Question for Lore...knowers... is ED Witchspace the same as FE2/FFE Witchspace?

[Louis Calvert]

I'm aware that FFE and FE2 Hyperdrives were different to modern ones - You created a wormhole and went through that, it took hours or days to traverse each jump, you exited at the edge of a system, etc.

The modern ones are a new invention and you travel nearly instantly, etc.

However, is the witchspace you travel through the same witchspace, or is a totally different one? Like a different layer of subspace, or a different zero-distance hyperspace dimension or however you want to put it?

And, part B of the question... Is our current Hyperdrive more like the Hyperdrive from the Original Elite?

We know Thargoids could drag you from hyperspace jumps in that era. In lore, the hyperdrive tech of the day used a special fuel (not Hydrogen, it was Quarium, or something like that). Then by FE2/FFE era the hyperdrive was a different type that used Hydrogen fuel and performed much better. The Thargs weren't around then (definitely not in FE2 anyway) so you never got Hyperdicted. Maybe the Thargs couldn't even if they were around... I've not played FFE so I've no idea if they did in that or not.

So now we're back to a Hyperdrive that seems to be not that dissimilar from the Hyperdrive from the Original Elite, only now it uses Hydrogen Fuel (presumably), and the Thargs are once more able to Hyperdict us...

So is our current hyperdrive maybe a development of the Elite 1 Hyperdrive? If so, maybe it is indeed a different witchspace entirely... on that the Thargs can access...?

Thoughts? Is there some official word on this somewhere? I'd love an official ruling from the powers that be on this topic tbh.

 

[madbilly]

Both Dave Hughes and Drew Wagar have written some stuff about this, whether it's speculation or truly official I'm not sure. (I don't know why Drew's Elite Lore pages aren't accessible from his homepage anymore)

My thoughts are that: No, it's not the same witchspace, and it's not the same as in the original Elite either. In fact I think that the only real witchspace is from original Elite, did FE2/FFE writings refer to witchspace? I think that although the ED hyperdrive seems similar to us pilots it's actually completely different, and therefore witchspace is different and the thargoid technology to hyperdict us different too. FE2/FFE was like you describe, a wormhole with associated time-dilation effects, very different from the Elite or ED hyperdrive.

Interesting that neither Dave nor Drew's articles refer to the type 4 military drive that was fitted to the AAAI Quest ships in FFE. In any ase this technology is now obsolete too (although does the Quest still have a higher jump range than a fully-engineered Anaconda in ED?).

That's what I think. I'm surprised that nobody else has weighed in here with their thoughts so far.

Cheers

 

[drew]

Frontier are beginning to augment the lore via the forums and on Galnet bit by bit, so my pages won't be updated beyond v2.4, I'm slowly retiring them. However, I think my hyperspace page is still pretty accurate.

https://www.drewwagar.com/lore/elite-dangerous-lore-hyperspace/

To answer the OP's questions. Yes, I'm pretty sure it's the same 'witchspace', ie. some sort of higher dimension that you're shortcutting through. You're also right that the new hyperdrives are more akin in function to the ones in the original Elite, though using different technology and vastly extended jump ranges. The original Elite drives were more technically advanced than the ones present in FE2/FFE, but their technology was lost in the collapse of Galcop - now just a footnote in history.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Louis Calvert]

Frontier are beginning to augment the lore via the forums and on Galnet bit by bit, so my pages won't be updated beyond v2.4, I'm slowly retiring them. However, I think my hyperspace page is still pretty accurate.

https://www.drewwagar.com/lore/elite-dangerous-lore-hyperspace/

To answer the OP's questions. Yes, I'm pretty sure it's the same 'witchspace', ie. some sort of higher dimension that you're shortcutting through. You're also right that the new hyperdrives are more akin in function to the ones in the original Elite, though using different technology and vastly extended jump ranges. The original Elite drives were more technically advanced than the ones present in FE2/FFE, but their technology was lost in the collapse of Galcop - now just a footnote in history.

Cheers,

Drew.

Thanks Drew

 

[Louis Calvert]

Both Dave Hughes and Drew Wagar have written some stuff about this, whether it's speculation or truly official I'm not sure. (I don't know why Drew's Elite Lore pages aren't accessible from his homepage anymore)

My thoughts are that: No, it's not the same witchspace, and it's not the same as in the original Elite either. In fact I think that the only real witchspace is from original Elite, did FE2/FFE writings refer to witchspace? I think that although the ED hyperdrive seems similar to us pilots it's actually completely different, and therefore witchspace is different and the thargoid technology to hyperdict us different too. FE2/FFE was like you describe, a wormhole with associated time-dilation effects, very different from the Elite or ED hyperdrive.

Interesting that neither Dave nor Drew's articles refer to the type 4 military drive that was fitted to the AAAI Quest ships in FFE. In any ase this technology is now obsolete too (although does the Quest still have a higher jump range than a fully-engineered Anaconda in ED?).

That's what I think. I'm surprised that nobody else has weighed in here with their thoughts so far.

Cheers

Thanks

I got to thinking about it mostly because of Babylon 5, where to travel FTL they travel into a different dimension that's kinda crazy and where space is compressed, so travelling for an hour in this other dimension is like travelling for 500 hours in normal space (I don't know the actual travel rate, but it's considerably compressed compared to normal space) - however, in that, they can "live" in this alternate space just like in normal space and in later seasons you find that the Shadows and Vorlons (advanced aliens) both "lurk" in hyperspace for various reasons, reminded me of the Thargoids.

In B5, the humans (and some other races), at the start, need to use hypergates to enter this dimension and they are in awe of aliens whose ships can enter and leave hyperspace at will. Which again reminded me of the various forms of Hyperdrive in Elite.

However - In B5, the hypersapce they enter is the same, regardless of how they get there.