Star Systems

(this is technical information and should only be read for interest. Knowing this is certainly not needed to play the game)

Many stars are surrounded by an exotic subspace field. This extends out from the star in the plane of the ecliptic and encompasses the vast majority of the planets. Technology has been able to tap into this field and use it in order to move faster than the speed of light across the system. This allows journeys that would take weeks or even months through traditional reaction drives to be completed in a matter of hours and days. These drives use the theory of Inverse Spatial Resonance (ISR).

Movement consists of projecting a field around the vessel and then adjusting the potential and resonance so that it matches that of a region of similar spatial resonance. Complicated subspace mechanics are used which eliminate the distance factor - i.e. distance becomes zero and the ship effectively jumps through space. Using a series of these micro jumps allows a ship to move through a system along regions of iso-linear fields.

Moving within an iso-linear field is not much use in itself, a ship also needs to move across these fields into regions of differing potential (closer and further away from a star). This can also be achieved through the use of the ISR drive.

Maps

As ships do not move through conventional space, producing maps based on conventional space is a bit pointless. Maps are therefore drawn as a series of concentric circles with each circle representing a different region of potential. Even systems that do not have a star still have variance within the field and can therefore be shown in the same manner. These maps, like real-world maps of underground metro systems are not based on Cartesian co-ordinates or distance, simply relative location. Therefore a system map for a dwarf star will be divided in the same manner as one for a giant star and even a binary system.

The numbers represent the regions of iso-linear fields. These are more commonly termed orbitals. They are also split into four quadrants. Together these give the series of 60 specific orbital quadrants; 15 orbital distances in each quadrant. In the above diagram it can be seen that some of orbitals such as 1, 2 and 3 are actually separated and at some points further away from the stars than orbitals 7, 8 and 9. This explains why some stars have planets in low orbital quadrants that are actually at a lower temperature than ones in a higher orbital quadrant, e.g. a system could have a desert world in Orbital Quadrant (OQ) Beta 7 but an ice world in OQ Alpha 2.

The Skye system is a binary system. The map for it however does not appear to be any different from the rest. This makes navigation around a system very easy, it has however led to some strange planets.

Travel Between Stars

Moving from one star system to another uses exactly the same mechanics, just on a much bigger scale. The ship used formulas unique to each star in order to create an ISR field around the ship that eliminates the distance factor. This pushes the ship through subspace and the ship appears in the destination system in the resonating location. As the resonance has to overcome the background noise of the current system, the jump to a new star system is normally only possible in the outer edges of a system. The standard orbital quadrant is ring 10.