Capsule Space Video

Sounds good to me.

The standard capsule space between known and well-used Lagrange points should be static and probably rather straight as well; for in-character explanation, you could call it a side effect of the capsule drives' technology, where repeated use of a capsule space tunnel (over decades of use -- well beyond anything you'd need to simulate) dilates, anchors, and smoothes out the tunnel.

An uncharted capsule space tunnel would thus be a snake path and actually involve danger and conscious effort to navigate safely. A charted capsule space tunnel (you do require the same system for charted tunnels, right?) would be a smooth curve with the same number of "sparklies" but very little in the way of being forced to dodge anything as you try to ensure that you remain within the tunnel itself.


The "Browning-White Capsule Space Insertion Drive", or "capsule drive" for short, is a device for travelling between nearby celestial bodies. Invented in the mid 21st century, they revolutionised interstellar and intrastellar travel by allowing vessels to cover exorbitant distances very quickly; paired with the Linear Displacement System, which allowed near-light speeds when travelling within a system, distances between planets in a celestial cluster were little different than distances between cities on Lost Earth.

In an area of weak gravity brought on by the presence of a Lagrange point -- the point where the gravity between two stellar bodies cancels out -- the capsule drive operates by building a bubble of real space and then projecting that bubble of real space into the fifth dimension, capsule space, which allows the ship to "fold" space in order to reduce the distance travelled to what seems to be several hundred kilometres instead of the actual distances, often upwards of a few light years. The realspace bubble, continuously projected by the ship as it travels through the capsule space tunnel, requires adjustment to ensure it remains within the "extradimensional insertion tunnel", or "capsule space tunnel" as it is more commonly known.

The fifth dimension, like any other dimension, is widely varied with various highs and lows of matter and energy. While in capsule space, these points of energy appear to someone in capsule space as disembodied floating "lights"; their technical term is "capsule-dimensional polar-coordinate bodies", or "PCBs" for short, reflecting the fact that they are actually amalgamations of many billions of fifth-dimensional particles compressed into three-dimensional representations. (PCBs are not to be confused with PBCs, which is an acronym referring to "particle beam cannons".)

When you see a PCB, what you are actually seeing is a large part of the existing universe compressed into a single point; collision with a PCB will thus "tear" the realspace bubble into millions of different real coordinates outside of capsule space. At best this will cause disruption of the capsule space tunnel and dump out the vessel at either the entry or exit point of the capsule space tunnel, though at worst it is possible for this to blow out the capsule space drive and cause the vessel to transition entirely into the extradimensional space, scattering its constituent subatomic particles across several parsecs of real space. Pilots are at least comforted in the fact that this death is presumed to be painless, as the brain and various nerves would be disintegrated long before any pain signals can be transmitted.

The presence of real space being projected into the capsule space dimension distorts and changes the capsule space dimension; though this has no known effects on our known three-dimensional universe, it serves to smooth out a capsule space tunnel over many decades of use, such that often-used capsule space tunnels are significantly easier to navigate than uncharted or infrequently used tunnels. Some scientists liken this effect to the wake left behind craft as they travel through a nebula; a sort of ripple through space, although in the fifth dimension instead of the third.

The capsule space distortion effect also undoes itself over time -- explorers have indicated that tunnels into the Epitaph system are quite distorted compared to most capsule space tunnels into the remaining systems within the Barrens, due to the general disuse of Lagrange points leading to that system. When Epitaph was an active mining site and trade route many years ago, it was considered one of the smoothest capsule space tunnels in existence in the Middle States cluster.

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"Important Note to Purchasers: This is a 100% matter product; in the unlikely event that this merchandise should contact antimatter in any form, a catastrophic explosion will result."

Very nice explanation. Very nice indeed. I would add that, in addition to degradation with time (which would presumeably apply to all jumps in the MS cluster), the reference to the dangerousness of Epitaph include something to do with the vast destruction that occurred during the war, causing heretofore unknown effects in both the celestial bodies in Epitaph, and its surrounding extradimensional space that disrupted the jump routes around Epitaph.

Awesome explanation. I think we should add it too. Only thing that needs to be modified or added, would be the presence of asteroids near the lpoints of capsule tunnels. These asteroids (very common at most lpoints) cause flucuations in the locality and smoothness of the lpoint itself which manifests as changes to the shape of the jump tunnel with time. The main trade routes of the middle states are all asteroid free, and are thus nice simple straight capsule tunnels. Which is essentially why they became the main trade and travel routes. Other lpoints, being unstable for various reasons (asteroids, weak lpoints, etc.) are not normally used. However, they CAN be used, if your capsule drive is powerful enough, and your piloting skills are elite enough. Even then it is a considerable risk compared to piloting through a standard capsule tunnel. Enough so that very very few pilots use the unstable routes. They will not even be normally be marked on navigation charts.

I believe we also are postulating that capsule drives themselves have the technology to 'sense' potential jump routes. The more unstable the route, the more difficult it is to sense, and connected to this issue is the fact that weaker capsule drives are not even able to generate a capsule bubble strong enough to enter the more unstable jump routes. Thus before you plan on doing any exploration of Unstable Space, you will need to upgrade to a decent capsule drive.

This reminds me GrandpaTrout, we may need to jump in her and articulate a little better our theories behind how this is all working. And then get that into game? Otherwise it is all really just in our head (and in the gameplay)