D-Drive, Privateer 2, and Continuity

[capi3101]

Morning, all.

I'm looking for any additional information at all on the D-Drive mentioned in Privateer 2. I found the JumpFAQ article at CIC (at https://www.wcnews.com/articles/jumpfaq.shtml), with this information:

The D-Drive is a traditional FTL drive developed in the Tri-System in 2304. It is just under 1,027 times as fast as a contemporary sublight fusion drive, although it is nowhere near as efficient as the jump drive. The D-Drives use was apparently limited to the colonization of the isolated Tri-System, which later adopted the human-developed Akwende Propulsion Device.

The D-Drive requires an extensive and length friction breaking process. Errors have been known to occur where this is disabled, rendering ships unable to stop. D-Drive equipped ships continue to speed up, forcing them into the nonexistence of the "Echo Dimensions".

I guess my question is this: is the D-drive what you use to get around in Privateer 2? I mean, you don't autopilot from nav point to nav point in Privateer 2, you jump. Are those supposed to be Akwende drive jumps, or what (because if they are, it would make the Tri-System more like a whole Sector instead of just three star systems).

I'm trying very hard to reconcile Privateer 2's history with the rest of the WC continuity. Big one for me is the idea that, though the people in the Tri-System are human, the area has been colonized for two thousand years. Two hundred, I could accept without question, but if P2 is set in 2790, it would've had to have been first colonized in 790. Pretty sure there weren't even industrialized nations on Earth at the time, so where did these people come from?

Pretty sure somebody's asked these questions before; once again, I don't feel like going scouring the site/forums for the answers.

 

[AD]

I'm trying very hard to reconcile Privateer 2's history with the rest of the WC continuity. Big one for me is the idea that, though the people in the Tri-System are human, the area has been colonized for two thousand years. Two hundred, I could accept without question, but if P2 is set in 2790, it would've had to have been first colonized in 790. Pretty sure there weren't even industrialized nations on Earth at the time, so where did these people come from?

Time Travel! A slow going pre-FTL Pilgrim ship (before the Pilgrims had super developed Pilgrim super powers) managed to work it's way into a worm-hole that was both conected to the Tri-system in space *and* time!

 

[capi3101]

Time Travel! A slow going pre-FTL Pilgrim ship (before the Pilgrims had super developed Pilgrim super powers) managed to work it's way into a worm-hole that was both conected to the Tri-system in space *and* time!

Uh......is that canonical? And if so, what's the source?

 

[Quarto]

I'm trying very hard to reconcile Privateer 2's history with the rest of the WC continuity. Big one for me is the idea that, though the people in the Tri-System are human, the area has been colonized for two thousand years. Two hundred, I could accept without question, but if P2 is set in 2790, it would've had to have been first colonized in 790. Pretty sure there weren't even industrialized nations on Earth at the time, so where did these people come from?

We have several different calendars on Earth. For us it's 2012. For the Jews it's 5000-something. For the Muslims, it's 1400-something. For the Ancient Romans (had their calendar survived to today), it would have been 2800 approximately. For the Ancient Greeks... ehhh... we'd be in the 700th Olympiad or something? I don't even know.

My point is - why would you think that Tri-System's 2790 is measured since the birth of Christ like our year? For all we know, our 2012 may not even be year zero in the Tri-System's calendar.

 

[capi3101]

My point is - why would you think that Tri-System's 2790 is measured since the birth of Christ like our year?

If it's the case where a different calendar is being used, I wouldn't be the only one around here who's made that assumption. Typing in "2790" into the search box at CIC brings up a few articles that suggest the 2790 date is using the standard Gregorian calendar (or at least the version modified to count individual days of the year rather than making any consideration of Roman and Norse deities). Second paragraph of the Privateer article at WCPedia even says the game is "set in 2790"; events from P2 are listed in the 2790 entry at WCPedia's timeline.

I can't recall if that date is actually present in-game or not; I remember something about Erin Roberts thinking that date would be far enough in the future to still be part of the WC continuity. Can't find that reference, though.

