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CRMcNeill
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 Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:47 pm Post subject: What Is Subspace? |
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So, we know what Hyperspace is (in general), but subspace is only mentioned with regards to communication (subspace radio). Has anyone ever done anything else with it? Can a ship physically transition into subspace? If so, what would be the utility of that?
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Has subspace been mentioned? Is it in the films anywhere? Or are we mixing a bit of Star Trek here. |
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Whill
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| Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 3:50 pm Post subject: Re: What Is Subspace? |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | So, we know what Hyperspace is (in general), but subspace is only mentioned with regards to communication (subspace radio). Has anyone ever done anything else with it? Can a ship physically transition into subspace? |
I remember first seeing reference to subspace radios in WEG SW 1E and I figured they just lifted the idea from Star Trek's subspace. In the Star Wars EU (not films), subspace radios allow virtually instantaneous FTL communication but the range is more limited than galactic holonet transmissions using hyperspace (which is much more expensive and pressumably what the Emperor used to communicate with Vader in the asteroid field in TESB).
I've always envisioned subspace as another dimension, coterminous with respect to real space just like hyperspace. I imagined that subspace may have been used for physical travel by one or more societies before their discovery of hyperspace, but as an archaic form of FTL travel, it was much slower than hyperspace travel.
I've also imagined possible problems with subspace travel to be (1) it may be inherently more catastrophically dangerous than travelling hyperspace, (2) it may have a tendency to cause illness or disease in living things (3) it may cause space-time anomolies in subspace thus making subsequent subspace travel along the same paths more dangerous (the more you travel along the same path the worse it gets), (4) it may cause space-time anomolies in hyperspace thus making subsequent hyperspace travel along the same paths more dangerous, (5) it may cause space-time anomolies in realspace making normal sublight travel in the area more dangerous, (6) all of the above, or (7) it may create a portal for powerful ancient chthonic beings to escape their enprisonment in subspace and enter real space to terrorize the galaxy. OK, I may be joking about the last one. 
I think I got most of my ideas above by thinking of subspace an analogy to Earth pollution and the quest for a cleaner, safer energy source. Using subspace may have been "polluting" the galaxy so the discovery of hyperspace may be the "cleaner and safer" form of FTL travel. Subspace travel could have been outlawed in the formation of the Republic which based its very existence on hyperspace travel. As new worlds were brought into the fold of the Republic a stipulation of admission could have been to immediately stop all subspace travel and destroy its technolgy if it was in use there, which should have been an easy decision since the world also gained access to superior hyperspace technology and travel in the deal.
Perhaps energy-only communication transmissions through subspace don't have the same problems that come with physical travel through subspace, so subspace communication is still in use as a shorter range but less expensive (and less restricted) form of communication than hyperspace allows.
Thoughts?
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CRMcNeill
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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Very well thought out, as always. I always thought that subspace seemed something of a rip-off from Trek as well. The question arose from an idle consideration about making SW "space submarines". My current tech for that is a cloaking device, but then I considered the possibility of a subspace drive that shunts the ship over into an alternate dimension "underneath" normal space. Since subspace already existed, it seemed a natural connection, but I wanted to do some sound-boarding with the forum...
On a side note, I do have techno-babble concerns regarding subspace. Since we have established that hyperspace is an alternate dimension of sorts where things either move faster or are closer together or both, wouldn't that mean that in subspace the opposite is true? Wouldn't things be further apart and move slower in subspace, therefore impeding its use for FTL communications?
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2011 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | Very well thought out, as always. I always thought that subspace seemed something of a rip-off from Trek as well. The question arose from an idle consideration about making SW "space submarines". My current tech for that is a cloaking device, but then I considered the possibility of a subspace drive that shunts the ship over into an alternate dimension "underneath" normal space. Since subspace already existed, it seemed a natural connection, but I wanted to do some sound-boarding with the forum...
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I did something similar here, calling it "hypospace" rather than "subspace". | crmcneill wrote: |
Since we have established that hyperspace is an alternate dimension of sorts where things either move faster or are closer together or both, wouldn't that mean that in subspace the opposite is true? Wouldn't things be further apart and move slower in subspace, therefore impeding its use for FTL communications? |
Not necessarily, and when restrictions aren't necessary, it's usually best to toss them out the window and maintain creative freedom. 
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Whill
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | crmcneill wrote: | | Since we have established that hyperspace is an alternate dimension of sorts where things either move faster or are closer together or both, wouldn't that mean that in subspace the opposite is true? Wouldn't things be further apart and move slower in subspace, therefore impeding its use for FTL communications? |
Not necessarily, and when restrictions aren't necessary, it's usually best to toss them out the window and maintain creative freedom. |
Right, it could be a completely arbitray name so I wouldn't try to read that much into it. But if you must have a logical explaination for the term...
Maybe term subspace comes from its original communication-only days (pre-subspace travel) and the tramsisions were thought to exist in the "underground" of the universe where the laws of physics in realspace could be violated...
Maybe subspace travellers just interpreted the subspace dimension to be "below" realspace because they intuitively compared it to water vehicles submerging beneath water because the ships are no longer detectable in realspace....
