User:Kelduum Revaan/Propulsion

A question which is commonly asked by new capsuleers is just how the different propulsion systems work on modern vessels. These subjects are not covered by the base capsuleer training as they do not effect the actual usage of the ship, however they are listed here for those interested.

The basics of Warp Drive

Warp drive, as found on all modern vessels, allows faster-than-light travel throughout New Eden. The drive core maintains a hyperspace 'bubble' which negates the mass of the core, which when attuned and expanded around the ship, causes the ship to be dragged through hyperspace to the destination at faster-than-light speeds, compressing the space in front of the ship while expanding the space behind it, 'warping' space around it.

Continuous Energy Input

Once a drive core has been powered up, it can not be shut-down safely without slowly reducing the energy input over the course of weeks (for smaller ships such as frigates) or years (in the case of capital ships), and improper disposal of a drive core, such as interruption to the energy feed (typically caused by critical damage the ship it is housed in), results in the uncontrolled collapse of the hyperspace bubble, releasing the stored energy into both hyperspace and normal-space, causing a chain-reaction of explosions which feed the collapse further, invariably resulting in the total destruction of the vessel containing it.

Discharged Drive Cores

When a ship is first constructed, the drive core is in its new and discharged state. This is charged by the ships power systems, but then cannot be disposed of safely without the required facilities, typically found at all stations. Once a ship is 'repackaged', the live core is removed and replaced with a pre-discharged core, ready to be reassembled with the ship, and the currently charged core is moved into special storage facilities.

Hyperspace Drag

While charged and un-attuned, the drive core generates drag in hyperspace, which prevents easy or rapid movement within normal-space at sub-light velocities. Without the drive core, ships would be able to accelerate to significant fractions of the speed of light, and turn and change direction rapidly, however this is a trade-off all capsuleers must accept for FTL travel. Some older ship designs included separate drive modules, however as the drive module became strategically important (allowing a rapid retreat) and systems such as the MicroWarp Drive were developed, they were integrated into the rest of the ship to allow for their defense.

Energy Requirements

The energy required to simply maintain the drive core is immense, and consumes the vast majority of the energy output of a ship. The remainder, a small fraction of the total output, is used to charge the ship's capacitor and from there consumed by the other systems on the ship, such as sub-light propulsion, defenses, and life support for any crew. Similarly, some of this capacitor energy is used to expand the bubble around the ship when entering warp.

Minimum and Maximum Warp Distances

There is a minimum amount of energy which must be transferred to the warp core, or it may cause a instability in the field, resulting in a premature collapse - this means that each ship effectively has a minimum warp distance, typically around 60km for most ships. Due to CONCORD regulation, this must be in excess of 150km, after a short warp by an early capsuleer which resulted in total destruction of the testing facilities. Effective maximum warp distance is only limited by the amount of energy which can be transferred to the core from the capacitor, however in all cases the core must be properly attuned to the relevant destination such as a planet, beacon, or other ships warp core.

Warp Destinations

To warp to a specific location, the core must be attuned to the relevant hyperspace coordinates (which when recorded are typically displayed in relation to the local star). These are non-linear, and so far scientists in each of the empires have not been able to predict them, however a warp can be safely targeted to a point within 0-100km of the destination, by attenuating the hyperspace field properly before entering warp.

Stations and other man-made structures such as stargates and beacons as well as ships within the same fleet pass their coordinates automatically, and celestial objects with significant mass such as planets and moons can be warped to within a few thousand kilometers due to their significant mass shadow in hyperspace. Other items such as asteroid belts are mapped and their locations transmitted by the local stargates. Finally, the coordinates of other items, such as wormholes, anomalies and non-fleeted ships can be identified by quadrangulation via use of specialised probes.

Typical Warp Process

To prevent the sudden stresses from transit to hyperspace from tearing a ship apart, it must be traveling toward its destination at greater than 75% of its top speed. Successfully entering warp reserves the required amount of energy from the ships capacitor, aligns and reaches the required speed, then properly attunes the ships warp core while expanding the hyperspace bubble around the ship. This allows it to be attracted to the destination coordinates, and the ship then accelerates to faster-than-light speeds as the field strength of the bubble is increased until the ship reaches it top speed. While nearing the destination, the field strength is slowly reduced, thereby reducing the attraction and the speed of the ship, while moving it back into normal-space as it reaches its destination.

Invulnerability Within Hyperspace

While in hyperspace, a ship can be observed by the typical sensor-suites aboard other ships, however it has no mass so cannot be targeted or collided with, meaning normal weapons are ineffectual. This allows a ship in warp to effectively pass though any other items such as ships and celestials without harm. There are some exceptions to this such as energy pulse weapons (for example, smart-bombs) which permeate both normal-space and hyperspace, and can do significant damage to a ship while entering and exiting warp.

