Sci-fi Tropes FAQ

Logistical mysteries

Faster-than-light (FTL) travel

Spaceships travel faster than light using “manifold collapse”, which creates a tunnel from one point in space to another. It takes a lot of time and energy to create these tunnels, which can only be used once per trip. Ships that have manifold collapse drives are rare, and most FTL travel across the Alliance is between space stations in orbit around key planets.

Manifold collapse takes longer for larger objects and across wider distances, but it is always faster than conventional space travel.

The manifold collapse drive on the Ardent is a state-of-the-art model, run by a dedicated onboard AI (T/OM) and powered by devoted reactors. This makes the Ardent the fastest and largest FTL craft built by the Alliance thus far: it is uniquely efficient, and the peak of Alliance craft in this regard. Even so, it can take several weeks to travel between assignments in different star systems – and if the Ardent wanted to return to Alliance space, a direct trip would take months.

Manned FTL travel to places outside of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is almost entirely unknown. Probes and drones have been launched beyond the Belt of Tiamat, but the distances involved mean reports from those experiments are few and far between.

Teleportation

The Alliance uses manifold collapse for teleportation. Personal “relocators”, like those issued to Ardent staff, can transport one individual along with their possessions, while larger stationary teleporters can move groups and cargo.

Teleportation is considered to be “short-range” if it is between adjacent spaceships, a ship in orbit and the surface of the planet it is orbiting, or between two points on the same planet. The accuracy and safety of teleportation dwindles rapidly beyond these ranges, and so is avoided. Teleportation is extremely reliable – when it’s done properly.

Energy fields can be set up to prevent teleportation into the area within the field, like a building or a spacecraft. It is much more difficult to prevent teleportation out of a specific area.

The matter that emerges from a teleporter is verifiably the same matter that entered it in the same configuration, merely displaced in space through a wormhole. There is no duplication of minds or bodies involved.

Communications

Interstellar messaging takes place via manifold collapse – data packets can be sent faster than light to information relays in Alliance-controlled space, which pass the data on by conventional local means. Messages can be blocked and intercepted at the relay end.

The Ardent “pings” its location and status back to the Alliance at the start of each day aboard, along with a report on any vital mission updates. The Alliance reciprocates with updates from home: these may include news from Alliance planets, scientific reports, specific information requests, and/or messages from the crew’s loved ones.

Contact with the Alliance is limited to emergencies, essentials and the daily bulletin(s), so to conserve time and energy – sending data by manifold takes a fraction of the power needed to send a ship, but it is still an intensive process for the ship’s computer. 

Universal translators

The Alliance uses universal translation software, which is installed on an internal cybernetic implant or an unobtrusive device attached to one’s clothing. The software translates what is spoken and what is heard simultaneously and in real time, allowing for different species to communicate through natural language.

The highly advanced computer systems of the Alliance can decipher newly encountered languages by using universal concepts and context clues as a reference. The preparations for any first contact scenario include the uploading of language samples to the Ardent’s database prior to any face-to-face meeting, so that both parties can understand each other.

While translators are highly resilient to electronic interference, they can fail or be jammed by energy fields, electromagnetic anomalies and certain neurological symptoms. They cannot translate encoded language or the vocalisations of non-sentient beings.

Energy and resources

The most advanced Alliance technology is powered by “mutual annihilation reactors”, which are fuelled by antimatter. Nuclear fusion is used for bulk energy generation and storage. “Power cells” are compact antimatter batteries, which can provide the short bursts of energy demanded by certain advanced tools.

FABREP, “fabrication-replication” technology, can be used to create a wide variety of simple substances and forms – everything from food and water to housing and clothing can be created in a FABREP machine at the push of a button, allowing the Alliance to shelter and support so many citizens across its planets.

Complex and exotic materials – especially those used in spacecraft – are in high demand, as they cannot be reproduced by FABREP and must be extracted or manufactured by other means. These include, but are not limited to: animal byproducts, living tissue, radioactive materials, and the RC (“Reactive Chamber”) gas that itself fills FABREP machines and facilitates their processes.

