In terms of Phase Gates

[ZeroDevil]

!WARNING: WALL OF TEXT!


I'm just curious about a detail which, I admit, probably won't affect gameplay unless the devs actually make something that goes on AFTER you build the rocket and get into space (such as going to another water planet through a phase gate).

From what I've gathered, at the time of subnautica, people have found a means of colonizing the whole galaxy and get around quickly from star system to star system using a phase gate network, which at first glance sounds almost identical to the jump gate network in another game that I play, namely EVE Online. In EVE, your ship can travel locally within a star system at FTL speeds using a warp drive, but since the ship's reactors and capacitors only put out enough power to maintain warp for a few minutes at a time, not to mention the fact that locking onto a target to warp to in ANOTHER SOLAR SYSTEM would take an enormous amount of energy, to get from one system to another requires the use of a jump gate, or if you're really lucky, a naturally-occurring wormhole going to where you want to go.

Now, here's the basis of my question; in terms of spacecraft in the world of Subnautica, is the situation more or less identical? Can spacecraft travel between star systems under their own power, or are the completely dependant upon the phase gates to get to where they need to go?

If the latter is the case, how did the Aurora get to this star system in the first place? The Aurora's mission was to head to this system and build a phase gate so that colonization of this system could occur, and then after the phase gate was online, to head to this ocean planet and search for survivors of the Degasi, the ship that went missing in the area (also shot down by the Precursor gun) a decade before the events of Subnautica.

Prior to the Aurora getting there, this system had no phase gate. If it had no phase gate, then the Aurora must have gotten there under its own FTL power, provided that the distances involved were on the order of multiple lightyears. In the Aurora's mission statement, we can find the following in-game and on the Subnautica wiki:

"The Aurora will travel from spacedock on the edge of Alterra space, making hundreds of consecutive phasegate jumps through nine different trans-gov authorities, and arrive on the far side of the Ariadne Arm in three months time."

This seems to suggest that there IS indeed a HUGE phase gate network that connects nearly all systems together in the Subnautica world/universe, just like in EVE Online, only instead of spanning a single star cluster, it spans the whole galaxy. This would also suggest that phase gates are an absolute neccessity for interstellar travel, but then we find this, literally all of two sentences later:

"From there the command crew will pilot the ship beyond the final phasegate, arriving in the next solar system approximately 18 months later."

This seems to say that the Aurora made the trip from the last system WITH a phase gate to the system this ocean planet is in, which does NOT have a phase gate. The Sunbeam, the ill-fated rescue ship that attemps to rescue the player, also was in this system and managed to get to the planet in a matter of days. For the sake of arugment, I'll assume, firstly that the planet that we're on in this game is orbiting a star in a stellar nursery, a type of star cluster with many, many young stars inside of it in relative close proximity to each other (real-life NASA measurements place the distance between stars in some real stellar nurseries as being as close as 1 lightyear appart from one another), and then another scenario where the distances are more like what we'd find local to around Earth in real life, in which the closest star over is around 4.6 lightyears out.

Now for some math:

Assuming 1 lightyear of distance (close-proximity stellar nursery distance) between the last system with a phase gate the Aurora jumped into, and this system that, prior to the Aurora showing up, had NO phase gate, and the travel time of 18 months (assumed Earth time), coming to 1.5 years, or 547.5 days (547 days and 12 hours), would mean that the Aurora was traveling SLOWER than light under its own power, going at around 66% to 67% of the speed of light (light goes at 1 lightyear per year. The Aurora covers the same distance in 1.5 years. 1 / 1.5 ~= 0.667 or 66.7%).

Now, this is assuming stellar nursery distances, which are REALLY close together. The thing is though that the skybox in Subnautica at night, despite being dominated by the planet's twin moons, does not appear to be similar to a stellar nursery, which would have giant columns or clouds of gasses and stars, hundreds upon hundreds of lightyears long, dominating the night sky.

So, let's assume, again, for the sake of argument, that distance are more comparable to something you'd find closer to home, say, 4 to 5 lightyears. For the sake of an even number, and to not give the Aurora too much credit, despite the ship's overall large engines and powerpant, I'll sum it up to a 4 lightyear distance.

