Hyperspace Lore Document back online

madbilly

M
Hi Drew,
Nice article. You say on the comments that it's 100% canon, is this the case for all of your lore articles? Can we expect them to appear on the ED website or in licensed media at some point?

Where did the type designations come from? I don't remember seeing those before. What happened to the type 2a?

In FE2/FFE the Eagle and Sidewinder were perfectly capable of housing a hyperdrive and being usable ships. Only a few very small ships (lifter, shuttle, hawk, osprey, kestrel and falcon) were actually incapable, our unusable, iirc. So, does this ship size business represent a change in the canon from FE2/FFE to ED?

Cheers :)
 
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Andargor

Andargor
Awesome! And when are we getting this in game? :D

In rare cases it was noticed that these hyperdrive mechanisms were able to take advantage of strange undocumented wormholes in space. It has been reported that jumps of distances of over 655 lightyears were achieved by judicious plotting.
Click to expand...
 

Zenith

Zenith
Andargor said:
Awesome! And when are we getting this in game? :D
Click to expand...

He's specifically referring to the original release of Frontier Elite 2 (FE2).
There was an overflow error in the hyperspace range calculation where you could pick a target in the 655ly range away and only use a sip of fuel. I nicknamed it "hyperspace resonance" and used it to cover large distances easily.

Imagine you want to jump between 2 systems 50ly apart but you only had a 7ly range. That would take you 8 or more jumps.
Using this technique, you could plot a course to a system 655ly away for 1 jump. Then replot to the system you want to end up at for another jump. 2 jumps total and not much fuel used. You had to use "mental compasses" to determine if the 2 systems could lie on the edge of a 655ly radius circle, but if they did then you could pull it off reliably.
If you kept on zooming out of the galaxy map of FE2, you'd eventually start seeing another galaxy appear on screen. It was the same galaxy and as long as you kept to the multiples of 655ly, you could jump from one side of the galaxy to the other in a single jump.
https://www.sharoma.com/frontierverse/wormholes.htm
 

drew

drew
madbilly said:
In FE2/FFE the Eagle and Sidewinder were perfectly capable of housing a hyperdrive and being usable ships. Only a few very small ships (lifter, shuttle, hawk, osprey, kestrel and falcon) were actually incapable, our unusable, iirc. So, does this ship size business represent a change in the canon from FE2/FFE to ED?

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

I'll reflow the text a little here - it was supposed to be contrasting with the older Quirium era drives, but I can see what you mean. :)

Cheers,

Drew.

- - - Updated - - -

Zenith said:
He's specifically referring to the original release of Frontier Elite 2 (FE2).
There was an overflow error in the hyperspace range calculation where you could pick a target in the 655ly range away and only use a sip of fuel. I nicknamed it "hyperspace resonance" and used it to cover large distances easily.

Imagine you want to jump between 2 systems 50ly apart but you only had a 7ly range. That would take you 8 or more jumps.
Using this technique, you could plot a course to a system 655ly away for 1 jump. Then replot to the system you want to end up at for another jump. 2 jumps total and not much fuel used. You had to use "mental compasses" to determine if the 2 systems could lie on the edge of a 655ly radius circle, but if they did then you could pull it off reliably.
If you kept on zooming out of the galaxy map of FE2, you'd eventually start seeing another galaxy appear on screen. It was the same galaxy and as long as you kept to the multiples of 655ly, you could jump from one side of the galaxy to the other in a single jump.
https://www.sharoma.com/frontierverse/wormholes.htm
Click to expand...

This. ^ It was a bug in FE2 - but quite handy. ;)

I assume it was a mathematical calculation not being handled correctly. 2^15 is 65535 (64k).

Cheers,

Drew.
 
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madbilly

M
drew said:
I'll reflow the text a little here - it was supposed to be contrasting with the older Quirium era drives, but I can see what you mean. :)

Cheers,

Drew.
Click to expand...
I did wonder that, since that made more sense. Thanks for the clarification.
 

Andargor

Andargor
Zenith said:
He's specifically referring to the original release of Frontier Elite 2 (FE2).
There was an overflow error in the hyperspace range calculation where you could pick a target in the 655ly range away and only use a sip of fuel. I nicknamed it "hyperspace resonance" and used it to cover large distances easily.

Imagine you want to jump between 2 systems 50ly apart but you only had a 7ly range. That would take you 8 or more jumps.
Using this technique, you could plot a course to a system 655ly away for 1 jump. Then replot to the system you want to end up at for another jump. 2 jumps total and not much fuel used. You had to use "mental compasses" to determine if the 2 systems could lie on the edge of a 655ly radius circle, but if they did then you could pull it off reliably.
If you kept on zooming out of the galaxy map of FE2, you'd eventually start seeing another galaxy appear on screen. It was the same galaxy and as long as you kept to the multiples of 655ly, you could jump from one side of the galaxy to the other in a single jump.
https://www.sharoma.com/frontierverse/wormholes.htm
Click to expand...