Vulnerabilities

As entering warp with an improperly formed bubble will invariably destroy the ship from the stresses, all warp drives must be properly stabilized for them to operate safely, however the use of items such as Warp Scramblers, Warp Disruptors and Interdiction Spheres cause instability with the field generated by a warp core, preventing it from being fully formed around a ship. These forms of interdiction can be negated in some cases by the use of Warp Core Stabilizers, which provide extra resources beyond the ship's default to stabilize the bubble. Also sometimes used are Mobile Warp Disruptors - as well as disrupting the ability for a ship inside its field to properly form a hyperspace bubble, these distort hyperspace, causing local hyperspace destination coordinates to be focused in their location, meaning attempting to warp to somewhere within the area will see you exit warp at the bubble rather than your planned destination.

Linked Cores

Multiple charged warp cores aboard the same ship (such as ships which are located in a maintenance bay, or otherwise being transported while packaged) must have their cores linked to the host ship otherwise they would generate differing stresses when entering warp, potentially leading to a catastrophic failure. Linking the cores of the guest ships to the host ship negates this issue, however the cores aboard these ships are not used to generate or augment the field of the host ship. This is of course not a problem for ships which have been packaged as their cores are discharged.

MicroWarp Drive

MicroWarp Drives are a recent development, and allow the ship to utilize the warp core along with significant structural reinforcement to massively increase the top speed of a ship. This works by expanding a very weak hyperspace field around the ship, while attuning the core thousands of times per second to a point directly in front of the ship, effectively augmenting the ships normal drive systems. However, doing this requires a significant proportion of the capacitor be reserved for the field generation, and the constant attuning of the core results in the ships effective signature radius to increase massively, while weakening armor and shields, making the ship easier to target and hit harder. Similarly, due to the fact this utilizes the warp core, a MicroWarp Drive can be shut down by a Warp Scrambler, as it prevents the core from properly being attuned.

Sub-light Propulsion

Maneuvering

Maneuvering in New Eden is somewhat complicated compared to archaic models of spaceflight, due to the friction generated by the modern warp drive. The drive core itself generated what is best described as sub-space friction. This friction means that a ship must constantly run its engines to maintain its speed, and shutting down its engines will see it slow to a complete stop.

These requirements also mean that modern ships are only able to move 'forward' at non-trivial speeds as the combination of the field emitters must be aligned properly. While it would be theoretically possible to construct a vessel which could move in any direction without turning, the extra mass of the engines, field emitters and support technology would require a significantly larger power core, making this configuration inefficient.

By comparison, in non-capsuleer vessels, the field geometry must be continuously adjusted by the ships field engineer, however in a capsuleer operated vessels, this is operated by the pilots subconscious, allowing higher speed and better maneuverability than non-capsuleer vessels with increased levels of skill training.

Inter-system Travel

Due to solar pressure, the nebula density increases dramatically beyond the borders of each star-system, making inter-system travel using Afterburner, MicroWarpdrive or Warp Drive travel unsustainable with current technology, in effect making inter-system travel without the use of stargates or Jump-drives massively inefficient.

Fuel

While there are a number of propulsion methods available, each expending fuel to move the vessel, all of them utilize the local nebula itself to provide a fuel source.

Using the defector field, a small amount of material is magnetically funneled to vents on the the ship where is collected and processed into usable material, with any non-suitable material reprocessed and stored for later usage or ejected with the ships exhaust.

Using this method, the typical vessel kept in good order never needs to refuel (although it would still need to periodically take-on consumable for the crew), and in the event the intake or processing systems are damaged, the typical ship holds sufficient fuel for approximately 72 hours of running at full speed.

Propulsion Methods

Sub-light propulsion is classed as any movement which does not utilize an FTL warp tunnel, including Afterburner and MicroWarpdrive usage.

Impulse

Ship impulse maneuvering systems include both the ships drive used to maneuver in normal space.

Each faction's ships typically use one of four propulsion methods, which have generally the same propulsion 'strength', although this does effect the color of the engine exhaust seen. There are a number of exceptions though: pirate-constructed ships, some joint-ventures and a number of Tech 2 ships.

Fusion

Amarr vessels typically use Fusion propulsion systems, resulting in a blue engine glow and exhaust. This method uses what is effectively a magnetically constrained nuclear explosion to project the ship forward. Due to anti-pollution rulings in the CONCORD Yulai Convention, the excess electromagnetic radiation caused by this system must be dealt with by the by the vessel, resulting in the relatively heavy reflective armor used to protect key systems, and resulting in significant proportion of the ships shield emitters used to collect the waste particulates.

