FORM Drive

The Frame Of Reference Manoeuvrability drive is an essential component of any space vessel that enables interstellar travel at faster-than-light speeds. Its method of propulsion is almost identical to the theoretical Alcubierre Drive, in which a field of negative mass is created around the ship. Space is then contracted in front of the vessel and expanded behind the vessel, moving the space around the ship forward and achieving FTL speeds.

However, this requires an immense amount of energy, especially for much larger vessels. As such, an accompanying advancement powers the FORM drive: alcubium, better known as Exofuel. It is a form of exotic matter that fuels the drive and allows it to perform this otherworldly phenomenon.

The exact composition of the fuel, and the nature of the drive’s fundamental workings, is kept a closely guarded secret by ExoChem, the consortium that manufactures and supplies key drive components to third-party manufacturers. They are the sole creators of such technologies.

Inner Workings

To give you a sense of how ahead of our time a FORM drive really is, it’s like if you taped a quantum computer to a World War One infantry tank.

— Abahd Grissah, member of the Royal Mathematics Club of Hashia

The FORM drive’s inner workings are only understood on a high level. Inside the drive’s mechanical housing is a sphere with a perfectly smooth texture, known as a “FORM core.” These cores have a very odd appearance - they reflect light in an otherworldly gradient of dark purple and green veils, cast against its otherwise blackened exterior. Along its smooth face there are strange inlets, perhaps engravings, cut into the sphere. They are also very dense; a Class 1 core, fit for personal transport vessels, weighs in at 500kg in standard gravity, yet its only the size of a football.

The core is placed inside of the FORM drive enclosure, an engine that enables use of the core via the ship’s control. The drive housing also delivers the Exofuel to the core, in which a controlled reaction occurs that creates the effect of the Alcubierre Drive. When activated, strange distortions of light can be seen surrounding the drive in the same blackened purple and green hues that are on the core’s surface. The distortions take the form of three-dimensional curved volumes that expand and contact. Sometimes tendrils of these distortions seep onto the floor during FORM transit, leading some conspiracy theorists to believe that the FORM core is really a creature. Although, it’s evident that it lacks any form of known life signatures, such as ways of hydrating and keeping itself energised - it is simply powered by the ship’s systems.

The drive also consumes are large amount of hydrogen fuel, since more power is required for the reaction to take place safely and to power the drive’s internal control computers. The reaction creates an ellipsoid-shaped bubble of warped spacetime around the vessel that acts at the safe space that the ship sits in during FTL travel. The size of the bubble can be varied, but its usually set to a fixed size by the ship’s computer.

Functions

Cruise Modes

• Supercruise is the mode that allows for travel between planets within a star system. This mode can go up to speeds measured in hundreds of megametres per second (Mm/s) and has the advantage of being able to move around at incredibly high speeds using the ship’s flight controls. While you have a slow turning circle, it is possible to turn in any direction. Autopilot can be used for larger vessels, but it is recommended you pilot it manually when going shorter distances as pirates - often prey between planets.

• Guided Interstellar Cruise, often shorthanded to “Gic”, is what you use to go between star systems. This mode requires the drive to spool more Exofuel in its buffer, which takes longer to do than a normal supercruise jump*. To handle going between systems, the speeds are increased by a huge margin, roughly tens of petametres per hour, though you’d more likely measure by travel time rather than speed. The “guided” aspect refers to the fact that manual control is not recommended for any interstellar travel as the turning circle is very large, even in smaller ships.

*The act of entering FORM cruise is called “jumping”, referring to the jump in speed rather than the continuous traversal itself.

Safety Features

Contrary to the initially threatening concept of going faster than light, the FORM drive has a vast array of safety mechanisms that prevent death to the pilot during cruise.

Mass Lock and Mass Dampening are two major features that prevent certain death when using the drive. The FORM drive is effected by nearby massive objects, such as moons, planets, and stars, putting extra strain on the core which could lead to a Mass Rupture Event, or MRE. To combat this, Mass Lock makes sure the drive cannot be activated when too close to a planet’s surface. Mass Dampening then makes sure the ship gradually decreases speed when nearing orbital bodies and vice versa. It is possible to disable both if you are under extraneous circumstances, but at the risk of your FORM core overheating and causing heat damage/melting, or via the spacetime field ripping the ship apart.

Emergency Stops allow the pilot to disengage the FORM drive at any speed. Usually, you’re meant to slow down to a safe speed before jumping out of cruise so as to prevent hull damage, the safe speed being anywhere below 1Mm/s. However, you can initiate an emergency stop to jump back into realspace at a manageable speed, though with significant strain on the FORM core and exterior hull damage. Stopping from supercruise only causes mild bends and deformation to the outside, but stopping from interstellar cruise could rupture the hull and cause breaches.

The frameshift anchor effect is an intrinsic characteristic of the FORM core itself that breaks the laws of general relativity, at least on paper. It allows the vessel to safely travel faster than light without the fear of time dilation sending the vessel countless millennia into the future. Some spacefarers believe that core malfunctions sometimes lead to this effect not taking place and is thus the reason why so many explorers mysteriously go missing after jumping into cruise.

Lastly, the frame of reference field itself acts as a barrier between anything in the way of the ship, moving spacetime itself around the ship so that it can phase through small obstacles such as dust and debris. However, it is possible for the ship to collide with larger bodies such as asteroids. As such, the ship will automatically initiate an emergency stop on detection of such as body, preventing a sticky ending.

Interdiction

It is possible to pull a ship out of FORM cruise by interdicting it using a FORM Interdiction Module. This extra device, in addition to the FORM drive’s original housing, uses one’s own core to “extend” their influence to a ship cruising directly in front of them. This consumes a vast amount of Exofuel in a very short amount of time, though it effectively grabs the ship in front of you in an attempt to force them out of cruise. The aggressor must then stay within a certain “angle of incidence” of the target while the drive pulls the victim towards them.

All ships must come with an SVOS capable of assisting the escape of interdictions by law, despite navies and other enforcement fleets using them too. The ship’s HUD will provide an escape vector to allow the victim to reduce the strain on their drive and eventually escape the aggressor’s interdiction attempt. However, they could also throttle back and submit, slowing the ship down to a safe speed before safely jumping back into realspace, with the aggressor within a kilometre of them.