Does anyone know of a source that gives the total size of the Confederation and Kilrathi territories in light years? Based on the distances given in Fleet Action, it seemed that Earth and Kilrah were only around 1000-2000 light years apart. The Hakaga fleet (which was at the edge of the Kilrathi Empire) was able to make it to Earth in a few weeks, so it seems like the overall size of the Kilrathi and Confederation territories is rather small. If Confederation/Kilrathi space is only around 5000 light years across (which seems to be the case based on distances given in the novels) this is actually surprizingly small compared to rest of the galaxy, since the Milky way galaxy is around 100,000 light years in diameter. It's actually a rather interesting concept to have over 90% of the galaxy completely unexplored by either the Confederation or the Kilrathi, since most other science fiction settings such as Star Trek and Star Wars tend to have large sections their galaxies explored and colonized.
Size of the Confederation and Kilrathi territories.
- Thread starter Devari
- Start date
Because of the nature of Jump Holes/Jump Lines, it is generally unknown whether two stars that are connected by one are actually next to each other in 3-dimensional space. For example, the Enigma system's black hole creates Jump lines that allows a ship to jump across an entire sector. Thus, it is more relavant to speak of the "size" of Confed, the Kilrathi Empire, etc. in terms of the number of systems that they encompass rather than the volume of space. According to the map, they each seem to have a couple of hundred systems apiece, so I would say that perhaps a few thousand systems have been charted all total.
Ijuin said:
That's true that jump points do not necessarily need to be directly adjacent to each other, although in most cases the games and novels indicate that most jump points are arranged next to each other in 3-dimensional space. For example, in Privateer the maps of the Gemini sector show a "spider web" of jump points that are generally arranged in a planar sequence, i.e., you jump from one point to a nearby point and so on. They also refer to the "boundaries" or "edges" of Confederation or Kilrathi space, which indicates that their territories don't simply consist of a scattered collection of stars connected by long-distance jump points.
Since Confederation and Kilrathi space seem to be fairly compact, you could probably travel through them fairly quickly using other types of FTL drives such as warp drive or hyperdrive. Jump point travel seems to be considerably faster than warp drive (based on the distances the Hakaga fleet travelled in Fleet Action), although it is probably not as fast as hyperdrive.
Iceman16 said:
Yeah, most of the crossover discussions I've encountered are usually totally idiotic. Usually it's some idiot trying to "prove" that their favouite setting is better than anything else. They might as well just type "OMG +3h 3mp1r3 1$ $0 L337 !1ONE!SHIFT!ONE!" over and over. Star Trek, Star Wars, and Wing Commander are all excellent science fiction settings with roughly equivalent technology. I don't think one is "better" than the others although there are definately some obvious differences that make each setting unique. For example, hyperdrive is obviously much faster than warp drive. And hand-held phasers are obviously much more powerful then Star Wars blasters. These types of comparisons are very easy to make. But then someone comes along and tries to "prove" that a Star Destroyer could kill the Enterprise-D, which is where the discussions become totally pointless.
The "technical" discussions that people try to come up with are even worse. I find it very amusing when someone tries to "calculate" the yield of turbolaser using a dozen assumptions and some high school physics equations. It's like they think that just because they make up a number they've "proven" something about technology that could never even exist in the first place.
Keep in mind that although you can travel through nav points, you cannot fly from system to system without a jump drive. Jump points gather several physical properties that allow a jump drive to work, while it won't at any other place.
You can easily calculate distances between nav points, but cannot say how far you're travelling through a jump point... nothing to say about distances traveled by the Nephilims through their wormholes
You can easily calculate distances between nav points, but cannot say how far you're travelling through a jump point... nothing to say about distances traveled by the Nephilims through their wormholes
Alch said:
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by not knowing how far you're travelling through a jump point. Two ships won't emerge from the same jump point in exactly the same spot, but those variations are relatively small compared to the distances covered during the jump. Since jump points are always located close to a star the distance between the two stars is going to be the distance you've travelled during the jump. The minor variations won't make much of a difference to the total distance travelled because the interstellar distances involved are far greater than the small variations that occur upon arrival after the jump.
Haesslich said:
Where's the Moravan/Hopper drive from? I don't remember it being mentioned in any of the Wing Commander novels, and I've read all of the books except for Action Stations.
Haesslich
Spaceman
Devari said:
I suspect what Alch means is that distance travelled while in jump is immaterial, so far as the jump is concerned - all that matters is that the jump point makes one system 'contiguous' with another via the jump point, even if the systems are dozens of light years apart... which, at least in an Akwende projection map, makes them closer together than two systems which are a light year apart in real space but it takes 3-4 jumps to get from one system to another. The actual physical location in the universe is unimportant when dealing with jump drives - the only measure of distance that matters is the size of the jump point, and how many jumps it'll take to get to one's destination.
Also, jump points tend to be pretty far out from the star, with the exception of maybe the Scylla anomaly. However, unlike the Moravan drive, you don't need to be COMPLETELY free of gravitic forces in order to have the drive operate.
Devari said:
See the Jump FAQ for details, but it originally comes from the WC Movie information.
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Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
We don't really need to speculate about anything -- there's an "explored galaxy" area chart on the Wing Commander Universe Map:
A few notes:
Most of our maps are "Gunther Projections" of sectors, which do not take into account physical space. The only exception is the original map of the Vega Sector - and each port of the original Wing Commander has a different total size for the region. The absolute largest field size is 134 light years by 209 light years (from the FM Towns version's manual).
Action Stations claims that the Confederation consists of "hundreds, thousands of systems" and that it has charted "several hundred million cubic parsecs of space" (~2628). The Nephilim 'empire' is located 10,000 light years "coreward" (so, on the other side of the galaxy).