 

[capi3101]

If it's the case where a different calendar is being used, I wouldn't be the only one around here who's made that assumption. Typing in "2790" into the search box at CIC brings up a few articles that suggest the 2790 date is using the standard Gregorian calendar (or at least the version modified to count individual days of the year rather than making any consideration for Roman and Norse deities). Second paragraph of the Privateer article at WCPedia even says the game is "set in 2790"; events from P2 are listed in the 2790 entry at WCPedia's timeline.

I can't recall if that date is actually present in-game or not; I remember something about Erin Roberts thinking that date would be far enough in the future to still be part of the WC continuity. Can't find that reference, though.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Uh......is that canonical? And if so, what's the source?

It's not, he's kidding. Or... theorizing!

I guess my question is this: is the D-drive what you use to get around in Privateer 2? I mean, you don't autopilot from nav point to nav point in Privateer 2, you jump. Are those supposed to be Akwende drive jumps, or what (because if they are, it would make the Tri-System more like a whole Sector instead of just three star systems).

Short answer... maybe, maybe not. The Tri-Systems seems to work exactly like Firekka (for example) with lots of intra-system minijumps and then several system-to-system jump points (which have physical gates at them in the game.) So your drive in Privateer 2 may be a standard jump drive.

The d-drive is mentioned in two places. One is the story of how one of the planets were colonized: a slowship was sent to colonize a planet in another system... and while it was on its multi-generational journey the FTL d-drive was discovered and used to colonize the planet in a matter of weeks.

So it could just be that it's an older technology (it doesn't seem to use jump drives)... except that the other place it appears is in the NAME of the various repair stations in the Tri-System, which are part of the "Smitchell Brothers D-Drive Doctors" company.

I'm trying very hard to reconcile Privateer 2's history with the rest of the WC continuity. Big one for me is the idea that, though the people in the Tri-System are human, the area has been colonized for two thousand years. Two hundred, I could accept without question, but if P2 is set in 2790, it would've had to have been first colonized in 790. Pretty sure there weren't even industrialized nations on Earth at the time, so where did these people come from?

There really isn't a good answer at this point. Privateer 2 treats Anhur as the origin of humanity and the post-game explanation created by Origin proper says there's no contact between the Tri-System and Earth... but the game's background also references Earth culture throughout.

My point is - why would you think that Tri-System's 2790 is measured since the birth of Christ like our year? For all we know, our 2012 may not even be year zero in the Tri-System's calendar.

I can't buy that. It's 2790 in 'our' system for the same reason everyone speaks English and measures things in meters. Otherwise it's a spiraling philosophical argument to nowhere with /every/ disputed fact.

(Maybe the dreadnaught is 22 kilometers long because kilometers are really short in the future! If Wing Commander even takes place in the future!)

 

[AD]

It's not, he's kidding. Or... theorizing!

Hehe, yeah. My other theory was that maybe the Outlander Humans colonized the Tri-system after they abandoned their Earth Colonies... but there were less logic leaps in the time travel version.

 

[Quarto]

I can't buy that. It's 2790 in 'our' system for the same reason everyone speaks English and measures things in meters. Otherwise it's a spiraling philosophical argument to nowhere with /every/ disputed fact.

I think there's a pretty strong difference. If a future WC product were to say, for example, that people in Tri-System measure their time since their arrival on Amhur (or, heck, let's imagine it is the Pilgrims, and they measure their time since MacDaniel's birth), nobody would be especially shocked by this. It would have all kinds of ramifications, the most important being that it would be pushing the events of P2 to at least two thousand years later than the rest of the universe - but it wouldn't be that disturbing (it would, in fact, go a long way to explain how the Tri-System has been colonised "for two thousand years"), and nobody would dismiss it as just plain stupid. This places it in a very different category than "maybe in the future kilometres are really short".

...Plus, none of the alternatives are any less crazy. Time travel? Well, yeah, there's one or two oddball mentions of it in WC, but certainly nothing on this scale. Some elite cabal on Amhur, deceiving the population into thinking that their civilisation has existed for over two thousand years on Amhur, when in fact they had only barely arrived a hundred years earlier? Or do we simply ignore the references to the Tri-System being isolated from the rest of the universe, throw away the "two thousand years" (which, after all, only appears during game installation, not in the game itself), and assume that the Tri-System is just another distant colony of Earth? I don't see any of these options as being especially more plausible.

