Ah, the ripple drive. The staple of FTL travel throughout the galaxy. From the smallest inter-system freighter to the largest military cityship, practically all FTL-capable ships have ripple drives even if they also have another drive as well.

These are the only drive on the Legacy Flint-Vasa aside from thrusters and other sublight manuvering systems. Ripple Drives can be used for sublight speeds in addition to FTL speeds, however they are unsafe to use in proximity to other craft or space stations.

The basic principal is that Ripple Drives send energy through exotic matter to distort space in a localized way around the ship. For small ships, the Ripple Drives extend along the sides of the ship, generally for about 75% or more of the length of the ship, in order to distort space all around the ship. For larger ships, there's usually “ripple drive extenders”, which are special pods that pull the distortion field from near the drives (usually in the aft of the ship) and tug it more forward to help surround the entire ship.

This distortion field creates an interesting situation; the ship isn't actually moving. Rather, space is moving around the ship and the ship is being slid along for the ride. When traveling faster than light, space around the ship travels faster than light, and the ship is practically stationary for all intents and purposes. It cheats relativity out of causing time dialations; so the crew live and age aboard the ship at the same rate they would outside the ship.

There are also a few other beneficial side effects that we will get into in more detail below.

The maximum speed for a Ripple Drive is about 0.7 lightyears per hour on a well tuned military ship for short sprints. Typical large ships cruise around 0.5 lightyears per hour, and may burst upwards of 0.65 lightyears per hour. Small ships are often restricted to more around 0.25 lightyears per hour or less due to the limited power generation capacities.

So what does it “feel like” to be traveling FTL with a ripple drive?

Not like much. As noted, the ship isn't moving, but rather the localized space around it is, in effect making the ship a stationary frame of reference. The primary oddity is a lack of stars; looking out the window will reveal a purple-ish swirly haze around the ship, and no stars. Some people find the haze beautiful, some people find it a little disturbing. The haze is very wispy and it is quite easy to see there's nothing beyond it.

Ripple Drives work by churning up the space around the ship. As such, anything that enters the field of churned up space around the ship will, itself, get churned up. For example, a shuttle attempting to leave the ship while the ripple drive is active will likely get torn to pieces. If the ship is carrying a large piece of bulk cargo (for example, a section of a space station) and part of that cargo touches the ripple field, then the part of the cargo that touches the ripple field will abruptly be going FTL while the part not touching remains stationary.

At best, the cargo will likely be ripped off the ship and destroyed. At worst, it will collide catastrophically with the ship and nobody will survive.

And thus, one of the cargo management team's most important duties is to monitor bulk cargo and make sure that it stays secure and safely contained within the ripple field.

As noted above, the field a Ripple Drive generates is effectively impenetrable to most objects. The ship doesn't actually have to move in order to have the ripple drives turned on, so a ship can sit there with the drives churning and use them as an effective shield against kinetic threats.

That said, there are a number of threats that can penetrate a ripple field. A large enough explosion can transfer some energy through the ripple field. A missile designed to disrupt or merge ripple fields with the target ship can potentially penetrate it. And some energy weapons are effective through ripple fields.

And of course, an object sufficiently large and sufficiently well aimed could come through the ripple field as debris that would hit the ship within the field like a shotgun blast. That, or just “bad luck” with a smaller object, as anything that gets into a ripple field could have some fragmentation that gets to the other side of it.

As such, the most effective way to use Ripple Drives as a defense is to perform a “Ripple Flare”. This is simply making the space distortion field around the ship larger; it requires more energy, in fact, a rather large dump of energy into the system. And it is rather hard on the engines as a result. But, increasing the size of the ripple field for brief moments can make it more likely the ship will shrug off what might otherwise be a devastating attack.

Often, the ship's computer will be used to track incoming projectiles or likely weapons fire from enemies and be used to perfectly time Ripple Flares to destroy incoming attacks. The flaring of the drives will eventually burn something out, though, so it is not a defense with indefinite endurance.