Quantum Slipstream V.S. Transwarp

[Gorgon]

My Star Trek sim group has been playing with the idea of pushing the warp technology forward and grappling with one of the other established ideas for higher speed travel.

The question that's come up, time and again, is whether to go with a Quantum Slipstream approach or one more based on the concept of Transwarp (as seen in Star Trek III).

I'm looking for guides and/ or good arguments for one mode of higher speed travel over the other.

My thinking is to go with Transwarp and explain that the Warp 10 Barrier stiil exists but we manage to reach higher speeds prior to hitting it in the following manner. Warp 9.999 becomes Warp 10 (Transwarp 1) and Warp 9.9999 becomes Warp 11 (Transwarp 2) etc.

Thoughts on any of this?

 

[sojourner]

The federation never successfully developed transwarp. Go with QSS.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

One doesn't necessarily have to follow the Star Trek Encyclopedia's take on transwarp. It is far more likely, IMO, that "transwarp" is a catch-all term for "faster than current warp capability" ("transwarp drive" never functions the same way every time we see it, anyways) and that Excelsior was succesful, necessitating the warp rescaling before TNG (and explaining the shift in starship design from Excelsior onwards).

As for transwarp/slipstream scaling, the idea for "Transwarp 1, Transwarp 2, etc." works much much better than "Warp 9.991918212891" or whatever.

Anywho, judging from VOY, slipstream seems to be a pretty decent transwarp option, seeing as Voyager already did a fair amount of R & D on it. The main downside is that it seems unpredictible, unrefined, and difficult to control. I wouldn't reccomend casual use, unless it's seen decades of development into something I would feel safe using.

Just my two quatloos.

 

[Lorna]

Coaxial Warp beats both hands down.

 

[Ronald Held]

To maintain some connect to Treklit and STO, I would suggest QSS drive.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Coaxial warp of course, shares numerous stability problems with slipstream as a form of transwarp travel, with the notable exception that Coaxial Warp would be a thousand times worse than any subspace weapon if it went unstable. In Vis a' Vis, Steth's ship would have collapsed space within a radius of about a billion or so kilometers if it's coax engines had gone kaboom.

If I may be so bold, I would suggest that you not consider any exotic transwarp propulsion systems, since most of them are unstable and poorly understood by Federation science, and instead go the route that I proposed the Excelsior had gone - that is, to turn conventional warp drive up to 11.

Or, perhaps, even introduce a new understanding of warp propulsion to Federation science that allows ships to take advantage of natural phenomenon to achieve transwarp speeds when needed (like the increasingly-popular fan theory of "warp highways"). Such an approach would probably be for the better if the sim is set only a few years after DS9/VOY.

 

[Gorgon]

Well it appears that the prevailing decision by our group is to use the Transwarp Hub concept that the Borg seemed to use. This keeps the ships from having to have a new propulsion system in and of themselves. It also limits the use of exotic speeds in game.

 

[SWHouston]

Seems like most of the Federation Technology has produced "questionable results', but, the Borg Hub/Conduit works, and it's not too large of a step, to think it (Coil/Assy) could be applied to Fed or Private Vessels.

But, where would you go ? The Conduits don't always exit where it's convenient for Fed Commerce. It certainly was convenient that VOY exited in Leonis.

How does one control where a Conduit goes ?
Who came up with that Technology ?
Probably not the Borg, but it's possible that information may be archived in a Borg Computer somewhere.

But, going fast like that, regardless of where it took you, is certainly something that one would not ignore.

 

[Deks]

Most of the time, the Federation hadn't really dabbled in faster than Warp propulsion development in TNG era.
Individual ships encountered it and their crews then dabbled with it to create their own version.

The Coaxial drive was actually fixed at the end of that particular episode, but neatly forgotten.

Quantum Slipstream was effectively the only technology used by the crew on 2 separate occasions.
It's no wonder their second attempt would produce questionable results, but that was more due to the inefficiency of their computers that were too slow at the time to properly calculate the phase variance as it was forming.

