At the time of making this there is/was an argument about FTL going on in the discord, so for the sake of not losing it/ease of access I’d encourage everyone to move it here.
Edit: conversation saved via screenshots here
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classified types of FTL
basing this off the community’s last consensus on the topic Wiki Link
Realspace
“Any type of faster than light travel that takes place in realspace”
Example – Alcuberrie Drive
Pros
– You can go ANYWHERE
– You stay in Realspace
Cons
– Slow
– Easily detectable
IFTL
“Any type of faster than light travel that takes place in another dimension”
Example – Star War’s Hyperspace
Pros
– Fast
– Sneaky (little bit)
Neutral
– You leave realspace
Cons
– Must be in a gravity well to exit
Hybrid
Examples – Don’t have iirc
“Any type of faster than light travel that can use either realspace or another dimension”
I don’t know the pros of hybrid
Gateway
“Any type of faster than light travel that uses fixed infrastructure (Gate, Wormhole)”
Examples – The Tantalus Cluster’s Drift Gates
Pros
– Instant
Neutral
– Fixed Entry/Fixed Exit
Cons
– infrastructure requirement
– No infrastructure, no warp
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Is there one for gateway?
done (I think)
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I think any kind of portable wormhole technology should be outside the scope of this canon. It just promotes tendencies of power creep. We’re A1-0, not near-divine technological ascensionists who can mine other universes for superstructure materials. To have any kind of technology that allows portable wormholes to be carried in casings the size of an orange would not only prove a tremendous technological disparity with less developed RP nations, but also imply other technological levels such as weaponising black holes. That for me is a step too far to pretend that this canon is balanced in any way.
I’m not opposed to gateway travel, but one shouldn’t be able to toss wormholes like they’re coins. No one can tell me such tech objects are rare and then also say they’re running a post-scarcity economy with all the abundant resources to create hundreds of megastructures. It wouldn’t make sense. It should take months to bring over the materials to a destined wormhole location and not something to be handled by mortal hands and left to grow on itself through nanomachinery.
Furthermore, I propose a ban through science shenanigans so that one couldn’t build any other wormhole or gateway into the Tiyanki Territories due to its anomaly as allowing such applications completely diminshes the role of the Zahamanan Commonwealth (NPN) as a gatekeeper of interference/colonisation/vassalisation of the Territories by circumventing the Zahamanan wormhole. Thus, access to the Territories cannot be circumvented and the community, through the ZC, controls over all the corridors into the Tiyanki Territories.
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Another con for gateway is that it’s a fixed point of entry/exit
That can really go either way, so I’m gonna put it as a neutral
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I’m in support of banning other ways into the TT, but I don’t know that wormholes are 100% off the table so long as it has limits on it
fern my post and again and I will mobilize your state’s national guard /j
Okay, serious posting about gate FTL
turn gate FTL into Gate FTL and Wormhole FTL
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Kindly keep discussion here relevant to the topic
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I think only naturally occuring wormholes should exist in the TT and need approval from the community as an NPN. Like I said, otherwise artificial wormholes allow anyone a gateway straight into the TT and the great colonisation of it will begin. I know because people have tried three times already to expand their spheres of influence into it.
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Oops, the wormhole idea was more generally, not as a way to enter the TT 
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How would you distinguish them other than inception?
I approve a ban on wormholes inside of the Tiyanki Territories.
As for the issue of wormholes.
“It should take months to bring over the materials to a destined wormhole location and not something to be handled by mortal hands and left to grow on itself through nanomachinery.”
So having to wait years for a self-replicating nanotech system to devour and reshape a continent’s worth of mass is not enough?
And about them being “portable”, they only are relatively so when they’re useless and nanoscopic, their state right after production. To make a wormhole worth anything (after using one of your specialized megastructures to make one through a very long and complicated process), you need to spend years building the required infrastructure for inflating them, and then you have to wait the years it takes for them reach any respectable size. Wormholes inflate at a rate of 1 meter per week if you’re pushing it, so its not a fast process by any means. And also, through inflating them they gain a truckload of mass, which makes them the opposite of portable.
Also, your whole issue about “weaponizing black holes” is illogical. Leaving aside the problem you have about a civilization being capable of making them, black holes are the worst weapon anyone could think of. Any black hole light enough to be shot at something is also microscopically small and will evaporate into nothingness in very little time, and any black hole large enough to become threatening is way too massive to be used as a weapon. I mean, a black hole not even two centimeters in diameter has as much mass as the Earth!
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Just to throw my own two cents in, but in regards to Galaxiel’s “self-replicating nanotech” is something that I believe steps a little too far into OP territory (yes, it does sound similar to the ones in Stargate, but that had a different use case iirc), and shouldn’t be allowed on Powercreep Grounds.
As for the Weaponing Black Holes, I understand where Mav is coming from, but Galaxiel is correct in this regard. Also, considering that a Wave Motion Gun (in Burst Mode or Positronic, not the Kill Laser) not only would be allow in canon, but also uses micro black holes as a part of it’s firing sequence. As for where Mav is coming from, it believe he’s referring to Star Trek’s “Red Matter” from the Kelvin Universe, as used to Destroy Vulcan by the Time Traveling Nero.
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To be clear, a lot of times you save any of the information that allows your tech to make sense until after people say it doesn’t make sense, and some of the information you’re using now are revisions that just recently happened, so I don’t know you can make the “not enough” argument at the moment.
I can’t help but feel that this is one of the things people have concerns about
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I mean, I explain it when it needs to be explained. I don’t intentionally hide it, and make revisions when someone makes a good point.
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Look, if it is that big of a worry, I can get rid of wormholes entirely. I’m quite fond of them, but they’re not such a fundamental aspect of the Confluence that it would all come crashing down if I removed them.
Yes, it should be tedious to make wormholes. Why? Because our canon will move across years and otherwise this tech will be facto instantaneous and in my opinion rapidly spiral the canon way out of proportions.
“Relatively portable” in my ears implies that there’s room for improvement to stabilise that tech. How can one guarantee anyone won’t handwave the tech progression in say 10 ABT? The mere implication that they are portable is a step too far for me. Right now it may be within A1-0 technological’s scope, but will it remain so as well? As for their production timelines, there’s always going to be wiggle room that will be too much for me, so I openly advocate to ban portable wormholes and their tech outright.
As for the black holes, I dunno if we allow them, I might just have portable black holes and drop the on planets. If we can have nanomicroscopic wormholes, I want microscopic black holes that I can drop on planets to consume it. You can’t convince me that won’t be possible if we can have such wormholes. How is that not being able to weaponise it? Also, why wouldn’t I be able to haindwave it with my science stick?
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hi guys I’m back
Gateway FTL vs Wormhole FTL
Gateway FTL stays in realspace while Wormhole FTL bends spacetime to reach a destination
Essentially, a gateway is an antechamber, while a Wormhole is something like ABH-003
While a wormhole has a fixed entrance and fixed exit, a gateway FTL can have a moving entrance (Ex. A GAW Relay is always in the Lagrange points)
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