Warp Drive

Standard with almost every ship, is an Alcubierre style spacetime manipulator, commonly referred to as a warp drive. The warp drive does not propell the ship per se, it creates a "bubble" around the ship where spacetime becomes compressed in front of the ship (and expanding behind). Combining regular propulsion with the warp drive on, the ship will accelerate in flat space to speeds greater than any conventional engine, but slower than Q-Tunnels. Depending heavily on the ship's DECR power output and over all mass, warp drive speeds slow significantly as the size of the warp bubble expands.

Larger hulls, like battleships, would be lucky to reach .6ly/h, while smaller ships can easily reach .8ly/h, but with less room for an onboard warp drive, the smaller hulls require external devices. Commonly shaped as a ring (or near ring shape), external warp drives, if not rigged directly to the hull, are detachable and self-powered. Hulls smaller than frigates are generally not rigged for an external drive, the minimum size requirements to sustain a warp bubble make for rings larger than even most frigates. This does not prevent speed seekers from fitting their personal crafts with such devices, some of which reach over 1ly/h.

There have even been supplemental external warp drives created for larger ships, mainly to help increase the strength of the time compression, thus making for faster warp speeds, but also in some cases, to catch smaller ships within the warp bubble. Warp piggybacking is a popular tactic for smaller ships, and especially tunnelers and smugglers, as the spatial distortions caused by warp bubble collapse are easy to track. Another danger of this tactic is falling outside the bubble mid-warp, the spacetime turbulance is generally minor and won't rattle a ship too badly, but if stranded in deadspace without a warp drive, there's little to no hope of making it back to civilization without assistance.