The main FTL method of the Tri-Star Commonwealth.
Origins
The Commonwealth hyperdrive was conceived soon after their secession from the Terran Empire. The technology originated from Imperial ansible technology, itself derived from the by that point long forgotten Shanti TeSDiR. When contemporary Terran FTL drives proved impossible to implement on short enough notice without their blueprints or manufacturing documentation, the remaining functioning examples far too valuable to risk in an effort to reverse-engineer them, it became apparent that another solution was needed. Unlike with FTL drives, however, information regarding the working principles of ansible technology used by the Terran Empire was easily available. Making the research path even more attractive, the Commonwealth had brought a considerable amount of spare ansible modules. That is where they focused their attention.
And so, a few decades down the line, once the supply of Terran drives ran dry and the need came to equip new ships with a different FTL system, the Commonwealth had its answer - the Commonwealth hyperdrive, the use of which had just recently been enabled by certain breakthrough advances in the field of transsophont studies.
Mechanism of function
While superficially similar to its distant cousin, the Shanti TeSDiR drive, the first working prototype of the Commonwealth hyperdrive was far from identical to its parent technology, and, following many reiterations brought upon by the continued technological advancement of the prosperous Commonwealth, the modern models can firmly be defined as a different, if related, technology. The main differences are as follows:
Firstly, contemporary Commonwealth entrance and exit anomalies appear visually similar to those generated by the ancient Shanti TeSDiR, but the space around them is considerably more warped and disfigured if one examines it with more sophisticated instrumentations or if the anomaly is sizeable enough.
More importantly, unlike their ancient technological counterpart, Commonwealth hyperdrives more effectively exploit the natural ebb and flow of the fabric of our reality, making anomalies easier to conjure up at or near lane breach points, and making it easier to travel along these natural roads within spacetime than it would be to do so off of them. This does, however, mean that off-grid jumps are more difficult and perilous, as the technology is simply more directly reliant on the quality of the spacetime terrain traversed than Shanti TeSDiR was.
And lastly, the Commonwealth solution relies on the aid of digital sophont beings, or, in the case of smaller civilian craft, the aid of highly sophisticated expert systems, for navigation. While ancient Shanti TeSDiR drives remain a mystery, neither transsophont solutions nor expert systems were advanced enough at the time for that to have been the case there. In fact, the latter only became an option for the Commonwealth very recently. Still, this remains a major deviation from what is currently known of the ancient parent technology, and as such is a worthwhile addition to this section.
Comments