Warp Drive vs Jump Drive: What's up with That?

A lot of the common sic-fi terminology for the various ftl technologies have established and defined concepts. We don't need to reinvent/contradict these. If you read around you'll find a consensus on a number the terms that are being used.

Actually the microwarp idea isn't new to sci-fi. That was a different (And interesting) take on how it would work but look at Star Wars and Star Trek. They're always pulling short-distance FTL jumps for various reasons.

Notably, the Picard manouver used against the Ferengi used a short distance warp jump to fool the Ferengi into thinking the Enterprise was in 2 different spots at once as they didn't have FTL sensors at that point. A microwarp pushed the 'real' Enterprise up next to the Ferengi ship while their sensors were still seeing the 'fake' Enterprise in its old position while the light caught up.

Star Wars uses them notably in exploration as gravity wells pull ships out of hyperspace. When you don't know what's coming up you need to make shorter jumps to stay safe..

My comment wasn't primarily aimed at the immediately preceding post.

There seems that the 2 most common warp drive involve warping normal space or traveling in some kind of hyper/subspace. Being in warp in Artemis does not prevent you from interacting with subwarp objects (running into stuff, firing and getting hit by weapons) so I feel that regular space manipulation is the way to go.
Physicist currently feel that the best way to accomplish FTL is to have the ship compress or fold the space in front of the ship and expand it behind the ship. If you have some others form of propulsion you would not need the expansion in the back as it should push you over the folded space. This fits well with the Artemis going full impulse while in warp. Space being continually compressed or a rapid series of folds both could be interrupted by massive objects allowing Artemis to run into things. Missiles lunched head on toward the ship would naturally take advantage of this wrapped space as well allowing slower than light torpedoes hit a FTL ship if on the right trajectory.

You could make arguments for either continual compression or rapid folds in space but I feel it is better to decide based on other factors. If humans developed both warp and jump drives then it makes sense to me for them to be biased of the same basic technology. I would propose both using folds as written in my last post. If we want the 2 systems to come from different species then the continual compression of spaces method gets my vote so the two systems are unique.

I like the idea from Star Wars that Admlbaconstraps brought up. Massive objects or their gravity wells mess up jumps. So a jump capable ship can jump around objects as long as they know about them as the computer can compensate for the gravity well. This might be another thing going on during the warm up period before the jump, the calculations needed to take into account all the massive objects between the 2 points. Being limited to only mapped out areas could explain why there are fewer jump drive ships.

I don't see why past a certain point in the very long history that is continually mentioned that the TSN can't have jump equipped ships. For longer journeys they are actually safer for the surrounding space where ever you are going.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/140635-the-downside-of-warp-drives-annihilating-whole-star-systems-when-you-arrive

My crew and I have been using jump capable ships every week for almost two months now. For us it is the only way to fly.

That's a good suggestion, Mordric. Thanks.

In an old topic I posted in the "Off-topic" section, before I knew of any official canon material, I surmised that there must be many types of FTL travel in various states of innovation. I assumed that both Warp Drive and Jump Drive are commonplace, and people are still experimenting with other forms of propulsion as well.

JUMP DRIVE: Conceived of as a means of breaking the so-called "Warp Barrier", jump drives became immensely popular until the invention of the Warp 2 Engine. To date, they are still the most economic means of flying interstellar distances and are very popular on civiilian and pirate ships.

WARP DRIVE: Studying alien technology has allowed government and military researchers to make vast improvements to human warp drives. While it's generally not thought of to be economical to make warp engines that fly faster than Warp 2, many military ships require the added versatility of a fast warp drive. Warp 3 and Warp-4 equipped ships are becoming more and more commonplace among deep expedition military vessels, at the taxpayers' expense.

