Travel

Information about travelling in various fictional settings

Space Age Science Fiction
In the Space Age, obviously, the most interesting form of travel is among the stars, but this aims to cover all forms of travel that are unique to a high tech science fiction setting.

Earth-like conditions
Travelling on a world similar to earth is not much different from travel on actual earth, though of course it depends on the situation of the society there, largely, imagine that the vehicles are just a bit faster and more fuel efficient.

Colony
A Colony World is a developing society on a hospitable planet - but the infrastructure is commonly underdeveloped and frequently, colony worlds are not self-sustainable - relying on shipments from their sponsors, employers or through purchase - either for food or for goods.

Travel by land, sea and air is a possibility in this time and age - but more primitive regions will rely on much more old fashioned methods. It takes a long time to get a car transported out to a colony world, so in order not to wear their few vehicles down, many people rely on bicycles or horses for local travel, reserving their motorized vehicles for long distance trips and hauls.

People will often rely on trains in less civilized parts of the world, and other forms of public transportation.

The highly fuel efficient modern vehicles are less popular on Colony worlds, because they require extremely advanced spare parts to repair and are very complicated to fix. Many colony farmers bring old analogue tractors and off-road vehicles with them, that run on primitive electric engines, either as back up or as primary means of transportation.

Dwellings
The situation is quite different if you move to more civilized regions of space. Availability of more convenient methods of travel is much higher, and taking a sci-fi equivalent of an airplane to the other side of the planet is probably no more expensive than a bus ticket to ride down the street today.

Harsh conditions world
A hospitable world with harsh living conditions, such as an entirely arctic world, or a very arid and dry world, will require caution when traveling. Travel across the surface of such planets is likely too dangerous, and most travel is probably either underground, underwater or orbital.

Colonies on such worlds are often temporary - usually mining worlds, or production worlds - where it's known that the production has detrimental effects on the planet, thus choosing a planet that is technically hospitable, but barely supports life (and what ever life can live there will surly survive what ever comes as a result of the production).

Dome Stations
A dome station is a man-made atmosphere inside several connecting domes, maintained by an airlock at all exits. Dome Stations are used for housing on planets that aren't hospitable. There are too many planets to choose from that anyone, under normal circumstances, chooses to live in a dome station permanently.

Dome Stations are usually constructed when it's necessary to maintain a presence on a planet for a prolonged time, usually as part of a corporation project or a military project.

Dome stations are massive, because they need to be self-sustaining. This means they have hydroponics, meat cloning facilities and life stock all kept indoors and of course algae-based oxygen productions.

One large dome station can easily support other smaller dome stations requiring travel between them to be possible. Tube-trains is a popular way to travel between dome stations, but on particularly rough worlds, they may not be possible to build requiring those who wants to travel to equip space suits or at least carry an oxygen supply or a protective suit.

Dome Stations are rarely abandoned again, and while few people actually choose to live permanently in one, many people use them as hotels or a buy them to set up some sort of polluting business that would endanger the population of a hospitable world. When a world has been completely mined for resources - the process of turning the world into a planet- or moon station often begins.

Various monitoring stations, listening posts, relay facilities and such are scattered across the surface, and the planet effectively (while useless and dead) serves as a station that supports the infrastructure.

Space Stations
Few space stations are large enough that travel, except for walking, is a necessity. There are those few exceptions however, and those usually combine elevators and trams, and small shuttles that go from one section to another remote section. Some have scooters or carts that can be used to quickly and efficiently travel down the long corridors.

Space Stations of the size where travel becomes relevant are also rarely used as a home by anyone permanently, but space stations are normally built for a purpose. Some stations are used as homes - more often the case with the largest of stations - these massive stations often being somewhere between the size of a large city and the size of a large Earth-based country.

If anything, space stations actually exist to assist people in traveling to other locations, because many larger ships cannot land or even safely enter an atmosphere for that matter.

Stellar Travel
Stellar Travel is travel inside of a solar-system. There are two general variants of this kind of travel.

Orbital travel
Orbital travel is when a space-worthy vehicle is not capable or reaching near-light speed travel, and as such - are unsuited for traveling much further than between orbiting objects - preferably only from the same object, into the orbit of that same object, and back or some such combination.

Orbital shuttles are often used to quickly go from one region of a planet to another or from orbital station to surface and vice versa. In case of a close orbiting moon, they may also provide transportation to such other celestial bodies.