Environmental consciousness

Not all technology is clean or sustainable, but the Alliance has a strong preference for environmental consciousness and renewable tech. The potential harms of polluting practices and unsustainable technologies are closely monitored, but there are exemptions under Alliance law for protected cultural practices, cases of overwhelming benefit to a population, or emergencies.

If the harm to a planet or ecosystem is judged to be negligible and/or manageable, the Alliance will sanction the use of less sustainable technologies. For example, the extractive gas-mining processes of Marzion IX are permitted because the gas giant does not support life, and in any case is so massive that it would take thousands of years of extraction for any impact to become apparent.

Science and technology

Forcefields and energy shields

Forcefields work by spreading incoming energy across their surface, preventing it from touching or affecting the protected space or person. They can block projectiles (including energy beams) and light, but they are permeable by gasses and slow-moving liquids.

Large stationary forcefield projectors can cover spaceships, encampments and buildings, while personal forcefield projectors (“shields”) protect the single individual wearing them.

Forcefields interfere with manifold collapse technology, and vice versa. Personal shields are inactive when you are moving through a teleporter, and spaceships cannot prepare for or undergo FTL travel and maintain a forcefield at the same time.

Weaponry

Hand-held projectile weapons fire magnetically confined plasma packets. These projectiles are short-ranged and slow-moving compared to traditional projectile ammunition, but are the only rounds that can reliably penetrate modern armour and energy shields.

[In-universe, the physical darts ejected from blasters are spent casings for the plasma packets. They can be recovered, but must be replenished before they can be fired again. This is the lore justification for dart sweeps and ammo drop-offs, which are conducted for safety and supply reasons OoC.]

Superweapons

The Alliance has experienced the wholesale destruction of a moon by a THRONE weapon once, during the Battle of Glittering Gulf. While the Alliance theoretically could create weapons of similar power, their development and use is strictly prohibited in all circumstances.

The creation of planet-destroying weapons is otherwise limited by such technology being large, expensive and impossible to hide; only THRONE and the Alliance can credibly claim the capacity to make them, while SHADOW may have access to superweapons left over from MOTHER’s stockpiles.

Artificial intelligence

T/OMs (Task/Observation Matrices, pronounced like the name “Tom”) are software artificial intelligences that require large specialised computer processing arrays to run. They’re typically interacted with via holograms, or through drones and probes. They are often eccentric in personality and highly specialised in function, but they are considered to be fully sentient and are legal citizens of the Alliance.

Anthroids are synthetic biomechanical humanoids. While their brains are fully synthetic, they are analogous to humans in operation, with neurons and a nervous system made of circuitry and conductive polymers rather than organic tissue. Despite their biomechanical nature, Anthroids are no more susceptible to effects that target technology (such as electromagnetic pulses) than other Alliance species, nor are they particularly resistant to biological threats.

The synthetic lifeforms of THRONE are uniquely advanced. They vary wildly in form and function, and are poorly understood by Alliance researchers – but they are certainly as intelligent and as willful as any sentient biological entity.

Virtual realities and digital worlds

Interactive holographic technologies exist that can generate continuous multi-sensory experiences, presenting a simulacrum of reality with 99% fidelity – but these systems are always recognisable as digital recreations. As far as the Alliance is aware, no simulation exists that is indistinguishable from actual reality.

Superstructures

Geostationary space stations and other orbital structures exist, and have been constructed across many planets in the Alliance and beyond it. They include information relays for transmitting data, orbital gates that allow FTL travel between planets, dockyards, defensive platforms, and the like.

No superstructure built or observed by the Alliance is larger than the Earth’s moon. Installations that approach this size are exorbitantly expensive and incredibly difficult to build and maintain, with little benefit compared to smaller spacecraft and satellite networks.

Two superstructures are known: the Successor’s Estate in the Spur region of the galaxy, built by MOTHER and subsequently controlled by SHADOW, and Geostation Kessler, commandeered from SHADOW corsairs by the Alliance. Neither was created by the Alliance, and the former was constructed from a hollowed-out moon (so cannot be said to be wholly artificial).