 

[quaker2k8]

The Booth database article on Anhur states that the planet went through many centuries of "serious history" and that it's famous for its archeological sites. The sites we see in-game, especially the landing sequence, seem to support this too.

Also there is much cultural variety in the Tri-System: Karatikus with its mutant problems, Hephaestus as a crowded, big industrial centre, and Bex with its ultra-orthodox monks and farmers (by the way, that's the planet of the D-Drive vs. slower-than-light colonization faux-pas issue).

Human culture in the Tri-System is most definitely much older than just a few decades or centuries. On how man got there so early or whether the year 2790 is really the same to them as to us, I have no opinion. Maybe some hundred humans of the egyptian era kidnapped by aliens and brought to Anhur through a Stargate(TM)?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I think there's a pretty strong difference. If a future WC product were to say, for example, that people in Tri-System measure their time since their arrival on Amhur (or, heck, let's imagine it is the Pilgrims, and they measure their time since MacDaniel's birth), nobody would be especially shocked by this. It would have all kinds of ramifications, the most important being that it would be pushing the events of P2 to at least two thousand years later than the rest of the universe - but it wouldn't be that disturbing (it would, in fact, go a long way to explain how the Tri-System has been colonised "for two thousand years"), and nobody would dismiss it as just plain stupid. This places it in a very different category than "maybe in the future kilometres are really short".

...Plus, none of the alternatives are any less crazy. Time travel? Well, yeah, there's one or two oddball mentions of it in WC, but certainly nothing on this scale. Some elite cabal on Amhur, deceiving the population into thinking that their civilisation has existed for over two thousand years on Amhur, when in fact they had only barely arrived a hundred years earlier? Or do we simply ignore the references to the Tri-System being isolated from the rest of the universe, throw away the "two thousand years" (which, after all, only appears during game installation, not in the game itself), and assume that the Tri-System is just another distant colony of Earth? I don't see any of these options as being especially more plausible.

First, I think it's a mistake (that I'm guilty of as well) to assume that the Tri-System is not connected to Earth in any way. Going back to the initial Origin FAQ, the famous disclaimer's quote is simply: "Privateer 2: The Darkening takes place in an isolated section of the Wing Commander universe. The Tri-System is not currently a part of the Confederation." That is much, much more broad than we have allowed it to become in our mind. Isolated doesn't mean disconnected. I have a friend who lives on an island and to get there I have to drive three hours into the country and then ride a special boat... that's isolated.

In fact, we know the Tri-System is NOT disconnected from Earth: Star*Soldier touches on it being known but distant in 2701. There are two references to 'long haul' merchants shipping rare goods from the area via multi-year runs. Which itself tells us the Tri-System exists in some similar form in 2701 rather than hundreds/thousands of years after the rest of Wing Commander. But I think we see that in the game itself: it's Wing Commander crossover mission involves recovering the pilot of a Privateer 1 Talon fighter... it's hard enough to believe those are still flying a century after the original game, much less multiple millenia. And all that makes you feel better about the bits of Earth history that appear in the Tri-System's culture ("Tex" Carver, mention of World War I aircraft, that sort of thing.)

But this case aside, I do believe that without an explicit reference that the year has to be the system we know... otherwise the whole system loses stability. Without being first told 'those are space years,' it's a slipperly slope to coming up with a similar explanation for everything we don't think fits (or just don't like.) Yes, there are perfectly reasonable arguments for the existence of different dating systems... but in terms of creating a timeline it's one of those hard we-need-to-assume-this elements. Consider its partner: what the heck is a YEAR in a galaxy with thousands of planets anyway? Shouldn't there be thousands of /different/ years? That's a perfectly reasonable thing to think on the surface, but for the purposes of comparison you just can't go into it because all it does is mean that nothing can ever go together. So 'year' will always be Earth year unless otherwise specified. (Even the kilometer example while ridiculous on its face is an argument I can imagine having with someone; if there are different kinds of *miles* today and through history, why not different kilometers in the future? And so on.)