Or maybe the term "subspace" is a retronym and it is only slower than hyperspace. This would be logical from a linguistical point of view considering that the original human word for subspace might predates the Galactic Basic Standard language, and the new word for it in the new language may not have come into existance until after hyperspace travel was common. Maybe the Republic had eliminated all known subspace travel at the time and didn't encounter it again until discovering a more archaic space culture that was still using it hundreds or even thousands of years later when the language had evolved, so they needed a new word for it and named it such to represent its inferiority to hyperspace.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:07 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | Right, it could be a completely arbitray name so I wouldn't try to read that much into it. But if you must have a logical explaination for the term... |
Thanks for all that again. From that point, I'm looking at practical application, as in using subspace for something other than communication, like using subspace travel as a way to make SW Submarines. I'm hesitant to go with a concept like "hypospace" if subspace is already present and can be readily adapted...
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:34 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | I'm hesitant to go with a concept like "hypospace" if subspace is already present and can be readily adapted... |
Yeah. I just wasn't sure if adapting subspace for that purpose would be stepping on some author's toes or not.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:52 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: |
Thanks for all that again. From that point, I'm looking at practical application, as in using subspace for something other than communication, like using subspace travel as a way to make SW Submarines. I'm hesitant to go with a concept like "hypospace" if subspace is already present and can be readily adapted... |
Make sure that you don't make "subspace" travel too convient. For example, if iit is easy to get and out of, and isn't affected by gravity wells, t becomes "better" for ships in combat.
I7d suggest making any subspace travel very slow in comparsion to hyperspace travel. with multipliers much much higher than hyperdrive. |
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Whill
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:53 am Post subject: |
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Keep in mind that one thing can have two different names, so subspace could be the same thing as hypospace. It's your universe so do whatever you want. You don't have to worry about stepping on another author's toes or contradicting canon unless you are a publishing EU author. If not, then no author is ever going to find out what you do in your game.
But in general, I do first try to work with canon and not contradict it if possible, but if I feel I must then nothing stops me from doing that.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:53 am Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | I just wasn't sure if adapting subspace for that purpose would be stepping on some author's toes or not. |
I've never seen any mention of subspace beyond communication in any of the SWU novels. Of course, it may be simpler to just stick with known tech and have SW submarines use cloaking devices and stay in realspace, especially since there is already an in-universe precedent. The flip side of that is that cloaking device tech and background is pretty well set in-universe.
Perhaps with a little ret-conning, subspace could be used to explain the atypical behavior of hyperspace in the Black Fleet trilogy, in that things can go into hyperspace and stand still...
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Whill
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 10:09 am Post subject: |
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I have to admit that I like the idea in general of an alternate dimension where you can "hide" from sensors in realspace (a sci-fi space version of submarines submerging), but I'm just not sure I like that idea for my Star Wars game. But if you do then great - to each his own.
I will add that Wookieepedia says that ships in good ol' hyperspace are normally not detectable from realspace, but I don't know anything about things being able to hide there without moving because I didn't read those novels. It seems to indicate that ships moving at lightspeed are not detectable, so maybe in AotC Obi-Wan's tacker he threw on the Slave 1 just transmitted the orientation of the ship as it entered hyperspace allowing for a calculation of its most likely course based on its last known trajectory. I don't think that it only started transmitting anything to Obi-Wan after Slave 1 got to Geonosis because Obi-Wan seemed to arrive almost immediately after Slave 1, IIRC.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 10:52 am Post subject: |
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I once ran a Trek crossover story arc, where my group of Star Wars PCs got thier hands on a Klingon B7rel class Bird of Prey. The part that is relevant to this topic is that the Klingon ship had Warp Drive. it was very sloooow, by Star Wars standards (hundred of ly per year vs. thousands of ly per hour), but had some perks, such as being able to warp out without the length hyperspace calculations (Trek ships do it on the fly, possibly becuase they are so much slower), and the ability to fight while at FLT speeds. That might work for "submarines" in SW.
Of coruse the B'rel had a cloaking device, too. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | I have to admit that I like the idea in general of an alternate dimension where you can "hide" from sensors in realspace (a sci-fi space version of submarines submerging), but I'm just not sure I like that idea for my Star Wars game. But if you do then great - to each his own. |
I'm not sure how I feel about it either at this point; this topic is more for informational purposes than anything else. But still, having SW submarine warfare is a tempting prospect.
| Quote: | | I will add that Wookieepedia says that ships in good ol' hyperspace are normally not detectable from realspace, but I don't know anything about things being able to hide there without moving because I didn't read those novels. It seems to indicate that ships moving at lightspeed are not detectable, so maybe in AotC Obi-Wan's tacker he threw on the Slave 1 just transmitted the orientation of the ship as it entered hyperspace allowing for a calculation of its most likely course based on its last known trajectory. I don't think that it only started transmitting anything to Obi-Wan after Slave 1 got to Geonosis because Obi-Wan seemed to arrive almost immediately after Slave 1, IIRC. |
It could also include the S-thread tracker mentioned in Cracken's Rebel Field Guide (and the stats for the Slave One).
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 2:45 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: |
I'm not sure how I feel about it either at this point; this topic is more for informational purposes than anything else. But still, having SW submarine warfare is a tempting prospect. |
Another way to do that would be to ome up with something that messes with sensors. Not a jammer, or even a cloaking device, but maybe something that could absorb sensor emmisons. Basically steath, but not quite a cloak.
You could evern have "bombs" of the stuff that would block sensors going though a certain radius. The "sub" could saturate an area. Like an octopus' ink cloud.
And just to be perverse, the sub could use some sortof "subspace" based sensors that can "see" through the interference.
This could be nastier in some ways than a "cloak" since it could blind a ship to things beyond just the "sub". it could mess with fighter operations, fleet movment, or allow someone to lay an undetectable minefield.
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