Warp Drive [Lore] news

In the game Spaceship Commander ships have 2 types of engines: a warp engine, through which the ship moves through Star Systems and deep space at faster than light (FTL) speeds, as well as a standard propulsion engine, through which the ship moves after exiting warp mode, for example, at orbit planets or during a space battle. You can read about propulsion engines here

The warp drive on the ship is warping space


Warp drive, no matter how fantastic it looks, in my opinion, is currently the most "realistic" of all FTL propulsion concepts. Because the idea behind it seems to be the closest to realization at this science level of humanity and in general does not contradict the laws of physics.

The principle of work of warp engines (distortion engines) is to deform the space in front of and behind the ship. Space “compresses” in front of the ship and “inflates” behind it, while the ship itself is in a kind of warp bubble. Inside the bubble, the space will remain normal and the ship in it will actually remain motionless. The distorted space around the ship itself moves. And this “space movement” can be faster than the speed of light.

This may seem outlandish and far-fetched, but the fact is that it does not violate the laws of physics (although any such theory has its problems). If an object with mass cannot move at the speed of light (According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity), then there is no such restriction on the movement of space itself at FTL speed. Moreover, right now, in our Universe there are galaxies (very distant from us) that are moving away from us...faster than the speed of light! This happens due to the expansion of the Universe.

***

Now about the problems of the warp drive theory.

Problem 1: to create a deformation of space that seems to “inflate” we need...exotic matter. What it is? Well, this is almost the same matter as ordinary matter, only it has a negative mass, something like -10 kg. If you push a ball made of exotic matter, instead of rolling away from you it will roll towards you. LoL. The problem with exotic matter is that no one has observed it in our time, but there are no fundamental prohibitions on its existence, and quantum field theory allows its existence under certain conditions. That's why I decided to allow exotic matter in the Spaceship Commander universe :)

Ordinary and exotic matter distorts space differently


By the way, there were studies that seemed to make it possible to form a warp bubble using only ordinary matter, where this was achieved by changing the geometry of the bubble itself and some other tricks, although the speeds obtained were sub-light.

Problem 2: It takes a LOT of mass to create the desired distortion in space. How much? Well, for a small ship, several solar masses would be needed from ordinary matter and the same amount from exotic matter... Although there were also calculations that reduce the mass by orders of magnitude. But still, to create a distortion of space, a huge mass is needed.

And here, in the universe of the game Spaceship Commander, a technology appears that is called a “warp catalyst”, this is a device that reduces the above problem with a huge mass to acceptable values. And now for an ordinary ship we need not a mass of 2-3 Suns, but, say, energy of several megawatts. Here we count not by mass but by energy, because roughly speaking, energy is mass, and vice versa. E=mc^2 and all that. But a few megawatts is certainly not a firecracker either, but the ships in Spaceship Commander have fusion reactors that are capable of generating that much energy.



The warp catalyst in Spaceship Commander allows humanity to travel at FTL speeds, which opens the way to other stars (and in a very short period of time). At the same time, the technological level of humanity remains at the “level applicable to current understanding,” i.e. There are no super-duper technologies here like teleporters, replicators and other hard equipment, and if there is, it’s a secret :)

Generally speaking, if you use technologies that are shown in many sci-fi films or games, it is very difficult to imagine how this should appear on the balance of the game. In essence, we would have to rethink all the sci-fi concepts that we have become accustomed to over the past decades. For example, in many games, ships can reach some unimaginable speeds, and in fact, if a ship can reach almost the speed of light, why all these lasers and other things? Just accelerate the ship to the speed of light (or so) and ram the giant station where the main rascal sits, that’s the end of the film... Therefore, the technologies in the game Spaceship Commander is which familiar to us. But with some modifications.

***

What about the speeds reaches by the ship? Excuse me, the speeds of the space around the ship? Well, in the star system the ship flies at speeds of the order of 100 speeds of light. By the way, according to the game’s lore, we cannot fly at full warp into any planet or asteroid, because... they have their own gravitational field (and therefore themselves distort space). Work of a warp engine near objects with mass is not possible, therefore it is impossible to ram someone else’s ship or even a microwave at warp speed; your ship will simply be thrown out of warp mode.

As for flight to other star systems, warp gates are used here. Yeah, the gates also use warp technology. Gates do not teleport a ship or open a portal to another dimension; they give acceleration to a ship that has passed through it. In more detail, they charge the ship’s warp engine with a huge amount of energy that is generated in these gates (using the same thermonuclear fusion) and redirect it to the ship’s warp engine, after which it can “rush at maximum speed” no longer at a 100 FTL speed, but at 10,000 FTL speed or more. However, this does not happen in any direction you want, but only to other gates. This is due to the imperfection of navigation equipment. The gates are strictly tied to other gates (aligned along the axes, the distance between the gates is known up to 1 meter of error), the slightest incorrect orientation of the gates in space and the ship will be thrown out God knows where. They say sometimes the gates malfunctioned and some ships were thrown somewhere in an unknown direction at distances of light years.

Warp gate. Although they are more often called Hypergates, God knows why.


Many may have a question: can a ship perform a “dashing maneuver” in a space battle, warping directly behind the enemy ship? The answer is no, since there is a minimum distance traveled per unit of time in warp mode, so there is no such “cheating method”. Your ship will simply fly by, and for a couple of tens or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Again, in addition to the minimum speed, there is also an error in the navigation equipment - even an error of 0.0001 seconds when exiting warp - and you have already flown past your desired destination by many hundreds or thousands of kilometers.

So, warp drive technology is the best choice for sci-fi games about the future and space flights at FTL speeds!