Jump Drive

Jump Drives are complex wormhole generators that can be used to generate self-contained wormholes that allow ships to "bore" through the galaxy to or from an Interstellar Gate. Jump Drives utilize Isotope-10 in order to manipulate the Psi-Fields around a ship and create the wormhole. Ships have to be a certain size to boast the systems neccessary to equip a jump drive. The smallest of these ships are known as Gate Runners. The restriction on this Drive is that a ship must either jump to or jump from a gate. They may not simply jump system to system. The ship must either pass through a gate, launching it into a system that has no gate, or it can jump from a system with no gate into a gate. The ship also requires the proper Navbox data of the gate they are jumping through. This makes ancient navbox tech a rare commodity. A ship with a Jump Drive allows a ship a certain amount of freedom when going through interstellar travel, and are not tied to merely jumping from one gate to another. Instead, they can use the gates as a "lighthouse". Thus, they are freeing but still restricting in a way. Most Jump Drives can store enough energy for one jump at a time, though some ships are upgraded to hold more, at great expense of their other systems. Jump drives are usually reserved for military and exploratory ships, as ships do not need a Jump Drive to jump from one gate to the next. However, they are also used by smugglers and other capable ship captains who love the freedom they offer to navigate the stars.

Tiers

Jump drives can be organized into tiers, from I-VII. The higher the tier, the farther a ship can safely jump. The size of a ship depends on what tier drive it is capable of equiping. Almost every ship (save for maybe super dreadnoughts) can equip a Tier III Drive. Only gate runners and smaller freighters can equip tier VII drives. Even then, Tier VI and VII drives are exceedingly rare, and are only able to be manufactured by a select few. Most are scavenged from ships dating back to before the Age of Silence. Tier III drives are the norm for most ships, who rarely jump that much further than the gates. However, smugglers, rebels and outlaws regularly invest in Tier V drives, in order to circumvent the authorities.