Even an Orbital Shuttle can reach a closely orbiting celestial body within a day or two at the most. These kinds of vehicles have limited life support, relying on manual re-charge of these upon docking - they also use EPE (Electromagnetic Propulsion Engines - an engine type that generates heat, but has no combustion or other chemical process involved - entirely electrical and powered by a battery or a reactor) to propel themselves in the vacuum of space, but are usually too small for a fusion reactor - so they rely on being recharged.

Other Stellar Travel
Usual Stellar Travel relies on, what is essentially a Jump-Drive, but without the key-component (the reactive and rare minerals that causes the dimensional shift). As such, the engine is capable of boosting the speed of the vessel into Light Speed (or even faster) for very short time (a few seconds at the very most) - but capable of keeping the vessel in near-light speed for extended periods of time.

These vessels are used for travel inside of a solar system or to destinations otherwise reasonably reachable at near light-speed. Very few solar systems are bigger than that a vessel traveling at near lightspeed can reach any celestial body from any other point of the solar system, in less than 24 hours.

Stellar Vessels can also travel between solar systems, provided they are close enough - but this usually becomes a very time consuming and ineffective affair - however, seeing as Hyperspace Jumps leave certain undesirable signatures, sometimes this method is preferred.

Interstellar travel
Interstellar travel varies depending what kind of region of space one is traveling through. As a rule of thumb, interstellar travel is only performed when a ship is equipped with a Jump-Drive (also called Spike drive, hyper drive and many other fancy names for a quasi magical engine with miraculous powers). The alternative is spending days, weeks, months, years or perhaps even decades if not centuries, attempting to reach the next star - by normal travel.

Ships are powered by an EPE, but ships are large enough that they have their own fusion core.The heat emitted from the EPE in turn provides most power for the ship, when in-flight (where the reactor is usually fully tasked with the actual propulsion).

Jump-Drives
The Jump-Drive runs on a special hydrogen isotope, which is most frequently found in liquid form. Even the smallest ships that aren't mere shuttles have enough fuel capacity for at least 10 jumps. Some Jump-drives can travel a further distance than others without outside aid, and they even do so faster - it also greatly depends on the navigator.

The Jump-Drive serves two functions - first; it allows a fully taxed engine to multiply its output and reach up to light-speed in travel for extremely limited time (a second is the longest most ships can keep this up without the fusion reactor exploding).

Second, while traveling at light-speed (and technically possible while not traveling at light-speed, but considered practically impossible), it can phase the ship out of real-space and into hyperspace - another dimension.

Hyperspace
Bodies of mass cast large "shadows" in hyperspace, and collisions with these are very bad - but also nearly impossible, because the jump-drives are built to drop out before a collision can happen (though that doesn't prevent a collision after dropping out!).This means that there is a finite and limited amount of possible Jump-Routes.

A ship can only exist in hyperspace because it becomes enveloped in a hyper-field, which effectively draws it into hyperspace, but also completely prevents the ship from interacting with the outside world. This also means that the ship cannot move. The Hyperdrive relies on unconventional methods of travel in hyperspace, where the distances are much shorter, or travel is much faster (it is unknown exactly how it works). It is believed that this travel method relies on the hyperspace equivalent of gravity - hence why travel is faster along routes with more mass shadows (even though these routes take much longer to calculate).

Navigation
Navigational Computers are powerful scanners that can peek into Hyperspace and detect mass-shadows, by sending out an "echo". Depending on how many mass shadows are present, the calculations can take anywhere from seconds to years.

Interestingly, ships travel faster along routes with high densities of mass shadows. Calculations are also done faster if the navigational computer is in possession of flight logs from a ship that has already performed the jump, or just pre-calculated routes (they still need to be re-checked - but it is SO much faster).

Celestial bodies produce energy signatures that can be detected and observed from incredibly distances. With modern technology, one can spy stars and accurately gauge the distance to them, from another galaxy. Celestial bodies are used as aim-points in real-space, and then the destination is processed by the navigational computer and compared to known routes and the echo-data received back from making a calculation.

Travel into the galactic core - where the density of star systems is incredibly high, it becomes almost impossible to discern celestial bodies from each other, and even harder to calculate a route. It takes years to plan a simple jump in the galactic core, into unknown regions, but travel there is also MUCH faster.

The most frequently used routes are called Hyper Lanes - they often feature extremely fast travel, across vast lengths of the Galaxy. The navigational computer automatically suggests Hyper Lanes when traveling, over other Jump Routes, and new ones are frequently discovered when people decide to travel to a new destination from a point they haven't tried before.

