Hyperdrives

Hyperdrives create an opening between space and subspace. It was originally developed in the early 27th, however, the rigors of hyperspace proved unavailingly fatal for some time after the technology was created.
Mankind sent robotic probes to stars that they thought looked promising, and worthy of exploitation. Thousands of uncoordinated missions were launched in various directions to explore, and report on what they found. In fact, most other races had their first contact with Earth through these robotic probes.
In the 28th century, the Canopans found a way to keep people alive in hyperspace, which lead to Link-UP   .

The Technology

The drive emits an energy field that creates an opening to subspace. The opening size is based on the size of the ship. One or more smaller ships may follow the ship creating the hyperspace window. When the ship enters hyperspace there are a few things that happen.
The ship leaves normal space, and is out of contact. It is unable to communicate with anything in normal space. The only ships in hyperspace it can communicate with have to have followed the ship into hyperspace, or plotted an identical course and entered hyperspace at the same time. Most ships can "link" their astrogation systems to allow the ships to travel together.
Once in hyperspace, all ships have a mass of effectively 1 gram for calculating velocity. Since larger ships usually have much more powerful drives that generate more thrust, they travel faster in hyperspace than smaller ships that produce less thrust.

Travel Times

For light speed travel time, take the ships base top speed and divide by 100. That is how many hours it takes to travel one light year.
Each speed mod that the ship has (see below) decreases the time by 10%, round to the nearest half hour.
Example: A speed of 600 would work out this way. 600 / 100 = 6 hours to travel one light year. That means the trip from Earth to Proxima Centauri of 4.243 light years will take just over 25 hours.
With two speed mods, each light year takes 5 hours to travel. That reduces the travel time to be just over 21 hours.
Example: A giant ship : Has a top speed of 300. So 300 / 100 = 3 hours travel per one light year. Making that same trip to Proxima Centauri takes just under 13 hours.

Children Technologies

• Kalian Hyperdrives

Access & Availability

Small ships can't generate enough power for a hyperspace drive. Only medium ships and larger. However, most technologically advanced worlds can get access to hyperdrives or ships with them installed quite easily.

For smaller ships that follow the primary ship into hyperspace can not have a total size (in game terms) larger than the ship creating the window. For example, a large ship (size 12) can have two small ships (size 6 each) or one medium ship (size 8) follow it into hyperspace.