Hyperspace
Hyperspace, also called witchspace, is a dimension through which hyperdrive/witch-space drive equipped ships can travel instantaneously from one star system to the other. There are limits to the maximum distance that can be traversed in one jump.
In the Oolite fanfiction, a hyperspace jump leaves behind a temporary blue hypercloud, which can be used to track the target system, and through which additional ships can jump to the same system, not using their own Quirium fuel.
Entry and exit of hyperspace are indicated by an unpleasant feeling, which experienced hyperspace travellers become used to.
Hyperspace travel looks like travelling through a tunnel with characteristic white rings around it.
One arrives at a witchpoint beacon at the far end (a variety of buoy).
Contents
Legends
It is rumoured that Thargoids are able to navigate inside hyperspace.
Legend has it that the results of a misjump can be disastrous, varying from ending up somewhere in the middle of a sun or interstellar space, to travelling through time, or even returning to normal space turned inside out! A forced misjump is the last resort of the hopeless.
History of Discovery
There are at least 3 different schools with views on Oolite in-game History. The Syncretists and the Purists have quite different accounts of how it was discovered (see History for a purist history and GalCop for a syncretist account of how Witchspace was discovered). The Pragmatics don't want to be tied down with a backstory - and just play the game! See Lore for an exposition of the various philosophies.
A Theory
A witchspace connection consists of a fifth-dimensional pseudocylindrical passage, or intertube, connecting a blue hole created by a witchspace drive to an invisible virtual white hole in the destination system. Fuel expenditure is proportional to the realspace length of the intertube.
The term witchspace refers specifically to the strange, magical and somewhat unlikely visual artefacts encountered while travelling the virtual length of the intertube. This virtual length is at once constant and proportional to the square of the realspace length, which makes perfect sense in five-dimensional bogometrics.
A witchspace malfunction occurs when the metric of the intertube is not perfectly balanced, which can happen due to hardware failure (slightly bent wire, build-ups of dust, or uneven load due to centrifugal force) in the witchspace drive’s field generator coils. This causes an “unravelling” of the field which dumps the traveller somewhere along the realspace path of the intertube; it is more likely to do so in the presence of large quantities of radioactive isotopes, incidentally of the very type used by the thargoids in their unrelated and badly-understood interstellar drives. Unfortunately, the only way to detect an unravelling condition is to enter the blue hole and see whether you end up where you expected to. This explains the importance of regular [[Maintenance].
Witchdrive fuel is used to create the entire intertube immediately before entering it, rather than for actual travel; for this reason, none is recovered in the case of “falling out” of the intertube Jens Ayton (2007).
Other theories of what Witchspace is
- Witchspace: possible to exit?
- Witchspace Wake
- Explanations Wanted
- Canon question about the Witchdrive.
Hyperspace/Witchspace Drive
The third drive of your space ship (if it is big and new enough!). Maximum range is 7ly, which radically affects the geography of each galaxy - creating The Great Rift in Galaxy 7 for example, an 'island' of 30 systems cut off from the others by a jump of more than 7ly. This range can be altered (reduced) by OXP.
The other drives are the Engine/Main Drive & the Torus Jump Drive.
OXPs & gaming links
Witchdrive Engines
- Single-Use Witchdrive by ocz
- Hyperdrives by Redspear: size, tech level & equipment (eg the Extra Energy Unit) all affect countdown time & maximum distance of witchspace jumps
- Breakable Witch Drive: OXP allowing your Witch Drive to be disabled by a direct hit in combat
- Ship Configuration OXP introduces another 3 classes of Witchdrive engine. A very complex .oxp.
Fuel/Misjump Issues
- Fuel Collector OXP by vsfc: scoops up fuel in witchspace v-e-e-ry slo-o-owly!
- Interstellar help OXP by Commander McLane: get a refuel from a passing stranger!
- Misjump Analyser by Eric Walch: supposedly allows avoidance of misjumps
- Wormhole restoration OXP by Commander McLane et al (2018): to re-open your witch-hole and escape, destroy the Thargoid hole-jammers!
Extra Fuel Tanks
- Duplex Fuel Tank by Timer: super expensive but easily rechargeable (even by sun-skimming!).
- Extra Fuel Tanks by Smivs: expensive & need to buy fuel specially to recharge, takes up no space in your ship
- Fuel Tank by Ramirez: takes up a missile pylon slot (one-use only)
- Internal Fuel Tank by Stranger: takes up 5TC of cargo space (one-use only)
Changing the jumps
- BackGround Set gives a whole new experience to the jump experience. There are two guite different versions - some prefer the earlier (1.10.9).
- Advanced Navigation Computer by Cmd. Cheyd and PhantorGorth
- Manual Witchspace Alignment by phkb
- Emergency Witchspace Initiator by Cmd. Cheyd
- Countdown to Zero by Spara
More varieties of Thargoid
- Thargoid for list of links
Dealing with Thargoids
- Dealing with Thargoids Tips on how to!
Facts about wormholes
Here are some facts about the way wormholes work in Oolite:
- The radius of the wormhole depends on the mass of the ship. This means that small ships create small wormholes and big ships create big ones. Therefore, it makes good sense to consider that a Cobra MKI generating a 1LY wormhole uses less fuel than an OSE Juggernaught generating a 1LY wormhole.
- The lifetime of the wormhole depends on the mass of the ship. You can verify this immediately if you buy a Wormhole Scanner and sample-scan a few wormholes. You will find that a Cobra MKI generates a wormhole that collapses in, say, 1.5 minutes, but an Anaconda created one collapses in 5 minutes or more (the numbers are indicative only and not necessarily accurate). This may be interpreted as another indication that a lot more fuel was used for the creation of the Anaconda wormhole.
- The mass of the ship does not affect the time taken to travel inside the wormhole. A Mamba escort entering a wormhole opened by its mother will arrive to destination together with the mother. Another_Commander.
Hyperspace or Witchspace?
| The confusion about the hyperspace/witchspace terminology comes from the original Acorn version manual and novella. Ian Bell & David Braben used hyperspace as their term of choice in the Manual. Robert Holdstock used witchspace by habit in his novella: it's found in many of his other SF novels, if my memory serves me correctly. Subsequent versions of the game's in-game text and documents have mixed both. It's now reached the point that Mr Braben's later versions of the game mix both terms pretty randomly. |
| (KZ9999 (2009)) |
Whilst some individuals have rigidly stuck with the use of either one term or the other - and some have used one for the tunnel and the other for the region where one is stranded in a misjump - overall the use of the two terms is utterly confused, which will undoubtedly reflect their use amongst the billions of people in the thousands of systems of the 8 galaxies!
Fiction
- Derelict by Ganelon
Links
- Witchpoint
- Force Misjump
- Inconsistent Language - Witchspace or Hyperspace? (2015)
- Inconsistent Language - Witchspace or Hyperspace? (2007)
- Ideally Imperfect OOniverse: Calibrated Hyperspace jumps. BB Thread (2017-8): why do traders/convoys make their way out to the Witchpoint beacon and jump from there?
- Why do temperatures, energy banks & shields not reset in the witchspace tunnel? (2010)
Oolite Equipment
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