Hyperspace travel how to#

Hyperspace Chartsĭetermining the corresponding points of stars in Hyperspace and the paths to move between them is part of the field of astrometry.

Hyperspace travel how to#

Even knowing how to get from star A to star B, and from star B to star C, does not really tell you anything useful about getting from star C to star A. And even if you have the Hyperspace coordinates of two stars, you can’t just draw a straight line between them to know how to get from one star to the other. This means that even when you know the exact position of two or more stars in normal space, you have no way to tell the positions of their corresponding points in Hyperspace. In real physics term, the geometry of normal spacetime is flat, but the geometry of Hyperspace is very much not, and there are no indication of any repeating patterns in the curvature of Hyperspace.

However, things get greatly complicated by the fact that Hyperspace is extremely warped and twisted. To move between any two places in normal space faster than the speed of light, a ship simply jumps into Hyperspace, flies to the point that corresponds to its destination, and then jumps back out of Hyperspace again. In this setting, Hyperspace jump capable space ships are as common as planes and similarly expensive to operate.Įvery point in normal space has a corresponding point in Hyperspace. It takes very little energy to cover incredible distances many times faster than the speed of light, and the engines required to enter and exit hyperspace are simple enough to be very widespread and accessible. Hyperspace is a separate dimension from normal space that has very different laws and properties. Players don’t need any of this to play adventures, but I need to understand this to set up adventures that will hold up to scrutiny.

The purpose of this whole system is to be able to answer questions if players ask about how these things work, and to avoid situations where players realize that two things that have been established through the course of the campaign make no sense and contradict each other. Players don’t need to understand or know any of this to play a campaign. Pretty much everything in this post is meant to be stuff that remains under the water. I think this is a pretty good example of Iceberg worldbuilding.

There is absolutely no evidence that such a dimension exists, but if there were, then all the problems with faster than light travel just magically disappear. It doesn’t violate reality by simply supposing that ships can, somehow, enter another dimension complete separate from our own, in which faster than light speeds are not just possible but easy. With Hyperspace, all the existing laws of physics remain completely untouched. In order to not mangle any actual physics, I knew immediately that I want to go with the most purely make believe solution that doesn’t connect to reality at all: Hyperspace. Alcubierre drives are the one tiny sliver of hope that the true believers have, but that seems like a really long shot, and even if it might be theoretically possible, there are several complications that make possible applications much less convenient and practical than what you see in sci-fi. Personally, I feel highly certain that faster than light travel is physically impossible. Something that always bothers me a lot in science fiction is that writers constantly use the latest new terms that have come out of physics to give their works an appearance of scientific backing and legitimacy, but then straight up doing things that have nothing to do with the concepts they are referencing. It’s the one biggest change from normal life that really affects everything about economy, politics, and societies throughout the setting. This really was pretty much the first thing I was thinking about when I decided to work on this setting. For settings set in space, I think the number one thing by a wide margin is the rules by which space travel works. In fantasy worlds, the major subjects are the magic system, the categories of supernatural beings, and the nature of other worlds where those beings come from. And these are pretty easily avoidable if you just take a bit of time to define the parameters by which the setting works at an early point of the process. Of course, countless writers have always just made stuff up as they went, going with whatever seemed convenient at that point, but that’s just asking to run into contradictions and thing that just don’t make any sense later on. When creating a new setting that departs from the normal conventions of reality, it’s always a good idea to define the new rules that are different.