Originally posted by Hippo
I agree with flaser with everything, except that there has to be some way that (in the FS universe), gravity effects subspace a lot more. Everything has gravity, including the lucifer... But the lucifer would probably not have enough gravity to, for instance, move a space shuttle parked 50 meters away, with no outside forces acting on it. Mass is directly proportional to gravity, through some formula involving n², that i don't remember... So taking the gravity effect coming from the lucifer, and again, ignoring almost everything else, you could say that subspace is effected by even small amounts of gravetational distortion, allowing the subspace "bubble" for lack of better terms, to be extended around the lucifer. Subspace tracking meerly needs to locate this "bubble" and "reach" it (without actually arriving anywhere, or assemling atoms, only to reach the same "frequency" (again, bad word) of the lucifer...
That would make more sense if i knew the words for half the stuff i was trying to babble about...
Gravity doesn't have to affect subspace anymore!
Actually the relation of gravity is:
F = f * (M*m) / r^2
F = Force
f = gravitic constant (a very small number)
M = mass of one body
m = mass of other body
r = radius or distance between the bodies
Gravity actually doesn't have a fundemetally prime effect on subspace - since it's not a separate entity, but a form or complexity of ordinary space-time that has little effect most of the time.
All of the forces - magnetic fields, electrostatic fields, gravity - all affect you when you've unwrapped the dimensions and move along them.
The only reason why I spoke of gravity primerly is that is the only force that stellard bodies have on your ship unless you wanna take a dip in a sun.
Electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic particles probably also seem warp space to a degree, but do so on different dimensions. (This could be why the Whiteside drive works).*
There is a trick to this whole warping I will cover later on**
When the Bastion chased the Lucifer, most of the time they knew what node it passed through, so its destination was known.
The problem is that there are an unlimited number of ways you can get from point A to point B through these hidden dimensions.
Even through a corridor (which may have any shape!) the Lucifer could use any given path it saw fit.
Subspace tracking is precisly knowing the dimensions, or how you precisly put it: the vector it took to go from point A to point B.
**I also must explain something: you're not in a bubble of real space! You don't need any bubble.
I stressed it that the warp effect is only your perception - you don't warp space.
The ship taking a subspace jump doesn't warp space, open up the hidden dimensions or forming a bubble and forcing that through these dimensions.
Instead it forces all of its particles to resonate on THOSE dimensions and bit by bit its whole energy is transferred to those dimensions.
The ship will still have part of its oscillations in in real space coordinates - but those will be reduced to quantic levels that are similar to what his other oscillations used to be. - You can go through it as if it was ghost, your presence having little effect on him and vice versa.
The nice thing about this is that most manmade objects have very little energy density in subspace without jumping on your vector. Even if you jump, but on a different vector they will still have a very low energy density. (Under energy density I mean the sum of oscillations that your main osciallations are on.)
However big natural object like planets or suns, even though they have little energy density their huge volume still makes them a notable presence.
Therefore you can still see suns and planets in subspace, but they're but a shadow of their normal selves.
It is possible that some of the missing matter, or the dark matter is actually in this state, therefore along certain vectors you'll find otherwise invisible objects - suns, nebulae or planets.
Some vectors may be so plagued in cetain areas with such matter or energy that it is impossible to travel along those vectors even if they are accesable.
You probably don't need a drive once you've enterred this state.
Depending on your vector, something may grab you/push you or you may end up lost in this state, floating forever - this happened to the Nyarlhoteph.
The question is how do ships force this resonation in their structure? If it need physical contact each and every ship must use its own drive to enter and exit subspace. However a ship may deploy fighters once in subspace, and those will have the same vector as the launcher. - I'm inclined to believe this.
That's why the Lucifer could launch ships in subspace, but you needed a special intersystem drive to chase it.
When the Lucifer exits, you already have the same vector as it does, so exit jumping will put you in the almost exact space.
There is also a possibility that was never used in the series: changing your vector once 'en route.
The problem is that even though some of your reference points may still be present - like suns or gasgiant - but their readings won't correlate at all to their normal ones, and there is no whatsoever insurance that your vector "shrunk" space isotrophly (equally among all directions).
Still during an intrasystem jump, with a shallow and slow vector a truely gifted pilot (with maybe a good sense of fortune / scrying
) may be able to change his vector en-route and effectily move around the solar system instead using inter-mittent jumps.
What is also rarely taken into account by mission desingers (unlike the overdiscussed recharge time) is the severity of navigation problems.
Once you made a jump, all you have is the data of the subspace vector, which doesn't have any correlation with your jump vector in realspace.
Space is not uniform, subspace has different properties in all of it.
Not only do you need to acertain your position once in real space, but to be able to jump next time with precision you also have to map the properties of subspace in the area - along as many vectors as possible.
First off: Acertaning your position is darn hard - explorer ships will spend a couple of weeks at minimum looking for similar stars. The problem is that the similar stars your looking for may be anywhere in their liftime. The light you're used to coming from them has been travelling for hundreds of years. When you jump to a different location the light will have to cross a different distance therefore it will have different properties since its from a different period of the star's life.
You will have to look for nebule and specific galaxies far away that change little with a couple of hundrey light year jump.
Also for a more precise measurement you'll have to look for star groups in the apropiate setting (their setup changes with time too! The stars move and the star signes chagne...).
So once you've made the jump, your hapless navigator spent the next 4 weeks doing a million readings to tell you that's you've moved 4 parsecs outwards in the galaxy.
Next you have to map subspace in the area for a couple of vectors. Once done, you jump back and hope your readings are good enough to arrive at the right place.
There could be devious nodes around that aren't just simple tunnels - systems or webs that connect several star system. They may be too complex for the GTVA and or too dangerous.
This could explain why the GTA maps had more nodes - the GTVA later decided to abandon some of these trick or not so trustworthy routes.
If you return, its time to have another go - you've only made a map for a couple of vectors, you need to cover a spectrum of vectors to make sure that a wide range of ships with different subspace drives would be able to make the journey.
*Artificial Gravity may be a byproduct of the subspace drive - instead a complete shift, we force the particles to change into gravitons.
The most likely problem why the system isn't widely used or employed as a weapon*** that it must have a sizeable subspace drive, and only very high energy particles can be forced to convert.
***In Infinite Ryvius they had gravity weapons - those things are worse that whatever any of you degrade them to be. You can slice up a planet! The Death Star is a toy compared to that...