Ion

Ion propulsion is usually used by Gallente ships, and can be identified by a blue engine 'glow' with a narrow yellow exhaust. This propulsion method uses a pulsed beam of ions to create thrust which is visible in the 'pulsed' effect of the exhaust, however this requires significant power generation meaning Gallente vessels typically have a physically larger spherical propulsion core, leading to the design of the typical Gallente ship appearing more rounded compared to other factions to accommodate the core.

Magpulse

Due to their history with the Gallente, Caldari vessels often use a similar propulsion method - Magnetic Pulse propulsion, typically referred to as Magpulse. This is widely similar to the Gallente system, producing a very similar visual effect, with a blue glow and yellow pulsed exhaust. However, this system requires a linear propulsion core, leading to the typical 'square' appearance of Caldari ships, but with the side effect of the shield emitters being able to use some of the excess energy to produce stronger shielding than rival races.

Plasma

Typically used by Minmatar vessels, 'plasma' propulsion produces a signature orange/red exhaust. Although most of modern propulsion systems use plasma in one form or another, the Minmatar system is significantly less refined, being somewhat similar to the archaic 'rocket' engines used in children's toys and early spaceflight, demonstrated in the less constrained exhaust produced. Despite this, it is not uncommon for Minmatar produced vessels to reach higher top speeds than those of other factions.

Other Methods

Jove

Jove vessels (including the Jove designed and constructed CONCORD Drones) use another propulsion method which despite trillions of ISK of research, is still not fully understood. It is suspected the system used is intrinsically linked to their apparent ability to travel at significantly greater FTL speeds than seen by other ships, and recent leaked (but unconfirmed) information suggests they use an entirely different method, with the 'engines' on the ships simply being for 'show'. No comment has been forthcoming on this matter.

Pirate

As they are not bound by the Yulai Convention, and therefore do not have to follow CONCORD regulations, pirate vessels will often have hybrid propulsion systems, allowing speeds greater than what is normally attainable using sanctioned methods. These will however usually mean the ships safeguards such as onboard fail-safes and fuel reserves are compromised, and pollution requirements are not met - due to this, and the relative limited available of capsuleer adapted pirate vessels, coupled with the primary users being outlaws, CONCORD usually disregard these infractions.

Afterburner

While the modules are named Afterburners after the systems used on atmospheric vehicles to burn unspent fuel in the exhaust of a jet engine, and they have a similar effect, this is somewhat of a misnomer.

In effect, the modules in question actually expend energy from the ships power core to increase the propulsion efficiency, effectively running the ships impulse drive systems at greater than normal levels. In order to do this, the magnetic containment of the engine must be reinforced significantly, power input to the the deflector field must be substantially increased, as well as the structural integrity of the ships hull itself to prevent catastrophic damage to the emitter mounts.

This has the effect of significantly increasing the maximum velocity of the ship, while also increasing the effective mass considerably, making turns much slower and slowing acceleration.

While a module of this type can be used indefinitely, when traveling at greater than normal velocity, the fuel scoop cannot be used to replenish the reserves, which will typically expire after approximately 24 hours, at which point the vessel would then need to slow to normal impulse speeds.

MicroWarp Drive

The MicroWarp Drive, typically referred to by capsuleers as an 'MWD', is a system which uses elements of both FTL and 'Afterburner' propulsion systems.

This operates by using the warp drive to form a warp containment field around the vessel, distorting space around the ship, thereby reducing the effective pressure on the deflector field. The ships structure and drive-core are then reinforced in the same methods as an afterburner, allowing much higher speeds than are conventionally available, but only with the same fuel requirements as the afterburner.

However, maintaining this effect for more than a few seconds is incredibly energy intensive, depleting the capacitor of most ships within minutes, and safety guidelines mean that simply having the MicroWarpdrive module fitted to a ship means a significant proportion of the ships power generation systems must be reserved for its usage, effectively reducing the capacitor storage of the vessel.

With the massive expenditure of energy involved, usage of the MicroWarpdrive also significantly increases the effective signature radius of any ship using it, making it easier to target. Also, like the Afterburner, the MicroWarpdrive cannot run in parallel with the fuel scoop, however this is less of a concern as a vessels capacitor will often be depleted within minutes of activating the module.

FTL Propulsion

Warp Drive

Warp Drive is the method used for Faster-Than-Light propulsion within star-systems, typically between planetary bodies. The typical process for entering warp is as follows:

Capacitor energy is shunted to the warp core, impulse drive is set to 75% of maximum output, and the ship is then aligned to the target by the on-board systems. At this point the capsuleer relinquishes control of navigation. Once she ship is aligned and at 75% of maximum engine output, the warp core generates a bubble around the ship, shifting it into subspace and transferring its momentum, which then accelerates it to faster than light speeds.

Irrespective of the ships class or velocity, INCOMPLETE.