Ships' hyperspace drives and thargoid interference

[Sir_Prometeus]

I'm not very familiar with Elite's universe but I've been trying to read all the lore entries I could. The way thargoids can hijack hyperspace travelling ships made me think about how that was possible to begin with. So I made these assumptions to understand it (feel free to correct me if the official canon says otherwise)

- Smal ships use the hyperspace drives we know and use them to catapult the ship towards a distant beacon or obstacle, which is a star (a very massive object) We know that mass can make supercruise travel slower, and possibly causes some interference with hyperspace travel. The energy required is proportional to the mass of the ship, and in the case of hyperspace travel, requires to be loaded in the engine to propel it through hyperspace. If the energy requirement is bigger than what the engine can store in its buffer, it's impossible to travel that far (unless you manage to overload the engine)

- Megaships instead open wormholes, that probably require a huge energy investment, but it's proportional to the size of the hole, not the mass of the ship travelling through it (real wormholes, in case they exist, probably will require enormous amounts of negative mass to keep the hole open, so it contradicts my interpretation) Due to their mass, conventional hyperspace drives cannot send them that far. Although I've read that somebody managed to send an entire space station that way, but again, a space station could dedicate enormous areas to the engine and fuel depots, whereas a megaship probably has some limitations. Especially if it's a combat-oriented megaship.

As I said, thargoids could, in theory, simulate the mass of a star (that requires enormous amounts of energy converted into mass) to tamper with their prey's drive. Either it confuses the engine or simulates a star that forces the drive to exit hyperspace.

What do you think?

 

[Sapyx]

First of all, you need to know one thing: humanity has had two, radically different, faster-than-light technologies.

The original FTL technology was "hyperspace". It was faster-than-light, but much slower than our current drives. Hyperspace theory was discovered in the early 2100s, and was not superceded until FSD theory was invented just a few decades ago. "Hyperspace" was also known as "witch space", apparently primarily due to copyright reasons, but the terms are interchangeable. [OOC: in the original Elite game, it was called "witch space", but in the next sequel, FE2, it was called "hyperspace".]

The Frame Shift Drive was invented only a few decades ago; it was not around when the Thargoids were first encountered back in the early 3000s.

Hyperspace worked by "punching a hole" outside of the universe, into an alternate universe where the laws of physics allowed for travel much faster than light; when you arrived at your destination-analogue in hyperspace, another hole was punched allowing you to drop back into the normal universe. Speed in hyperspace was variable; the earliest hyperdrives took months to travel to Alpha Centauri. And the size of the ship was also restricted in the early days of space travel, which is why the colony ships were usually sublight-speed generation ships rather than hyperdrive ships - you simply couldn't fit an entire colony of people and all of gear onto a hyperdrive ship. This "hole-punching" left a visible remnant in real-space, called a "hyperspace cloud", which persisted for several hours after Departure and appeared in the destination system at the same time as the Departure, so an Arrival cloud would last for up to a week. Human sensors were capable of detecting and analysing these clouds, determining the mass of the ship that caused it and whether the cloud was an "Arrival cloud" or "Departure cloud". In practice, this was very analogous to the way FSD wake scanning works.

The technology did improve incrementally, such that by the dawn of the Fourth Millennium, an ordinary commercial hyperdrive ship could travel 20 or 30 light-years in one week, and ship sizes had increased such that reasonable cargo and passenger amounts could be carried on hyperdrive ships - generation ships were obsolete by 2600. Even giant megaships could be fitted with hyperdrives.

A ship in hyperspace was unable to be steered or navigated - a destination was "set", and the hyperjump took you to that destination - or not; mis-jumps were always possible. While a ship could Depart from anywhere it wished to - even inside the atmosphere of a planet - an Arrival could only happen in clear "flat" space, at least 10 AU away from the nearest star. Thargoid hyperdrive tech apparently allowed them much greater control over hyperspace; they could apparently maneuver in hyperspace, stop, speed up, slow down and change course. Thargoid ships also had much greater range; it is estimated they were able to jump 600 LY in a week, 20 times faster than the best Human warships. Thargoid sensor tech also apparently allowed them to detect human ships in hyperspace, making it easy for them to "intercept" one. Additional alien tech allowed them to drag an intercepted ship out of hyperspace back into normal space - usually at a location that was far far away from any star or planet.