If this is the case, the Aurora would have made the 4 lightyear distance, which normally takes light the obvious 4 years of time, in 1.5 years. Going twice the speed of light would cover this distance in 2 years. The Aurora, in this case, would have done it in 1-and-a-half years. so, 4 lighyears over 1.5 years comes to around 2.667, or roughly 2 and 2/3 the speed of light.

So, in all, in the case of a stellar nursery grade of distance, it would mean that the Aurora made the slower-than-light trip at a significant fraction of the speed of light from a system with a phase gate to the next system over without a phase gate, which would imply that phase gates are required in each and every system for practical interstellar travel, which is identical to the case in EVE online where starships may be able to fly inside a system at FTL speed, but don't have the power requirements to fly from one system to another on their own, and every time a new gate needs building in an unexplored system, one had to wait at least a few years for a slower-than-light ship, with a folded-up jump gate on board, to make the long, slow trip from one system to another at a large fraction of the speed of light to set up a new gate and link it into the network, which in the case of the universe of Subnautica, was the Aurora's job.

In the case of a larger distance between stars, if the star that the ocean planet orbits around is NOT in a stellar nursery and has greater distances involved, then the Aurora and other ships like the Sunbeam and Degasi may very well have their own onboard FTL drives but getting from one system to another WITHOUT the use of a phase gate might just take a long time, to the point where large-scale interstellar commerce might not be practical or at least cost-effective without them. In this situation, it would more close to the universe of the original Mass Effect trilogy where starships were perfectly capable of FTL travel on their own without an exterior device, but going the extra-long distance around a whole galaxy would not be practical for interstellar empires. In the cause of Subnautica, it might be even more pronounced with space fairing vessels not being able to travel very fast at all between systems, still requiring a year or two to get between systems at FTL speeds. In this situation, the phase gates are the primary means of FTL travel because they speed things up considerably from a period of a few years to a few months. In this same situation though, the ships still have their own FTL drives, but the drives are more of a backup system in the case of smaller ships like the Sunbeam and Degasi in case of an emergency where a phase gate is offline or unavailable, or as a standard means of propulsion for a construction ship like the Aurora when it's travelling to a new system to set up a new phase gate.


The short of it; it all depends on the distance. If the stars in this part of the galaxy, in the universe of Subnautica, are only around 1 to 2 lightyears apart, then it would make sense to use a slower-than-light nuclear detonation/plasma stream/"Daedalus-Drive" system to propel the craft to high-end slower-than-light speeds to make the long trip to set up a new gate, but in the case of longer distances, a relatively slow, but still faster-than-light onboard drive system would be required for ships if they either, A: are dealing with a situation where a phase gate is offline or unavailabe, or B: are a construction vessel, like the Aurora, travelling to a system with no phase gate in order to set one up.


So, my question now is really this; how far apart are the systems involved here? How far did the Aurora travel inbetween the system it last left, which had a phase gate, to this new system which did not?

[Minimum wage Kobold]

I stoped reading after your third paragraph. You may be looking into this way too much.

[redeyedraven]

Originally posted by ShadowTheDragon:

You may be looking into this way too much.

This.

The entire thing about Aurora's mission is merely a setup, an explanation for why the Aurora was close to that planet she eventually crashed on.

[dancle]

Originally posted by ShadowTheDragon:

I stoped reading after your third paragraph. You may be looking into this way too much.

Um, ya. I really think you are overthinking the backstory to kickstart the game. It makes no impact overall on the gameplay, so why even think about it?

[ZeroDevil]

Originally posted by danielDaBoss:

Originally posted by ShadowTheDragon:

I stoped reading after your third paragraph. You may be looking into this way too much.

Um, ya. I really think you are overthinking the backstory to kickstart the game. It makes no impact overall on the gameplay, so why even think about it?

Because I'm a lore nut and like to get in deep into the story of a game, backstory included. This IS the "story and lore" section of the discussion board; this IS the place to discuss the game's lore. Gameplay, in this subforum, is irrelevant; I don't know why you'd even bring it up.