The 'front line' is said to be 1,500 ly across in Fleet Action (2668), though the claim is vauge and may refer only to the area effected by a particular opration. The Hari Sector is said to be 1,000 ly away from Kilrah. Kilrah seems to be 600 ly from the front lines. The Empire (or at least the part worth spying on) occupies "a billion cubic light years".
A few notes:
Most of our maps are "Gunther Projections" of sectors, which do not take into account physical space. The only exception is the original map of the Vega Sector - and each port of the original Wing Commander has a different total size for the region. The absolute largest field size is 134 light years by 209 light years (from the FM Towns version's manual).
Action Stations claims that the Confederation consists of "hundreds, thousands of systems" and that it has charted "several hundred million cubic parsecs of space" (~2628). The Nephilim 'empire' is located 10,000 light years "coreward" (so, on the other side of the galaxy).
The 'front line' is said to be 1,500 ly across in Fleet Action (2668), though the claim is vauge and may refer only to the area effected by a particular opration. The Hari Sector is said to be 1,000 ly away from Kilrah. Kilrah seems to be 600 ly from the front lines. The Empire (or at least the part worth spying on) occupies "a billion cubic light years".
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Haesslich said:
I'd agree that the distance the ship travels during the jump isn't particularly important since both jump points are fixed and the jump is essentially instantaneous. But it is still possible to calculate the "average" speed of jump point travel based on total time taken to get from one jump point to another and the total distance covered during the jumps. For example, the Hakaga fleet took rougly two weeks (let's say 15 days) to reach Earth from the edge of the Kilrathi Empire. That distance would have been at least 1500 light years from Earth, which gives them an average speed of roughly 100 ly/day (1500 ly / 15 days).
This is actually pretty fast compared to warp drive. Voyager would have taken 70 years to travel 70,000 ly to get back to the Alpha quadrant at their maximum sustainable speed (around warp 8, or 1000 c), which averages out to only around 3 ly/day by comparison. If voyager had a jump drive averaging 100 ly/day, they could have gotten home in about two years.
Haesslich said:
That explains why I haven't come across it, I don't rely on anything from the Wing Commander movie since so much of it is completely different from the games and novels. The movie is really a separate setting entirely, it's not really possible to take elements from the movie and apply them to the main Wing Commander setting. The stuff they included about pilgrim navigation, for example, is really annoying and is only mentioned in the movie. Considering how good the video sequences were in WC3 and WC4 it's amazing how bad the WC movie was. If someone had simply used the actors and movie sets from WC3 and WC4 they could have made a much better movie. Instead Chris Roberts tried to "reinvent" the WC setting and ended up with total crap.
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Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Great, but the jump background for the movie (published in The Confederation Handbook) was taken directly from Origin's Wing Commander Universe bible.
Death
gh0d (Administrator)
Devari said:
First off, there's ten zillion different threads arguing about whether the movie counts.
This isn't one of them.
Secondly, that travel time includes traveling across systems at sublight speeds. Jumps are almost instantaneous no matter what the physical distance between the star systems that are connected by the jump paths. Cross-system travel is limited by ship speed and fuel concerns (as per the novels you can close scoops to travel faster, but at the cost of burning internal fuel instead of scooped hydrogen, possibly leaving you short of go-juice when it's really needed).
Bandit LOAF said:
Was the Wing Commander bible ever officially released by origin? I read somewhere that it was provided to authors who wrote the novels as general background material, but I'm not sure how much of it actually became official. If the only published source for the the Wing Commander jump information is from the movie (or the handbook, which was based on the movie) then it doesn't necessarily apply to the Wing Commander games/novels. The movie flatly contradicts the games and novels in many cases, so you can't necessarily "combine" the movie information with the novels.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I don't really think there's really a contradiction in anything but style (and the movie certainly isn't unique in that) -- but yes, the bible (available in our archive) was what Origin provided to the novelists for background in their works.
"I don't like the movie" isn't really the same thing as an excuse for why its perfectly harmless introduction of an FTL drive (something you were begging for a few posts ago!) is any sort of contradiction.
"I don't like the movie" isn't really the same thing as an excuse for why its perfectly harmless introduction of an FTL drive (something you were begging for a few posts ago!) is any sort of contradiction.
Death said:
Actually, since infromation being provided is being referenced from the movie (or the movie handbook), the source of the information is relevant. The thread is still on-topic, I'm simply asking about the source of the jump drive information that was mentioned.
Death said:
That's exactly my point. Just because the actual jump itself is instantaneous doesn't overcome the other limitations of jump point travel. I was calculating the average sustained travel speed since that's really all that matters if you want to go from point A to point B. Unlike warp drive or hyperdrive, Wing Commander ships need to use pre-existing jump points and can't simply program in a desired course. This means they can't travel directly into deep space at faster-than-light speeds, they can only jump from one star system to another. The average rate of jump drive travel is still much faster than warp drive but is less convenient due to the need to rely on pre-existing jump points.
Bandit LOAF said:
Well, take the pilgrims for example. They have nothing to do with any of the Wing Commander games or novels and are never mentioned at all except for the movie. For all intents and purposes, they basically don't exist in the main wing commander setting.
Bandit LOAF said:
I actually didn't mind the movie itself that much. If taken on its own it wasn't all that bad, but it definately wasn't anything like the Wing Commander games or novels. Trying to "integrate" the movie into the rest of the Wing Commaner universe is basically a lost cause because so much of the material simply doesn't match up. The material that does match up is still potentially useful, but it defiantely needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
And I'm not sure what you mean about my "begging for an FTL drive"? I was asking about a source giving the total size of the Confederation and Kilrathi territories. Some distances are specified in Fleet Action, but they don't seem to provide the total distance from one edge of Confederation or Kilrathi space to the other.