A navigation check decides if the navigator is capable of shortening the base-trip length. It's not possible to shave a 6 day trip down to anything less than 4 days. A dramatic success indicates that the navigator has found a way to permanently reduce the travel time of that route though. A marginal success shaves off half a day and anything between that and a dramatic success will produce varying effects.

Life Support
Travel through space is made possible by the complex life-support of a Space Ship.

On board a space ship, oxygen is being produced by super-algae. Super-algae easily produces more oxygen than a crew can use, meaning they need to produce carbon-dioxide for the algae.

The feces of the crew is drained for water and the carbon is extracted from it to create carbon-dioxide from the excess oxygen. The feces is also used to provide nourishment for the algae, which causes it to grow, but seeing as it needs to retain a certain size, excess algae is cut and reprocessed for carbon.

Everything on the ship is recycled. Water drained from feces, urine, bodily moist - it's all automatically gathered by the ship (eventually) and recycled. The only thing a ship can really run out of, is fuel and food.

Civilized Space
Civilized Space is centered around the Hyperlanes for obvious reasons.

Mass-Relays are located along the Hyperlanes, capable of accelerating ships to much faster speeds (they are essentially space-stations, which use jump-drive technology to have a portion of the station phase into hyperspace - and in turn generate powerful gravitational fields).

There are travel agencies that sell seats on their crafts to travel along the Hyperlanes, going for prices similar to the pricing of an airplane ticket today, comparatively.

A ship traveling along the Hyperlanes can project a ping forward, and the relays will keep accelerating the ship. Rarely will it be necessary to drop out of hyperspace, and using the Hyperlanes, it's possible to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other, in one jump, even with the most primitive hyperdrive engine. On average, it takes 24 hours on the fastest route, from one end of the galaxy to the other - but the jump would take a few hours to calculate ahead of time, because of the length and how close the ship comes to the galactic core.

This means travel between the civilized worlds is generally easy and problem free, and quite certainly something you "just do".

Some few individuals own their own private space ships, usually business men who cannot rely on having to ever wait on the next ship leaving. Private space ships are often expensive models that have incredibly powerful Jump-Drives capable of traveling much faster than the average commercial transport ship, so it does pay off in the end for them.

Other than that, most travelers are those flying the large bulk freighters - the space age equivalent of a container ship.

There's also the odd delivery company making small specific deliveries.

Fringe Space
The luxury fast travel of the hyper lanes isn't something the people in Fringe Space have access to. It can take months, years or even decades to reach destinations in fringe space.

The colonies that exist in Fringe Space cannot count on frequent deliveries of large quantities of material - The worlds in Fringe Space are normally mostly self sustaining. They may still need to trade with each other occasionally, and this is why the need to travel in Fringe Space even exists.

Naturally, if a mining operation is set up in one system of Fringe Space, and the colony that needs the mined products is in another system, it pays off for that world to buy a large freighter and have it constantly traveling back and forth.

But logistics like that can't work properly unless there's also a faster way to get back and forth, and that's where smaller private vessels - Free Traders come in.

Free Traders make it possible to quickly ensure that certain deliveries can be made, as well as making it possible to book passage to certain locations that are off the beaten track.

People who do not own their own ships and cannot make use of public interstellar transportation will have to book passage on a private vessel.

Jump Drive statistics
You can travel through hyperspace if you have a hyperdrive and have fuel for it. Each jump consumes one unit of fuel, and most ships carry at least 10 units of fuel from the factory. A unit of fuel costs 100 credits, but might be more expensive in certain regions.

Hyperdrives come in levels, and the levels essentially determine their speed and possible travel distance without outside aid.

Assuming no outside aid, a level 1 hyperdrive can travel one hex-grid on a standard galactic sector map in 1 day. When improving the level of the hyperdrive, you can jump further in the same amount of time. A level two hyperdrive can jump two hexes in 1 day, but jumps one hex in 0.5 days and so on. Jumping a single hex consumes only half a point of fuel with a level two hyper drive.

In order to travel through hyperspace, you need to target either a location that has a specific transponder that essentially mimics an incredibly powerful energy signature or a location that is in fact a powerful energy signature. Most people target a star. In order to target a star, or another location that has a given signature, they need the navigation data and a navigator who can process it. Such information can usually be bought at local star ports or calculated manually.

Fantasy Setting
In the Empire, travelling is fairly easy and relatively safe, especially in midland-regions and in populated areas, but the experience differs generally from person to person, very much depending on purpose and social layer. Outside of the Empire, travelling works much in the same ways, but not many places are as civilized or advanced as the Empire, and this is mirrored in their means of travel.