[Syndicake ☠]

It's obvious they have some means of travelling FTL, probably by accelerating conventionally powered by a dark matter drive (zero point energy?)

But the aurora was being sent to construct a phase gate, presumably large enough for smaller ships. Maybe the requirements for FTL are very expensive or require a large starship. Smaller freighters might be entirely reliant on phase gates.

[ZeroDevil]

Originally posted by Syndicake ☠:

It's obvious they have some means of travelling FTL, probably by accelerating conventionally powered by a dark matter drive (zero point energy?)

But the aurora was being sent to construct a phase gate, presumably large enough for smaller ships. Maybe the requirements for FTL are very expensive or require a large starship. Smaller freighters might be entirely reliant on phase gates.

that's the sort of thing I'm trying to figure out. Is this an EVE Online scenario where interstellar travel is completely impossible without phase gates, is it sort of like in Star Wars where larger and/or more advanced ships can go FTL on their own but certain smaller ships, like most production TIE Fighters can't and require another ship (or in this case a gate) to carry them to where they need to go, or is it a situation where ANY ship can go FTL on its own, but going FTL on its own still takes a long time and thus the gates are a means of speeding the ships up to the point where a single instellar voyage would take, say a few minutes via gate travel versus a few days with a ship flying under its own power?

[Recursion]

There is a great force in all games, movies, and literature, called PLOT. the great force of PLOT can only be beaten when the game/movie/book is coming to an end.

[Macrocheira kaempferi]

waaall of text

[Venrez]

The game does take some elements from EvE Online via the Phase Gate Network, but think of that as a commercial development for the greater masses to use once they are established. It is mentioned numerous times in the lore that many different Mega-Corporations control various areas of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The Aurora itself was on a 30-something year mission to establish a new phase gate.

Massive starships like the Aurora can achieve FTL but not for prolonged lengths of time nor at "true" FTL speeds. As stated, it still takes them quite a while to progress past the frontier and then establish new gates. But it is definitely faster than anything we can theorize using conventional science and technology.

- - -

What I dont understand, interestingly, is why they dont build a functioning Phase Gate and send it off into deep space on its own like a robotic probe. Once it reaches where they'd like it to be, they simply deploy it and they can now teleport there.

We can map distant stars and plot accurate trajectories for probes over immense distances. No reason they couldnt do the same, especially given their more advanced technology.

No need for an entire capital ship crew to be there.

[or0b0ur0s]

The existence and nature of the Sunbeam's involvement raises a lot of questions too.

Her captain introduces her as a "trading ship". But if this is some kind of frontier (with no Phase Gates and "outside" Federation Space as he says), why would they be out here?

This strongly implies that Phase Gates have a one-to-one relationship, like the alien gates on 4546B. Which means the Sunbeam was traveling at "slow-FTL" or STL speed between the two nearest gates.

An argument that there's no between-gate FTL would be that no trading mission is worth years of travel between gates, so there must be a faster way, or the Sunbeam wouldn't be there. You couldn't possibly be confident enough of the economic conditions at your destination to risk the expense of the trip if it was going to take that long. Your cargo might be worthless by the time you get there, even if it isn't perishable.

On the other hand, the amount of time it takes the Sunbeam to cross the solar system from "the far side" of it as the captain says, argues for STL, including a massive delta-V dump to get going int the right direction for a planetary rendesvous they didn't plan on in the first place.

Add in the way the Sunbeam is so tiny (what cargo coudl they possibly be carrying in that tin can that would be worth trading over interstellar distances?), and I think we may just be feeling around the edges of a Good Old Fashioned Plot Hole.

The Aurora, with limited-FTL or plain-old STL engines could make sense, either as a terraformer, colony ship, mining expedition, or Phase Gate builder. As corroborated by the mission time lengths indicated in the first "codes" PDA. Forty-odd months? Nearly 4 years? Sounds right, even if they did get to 4546B's system somewhat fast and early after leaving the Phase Gate. This could be accounted for by time dilation at high STL speeds. Maybe the 40-odd month mission time is actually a couple HUNDRED months objective time back in the Federation.

The Sunbeam, on the other hand? A too-small "trading ship" happens to be within a few tens of AU just randomly, more than a year away from any Phase Gates? I can't figure out yet how that makes sense.

