside of atmospheres. These missiles are typically large enough to have a FTL engine pair, exit FTL just before atmosphere contact, and have shielding to survive the descent. In this process the rear engine is kept on a millisecond longer allowing it to gain a small amount of velocity as it prepares to make landfall.

Travel in Distortion Fields

Time in this section is measured in Months. For the sake of simplicity we break immersion to use Human/Earth time scales. This will change in the future.

1 hex = 1.5 ly, and the average speed across the galaxy for Distortion Field Engines is 19xLS but ranges from sub light speeds to 26xLS. Even the fastest Distortion Field will take roughly 3 weeks to cover one hex and on average the travel time is roughly 1 month per hex making even the shortest galactic trips a logistics challenge. The larger the ship, the more exotic matter is needed but being away this long requires more than a little life support systems. Eye balling it the longest jump is 16 hexes. (Not counting each unique hex, but adding partial ones together). That's 16 months without the ability to refuel or resupply. Theoretically you could put multiple ships in one massive ring and some of those could provide logistics to other ships inside the distortion but that's a lot of space to fold for no reason and docking the ships to each other, I think there is a word for that. Oh yeah bigger boat.

Any way you want to split it, this means that ships can be crafted for the route they plan on running. A massive trade ship that just plans on running the gates, occasional distortions to stations neat planets could be fairly small on it's life support systems making more room for goods. Warships that refuse to use the gates, or aren't allowed to will need larger life support systems, denser storage for food stuffs, and hopefully better crew housing. They should also build up stronger logistics lines. This becomes even more important when in an active war and the gates are shut off.

Trying to build a ship that is capable of 1) atmospheric flight. 2) capable of making FTL. 3) Carries people/goods, is a fine balance. While ships exist that could do all three of these they'd have low cargo capacity, likely not a ton of fuel (low number of jumps without refueling) or flies like a boat in atmosphere and requires maintenance each reentry.

How the tech affects ship building

Generally, in relation to this technology, come in 3 categories. 1) Distortion tech build into the craft. 2) Distortion tech latches where gear can be temporarily added. 3) Does not support the technology.

I like the idea of a long distance trade ship, that goes out to colony worlds to deliver critical goods, has two giant rings built into the bow and aft of their ship. Giant engines would push their plume through the rings when not in a distortion field. These craft operate with a robot crew with minimal alive personnel, allowing maximum profits.

If you primarily use your ship for personal use between atmosphere and stations in orbit you probably don't own your own ring set and prefer to borrow a pair to make long distance travels.

Another option would be to dock your small ship onto a carrier where you can experience better long term travel while you're in the distortion field.

FTL Calculations and Transit hubs

While distortion fields can be generated on a whim and will go where ever they are pointed doing so can be incredibly dangerous, or illegal. In order to ensure a trip is safe data is gathered on the desired route, obstacles in the way, recent transit in that area, and micro debris that may be in that area. All of this, and more, is used to create a simulation of space in that area then have the ship transit in the simulation. The simulation will fail if the ship collides with something or succeed if there is no collision. Often many of these are run simultaneously and a success rate beyond a threshold is required in order to deem the route safe.

These calculations take a lot of energy and create a lot of heat, making it difficult for small ships to both generate the distortion field and calculate its safety, even larger ships may not want to deal with this sort of issue. The solution is broadly called Transit Hubs, but names are subject to change. Transit hubs are simply large computers that run these simulations and give that data back to the ship, they also add in other data they collect, like other ships in distortion fields. Well equipped Transit Hubs also have a Distortion Field sensor that can detect incoming ships.

It's most common for ships to ships to be able to perform these simulations themselves, but much slower and with less fidelity as these are meant to be used in emergency scenarios where you've somehow ended up too far away from anything.

Transit Hub Simulation Strength may be a reason why some FTL lanes are larger/smaller than others. Older systems may not be able to calculate as far, likewise heavy traffic systems may not have the bandwidth to go as far but that's a solvable problem. The real limiting factor, as it is even without a Transit Hub, is keeping the Light Matter under charge and stable long enough to make it the distance.