Faster than Light travel

== Intra-system travel ==
Terrans scientists at the end of the Third World War had figured out how to effectively create a sub-space bubble around a ship to allow it to travel at incredible speeds. Early tests of this "warp device" resulted in failures however due to stellar debris hitting the bubble and either distorting the bubble too much and returning the ship to realspace or simply eradicating the ship from existence. While research was underway to prevent such occurences, the Protectorate invade Earth.
This was actually seen as a lucky break by most scientists, as they managed to reverse engineer the power field technology and dispersal field technology of the invaders and adapting it to their own basic ship designs. Using the ships power field (calculating the shield strength in a new unit of measure, the Churchill) stabilised the sub-space bubble against most debris while the dispersal field moved those debris away from the ship hull, a trip from Earth to Mars, that would have taken 2 to 3 months with a standard Ion engine, now took anywhere between 3 and 4 seconds. 
Warp travel is an extremely rapid means of travel, which on the counterpart requires an immense amount of energy. Most ships use a matter-antimatter conversion engine to generate the necessary power for a jump, which requires refined hydrogen as fuel. The most important part for a pilot is to calculate a jump direction, align the ship towards it and power the warp engines for a short burst of travel. Smart pilots understand that warping requires a good knowledge of the gravity wells in a system, as something the size of a large asteroid can stop a ship in its track as the sub-space bubble dissolves as a safety mechanism when it comes within about 50 000km of a large enough spatial object. 
=== Hydrogen mining ===
The main requirement for space travel is hydrogen, and immense quantities of it. While it is the most common element in the universe, refining it in large enough amounts used to be a massive problem for most space-going races. Converting water (another rather common element) into hydrogen is simple but requires a large amount of energy, which in turn requires large amounts of hydrogen for most species. Alternate forms of power, like nuclear fission, was used in the early days of space travel by the Protectorate, while magical conversion was using by both the Union and Empire. As time went by, many hydrogen giants were found throughout space, which became a standard for the production of hydrogen, as massive refinery stood in orbit while orbital "drilling" was performed. The cost for such an endeavour was rather large, but it simplified the process a great deal.
Terrans, being the insane scientists that they are, went one step further. The most common, and ample, source of hydrogen was always the star at the center of a solar system. Using advanced shielding technology, they replicated the refinery and drilling setup, but around stars instead of gas giants. Large spatial nets also gather energy and particles from the star to increase the production by a fair margin. Hydrogen tankers of the Elven Star Empire and Terran Confederacy are now built with this in mind, being able to approach the corona of a star to dock with the processing centres. The Union has been rushing to be able to replicate this technology, while the Protectorate has been placing a few requests for the banning of such practices by the Tripartite Council.
== Going beyond the stars ==
Warp travel is good and all, but sadly, the amount of energy required to go from star to star would be far too high to make it an efficient mean of travel. It used to be the standard before the Exodus, of course, but the Elves changed the game completely with their arrival. Communicating with nature and reality in a way no other species was able to, the Elves began connecting with the universe and "telling it where they wanted to be". While not magic per se, it was a revolution in space travel, as it allowed for, more or less, stable wormholes to be created more or less at will.
As the required energy and computation power required for such a jump is relatively high, most ships cannot jump on their own. There is three types of jump travel that is possible. The most simple is the Jump Gate, which is a large, sentient-made structure which links one point of the galaxy to another point, up to 36 light-years away. While those jump gates have only one entry and one exit, they generate their own wormholes and use their own internal energy source for the ships to travel through, meaning pretty much anything can travel through them. Attacks on Jump Gates are strictly forbidden by the Treaty of Centauri.
The second is called buoy jumping, in which a ship uses predetermined coordinates emitted by a sub-space beacon in another system to initiate the jump procedure. The ship, of course, needs to be outside of the solar system gravity well to perform this, but it allows ships to move freely between buoys that would be located anywhere within 36 light-years. Networks of jump buoys are generally put in place at the beginning of a military operation to facilitate the travel of warships or are setup in key systems to allow rapid travel to and from them. Destruction of a jump buoy network is generally considered a priority in most military engagements.
Finally, larger ships are able to generate and calculate their own jumps, using the Internal Calculation Engine (ICE), which is used to contact "reality" and allow the formation of a stable wormhole. Multiple ships can connect on a single ICE to perform the same jump, allowing a fleet of vessels to jump together even if only a single vessel is jump capable among them. Most ships capable of jumping on their own carry jump buoys as well which they can drop as soon as they emerge from their jump, allowing further ships to travel to their location.
Category:Technology
Category:Setting information