Warp

by TheiaTheGondia

Warp travel is the most basic form of FTL and the one species usually come up with first. It involves making a bubble of space around the ship and moving that bubble faster than light by manipulating mass, warp has an unusual effect when observing the universe outside the bubble as the universe you observe outside the bubble will move backwards in time until you reach your destination, however when the warp bubble is resynched with the rest of the universe time will quickly move forward to the present day. This happens due to relativity because time moves as fast as light does and the universe light years away is still in the past from your perspective so you are taking a pocket of the present day backwards in time as you move faster than light but when the bubble re-joins the rest of the universe it goes back to the present and takes the ship with it. All FTL travel is time travel and basic Warp prevents you from actually interacting with the past due to the fact that you are carrying a piece of the present with you but more advanced forms of FTL can be used to actually travel into the Past and require safety measures and alien species that move past warp have to deal with this.

The speed of warp travel is proportional to the amount of energy one can dedicate to it, most species can achieve a few light years per day but in theory with a large enough power supply and an efficiant enough warp drive any speed is acheivable.