(Heck, even the specific Kilrathi 'sun years' in Voices of War are just the human ones written in base-8...)

As for *why* there was a human civilization on another planet in 700 AD... I have no idea and I kind of like it. There's a story there for someone else to tell someday, maybe. I can think of a million similar a-little-too-out-there reasons for why it happened... but why bother? It's strange, but not the worst thing in the world. Heck, plenty of great science fiction franchises are happy to assume that the distant reaches of space are full of humans or human-alikes! The thing I *don't* like is being put in the opposite position: assuming I need to explain why the original statement and its intention *wasn't* true.

(It's Anhur, not Amhur.)

 

[capi3101]

I'm glad I seem to have kicked off a serious discussion of this topic...naturally, I'm wanting to resolve this stuff because I'd like to try to include P2 in WCRPG; I'm hoping it's not so far out there that I can't pull it in. Anyways...let's see......

Short answer... maybe, maybe not. The Tri-Systems seems to work exactly like Firekka (for example) with lots of intra-system minijumps and then several system-to-system jump points (which have physical gates at them in the game.) So your drive in Privateer 2 may be a standard jump drive.

The d-drive is mentioned in two places. One is the story of how one of the planets were colonized: a slowship was sent to colonize a planet in another system... and while it was on its multi-generational journey the FTL d-drive was discovered and used to colonize the planet in a matter of weeks.

So it could just be that it's an older technology (it doesn't seem to use jump drives)... except that the other place it appears is in the NAME of the various repair stations in the Tri-System, which are part of the "Smitchell Brothers D-Drive Doctors" company.

Hmmm...I'm inclined to believe that it is the D-Drive, simply because it is possible in P2 to reach planets that are in three different systems by following strings of jump buoys, and supposedly because every time you jump, you "feel your constituent particles being strained through the course weave of your undergarments as you are propelled across the improbable vastness of space at quite unnecessary speeds." The D-drive is described as a faster-than-light system, and that effect seems to match.

The fact that the inhabitants of the Tri-System seem to remain confined to just those three systems suggests to me that they never developed Akwende jump drives. Otherwise, why wouldn't they continue to expand their sphere of influence?

There really isn't a good answer at this point. Privateer 2 treats Anhur as the origin of humanity and the post-game explanation created by Origin proper says there's no contact between the Tri-System and Earth... but the game's background also references Earth culture throughout.

I can't buy that. It's 2790 in 'our' system for the same reason everyone speaks English and measures things in meters. Otherwise it's a spiraling philosophical argument to nowhere with /every/ disputed fact.

(Maybe the dreadnaught is 22 kilometers long because kilometers are really short in the future! If Wing Commander even takes place in the future!)

I think there's a pretty strong difference. If a future WC product were to say, for example, that people in Tri-System measure their time since their arrival on Amhur (or, heck, let's imagine it is the Pilgrims, and they measure their time since MacDaniel's birth), nobody would be especially shocked by this. It would have all kinds of ramifications, the most important being that it would be pushing the events of P2 to at least two thousand years later than the rest of the universe - but it wouldn't be that disturbing (it would, in fact, go a long way to explain how the Tri-System has been colonised "for two thousand years"), and nobody would dismiss it as just plain stupid. This places it in a very different category than "maybe in the future kilometres are really short".

...Plus, none of the alternatives are any less crazy. Time travel? Well, yeah, there's one or two oddball mentions of it in WC, but certainly nothing on this scale. Some elite cabal on Amhur, deceiving the population into thinking that their civilisation has existed for over two thousand years on Amhur, when in fact they had only barely arrived a hundred years earlier? Or do we simply ignore the references to the Tri-System being isolated from the rest of the universe, throw away the "two thousand years" (which, after all, only appears during game installation, not in the game itself), and assume that the Tri-System is just another distant colony of Earth? I don't see any of these options as being especially more plausible.

