Space travel methods and Galactic Empires.

The ability for ships and possibly fleets to travel vast distances is vital. Still up for decision
is the method by which the various inhabitants of the galaxy travel and whether or not the
method is universal. I dont believe the method needs to be universal and the idea of some
species possessing technology not accessible to others is an interesting concept and certainly
plausible concept after all that would be a difficult secret to share. Also FTL will be used for the
remainder of the conversation as any method of traveling a great distance in and insignificant
amount of time comparatively.

Now as for methods of travel

Gates, Relays, & Warp Fields
The idea here is that most individual ships dont possess the ability on their own to travel
vast distances very quickly on their own. The power isnt available or the technology requires a
massive size. Possible ideas include relays similar to mass effect, where the ship enters a certain
proximity and its sent to the location of the receiving relay.
Another idea is the idea of physical gates, I imagine the rings from Halo generating some
form of field that must be passed through. The idea here is that space stations become relatively
speaking immobile. Any vessel larger than the Gate must possess its on method of FTL. This
gives some variability some gates could be more valuable than others due to their size or
range.
The last idea of the teleportation like method of travel is Warp fields. Im not familiar with
any story that uses this model but my idea is only exceptionally large ships are large enough to
possess the drives/reactor/projectors/containment necessary to generate a stable warp field.
These capital ships would generate a field, where anything within the field goes when the capital
ship goes. I suppose its similar to a portable mass relay. With this model the focus is placed on
capital ships. Having a large fleet of frigates is only useful for systemic defense you need capital
ships to move your fleet. This could be a offshoot technology for some faction.

I will continue my thoughts another time. (This was kind of where we left off)
Backing off from our last conversation, I want to focus on the scale of Galactic empires for
a little bit. I think that will help us reign in on the method, scale and cost of travel. So first
things first, what does the galaxy look like. Personally I like the idea of using the Milky Way as a
base. Personally I think its cool to think of the system as an actual possible reality in the vastly
far future. There are a lot of galaxies out there so if you have a reason to believe one would suit
our abilities better, open to suggestions.

Here is the milky way: http://tzontonel.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/national-geographic-milkyway-reference-map1.jpg?w=6000&h=3887

As you can see in the graphic above, we are in an interesting position. Our sun is between
a miniature arm the Orion arm and the Sagittarius arm. Not being in the arm puts us in a

relatively stable place. Not a lot of catastrophic things happen there. On the other hand being
between an arm means that the distance that needs to be traversed to get from one system to
another is rather large. If you were, in the arm, you would have a lot less far to travel to get to
where your going.
Now I personally believe that once a species has technologically developed, the arms
are the likely places to invest in colonizing. More systems in a local area means more resources
to exploit and your civilization will thrive more than being out in the boonies. The advanced
technology would help fend off, rouge asteroids and comets. Perhaps part of the defense fleets
duty is to patrol for free roaming objects and either capture or destroy them. In addition the
ability to manipulate/generate fields would protect from a lot of the radiation emanating from so
many stars so close to each other.
So if we agree that the open areas are great for a developing species, meaning its safer for
life develop, but eventually youll want to get into the clusters for more resources and rapid
growth, we can continue on to the subject of empire size.
First up my most recent favorite, mass effect. Mass effect is interesting because it
operates very much on the Imperial English no flag no country, so heres mine philosophy. The
entire galaxy is colonized, and here are areas of major influence. But it seems that everybody
has a least a little presence everywhere except the humans who were late to the party and
have no direct colonies in inner counsel space. So here is a picture of the map.

As you can see the galactic center is a mess, too much is going on there for it to be
colonized. Stars and systems crashing into each other. Then you have various zones of
influence keeping in mind that all factions have some level of colonization in all zones. The
council space is majority the council species. Earth Alliance space is majority earth. The Attican
Traverse is pretty much fair game. And the Terminus systems are composed of factions not
necessarily aligned in anyway other than they oppose the council directly. In the mass effect
universe a lot of the mixing of species is dependent on as you pointed out cooperation. Without
cooperation mixed systems would have difficulty existing unless..
If any ship can warp any distance, then all ships would use that method of travel. If you
can literally go anywhere (that you have navigational knowledge of) every system essentially
becomes an island without an ocean. Travel from one island to another is instantaneous and
nothing happens in between. Not that there were really many battles out on the open Atlantic or
Pacific but it was a possibility. I guess where Im going with this line of though is, if there arent
serious fuel costs, limited availability of the resource, limited availability of the technology, or
more interestingly limited availability of navigational knowledge. Each system literally is on its

own, when it comes to immediate defense. Which is what you see in mass effects world map,
the colonized planets are the highly sought after ones and everybody is everywhere, the zones
are purely majority influence markers.
I dont know why, but I feel like I like the idea of regions of controlled space or influence

zones.

Above is one of many, there are a lot of fan boys, compiled maps of the star trek galaxy. Note
many distinct territories that dont necessarily overlap. I dont like this, without
overlapping/shared borders, there is no conflict zones unless we go back to the previous idea of
every system is an island with no ocean viewpoint. Which honestly may be what we end up
doing. All worlds will need to beef up system defenses and have their own fleets, it would be a
very turtlely galaxy.

So looking at these maps and back at the map of our galaxy, I think this is how we should
set it up. Traveling across the galaxy takes an immense amount of power and technology, and
only the largest of ships or a relay/dedicated gate type technology should be able to traverse
such a distance. And moving a ship of such magnitude would really be considered an act of war
unless there was a precedence for the migratory nature of the vessel.
I think even crossing the vast gaps of nothing between the galactic arms would require a
ship with a very large drive, perhaps even limited to the largest of merchant type ships, military
battle cruisers & destroyers (most political personnel would travel via military escort anyway),
capitol ships, and frigates designed specifically for that type of travel.

This allows for several things

With super long distance travel limited to large vessels, there is still the threat of a
surprise military attack, but not everywhere simultaneously, and certainly not on an
overwhelming scale. Light cruisers armed with planet destroying weapons of mass
destruction cant just pop up everywhere and wipe a faction off the map instantaneously.
With limited travel there will be factions with regions of influence, if everyone is acquiring
navigational knowledge via exploration obviously everyone will have their distinct regions
which will eventually rub up against eachother.
This allows for 2 kinds of conflict, one being direct conflict at the edge of the territories
(either in an arm, or in between arms), and the other is again the possibility colonies on
the outside of influence zones being raided or if there is a conflict fleets could at great
expense traverse a surmountable distance.