However, if the Federation was to create the Quantum drive and pick up from where Voyager left off... well, one can easily claim that several years after the ship made it back to Federation territory, they'd have a functioning QS drive (but still limited by the Benemyte crystals).
Or they can use the slower version of the drive that would have initially took them about 3 months to traverse 60 000 ly's (that one Voyager hadn't had a problem with when it came to the phase variance, but rather with the hull being unable to take quantum stresses).

QS as such is viable for Feds to acomplish.

Transwarp ... seeing how it's similar to QS in the first place, development of the latter should provide insight into reaching it (though, on their v2 of QS, we were led to think it was on par, if not better than TW).

Higher Warp velocities are more or less a given.
SF is bound to increase the efficiency of regular Warp engines as well, which would probably bring everything to early TNG standards and reduce travel significantly.

 

[Python Trek]

I kinda liked the Soliton Wave, invented by I Fell Asleep on a Waffle Iron Guy on TNG. Remember when Geordi said, "Warp without Warp Drive!"? And the special effect looked like the ship was riding on a piece of X-Mas ribbon candy, so it's got that going for it.

 

[Gorgon]

Well, THERE is another technology that we hadn't considered. Thanks Python.

 

[C.E. Evans]

One doesn't necessarily have to follow the Star Trek Encyclopedia's take on transwarp. It is far more likely, IMO, that "transwarp" is a catch-all term for "faster than current warp capability" ("transwarp drive" never functions the same way every time we see it, anyways) and that Excelsior was succesful, necessitating the warp rescaling before TNG...

To be fair, we don't have to follow the Encyclopedia's take that the warp scale was rescaled before TNG either. Onscreen, neither scale has ever been actually mentioned, much less actually followed (i.e., speed of plot being the general rule).

IMO, quantum slipstream is a form of transwarp drive, but a more specific one in the same sense warp drive is a specific type of FTL drive...

 

[Ronald Held]

Hmmmmm maybe an amped up soliton wave would do?

 

[Satyrquaze]

basing the next generation of FTL after Warp drive on the Borg's Transwarp Hub is a very flawed idea.

First of all, you have no network of transwarp apertures/conduits in Federation control in Federation space. Any pre-existing ones would be of Borg design.

Unless you have eradicated the Borg in your timeline, then good on you. If you haven't... then you will need to deal with the obvious repurcussions of Starfleet using Borg Transwarp corridors. We're talking a Starfleet vessel uses a conduit to get from the Alpha to the Beta quadrant, within minutes theres a Cube on an intercept course and within sensor range.

If Starfleet in your unverse wants to begin construction of their own Transwarp Network, then you're looking at decades of construction time.

Yes, Voyager returned to Federation space with specs on a Transwarp coil, but they also returned with specs on a QSS. And for all it's faults, the QSS is much safer in the long run.

 

[Lorna]

basing the next generation of FTL after Warp drive on the Borg's Transwarp Hub is a very flawed idea.

First of all, you have no network of transwarp apertures/conduits in Federation control in Federation space. Any pre-existing ones would be of Borg design.

Unless you have eradicated the Borg in your timeline, then good on you. If you haven't... then you will need to deal with the obvious repurcussions of Starfleet using Borg Transwarp corridors. We're talking a Starfleet vessel uses a conduit to get from the Alpha to the Beta quadrant, within minutes theres a Cube on an intercept course and within sensor range.

If Starfleet in your unverse wants to begin construction of their own Transwarp Network, then you're looking at decades of construction time.

Yes, Voyager returned to Federation space with specs on a Transwarp coil, but they also returned with specs on a QSS. And for all it's faults, the QSS is much safer in the long run.