The Booth database article on Anhur states that the planet went through many centuries of "serious history" and that it's famous for its archeological sites. The sites we see in-game, especially the landing sequence, seem to support this too.

Also there is much cultural variety in the Tri-System: Karatikus with its mutant problems, Hephaestus as a crowded, big industrial centre, and Bex with its ultra-orthodox monks and farmers (by the way, that's the planet of the D-Drive vs. slower-than-light colonization faux-pas issue).

Human culture in the Tri-System is most definitely much older than just a few decades or centuries. On how man got there so early or whether the year 2790 is really the same to them as to us, I have no opinion. Maybe some hundred humans of the egyptian era kidnapped by aliens and brought to Anhur through a Stargate(TM)?

First thing's first: where exactly in the WC continuity is there mention of time travel? Next: where in Privateer 2 are there Earth references?

Of the standard sci-fi conventional cliches, I'm beginning to lean towards "race that seeds other races" to explain the colonization of Anhur. That might at least explain the Earth references. You do have evidence of the presence races out amongst the stars early on in the continuity (my first thought here was the Utara but any race will do. I'd say Steltek except that doesn't seem like their cup of tea and I don't recall how long they've been gone by the time of WC); motivation for such a seeding can be kept a secret for all I care. In any event, you wind up with a situation like classic BSG: other groups of humans amongst the stars with varying levels of technology, some of whom have no knowledge of the others.

Was going to suggest that Anhur's year is really, really short (like on a scale where one Anhurian year equals one Terran month), but then quaker2k8 pointed out the vast "archaeological and architectural" wealth of Anhur, which is in-game and makes the really-short-year explanation less likely...

 

[capi3101]

Missed your last post before I posted, BanditLOAF...sorry about that. You're right; the lack of an explanation for how the Tri-System was colonized is the exact sort of material that would make for a good WCRPG adventure. For purposes of the timeline, I might just note that initial colonization of the Tri-System has taken place in 790 AD, and leave the how of it alone.

I've often thought that the jump network we've got in the WC universe (the one that has all our favorite hangouts such as Earth, Sirius, Enyo, McAullife, Kilrah, Ghorah Khar, Hell Hole, etc.) was just one of many, particularly with the inclusion of Morvan Drive systems. It could be that there's more than one of them, and you'd need something like the Morvan Drive to reach them. This would account for the relatively small number of stars you see on the Akwende Projections...doing it that way would allow you to have more than one group in another group.

Does that make any sense? I don't think I explained that very well.

I think the Tri-System is only accessible to Earth via Morvan Drive, which is why it doesn't appear on the standard Akwende projections we have available to us. It is still part of the Confederation but is particularly distant.

Still want to know where the references to time travel in the WC continuity are...

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I've often thought that the jump network we've got in the WC universe (the one that has all our favorite hangouts such as Earth, Sirius, Enyo, McAullife, Kilrah, Ghorah Khar, Hell Hole, etc.) was just one of many, particularly with the inclusion of Morvan Drive systems. It could be that there's more than one of them, and you'd need something like the Morvan Drive to reach them. This would account for the relatively small number of stars you see on the Akwende Projections...doing it that way would allow you to have more than one group in another group.

Does that make any sense? I don't think I explained that very well.

That does make sense. What's up in the air for me is whether it's a case of the jump points not existing or a situation where they just haven't been charted. Star*Soldier calls it 'unexplored space,' which suggests to me that we just don't know. There's some vast expanse of space between Sol/Vega/Kilrah/etc. and wherever the Tri-System is which you can cross with a slover 'in any direction' type of FTL drive... and we just don't know if the network of jump points expands through all that or not because it just hasn't been charted.

I think the Tri-System is only accessible to Earth via Morvan Drive, which is why it doesn't appear on the standard Akwende projections we have available to us. It is still part of the Confederation but is particularly distant.

It's explicitly *not* part of the (Terran) Confederation -- it has its own inter-system government.

Still want to know where the references to time travel in the WC continuity are...

