Questions about the Starscape universe

[Crowley]

I've recently started playing the demo, and I love it. However, I've been left wondering a couple of things about the internal logic of the Starscape universe:

1) I got the impression that the Aegis has only conventional engines in addition to the dimensional drive. With the D-drive gone, what is this jumping thing and how do they do it?

2) The Arachnid don't look very arachnid (i.e. spiderlike) to me...

And is the name Von Braun a System Shock 2 reference?

[Goober]

1) the space is actually 5 dimensional, so to warp out they just move in a direction orthogonal to the conventional euclidean axes. what you're seeing is our best attempt at representing movement in 5 dimensions. <cough>bullsh...</cough>

2) the Arachnid are actually called the Archnid. no spider references here.

Von Braun isn't a System Shock 2 reference, although I forget where it actually comes from at the moment.

[Fost]

[Poo Bear]

The normal universe is punctuated with black holes, as well as sucking in matter these singularities form deep gravity wells that destabilize space time.

Within the blackhole is the node, an area of calm within the eye of the storm, a place where normal physics does not exist. The asteroid like objects in the nodes are the exotic matter result of all the material the black hole is absorbing.

The node singularities are all connected together by a lattice of stable wormholes which can be accessed using a focused tachyon field (the jump drive) to allow a vehicle to transit from node space to wormhole and back again.

This means you can move from one part of this galaxy to another part of another galaxy in a matter of just a few hours. The dimension drive allows you to enter the eye of a singularity (a game node) and the tachyon generator allows you to enter the wormhole matrix linking the nodes. Once you get to your destination node you just use the dimension drive to enter real space again. You can use the dimension drive to control your exit point as long as it is within a certain distance from the black hole.

So all you need are some good singularity charts and you could go almost anywhere in the universe, except for nebulas and interstella areas obviously as there are no singularities anywhere near there so there is no entry/exit point.

[Crowley]

A good thing they had a tachyon field generator then. Von Braun's intellect really has to be superhuman to figure out alien laws of physics so quickly.

[Poo Bear]

That is why Dr.Braun was chosen, he is like the Dr.Who's dad of the future, he throws away gadgets we can't even dream of and tinkers together scientific wonders that would make your ears bleed before breakfast. He was escorting young female assistants on voyages of scientific discovery before he was even old enough to vote!

As for the dimension drive needing to be near a singularity to work, it's just a matter of scale. 1600 light years is a bit like going to the corner shop, the thing is you see, the universe is big, really big. In fact big doesn't really begin to describe just how enormously large and expansive the universe really is. You might think it's a long way to the outside lavy on a cold winters night at 2am but compared to the universe that is a drop in the ocean. In fact it is more like the distance between the molecules of the drop as it drops into the ocean.

[Crowley]

Yes, but how do they get to the black hole in less than 1600 years (from the crew's point of view). Do FTL drives other than the dimension drive exist in the Starscape universe? Or are you saying that few hundred light years to a black hole is near enough for the D-drive?

[Tangent]

In any event, some sort of drive system must be responcible for moving the Aegis and the shuttles across a distance of 1600 or so light years over a five year period. This need not be the D-Drive itself though. Motivation for the development of a D-Drive when a functional FTL drive already existed could be numerous.

• Habitable, or nearly habitable, planets could be reletively scarse. If rare enough, being able to broaden the search, or shorten the travel time between known inhabitable worlds would be a great boon!
• Just because they have a fast and reliable way to travel across vast distances, does not mean that they aren't interested in pushing the envelope. even if for only purely scientific curiosity.
• Dr.Braun is doing it all to win a bet with an old college buddy.
• All of the above.

And, because I like the cute little guy:

[deleon]

I think they used the bistromathic drive, or possibly the infinite improbability drive. Either way, it's obvious that they didn't panic, referencing poo bear's post above.