The second FTL tech, the Frame Shift Drive we use today, works on an entirely different principle. An FSD-equipped ship never actually "leaves" the real universe, but using a principle not entirely unlike the Alcubierre Drive originally postulated back in the 20th century, it bends the universe around the ship from the point of view of the ship, shifting the frame of reference for the ship (hence the name) so that distances between the departure and arrival points were dramatically reduced. This "bending of space" has difficulty working in areas of space that are already bent (eg by gravity), so the FSD drive does not work in close proximity to a massive object. However, an FSD Arrival does require the presence of a nearby massive object to help snap the frame of reference back to something resembling the 1:1 of "reality", so an FSD Arrival can only take place in the vicinity of a large enough generator of warped space - such as a star.

The rate of bending of space an FSD generates can be "tuned". Ramped up to full power, it can bend space sufficiently that dozens of light years can be crossed in a few seconds. At lower power levels, speeds well in excess of the speed of light can still be achieved; we call this "Supercruising". Thus, it is the same FSD drive that is responsible for both the ability to SUpercruise about a star system and to "jump" to another star system entirely.

Ships in Supercruise can be "interdicted". The FSD Interdictor apparently works by creating a "bend" in space deliberately tuned to interfere with the bent space of a passing ship in Supercruise, thus causing the altered frame of reference to collapse and dropping the ship violently back to the 1:1 frame of reference we call "normal space". We do not know quite how the Thargoids undertake FSD "hyperdiction", though I see no reason why it is not simply a more energetic version of our own FSD interdictors, since it is the exact same drive principle at work. The only thing we are unsure of is how the Thargoids are detecting a ship in FSD operating at full "jump" power, as this is something which humanity currently lacks.

[OOC: given that the capital ship "arrival cloud" and "departure cloud" look suspiciously like the arrival and departure clouds of hyperspace in FE2/FFE, and look nothing like anything generated by a normal FSD, it is speculated that capital ships do not use the FSD, but rather still rely on hyperdrives.]

 

[AegisXOR]

It should be noted that FSD technology was developed using Thargoid technology as a basis (though whether this is reverse-engineered or simply adapted, I think, is unknown) so that could provide a foundation to explain how they are able to detect us in a hyperspace jump.

Although, perhaps they just pick up on our high wake and can "reach into" it to drag us out. Who knows.

 

[Azreh Helas]

I do believe I read somewhere that capital ships still rely on old tech as they are too big for the fsd drives

 

[Sir_Prometeus]

This "hole-punching" left a visible remnant in real-space, called a "hyperspace cloud", which persisted for several hours after Departure and appeared in the destination system at the same time as the Departure, so an Arrival cloud would last for up to a week

Everything was very interesting, and more or less fits with the idea I had in mind. These arrival clouds that happen before the ship exists hyperspace sound like a normal cloud but happening in reversed time. Instead of popping out of nowhere when the ship arrives and lasting some time later, they vanish (in reversed time it means they are created) - last - and finally are created (disappear) when the ship arrives. After that, there should be no trace of their existence

Capital ships relying on old tech could be explained in these ways:

- Refiting a megaship is so expensive that many are equipped with minor upgrades, unless those upgrades happen in their external surface.
- FSD the size of a megaship could be very expensive
- Or simply, it requires too much energy to move a megaship using an FSD (and probably their own mass and distortion of local space time could be a factor)

 

[Sapyx]

Another factor that may be relevant: the FSD seems to always dump a ship next to the star. For their capital ships, the military may prefer the flexibility that a hyperdrive offers, in being able to arrive anywhere in the system, not just at the star. Which would also explain why we never see the things flying around in Supercruise.