Travel
Interstellar Travel
The basis of all interstellar travel is the fabrication and use of of Delta Dust in Jump Drives. Unlike the Posts' wormholes, jump drives are not (effectively) instantaneous and can take days, weeks or even months to get from origin to destination.
Navigable star ways are colored three ways on the map:
Red routes are poorly plotted and slow. Travel speed along them is halved.
White routes are standard navigationally-cleared routes. Travel along them is at standard speed. During the ZOCU war many navigational beacons were destroyed, temporarily reducing otherwise well-travelled routes to Red status.
Blue routes are host to Interstellar Catapults at each end. Normally this allow ships to travel at twice normally speed along them. See below for full rules.
Due to the phenomenally high speeds attained during interstellar transit, combat is completely impossible between solar systems.
Distances on the star map represent transit-weeks. Military ships cover these at the rate of (1 + Tech Level) per week. Civilian ships travel at 1/2 this speed. For bookkeeping simplicity, treat all game months as having exactly four game weeks.
As jump drives have intense energy demands, ships must pay 5% of their He3 upkeep for every transit-week they travel.
Interstellar Catapults
While the tramp freighter with its rogueish captain, bioroid co-pilot and subsentient robot assistants making their way in a dangerous galaxy by wits and fists is a terribly common cliche in fiction, it is a poor representation of what space travel is like - at least in the Core. Starting in the Core, a network of interstellar catapults exist along the primary colonized arms, allowing fast and safe travel from system to system.
Interstellar catapults are large constructs specifically designed to augment a starship's own jumpdrive and essentially 'throw' a ship at increased superluminal velocities. This has proved a boon to commerce, as it effectively allows civilian shipping to travel at military speeds. Military ships, of course, can react even faster to crisis situations.
A stellar route with interstellar catapults allows ships to travel along it at double normal speed. However, this only applies to a ship that is actually boosted by the catapult. If a ship does not use the catapult (for example a pirate ship sneaking out of the system) it counts the star way as a normal white line.
Catapults have another advantage for travellers; they cost no onboard He3 to use. Instead, the standard strategic movement cost can be paid for directly out of a nation's He3 supplies – functionally, a debit is paid against the HEC for transit costs. Alternatively, one may simply buy the required He3 at the catapult at market prices (TBD). Note that Monopole-driven ships must still pay He3 to use a catapult, as the primary energy impulse is coming from the catapult itself and not the ship.
A nation may also elect to construct catapults for either its own use or for public use. Several sizes exist, varying from small catapults mainly used for dispatch ships to the giant, high-capacity catapults that string the colonized arms.
Note that for calculating ship size and catapult capacity, all civilian ships multiply their base IP by 10. Military Catapults can also be built to provide even great speed bonuses, up to 6x for small 'dispatch' catapults.
Catapult Types
Dispatch Catapult
2x Catapult Bonus: 100 IP, 100 Delta Dust
3x Catapult Bonus: 150 IP, 300 Delta Dust
4x Catapult Bonus: 200 IP, 500 Delta Dust
6x Catapult Bonus: 300 IP, 800 Delta Dust
Maximum Ship Size: 20
Medium Catapult
2x Catapult Bonus: 200 IP, 250 Delta Dust
3x Catapult Bonus: 400 IP, 750 Delta Dust
4x Catapult Bonus: 600 IP, 1250 Delta Dust
Maximum Ship Size: 80
Capital Catapult
2x Catapult Bonus: 500 IP, 750 Delta Dust
3x Catapult Bonus: 1000 IP, 1500 Delta Dust
Maximum Ship Size: 500
Civilian Trade Catapult
2x Catapult Bonus: 2000 IP, 2500 Delta Dust
Maximum Ship Size: N/A
A Trade Catapult at both ends will turn a white line into a blue line.
As Trade Catapults are civilian structures used for commercial shipping, they may never be placed under Official Secrets.
Catapult Special Rules
Once a Catapult is erected, it is not fixed in its destination. However it takes an entire month to power them down, realign and recalibrate in order to have a new destination system. Thus all Catapults must have a target system listed.
For an added cost, Military Catapults may be designed to be more easily realigned, shortening the process to a day or less, making them Flexible. However, this still cannot be done too often and so Flexible catapults may only be targeted at a single system per month. Dispatch and Medium Catapults pay an extra 50% IP to be Flexible. Capital Catapults pay an extra 100% IP. Trade Catapults may not be Flexible.
Jumpships
In the early days of interstellar exploration, jump drives were bulky, expensive and rather inefficient. This greatly limited them to ships of fair bulk and resulted in the adoption of the Jumpship for civilian shipping. These ships were essentially interstellar tugs, transporting cargo pods and STL-capable ships between stars. Newer generations of jump drives have (significantly) decreased the importance of jumpships, though they still play a role in modern space travel.
In current times, jumpships have evolved and have diverged into two related types. The first are Conveyors, ships specifically designed to transport HLVs or compatible cargo containers between stars. In fact, they most resemble 'historical' jumpships in operation, design and use.
Modern jumpships instead take the 'interstellar tug' concept to its logical extension. Pretty much just an immense jump drive with a station-keeping drive and crew cabin, jumpships are the heavy lifters of space. While most ships use hull-conformal or some other minimalistic drive geometry for maximum efficiency, jumpships are specifically designed to expand their jump fields into spheres a kilometer or more in diameter in order to enclose a maximum cargo volume. More sophisticated models can even further alter their drive geometry, creating highly assymetric shapes to further optimize their hauling capability. Battleships, habitats, even small asteroids - so long as it can fit inside the drive sheath it can be pulled into FTL.