FTL travel is unknown to all the Babel's space civilizations, they all use wormholes for travelling between stellar systems.
Wormholes are anomalies (that doesn't contradict Einstein's General Relativity theory) in space wich allow starships to make instantaneous transits over interstellar distances. There are many sub-types of wormholes but all are formed by the interaction of stellar gravity wells and share certain common traits:
- More massive stars generally have higher numbers of wormholes. Sometimes wormholes are associated to starless area, they are called 'Dead end' wormholes.
- Only physical objects can transit through wormholes.
- Objects wich pass through a wormhole simultaneously have a great chance of being destroyed at their return to normal space,since two objects cannot exist in the same space.
- Wormholes are little black holes and exerce gravity whirlpools whose
"grav surge" will destroy most small objects (like fighters,missiles...).
For security reasons it's better to be protected by a force field.
Sensitive electronics suffer temporary incapacitation or degradation, and travellers also suffer from temporary confusion and incapability to concentrate troubles. - Wormholes transits don't produce any detectable radiation, so the only means of detecting them is to be at scanner range at the moment of the transit.
- Wormholes are hard to detect.
- A wormhole connects only two nearest stellar systems, so don't expect to move to an another galaxy while entering it. But some scholars (foolish ones?) theorize that some wormholes could bound two very distant systems. The known maximum distance separating two linked systems is 4 parsecs. Some theorists think that this distance is varying depending on the location in the galaxy. At its center, it should be very small as the stellar systems are very close, but at the edge it could be 10 parsecs or more.
- The size of the two wormholes exits could be different (in general they are different).
- If an object is too big for entering or exiting, it's destroyed!
The majority of Babel's races use reactionless drives for space propulsion. Instead of classic action-reaction engines, reactionless drives generate a force field about themselves and eject a stream of pure force astern. Starships incorporate inertial compensators and gravity generators for protecting the crew during violent maneuvers. A ship with reactionless drives could go from 0 to 10% of light-speed in just 30 seconds, or can stop immediatly its movement.
The major drawback of reactionless drives is their massive energy signature when used. In addition, interruption of the drive (whether intentionally or accidentally) causes a ship to stop dead. Actually the maximum known speed for any reactionless-drive ship larger than a fighter is 10 % of light speed.
| Speed factor | % Light speed |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2% |
| 2 | 3% |
| 3 | 5% |
| 4 | 7% |
| 5 | 8% |
| 6 | 10% |
| 7 | 12% |
| 8 | 13% |
| 9 | 15% |
| 10 | 17% |
| 11 | 18% |
| 12 | 20% |
As no FTL travel exists,the faster means of communication is tight-focused beams who travel at light speed.As only physical objects can pass through wormholes,starship or courier drones must be used too. So the best interstellar communication network is the combinaison of radio or laser communications relays and starship or courier drones. Courier drones are small,unmanned spacecraft slightly larger than fighters. They have powerful drives and sophisticated computers wich permit them to make wormhole transits but require navigational beacons at each wormhole end to reorient themselves after transit. Drones have a maximum speed of 12. Sometimes space stations are placed at each wormhole end, they serve as communication relays and courier drones launcher platforms at the same time.
As starships leave star systems through wormholes, these become vital strategic positions. The best defense for a system is to have battle stations near wormholes as only one starship can pass through it at one and the same time.Assaulting a system is very hazardous when you don't know what's behind the wormhole end, it could be mines,battle stations,a huge fleet or nothing. Sometimes an assault is carefully prepared for several weeks to discover that there's nothing in the system, not even an inhabited world. And when a wormhole assault is successful, the system pacification is another problem. Starships aren't fast and surveying a system for wormholes or hidden ships could take weeks.
With the starships slowness and wormhole assaults problems, interstellar wars looks like trench wars. System are lost and taken several times. If the two belligerents have an equivalent military power, it could be certain that in a full year of war, the winner will conquer only a dozen star systems.
The other effect of wormholes is the space travel safety. With wormholes protected by battle stations or patrol-ships, outside piracy threats are almost non-existent.
Wormholes size are classified in three categories: [S]mall (100 Hull spaces), [M]edium (300 Hull spaces) and [L]arge (500 Hull spaces).
In the different stellar system surveys, the distance is the distance between the wormhole and the primary star in A.U. For convenience, we assume that astral bodies doesn't rotate around stars and that the distance of a wormhole to a planet is a simple subtraction between the distance to the primary star and the planet orbit radius. For multiple systems, add also the companion star orbit to the result if you want to calculate the distance for a planet orbiting a companion star.
Wormholes and Reactionless drives were inspired by the interstellar wargame Starfire and by the Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's novel 'The mote in God's eye'.
Starfire is a copyright of Task Force Games.
See Computer technology
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