Travel on land
Travelling on land is most frequently seen when armies march or in relation to trade. In a life full of uncertainty, leaving home for extended periods of time is not something done lightly, but shorter distances are traveled commonly by everyone of every social layer.

Royalty and other high-up's
When royalty or very important spiritual leaders travel, they do so with an entourage of armed guards and servants, usually in comfortable and luxurious horse carriages, and they have tents that are almost as comfortable as low-class houses, and further more, they rarely travel away from the beaten roads, meaning they rarely even have to rely on such measures as they will stay the night at inns or simply temporarily take over a house. In countries where the royalty doesn't hold much sway, the royals travel from court to court between their subjects, where as in countries where the royalty is respected, the nobles send trusted people to be a part of the royal court rather, and as such, some kings rarely travel at all. When royalty travel, they still eat quite decent meals, and steps are taken to assure that they hardly have to feel as if they even left home.

Very rarely does royalty travel without the company of their spouses, and at least some of their children (usually daughters).

Noblemen
Some noblemen can afford to travel as royalty, but seeing as noblemen tend to travel more than royalty, many nobles are more pragmatic and slightly more accustomed to the road. Noblemen also almost never travel alone for safety reasons, realizing their lives are highly valuable when held for ransom. Albeit less luxurious they also tend to use carriages for travel in more ordinary areas but are often seen travelling on horseback armed and armored to the teeth. They also tend to favor inns and can easily demand at the very least a place in someones stables, but very few are foolish enough to deny a noblemen a place under their roof, and they can certainly afford to stay at inns. Noblemen are often found travelling all parts of the Empire for various reasons and as such, the quality of their meals varies greatly, from travel-rations to freshly cooked meals, depending on their destinations.

Merchants and craftsmen
A merchant of considerable wealth can easily afford to travel in similar ways as nobility or even royalty as there are some very wealthy merchants in the empire, but such people rarely have need to travel and might do so simply out of a desire to see the world. Leisure travel is a rarity in the empire. Merchants of less wealth and craftsmen often travel the road, rarely alone however, as they often transport valuable goods, rather they tend to travel in caravans, protected by armed mercenaries and accompanied by other traders of similar profession. Life of a travelling merchant is far from glamorous, and while travelling craftsmen and merchants might be able to afford to stay at inns and can probably easily trade themselves to being allowed to stay with commoners, they are also often forced to rough it in standard camping gear. Many of them travel in basic carriages providing very limited luxury, and mainly a means to transport cargo.

Soldiers/mercenaries
Soldiers and mercenaries travel in groups and rarely in populated areas, but typically frequent the borderlands and the more dangerous areas where dangerous creatures lurk. They typically live in camps, not always having time to afford themselves the luxury of putting up tents, and live off of dried rations. Mercenaries travel more than ordinary soldiers as they have to move around for work.

Others
People without other means of travel are often forced to travel on foot or by horseback. Horses are very common animals in the empire, and most farms have at least 2 horses and it's highly unusual to find a farm that doesn't also have a carriage, but people from the city cannot always count on being so lucky, and besides, leaving home with the carriage and both horses is not always an option, so many peasants and citizens have to rely on getting wherever they need on foot. When travelling on foot, one has to be a trained forager or stick to the main roads where one can pay for a warm meal or some dried rations (most farms produce "dried rations", or other foods that can last a long time, and gladly sell these to travelers as most farms have them in abundances) and a place to sleep. The only other alternative is to acquire professional travel gear (such as a backpack a bedroll and a tent, and loads of dried rations), which is not commonly found in households (though not hard to get at all). Especially poor travelers who have no money will have to work for they stay and meals, and usually work a week at a time at a farm, or a day or two at the very least, earning enough "credit" to get them rations to carry them a good portion before they have to start over again, and eventually reaching their destination.

Travel by Sea
Travelling by sea is the most common means of leaving one country and getting to the another, if it's not the neighboring country and one doesn't live near the border. Merchant ships travel along the coast constantly, and most of these take along a few passengers every time they dock. There are also inter-continental trade-routes, and some of such ships even specialize in moving passengers.

Royalty and other high-up's
Again, royalty never travels alone, and all kings in the Empire travel by their own ships with their own crews, escorted typically by other ships. As such, they travel in utmost luxury on board, as their quarters will be made fit for their status, and an attempt will be made to ensure fresh wares to produce decent meals for the royal passengers, sometimes involving bringing along live animals and sea-side butcherings (fairly uncommon practice on shorter voyages). While most kings have their own private sea-vessels, they rarely make use of these, as most kings rarely travel, and when they do it's even rarer for the destination to be far away.