Privateer 2, of couse. It's an obscure reference and it isn't about the sort of Star Trek changing-your-past time travel you're now envisioning. From the original UK version of the Privateer 2 manual, the description of the Nuke 'em bomb: "The device carries a small synchronic temporal warp generator which at the point of detonation throws you marginally forward in time after the blast, giving you escape from the carnage... The Campaign for Real Time considered this weapon to be a breach of most time laws and lobbied against its legality, until one day, quite by accident, a rogue Nuke 'em landed on their offices during an annual general meeting." (Note that this apparently horrified the American editor, who cut the description in that printing down to: "Includes a small Synchronic Temporal Warp generator which protects your ship from the blast.")

Hmmm...I'm inclined to believe that it is the D-Drive, simply because it is possible in P2 to reach planets that are in three different systems by following strings of jump buoys, and supposedly because every time you jump, you "feel your constituent particles being strained through the course weave of your undergarments as you are propelled across the improbable vastness of space at quite unnecessary speeds." The D-drive is described as a faster-than-light system, and that effect seems to match.

It makes sense that it's the standard drive in Privateer 2. The only thing that gives me pause there is the fact that the d-drive mentioned in the database took several weeks to travel from one Tri-System system to another. (That effect also sounds like the effect jumps have on characters in the novels, though.)

 

[Ijuin]

The fact that you have to make several jumps in between destinations in P2 sounds to me like you are using some kind of Morvan-drive-type of transportation. The descriptions of the D-drive on the other hand seem more like they are describing a continuous drive rather than one that moves in a series of discrete long-distance jumps.

 

[Quarto]

But this case aside, I do believe that without an explicit reference that the year has to be the system we know... otherwise the whole system loses stability. Without being first told 'those are space years,' it's a slipperly slope to coming up with a similar explanation for everything we don't think fits (or just don't like.) Yes, there are perfectly reasonable arguments for the existence of different dating systems... but in terms of creating a timeline it's one of those hard we-need-to-assume-this elements. Consider its partner: what the heck is a YEAR in a galaxy with thousands of planets anyway? Shouldn't there be thousands of /different/ years? That's a perfectly reasonable thing to think on the surface, but for the purposes of comparison you just can't go into it because all it does is mean that nothing can ever go together. So 'year' will always be Earth year unless otherwise specified. (Even the kilometer example while ridiculous on its face is an argument I can imagine having with someone; if there are different kinds of *miles* today and through history, why not different kilometers in the future? And so on.)

I do agree that, for simplicity's sake, we have no reason to assume there is a different dating system in the Tri-System. Your basic argument is correct, too many things unravel once we open ourselves to that possibility. What I am saying, above all, is that it certainly is an option that's open to explore, should some future WC product choose to do so, and it wouldn't be an especially bad option, though certainly it's one that would be made difficult by the links that Star*Soldier establishes.

As for *why* there was a human civilization on another planet in 700 AD... I have no idea and I kind of like it. There's a story there for someone else to tell someday, maybe. I can think of a million similar a-little-too-out-there reasons for why it happened... but why bother? It's strange, but not the worst thing in the world. Heck, plenty of great science fiction franchises are happy to assume that the distant reaches of space are full of humans or human-alikes! The thing I *don't* like is being put in the opposite position: assuming I need to explain why the original statement and its intention *wasn't* true.

Well, because it's fun . The neat thing about these discussions is that they're a good sight different than they were back around the turn of the century - no one is saying any more that P2 can't be a part of the WC universe because of this, this and that. Instead, the discussion is about how possibly this, this and that can be explained. I think, while it's always a good thing to consider developer intentions, it's just as worthwhile to look at a given problem from the perspective of future developers: if I were to explain the exact relationship of the Tri-System with the rest of the universe, what would my options be?

 

[Flashpoint]

no one is saying any more that P2 can't be a part of the WC universe because of this, this and that. Instead, the discussion is about how possibly this, this and that can be explained. I think, while it's always a good thing to consider developer intentions, it's just as worthwhile to look at a given problem from the perspective of future developers: if I were to explain the exact relationship of the Tri-System with the rest of the universe, what would my options be?

