Hyper Ice

[CRMcNeill]

Just watched this episode of Mega-Projects about the Russian fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, and it got me thinking. In the past, I've used a lot of real-world parallels to flesh out the concept of hyperspace, hypermatter and the like, and doing an icebreaker parallel has always tickled my fancy, although I've never been able to come up with a decent application for it.

Now, to be clear, I'm just using the term "Hyper Ice" to emphasize the parallels between what I'm envisioning here, not because I'm picturing actual ice in hyperspace.

What I am picturing is areas of space where hypermatter concentrations are so dense that they render normal hyperspace travel effectively impossible, and require specialized ships with beefed-up hyperdrive field generators to clear routes. Said routes would either be temporarily navigable by other vessels following in close proximity to the "icebreaker" or the cargo would have to be transported by the breaker itself, as the hypermatter would very quickly (relatively speaking) fill in the gaps once the ship had passed. Either way, travel through such areas would likely be much slower (maybe increasing Hyperdrive Multipliers by 1-2 steps)

This would be a very niche application, but having areas of the galaxy that are cut off from normal hyperspace travel for whatever reason has some precedent in the EU, so I figured I'd put it out there.

I'm mostly looking for suggestions as to how to flesh out this idea, so please feel free to put in your .02 credits.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Dredwulf60]

Holy moley, this is such a cool idea!!

So many expanding possibilities!

For me it really reinforces why hyperspace routes are actually a thing.