Spatial Warp Drive

For centuries the Imperium had been restricted to the use of relativistic ships for star travel.  Terran sleeper ships carried people and automated ships, each generation requiring less and less crew until none were needed at all, carried everything else.  It wasn't until a Terran scientist in his last months of life due to a severe case of radiation poisoning, developed a technology that would evolve into the core of the Imperium's faster-than-light technology.

The scientist's discovery allowed for the creation of a pocket of real space separated from the rest of reality by an as yet unnamed dimension of space.  Quickly acquiring the discovery for themselves, the Terran military employed scientists, engineers, technicians, and others to fully master it.  Before the century had ended, they had figured out that this technology would allow for the exploitation of a loop hole in the laws of physics...namely, that while no object can travel faster than the speed of light, there is nothing preventing the fabric of space from doing so around that object.

It took a century and a half, but the Imperium's work payed off.  They had developed a mass producible engine that exploited the loop hole and allowed for Imperium ships to obtain superluminal speeds.  However, it was soon found that, unless the ship and the fabric of space were traveling at the same speed, a field collapse while at F.T.L. velocities could result in the destruction of the vessel.  In the centuries since then, the technology's efficiency and capabilities have increased many fold, the risk of a field collapse, while lower now, still remains possible.

While the spatial warp drive isn't the safest way to travel faster than light, it is currently the only one known, and available, within the boundaries of Imperium space.

Having captured examples of the Spatial Warp Drives utilized by the old Holy Terran Empire both when the founding members captured ships in combat during the war as well as in the ships that turned themselves over when Terra was captured and the old Holy Terran Empire fell, the Zodiac Empire has long been able to compare these engines to what was commonly used, a Fenghuang design that had filtered out to their allies, before the common application of both their Quantum Impeller Drives and Spatial Fold Drives.  Easily seeing the inefficiencies when directly compared to their own, independently developed version as well as ways the Terran engines were superior, the Fenghuang and their allies created a small group of engineers tasked with combining the two into a new design that was fully superior to both.

When the Quantum Impeller Drive was developed and introduced as the new standard on military vessels, the Spatial Warp Drive enhancement project was all but forgotten.  Though the team, taking pride in their work, decided to soldier on and keep at things.  As such, it was more or less a surprise when they finally achieved success and announced they had worked up a theoretical design that combined the pros of both older models while minimizing the cons as much as possible.  Intrigued, the now Zodiac Empire decided to fund the creation of physical prototypes for testing.

Installing their prototypes into various hulls that had been retired from active service, a mix of Rihannsu provided V-11 vas'Kalabam class cruisers and V-1 Vas Hatham class Birds of Prey, the engineers began testing.  Finding flaws here and there, they worked to correct these as best they could.  It took a few more years, but soon they had taken what they had learned and created a final prototype that was installed inside an old K'nteka class heavy cruiser for an official demonstration.  Though they, at first, had some initial issues adapting the unit to work with the old ship's power systems, the demonstration proved an impressive success.

Moving forward to translating their final prototype design to a full production model, the Zodiac Empire's modern model of Spatial Warp Drive entered service.  Though no competition for the Quantum Impeller Drives or Spatial Fold Drives utilized by the military, they have found huge popularity and success in the civilian market.

When compared to the models utilized by Aku's 'new' Holy Terran Empire and the Terran Imperial Loyalists, the Zodiac Empire's Spatial Warp Drives show they are both the fastest, longest ranged, and have the best endurance of the three.  This means, three identical ships of the same class, the only difference being which faction's version of the Spatial Warp Drive they were equipped with, that entered into a race with each other would have the vessel with the Zodiac Empire model as being able to go the farthest, the fastest, and maintain travel for the longest time.