I recently came up with a future of trek idea where the Federation by 2440 has connected all major planets within Federation space with Transwarp conduits. Due to the tactical advantage the Transwarp conduits give the Federation it brought about tensions with the other powers even the Klingon Empire. To ease fears and tensions and prevent war the Federation agreed to sign a treaty preventing the use of Transwarp conduits outside of Federation territory.

 

[Satyrquaze]

^Yeah, if the Feds didn't share the tech (transwarp or QSS) with the Klingons I could see them getting a bit ornery over it.

Course, you don't see the Klingons sharing cloaking tech with the Feds and I believe the Treaty of Algeron only stops the Federation from researching it themselves (which they've blatantly ignored on at least one occasion in-canon).

Yeah yeah, oh mighty, Roddenberry says it would be unFederation-like to use the cloaking device.

On the Soliton Wave, I think it was probably the only time I've ever heard of a guy being happy about possibly put out of a job. Geordi was positively gushing over the concept of being potentially unemployed.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

One doesn't necessarily have to follow the Star Trek Encyclopedia's take on transwarp. It is far more likely, IMO, that "transwarp" is a catch-all term for "faster than current warp capability" ("transwarp drive" never functions the same way every time we see it, anyways) and that Excelsior was succesful, necessitating the warp rescaling before TNG...

To be fair, we don't have to follow the Encyclopedia's take that the warp scale was rescaled before TNG either. Onscreen, neither scale has ever been actually mentioned, much less actually followed (i.e., speed of plot being the general rule).

With the exception of that whole warp 10 thing...

I guess the original Enterprise went past infinite speed a few times?

basing the next generation of FTL after Warp drive on the Borg's Transwarp Hub is a very flawed idea.

Who's to say that a new type of FTL drive is needed? The Traveller showed us on TNG that a traditional warp drive can do just fine when it's turned up to 11. No need to rebuild the whole fleet from the ground up if traditional warp tech's always improving.

FTL propulsion isn't exactly something you need to totally rework yearly like iPhones or other commercial products...

 

[sojourner]

^The Traveller wasn't "turning up" the ship's warp drive. He was propelling the ship himself.

 

[C.E. Evans]

One doesn't necessarily have to follow the Star Trek Encyclopedia's take on transwarp. It is far more likely, IMO, that "transwarp" is a catch-all term for "faster than current warp capability" ("transwarp drive" never functions the same way every time we see it, anyways) and that Excelsior was succesful, necessitating the warp rescaling before TNG...

To be fair, we don't have to follow the Encyclopedia's take that the warp scale was rescaled before TNG either. Onscreen, neither scale has ever been actually mentioned, much less actually followed (i.e., speed of plot being the general rule).

With the exception of that whole warp 10 thing...

Which was broken more than a few times in both TOS and TNG.

I guess the original Enterprise went past infinite speed a few times?

Nope. But from onscreen material alone, 24th-Century warp engines weren't any faster than those of the 23rd-Century (they were possibly even slower), but could enter transwarp at Warp 10. Otherwise, the warp scale appears to be unchanged between TOS and TNG...

 

[shipfisher]

Quantum Slipstream always struck me as a probable "re-branding" of Transwarp in light of previous failures associated with the term, just like "transphasic" seemed to replace "interphasic" tech after that unfortunate business with the Pegasus.

It seems transwarp is more deflector than drive on the face of things. That little transwarp coil our Voyager heroes boosted from the Borg didn't seem like an engine or drive core component. Perhaps it helped deflectors punch transwarp conduits open.

Relative to previous ships, the most distinguishing feature of the transwarp prototype USS Excelsior was the increased hull volume around the deflector dish, suggesting some possible new gear associated with the dish. Similarly, the NX-01A Dauntless had a unique grille type deflector in place of the usual dish mechanism.

Incidentally, the "warp 13" references in TNG:AGT could be verbal shorthand for an era where speeds of "warp 9.9995", etc., might be common and a slight nuisance to spit out. Just superimposing the sub-warp 9 scale over the warp 9+ equivalents seems to make sense.