Slipstream Drive

A Slipstream Drive is a type of FTL propulsion system. The main operators are the M'KHarens, though numerous other smaller cultures have developed variants. The Gudersnipe Foundation possess the technology but has never officially fielded a ship using it. There is some speculation that Motherships may use them, but no one knows for certain.

Operation

A slipstream drive shares some traits in common with a Python Reactor, including the use of python particles. However, it does not produce an energy mantle. Instead, python particles are infused into a type of exotic plasma which is projected out the front of the ship. This mass of plasma then pulls the ship along, similar to a Gravitational Mass Displacement Drive. In order to maintain the slipstream, the mass of python plasma must be continually renewed.

A key element to the slipstream drive is that, unlike a python reactor, the ship is not moved partially out of normal space. This allows the vessel to continue using shields, weapons, and sensors just as it would traveling at normal speed. The slipstream also preforms extremely well over long distances, with the same drive design functioning equally well as both interstellar and intergalactic. Slipstream drives are much faster, very quickly reaching FTL Factor 10, and easily cruising into the 20s.

The downside, however, is that the drive has very poor functionality over short distances, being basically unable to travel less than 40 light years at a time(old M'KHaren navigators jokingly reffer to short jumps as "triangle jumps" since traveling a distance less than 40 light years requires the ship to jump to a location 40 light years away, alter course, a jump a second time to their actual destination, completing the points of an obtuse triangle).

Slipstream jumps require extremely precise navigation and calculations, even more so than the time problem experienced by python drives. Like Python drives, the ships continously accelerates during the voyage. But with a minimum operation time of several hours and a minimum jump distance of forty light years, it is imperitive to know when to shut down the drive to drop out of FTL at a desired location.