Thursday 7 January 2021

The Stellar Bounce manoeuver

 I flew back to New Eden to learn from Sarachem, but I became a student of professor Moriarty.

Ships don't collide and crash, they bounce off each other. It is a consequence of our warp drive bubble. The bounce is ruled by the laws of physics, and vessels experience a larger change when they collide with larger ships. The bounce effect is even stronger with celestial objects, in particular stars.

My tiny exploration frigate, when bouncing off the New Eden star, was thrown out a distance of 470000 km instantly. However, a regular warp to the star leaves one much too far away from the star's core to perform this manoeuver. This can be helped by dropping mobile depots close to the star's core, best within the range where ships experience the bounce. Warping to them will bring you right inside the bounce radius and fling your ship away.

Professor Moriarty positioned many such depots inside the New Eden star (however, they will decay in a month or two). They can be easily found using combat probes. Warping to these will bounce a ship immediately outwards - my magnate crossed a distance of 332000 km in a fraction of a second, in the direction radially outwards from the sun. Some depots are just outside the bounce radius, as you have to build your way inside. Warping to those, I found myself navigating inside the star's plasma. The screen apart from the windows went blank from radiation. I guess this would be an ideal hideout.

Mass times intertia of ship determines the strength of the effect and the distance crossed. My propulsion mod increased the bounce effect. A freighter or a dreadnought can cross vast distances like this.

I can see how this could have military applications. The larger the star, the stronger the effect. Shellashock Askiras, a specialist in stellar bouncing and peaceful scholar who was present to assist professor Moriarty, told me of tests with dreadnaughts performed in M-YCD4 that have allowed to bounce these ships over 11 AU in an instant. Some military strategists now siege capital fleets inside suns, apparently. And a fortizar was also built inside the sun's photosphere.
 
Alas, New Eden star by our experiments is not massive enough to warp closer to Eve Gate than twice the distance the Goners reached, and professor Moriarty has already reached much farther than that.

Dear reader, please do not reveal the knowledge that I divulged here, for much more is to be learned from professor Moriarty, and he might shun me for sharing this with others.