Table 5-5: FTL Drives

• The jump drive takes 10 percent of the ship’s hull points. Its FTL rating varies with the amount of fuel expended for a jump. ** The wormhole screen takes 5 percent of the ship’s hull points; the gate activator takes 1 percent. Performance varies. ! The stardrive and the drivewave require a mass reactor power plant. Performance varies. Tech: The technology required to build this drive system. Pow: The amount of power required, per hull point devoted to this system. Min Size: The smallest drive installation of this type possible, in hull points. Base Cost: The cost for an FTL installation of this type. Cost/Hull: The cost per hull point assigned to this drive; cumulative with the base cost. Acceleration rating at…: The ship’s FTL speed for an installation comprising 5-50% of its overall hull. For example, a ship of 100 hull points with 20 hull points of hyperdrive travels at 4 light-years per day of hyperspace travel.

A ship’s FTL speed depends on how much of the hull is devoted to the hyperdrive system, with a minimum of 10 percent. Each hull point spent on the hyperdrive requires 3 power points to activate the system. For example, a ship of 300 hull points has a hyperdrive of 45 hull points, or 15 percent of the hull; this requires 135 power points to activate, and provides the ship with a speed of 2 light-years per day of hyperdrive travel. There’s no limit on the length of a jump other than the simple question of how long a ship can remain in hyperspace without refreshing its stores. (The GM may impose a limit of 1000 light-years per hyperjump at his discretion.)

Psychoportive Drive (PL 7) Psychoportive drive technology uses the power of the mind to defeat the restrictions of time and space. The psychoportive drive works a lot like a jump drive, except that instead of burning fuel, it burns psionic energy points (or PEPs) as shown below:

Multiple psionic characters can contribute PEPs to increase the range of the jump. Each psychoportive jump takes one full day. Psionic characters recover their psionic energy points normally after using them on the initial entry into Otherspace. Calculating the probabilities and energies of the next jump requires one psionic character, the navigator, to perform a complex skill check against ESP-navcognition. The navigator requires 4 successes and may make one skill check every ten minutes to prepare the ship for its next jump. The psychoportive drive requires 10 percent of the ship’s hull, and uses 1 point of power per hull point devoted to the drive.

Stardrive (PL 7) The stardrive creates a short-lived, controlled singularity that drops the ship out of normal space and into drivespace, a parallel dimension tied to the real universe. All drivespace submergences last for 121 hours (about five days). A stardrive must be coupled to a mass reactor; no other power system can energize a stardrive. Like the hyperdrive or jump drive, a ship powered by a stardrive must plot its jump carefully; it can’t maneuver once it enters drivespace, and nothing can interfere with its progress until it arrives at its destination. The base distance achieved by a stardrive in a single jump is based on the ship class:

The stardrive requires 5 percent of the ship’s hull and 3 power points per hull point of the system; for example, a ship of 80 hull points requires a 4-hull point stardrive and 12 power points to make starfall. It’s possible to increase the distances shown above by exceeding the power requirements found on TABLE 5–5. For every 10 power points beyond the minimum allocated to the stardrive, the ship can starfall one additional light-year. For example, a battleship of 1,000 hull points needs 150 power for its stardrive, but if 300 power points are allocated, it starfalls up to 45 light-years instead of 30 light-years. The stardrive requires several days to recharge after a drivespace journey. Typically, it takes d4+1 days to recharge a stardrive for the next starfall.

Drivewave (PL 8) The drivewave generator is simply an improvement of the stardrive. It resembles the earlier engine in most details, except that the length of a drivespace submergence is only 11 hours, and the recharge time for the drive is only d4+1 hours. Since it cycles much faster, it can cover territory at a correspondingly faster pace.

Spacefold Drive (PL 8) The spacefold drive “folds space”, making it possible for a ship to leap dozens or hundreds of light-years in a single instant. The range of the drive is determined entirely by the amount of energy used to power the system, as long as it meets the minimums specified on TABLE 5–5. For instance, a 200-hull point ship must allocate 20 hull points to the spacefold drive, which requires 120 power points. As long as the ship can generate 120 or more power points, it can perform a spacefold of up to one light-year per power point assigned to the drive. The spacefold drive can cycle almost instantaneously, but it creates dangerous stresses in the fabric of space; for safety a ship must travel 5d20 (x) 10 AU (astronomical units) from its arrival point in normal space before it’s safe to use the drive again.

Transcendent Drive (PL 9) The transcendent drive system harnesses the power of a psionically gifted person and unlocks unfathomable energies with the key of an intelligent mind. The drive permits travel at FTL speeds in normal space with no careful navigation plots or calculations required. The ship’s speed is a number of light-years per hour equal to the psionic energy score of a single psionic character who is flying the ship at any given time. A psionic character who powers the transcendent drive even for a moment immediately expends all of his psionic energy points. He can stay “in the chair” for up to eight hours before becoming exhausted. He can begin to recover psionic energy points normally after he leaves the chair.

Example: Jaleel is a fraal mindwalker with 18 psionic energy points. If he takes the helm of a ship fitted with a transcendent drive, the ship will travel at the rate of 18 light-years per hour until Jaleel runs out of steam, at which point another psionic character could take over. Large ships of this type frequently have small teams of pilot-helmsmen who can rotate the piloting duties. The transcendent drive requires 10 percent of the ship’s hull points and a modest amount of power.

Warpdrive (PL 9) By creating a warp field in which the normal laws of physics are suspended, the warpdrive permits FTL travel. The warp field does not interfere with a ship’s ability to gather information from its surroundings, and a ship traveling with warp drive can change course, stop, or start again at will, as long as power for the drive is available. Like the hyperdrive, the warp-drive’s speed is measured in the number of light-years it can cross per hour of operation. A ship of 100 hull points that devotes 15 hull points to its warpdrive has allocated 15 percent of hull to the drive, so it can travel at a speed of 4 light-years per hour.