RIFT DRIVE: This is my explanation for why the Artemis can "warp" to unknown sectors deep in unexplored space, but then flies around at slow speeds (warp and jump) after that. It's also how the enemy can "teleport" into the sector but can't teleport across the sector whenever it wants. This form of drive is equipped on a space station and creates rifts in space that can propel a ship to a certain exact spatial coordinate very far away, or create a similar rift to bring it back (either at an exact coordinate or in response to a specific encrypted signal). So the Artemis can't just fly to nearby sectors whenever it wants to, but it still has a means of entering and leaving other sectors.

http://www.artemis.eochu.com/?page_id=28#/20120920/ftl-travel-1924516/

I think of TSN Jump drives much like the Defiance having Romulan cloaking tech in Deep Space Nine. At some point in the cannon, the Ximni could ally with the TSN and agree to offer the technology. Whether that leads to all USFP having the option is another topic. I think that topic could make great cannon creation fun. In effect, cannon isn't fun to read about, it's fun to experience.

Cannon could go an 'Event Horizon' path, where human minds go crazy with too much jumping.. It could have a cthulhu type maddening effect. For that matter, you could introduce other space beings to go with such a storyline. Of course, this moves away from a vanilla startrek clone cannon, but it is certainly an option.

This brings me to another question: Is Artemis intending to make a serial numbers filed off of Startrek experience, or is cannon and what can occur/alien encounters capable of going wherever the community wants it to?

Matt, the answer is a little of both. While the Artemis universe will allow players to live out some Star Trek like fantasies, it will never be able to replicate the entire experience. For example, Artemis lets players experience what it is like to be the Science Officer of a starship, but it does not give players the experience of being a logic-obsessed half-human. The player must add that LARPing part with his/her own imagination.

Artemis always has and always will draw on the community for input in the directions of game play and canon. But just as Thom relies on his game development experience to decide on which game element suggestions to implement, I will rely on my storytelling experience to decide on which canon suggestions are best. It's a simple fact that in both cases, most suggestions must be rejected, often because they are in conflict with each other.

The prime directive of the Artemis game is to constantly keep all six players on a full bridge engaged in the action. That means Artemis missions must be something like 97% combat, with room for 1% science, 1% exploration, and 1% diplomacy.

That limitation on missions does not exist in prose or dramatic fiction. The Artemis universe leaves plenty of room for novels or films about science, exploration, and diplomacy adventures.

I tend to disagree about the comment that the prime directive of Artemis is to keep all players engaged and must be done by combat. If Thom were developing the game for commercial play like conventions or an arcade type setting then yes combat would be the main direction of gameplay. If we just wanted a space combat sim that's easy and exist in other games. While not everyone will be on the same ship they will fight together I.E. Evochron or freespace games. One of the things that draw most of us to Artemis is not the combat but the immersion and working together to complete a goal. that involves much more than combat. More than half the request that I have seen for gameplay are things that do not involve combat but that add immersion to the game. No slight to Prof. Substelny but if combat was the concern then why bring you in to create a conical setting for the game? For myself and my friends Artemis is more than a game, its a sandbox in which to play a fantasy. The Fantasy of a Starship Bridge crew and I would love to have more sand in that box. Sure make it optional but at least have those options available. That way players could customize the game to what they would like to be playing. Would you not agree that modern game development has moved far beyond straight arcade style gaming. You teach story telling in games well Artemis has the potential to be the foundation of thousands of stories why not make that part of the game itself.
To stay on the subject of this thread My crew assumes that both jump and warp drives exist but its simply a matter or economy that prevents the use of jump drives. Either from the cost of the drive system or the fuel to power it. And since The T.S.N. is at war the budget takes concern until a point is reached where the expense must be paid or the war lost.

Jumping in here for a suggestion regarding jump vs warp drive for canonical purposes.

In "Is there in Truth No Beauty" from ST:TOS we're introduced to the Medusans, who to summarize quickly are creatures that are so ugly that humans can't look at them without going mad. Lovecraftian hyperbole aside, I feel that this is a potential explanation for why a human race might not have jump drive but another race would.