While I understand the reservations of jamming in explainations to make things fit together, I would argue that coming up with (some times ridiculous) theories to explain how something fits with the established whole is pretty much how cosmology, quantum mechanics and such are pushed forward.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The fact that you have to make several jumps in between destinations in P2 sounds to me like you are using some kind of Morvan-drive-type of transportation. The descriptions of the D-drive on the other hand seem more like they are describing a continuous drive rather than one that moves in a series of discrete long-distance jumps.

The fact that it's *set* jumps, though, makes it seem unlike a Morvan drive... since that didn't rely on existing jump points, you just pointed the ship in the direction you wanted to go and hopped forward in increments.

Well, because it's fun . The neat thing about these discussions is that they're a good sight different than they were back around the turn of the century - no one is saying any more that P2 can't be a part of the WC universe because of this, this and that. Instead, the discussion is about how possibly this, this and that can be explained. I think, while it's always a good thing to consider developer intentions, it's just as worthwhile to look at a given problem from the perspective of future developers: if I were to explain the exact relationship of the Tri-System with the rest of the universe, what would my options be?

I can agree with that save that theorizing about it doesn't answer the initial poster's question.

Any number of familiar sci-fi scenarios can work, I suppose:

- Humans were somehow transplanted to Anhur in 700 AD, by aliens or some kind of artifact or some sort of cosmic chance event and then developed the society that became the Tri-System.

- Parallel evolution occured on Anhur, either by chance or by God or through some connection where both planets were seeded in the same fashion.

- Whatever built the Tri-System culture wasn't human at all, but humans began to trickle in in the 23rd century, interbreed with the existing society and by 2790 had taken over.

- Time travel, either intentional or through some galactic mishap. Perhaps a 24th-century sloship becomes trapped in a wormhole/quasar/whatever that sends it to the Tri-System but 2,000 years in the past (this is my favorite of the high-concept story options.)

And so on--I bet there are a million of them. If I were advising some future Wing Commander story, though, what I would say I REALLY wanted to see was not so much the question directly answered but the question brought into the Wing Commander universe. It would be great to see that this is an issue humans in 2790 are themselves dealing with.

 

[capi3101]

It's explicitly *not* part of the (Terran) Confederation -- it has its own inter-system government.

Whoops...you're right. Sorry about that.

It makes sense that it's the standard drive in Privateer 2. The only thing that gives me pause there is the fact that the d-drive mentioned in the database took several weeks to travel from one Tri-System system to another. (That effect also sounds like the effect jumps have on characters in the novels, though.)

You're getting the "several weeks" from the history of Bex, right? I'd submit that a fair amount of time has passed since the planet's colonization, and that the newer d-drive versions are substantially more efficient/faster.

The fact that it's *set* jumps, though, makes it seem unlike a Morvan drive... since that didn't rely on existing jump points, you just pointed the ship in the direction you wanted to go and hopped forward in increments.

You also have an eighteen hour pause between hops. In P2, you can jump again as soon as the light turns green, usually a matter of seconds. Also, Morvan jumps have to be done in microgravity on the outskirts of a star system; in P2, you can jump in the vicinity of a planet. Pretty sure we can definitively say that the drive in P2 is not a Morvan Drive.

Thought: it might not be a proper Akwende drive either..because the jump-in point at a nav buoy can also be the jump-out point. (i.e. if you kill your engines when you get to a nav point and hit the jump when you get the green light, you go on to your destination). I'm not sure if it's explicitly stated anywhere that a jump point is strictly between two points in space. It would seem to work that way in P1.

Yeah, based on the differences between how flight works in P2 versus the rest of the WC continuity, and given the description of the physical effects of a jump in the P2 documentation, I'm inclined to say its definitely a modern day D-Drive you're using.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Wait, duh, it's a jump drive - from the playguide: "Tri-System space consists of pockets of local space connected by jumps. If there is no planet or major space station in a pocket, it is marked by a navigation buoy. To move from nav point to nav point along your route, you will have to activate your jump drives and jump. Before you can activate your jump drives, you must select a destination with the nav map... it will turn green when your jump drives are powered up and you can jump."