Lastly, I'd like to point out I haven't read any speculation, let alone explanations, for the funny glowing blue circular pads on both the Aurora and Sunbeam. On the latter, they're positioned on what appear to be engine nacelles, as if they were part of the drive system (or A drive system, anwyay). But on the Aurora they're far forward, away from the obviously-STL thrusters. They seem far too big to be exotic maneuvering thrusters of some kind, and their placement on the Sunbeam doesn't support that, either (they'd be further forward, like on the Aurora if that were the case). If anything, this weird design consistency supports the limited-FTL theory, since I can't explain what these prominent exterior structures are if not that.

[ZeroDevil]

@or0b0ur0s, But even at low-FTL speeds, say twice the speed of light, it'd take, assuming this planet is 1 AU away from its star, 4 and a quarter minutes, or 4 min 15 sec, for the Sunbeam to get from a position directly over the star to directly over the planet, traveling in a straight line, as light takes 8.5 minutes to get from the Sun to Earth IRL (which is a distance of 1 Astronomical Unit). Depending on big the solar system is, I'll use Neptune's orbital radius of around 30 AU as an example, it'd take longer. To go 30 AU at the speed of light would be 30 * 8.5 == 255 minutes or 4.25 hours, not including acceleration and deceleration. Now, if you go twice the speed of light, it'd only be half that time: 2 hours, 7 minutes, 30 seconds. BUT, if they're on the "far end" of the system then the distance is doubled, so if they were about 60 AU away, at twice the speed of light it'd take them, still, roughly 4 hours and 15 minutes to get there from the end of the solary system, and the first message that you got from the Sunbeam was prior to them even being in said system.

Complicating things is that we don't know how long a day and night cycle is on the planet we're stuck on. We could either take the fast day/night cycle as means of speeding up the gameplay to make it feel as though months have gone by, but there have been exoplanets, IRL, discovered with day/night cycles that are much, MUCH shorter than on Earth. Also, depending on how you play, you could wind up getting all the Sunbeam messages on the comms within the span of 4 hours, making the "slower FTL" reasoning that much more valid. Also, it says that the Aurora's journey was several months long, but that was traversing a big portion of the whole GALAXY, not just from one system to another. This journey presumably required the use of phase gates.

It could be, because of power requirements required for FTL travel, that smaller ships, like Sunbeam and Degasi before it, CAN fly at low FTL speeds under their own power, but huge capital ships like the Aurora cannot, at least not without the use of phase gates. So it could be that light commerce did commense at FTL speeds before the invention of phase gates, but used smaller ships over a period of several years going from one star system to the other, like the wagon trails of the wild west; it was possible to traverse the distance, but it took a few years.

Then the phase gate gets invented, the equivalent to the railroad I suppose, allowing for huge vehicles, like the Aurora, to go the same distance despite not being FTL-capable themselves. Smaller vessels still exist and can go FTL on their own because their small size demands less power (for what I"m assuming is a warp drive or its equivalent), but large vessels used for large-scale interstellar commerce require the use of phase gates as they're simply too large (too much mass) for current-generation FTL engines to allow for them to go at FTL speed under their own power.

At least that's what I'm getting from this.

[or0b0ur0s]

Originally posted by ZeroDevil:

@or0b0ur0s, But even at low-FTL speeds, say twice the speed of light, it'd take, assuming this planet is 1 AU away from its star, 4 and a quarter minutes, or 4 min 15 sec, for the Sunbeam to get from a position directly over the star to directly over the planet, traveling in a straight line, as light takes 8.5 minutes to get from the Sun to Earth IRL (which is a distance of 1 Astronomical Unit). Depending on big the solar system is, I'll use Neptune's orbital radius of around 30 AU as an example, it'd take longer. To go 30 AU at the speed of light would be 30 * 8.5 == 255 minutes or 4.25 hours, not including acceleration and deceleration. Now, if you go twice the speed of light, it'd only be half that time: 2 hours, 7 minutes, 30 seconds. BUT, if they're on the "far end" of the system then the distance is doubled, so if they were about 60 AU away, at twice the speed of light it'd take them, still, roughly 4 hours and 15 minutes to get there from the end of the solary system, and the first message that you got from the Sunbeam was prior to them even being in said system.