The way I understand the layout is that warp drive is in the idea of ST:TOS' "we've broken the time barrier," wherein I assume that space/time are being warped to allow the ship to actually physically be in each location between point A and point B, simply at a tremendous rate of speed. Jump drive however, would be a space folding phenomenon akin to what the gravity drive of the Event Horizon accomplishes, in the movie of the same name.

For those who haven't seen it, upon engaging the gravity drive the ship folds space and time to come out the other end. Unfortunately for humans inside the ship, everything goes to "hell" and there's insanity, gore, and other frightening goings on that drives anyone experiencing the ship to madness. As I remember, the Warhammer 40k universe uses this same idea for its teleporting ships as well.

Perhaps with the Medusan/Event Horizon style jump drive, there could be a mental side effect that X% of the human population (I suppose it would have to initially be a large amount) are susceptible to with jump drives that does not occur to the race that invented them? As time goes on and more regarding what I'll call the "Weir/Miller Syndrome" is studied, science would come up with a way to prevent it from occurring in humans, which would allow for increased use of jump drive technology.

I think it would definitely be cool to be able to tell what kind of engines a ship uses at a glance, generally. We have to remember that unlike terran military equipment, much of what is seen in space would also be created there as well, so considerations that affect ships that float don't affect ships that exist in outer space. A ship that goes through water has to have a particular shape, and thus engineering advancements for them (such as the switch from 8 diesel engines to the 3 nuclear screws, etc) won't be limited to the shapes and necessities of the ships they power. When things are created in outer space there need not be a restriction on the construction method that would prevent their ease of differentiation.

Not that everything has to be easy to tell apart, but knowing a particular culture uses a particular kind of ship and they also use a certain means of propulsion will allow for exciting plot twists wherein "oh no, the [insert] has a [insert] that can [insert] instead of [normal]! EGADS!"

It would be like fighting a guy who looks like SubZero, but then suddenly he throws a spear like Scorpion. It doesn't make that big a deal overall, but the slight change can be the source of much speculation/drama.

Clever ideas, IvyStryker.

Would you consider an opposite alternative? In my experience most players find Warp Drive much easier to use than Jump Drive. Thus, most fleets would drop Jump Drive in a heartbeat if they could have Warp Drive. So in my mind the TSN probably knows how to make Jump Drive but their crews don't want it. But crews that have Jump Drive might play their harmonicas around the campfire, lamenting about how they would dominate the universe if only they had Ward Drive.

I dunno, to me it seems more logical that a warp drive system would be lower-tech than a jump drive. Kind of like a concorde jet is fast and all, but a teleporter is faster.

Historically humanity hasn't had any issues with making something accelerate faster and faster, as once it's moving we just juice up whatever makes it move. An engine that folds space or some other quantum type of deal feels like a completely different method of thinking. Like something that might come from an alien race that thinks of dimensions differently and thus was able to develop it, or from some madman scientist/group.

Up to you, though. :v

I kind of feel that a jump drive isn't necessarily higher tech - YMMV, of course. You've got to pick a direction, set an absolute distance, wait for the drive to warm up, and once it's laid in you can't change it; not the most intuitive movement system. Warp drive lets you adjust on the fly, move as soon as you decide to, and is more intuitive as a control system. While jump drive is more esoteric, it doesn't necessarily mean it's better :P I think I'd agree with Mike on this one, the Jump Drive could have been the first experimentation in space folding, but was power hungry, inefficient, and required massively complex calculations for individual, discrete jumps. It might even still be used for inter-system transport, with DS stations being able to form a jump ring (and providing the power for the long range jump); it takes a few hours to set up the proper alignment (which means you can't form it with incoming enemies). Warp drive was the result of decades of research allowing for continuous space folding and manipulation, potentially due to a breakthrough in the algorithm used to determine how space is manipulated. It's not necessarily good for inter-system transportation, due to the ongoing power requirements, but for combat maneuvers and intra-system transportation, it is becoming the new standard.

The more I read I feel like excuses are being made to preclude the TSN from having jump drives.