But... But... I still want it! :D
 

Rob At Work

R
drew said:
Well, strictly speaking it is 65536, but since computers count from 0 rather 1, 64k is 65535.

Cheers,

Drew.
Click to expand...

Well I'm glad we cleared that up! :)

PS Just a thought if you could only use 0 or 1 then in either case 0 or 1^15 (or 16) would equal the number you first started with, wouldn't it?
 
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madbilly

M
Hey Drew,

I appreciate you taking the time to keep us updated with the evolving state of the gamelore, much appreciated. [up]

I'm concerned about something in your lore document. If the Galactic Cooperative existed at the same time as the Federation and Empire, then having instant jump hyperdrives would have given GalCop an enormous military and economic advantage, there is no way that the Feds or Imps could have out-manoeveured or out-competed GalCop.

The recent Galnet article doesn't mention GalCop, so in ED is it still the case that GalCop didn't exist, at least not in the way they did in the original Elite games? The GalNet article also doesn't say that Quirium drives allowed instant travel, so can we interpret it to mean that time was dilated in the same way time was dilated in FE2/FFE?

Have I misunderstood, or is there still some inconsistency between your doc and the gamelore? Please excuse me if I sound like I'm being a smart-, communication via text only is tricky. :)

Also, I'd still like to know what the type 2a drives were, if you know. 2b is in the Galnet article and your document, but the 2a drive is not explained.

Stardreamer/jump drives are not in the scope of this article but I would expect that the lore is now that jump drives actually worked the same as Stardreamer and put the pilot into a form of hibernation as you explain in your document. Your article implies that Stardreamer was used for reducing time in hyperspace from the pilot's perspective. Until now I assumed that the difference between time in hyperspace to real time was due to time dilation in a relativistic way, but article clarifies this, thanks. Stardreamer was also used for reducing in-system travel time from the pilot's perspective, the only way to travel to Hutton Orbital in-game and still have a life out of game!

Cheers :)
 

MartinG

M
drew said:
It was a bug in FE2 - but quite handy. ;)
Click to expand...
It was fixed in later FE2 versions, at least for the PC, though, so I would be wary of treating it as a part of the canon.

drew said:
I assume it was a mathematical calculation not being handled correctly. 2^15 is 65535 (64k).
Click to expand...
As others noted, actually, 2^16 is 65536. :p In binary prefixes, 64K (more properly 64 Ki) is 65536 indeed.
The bug surely was caused by multiplying two 16-bit numbers and treating the result as a 16-bit number instead of a 32-bit one. This kind of bug is quite easy to make in C and similar languages. (Speaking as one who codes in C for a living :))
 
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drew

drew
madbilly said:
Hey Drew,

I appreciate you taking the time to keep us updated with the evolving state of the gamelore, much appreciated. [up]

I'm concerned about something in your lore document. If the Galactic Cooperative existed at the same time as the Federation and Empire, then having instant jump hyperdrives would have given GalCop an enormous military and economic advantage, there is no way that the Feds or Imps could have out-manoeveured or out-competed GalCop.

The recent Galnet article doesn't mention GalCop, so in ED is it still the case that GalCop didn't exist, at least not in the way they did in the original Elite games? The GalNet article also doesn't say that Quirium drives allowed instant travel, so can we interpret it to mean that time was dilated in the same way time was dilated in FE2/FFE?

Have I misunderstood, or is there still some inconsistency between your doc and the gamelore? Please excuse me if I sound like I'm being a smart-, communication via text only is tricky. :)

Also, I'd still like to know what the type 2a drives were, if you know. 2b is in the Galnet article and your document, but the 2a drive is not explained.

Stardreamer/jump drives are not in the scope of this article but I would expect that the lore is now that jump drives actually worked the same as Stardreamer and put the pilot into a form of hibernation as you explain in your document. Your article implies that Stardreamer was used for reducing time in hyperspace from the pilot's perspective. Until now I assumed that the difference between time in hyperspace to real time was due to time dilation in a relativistic way, but article clarifies this, thanks. Stardreamer was also used for reducing in-system travel time from the pilot's perspective, the only way to travel to Hutton Orbital in-game and still have a life out of game!

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

Good observations! I'm afraid you'll have to wait for my articles on the Federation, Empire, Alliance and Galcop as the answer is political, not technological. Galcop definitely did exist however. I hope to cover in-system drive technology at a future point. :)

Cheers,

Drew.
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
These pieces of knowledge are invaluable.

Do you mind if I translate them and post on Polish forums for my community to enjoy? Not all of my guys speak English, but a lot are interested in lore. I'll of course link to the source and credit you as the author!
 

drew

drew
rootsrat said:
These pieces of knowledge are invaluable.

Do you mind if I translate them and post on Polish forums for my community to enjoy? Not all of my guys speak English, but a lot are interested in lore. I'll of course link to the source and credit you as the author!
Click to expand...

No problem with translations - italian and french versions (and I believe Russian) are already in the works.

Cheers,

Drew.
 
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