I don't have it handy, but I thought the Devs specified exactly what level of time acceleration is used in the game - relative to real-time. Which means the Sunbeam's journey from first "Hey is anyone alive down there?" message to landing attempt took over a week or longer, not the hours it took in playtime. Don't get me wrong, that's still STUPENDOUS sublight speeds in terms of our present-day spacecraft, but nowhere near the speed of light, since you're very right about even a solar system twice as wide as Sol's is still only a matter of light-hours, maybe a couple of light-days wide.

It also means the planet's day/night cycle is exaggerated for game purposes, but in reality isn't nearly as far from Earth's cycle as it seems to us, playing the game. This is corroborated by the food & water depletion rates. A real human being doesn't get hungry again in 10 minutes after eating, nor does he risk starvation if he doesn't eat every 40 minutes or so, or even once a day, regardless of what planet he's on.

If anything, I think the obvious time-acceleration of the game showing how long the days actually are (despite how they seem to us), and the length of time it takes the Sunbeam to show up from its first message, proves they either don't have FTL aboard or can't use it to get from out-system to 4546B for some unknown reason (lack of power or fuel, physics restrictions on FTL within a star's gravity well, etc.).

[ZeroDevil]

@or0b0ur0s, is there any way to contact the devs on this?

[Syndicake ☠]

Originally posted by or0b0ur0s:

The existence and nature of the Sunbeam's involvement raises a lot of questions too.

Her captain introduces her as a "trading ship". But if this is some kind of frontier (with no Phase Gates and "outside" Federation Space as he says), why would they be out here?

I always assumed they were dodgy, maybe smugglers, maybe just trying to evade paying taxes or fees for crossing transcorp space. What better way of avoiding toll gates on the highway than cutting off road through an unknown system?

[MasterHowl]

Originally posted by Syndicake ☠:

Originally posted by or0b0ur0s:

The existence and nature of the Sunbeam's involvement raises a lot of questions too.

Her captain introduces her as a "trading ship". But if this is some kind of frontier (with no Phase Gates and "outside" Federation Space as he says), why would they be out here?

I always assumed they were dodgy, maybe smugglers, maybe just trying to evade paying taxes or fees for crossing transcorp space. What better way of avoiding toll gates on the highway than cutting off road through an unknown system?

It's strongly implied/inferred that the phase gate technology used only works when there's a gate at both ends. If the location we're at on 4546B is somewhere "out in the boonies" (to use the technical term) then there would be few explanations for the Sunbeam to be here other than if they had a desire to not even use the phase gates. Them being smugglers is certainly one of them, but the sympathy they convey through their messages leads me to believe this to not be the case. Instead, the small size of the ship not using a widely used transportation system like the gates and risking a longer, more dangerous route without them leads me to believe the phase gates actually function on a toll system from whatever corporation owns them (likely Alterra, at least for this section of the galaxy) and the crew of the Sunbeam just couldn't afford to use them.

Originally posted by or0b0ur0s:

Lastly, I'd like to point out I haven't read any speculation, let alone explanations, for the funny glowing blue circular pads on both the Aurora and Sunbeam. On the latter, they're positioned on what appear to be engine nacelles, as if they were part of the drive system (or A drive system, anwyay). But on the Aurora they're far forward, away from the obviously-STL thrusters. They seem far too big to be exotic maneuvering thrusters of some kind, and their placement on the Sunbeam doesn't support that, either (they'd be further forward, like on the Aurora if that were the case). If anything, this weird design consistency supports the limited-FTL theory, since I can't explain what these prominent exterior structures are if not that.

I posit those are the mechanisms used to deploy a kind of "mass effect" field around space vessels that allow a bubble to be created of low/zero mass which facilitates FTL travel. In Einstein's E=mc^2 equation, the more 'mass' an object has, the more energy required to reach light speed. In order for FTL to be possible, there must be some way to manipulate mass and a bubble of low/zero mass surrounding a vessel would be the easiest way.