Terraforming

The Alliance has the technology to alter a planet’s ecosphere enough to support life without further assistance. Doing so is complicated, long, expensive and delicate – and so true terraforming is rare, with most proposals bound up in years of bureaucratic procedure.

Sultonia is considered a shining example of Alliance terraformation working as intended. It must be noted, however, that the young planet already had many of the pre-conditions necessary to eventually support life on its own – it may be said that the Alliance merely sped up the process.

Matters of the mind and body

Medical science

Surgical and medicinal technology is extremely advanced, and Alliance medical professionals are trained to treat acute and life-threatening injuries suffered by any Alliance species. Wounds can be healed in minutes, new organs manufactured, and complex surgical procedures conducted with minimal discomfort in field hospital conditions.

Access to care is enshrined in Alliance law, but resources and expertise can be limited on remote and/or developing planets.

Chronic illnesses and disabilities exist, and are caused by a multitude of factors. Alliance care always prioritises quality of life and personal liberty, and citizens have many options for managing their health as they see fit.

Reproduction between different species

Genetic therapies based on stem cells (and their equivalents in other species) allow parents of differing species to produce offspring together. The child is always the same species as one of its parents – hybrids are not possible, and there is no known way to directly bridge that gap between evolutionarily distinct lifeforms from different planets.

Life, death and cloning

Consciousness is distinct and irreproducible. It has thus far proven impossible to move a mind out of one body and into another.

Cloning is possible, though closely regulated. People produced via cloning are new individuals, with no mental or physical connection to the person they were cloned from (except for their genetic similarity as homozygous “twins”).

Medical interventions can reproduce tissue and repair damage, but attempts to turn back the aging process always suffer diminishing returns. Alliance citizens live on average twice the average pre-contact lifespan of their respective species.

All beings in the Alliance age and die. This includes synthetic beings: Anthroids and T/OMs, though long-lived, will eventually succumb to information decay.

Telepathy and telekinesis

No species yet encountered by the Alliance has shown any ability to communicate telepathically.  Technology – like the scanners used by DIPLO agents – exists that can “read” emotions and intent, using observable phenomena like microexpressions, bodily tension, electrical impulses and pheromones.

Likewise, no species encountered by the Alliance is capable of moving objects with their minds alone. Manipulating objects without physical contact is possible technologically, via the use of magnetic pulses and energy fields. FABREP machines and Alliance freight systems use this to arrange particles and organise/secure cargo, respectively.

Mind control and memory alteration

Direct manipulation of someone’s consciousness and memories is extremely complicated, and not something that can be done on an ad-hoc basis. The risk of brain damage is high, and false memories or impulses that are too far-fetched can be recognised and rejected by the mind’s “immune system” of personality.

Preservation of the mind is as legally sacred within the Alliance as preservation of the body. Research into technologies in this area is therefore limited, save for study of preventative measures.

Cosmic questions

Other universes and alternate dimensions

Evidence for “parallel” or “alternate” dimensions is scarce. Manifold collapse tunnels used for FTL travel and local teleportation technically exist outside of conventional space-time, allowing researchers to observe the universe from “outside”, but there has been no conclusive observation of any universe(s) other than the one we inhabit.

Faith, ascension and godhood

While science has advanced massively, the origin of the observable universe has resisted scientific analysis. There are many unanswered questions (and few definitive answers) about the nature of consciousness, leaving room for speculation about what might happen to sentient beings after death.

Many individuals find comfort and purpose through faith, spiritual practice and practical philosophies. Traditional and newly-formed beliefs are abundant across the galaxy, such as the Vari ideology of “redundantism”.

Transcending physical reality – as a disembodied intelligence, god-like consciousness, or the like – is not within the capabilities of any discovered species or technology.

Time travel

Time travel is understood to be impossible, according to the laws of causality.

Manifold collapse travel occurs outside of conventional space-time, but you always emerge from the wormhole farther ahead in time than the point in time that you entered it.