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K
04-17-2011, 11:54 PM
Deleted at author's request.

Biophysicist
04-18-2011, 12:07 AM
FreeSpace/FS2 handled FTL by using "jump nodes", naturally occurring portals between star systems. No one knows how to make artificial jump nodes and none have been discovered leading out of the galaxy, so they can explain really fast transit times without dealing with extragalactic travel.

Babylon 5 did something similar, except that you COULD construct jump nodes (except they were called something else in B5) - as long as you could get a ship to the other side. That required "realspace" travel, which was much slower than using hyperspace. This way, there was still a limit on the setting size that did not prevent very fast ships.

I like this sort of setup because it prevents the setting from getting unmanageably large, BUT does let you have very fast travel. (If you just had Stat Trek-style warpdrive, a ship could theoretically leave the galaxy, which is why they were so slow relative to FS/B5 ships.) Also, with FS-style subspace, you don't have to worry about making your star maps match real ones, which is convenient. (This is because two far-apart systems could have a very short jump distance.) Babylon 5-style hyperspace has the advantage that the warp network is mutable.

K
04-18-2011, 12:34 AM
Deleted at author's request.

:| Undying |:
04-18-2011, 09:11 AM
Distances of millions of light years between galaxies is a far cry from the distances between stars, or the diameter of the Milky Way.

K
04-18-2011, 10:52 AM
Deleted at author's request.

:| Undying |:
04-18-2011, 10:56 AM
Makes sense.