Nobility
Some noblemen, especially those that reside over ports have their own ships, but rarely use these for travel, preferring to rent them out or play at being merchants themselves, making small fortunes that way, but when they travel, it's usually slightly less extravagant than when royalty does it, but akin to that. Even noblemen travelling on a chartered ship or as passengers will rarely settle for less than private quarters, and again, they do not travel alone. Noblemen accustomed to less luxury will often settle for dried food on travels by sea as most people do, reducing the cost of travel significantly.

Merchants and craftsmen
Merchants are the most common sights on the sea, craftsmen tend not to travel by sea unless it's necessary for them for some reason (although most ships on longer journeys do take along shipbuilders as members of the crew). Merchants travel by sea so that they can move their goods faster and further, and they make an astounding profit this way. Merchants often commandeer their own vessels, and do not necessarily travel on them, but hire people to do their trading for them, having pre-established trade-agreements. When they travel by sea, it's usually still in conjunction with their profession though and tend to get nice quarters on ships if such are at all available. Craftsmen travelling often travel as commoners however, finding themselves a bunk below deck.

Soldiers/mercenaries
Mercenaries are commonly hired on as almost permanent staff on sea vessels to ensure the safety of the captain who will in turn ensure the safe return of the ship to the owner, and otherwise employed for other obvious safety reasons. There are sea-based mercenaries out there however, many a captain has been awarded his ship for services rendered and continued his trade as a military sailor. The navies are packed full of warships, and only officers can expect decent quarters upon such vessels, where as all others must take to bunks or hammocks, and dried rations will be the tried and true menu. Some ships are designed to transport infantry forces or even cavalry, and such journeys are often terrible experiences for both animals and humans on board, because ordinary infantry are not used to life on sea, and animals will often find themselves in terrible conditions for weeks on end, in dire need of tending when they finally reach land.

Others
It's fairly cheap to book passage on a ship for a short journey, and cheaper yet if one can provide rations for himself. Most passengers find themselves unbothered by the staff of the ships as ships rely on good reputations (lest they aren't hired to transport goods). Anyone with a few coppers to his name can book passage on a ship, but getting far is more expensive for many reasons. Having a passenger on board who isn't used to life at sea will put the rest of the crew at risk, and the extra mouth to feed on a long journey will not sit well with the working crew. People with some sailing experience will find it easy to hire on as a deckhand for a short while, and they might even get paid for longer journeys, even though their purpose was transportation.

Dangers of travel
Occasional pirates roam the seas, and many countries are at war with each other, making some sea-ways dangerous to travel along, but apart from that, and of course bad weather, ship building and navigation techniques have come so far in the Empire's current days that travel by sea is considerably less risk-filled than travel by land. There are of course also monsters at sea, but they rarely attack ships, after all, the sea has it's own lifeforms, and the world doesn't revolve around the humanoids of the land.

When travelling by land, especially in the border regions that are poorly patrolled, one might encounter bandits and outlaws who live and survive by plundering and pillaging. The empire makes quick work of bandits usually but smaller bandit groups are harder to track down than the larger ones, but of course only pose a risk to smaller groups of travelers. Bandits are often poorly armed and poorly fed, they make up for this with experience in combat and from living the rough life, and finally with pure malice. Travelers on the road rarely travel unarmed. There is also the constantly lurking threat of monsters of course.

Ships have maps and finely attuned navigation tools (unless they travel along the coast in which case they don't need such means), but travellers in less populated regions by land rarely have access to such means, as owning them privately is a massive expense. Getting lost is a real danger when travelling on land and it used to be on sea as well, but it hardly is these days.

Other means of travel
The truly wealthy and well connected can afford access to the Dwarven deep roads, enabling them to travel hundreds of kilometers by going straight on decent road, and others might be willing to risk teleportation by enlisting the aid of a mage. Considering the risks involved with teleportation, this is usually avoided.

The Dwarven race has been in steady decline, and have lost control over many of their deep-roads that have fallen out of repair. They still boast the ability to reach any land in the world via their roads however, but different clans possess different territories. The tunnels are usually only braved as an alternative to travel through mountains.

Some particularily brave adventurers have used the "deep below" as the dwarves call it, as a means of travel. The deep below remains a bit of a mystery to human kind, but apparently, deep below the surface, there are pockets full of life, far below the deep roads.

Travel by airship is not entirely unheard of, but not quite common either, and seeing as there are several flying animals capable of carrying a human being in flight, this is an option for some people.