Anti-micro jump drive (lore)
Anti-micro jump drives were developed by the Sukuuvestaa Corporation along principles similar to mobile warp disruptors. Where mobile warp disruption fields serve as tactical countermeasures to incoming ships, Sukuuvestaa’s invention produces a bubble of interference which prevents ships from entering when using the rumored micro jump drive. Since the micro jump drive technology never made it to market, the anti-drives were discontinued as well.
Contents
Development
Espionage, Failure and Revelations
Sukuuvestaa Corporation discovered the development of Lai Dai’s micro jump drive through a source in Lai Dai’s research team, who leaked early plans to the rival corporation. Seeking to undercut their competition, the Sukuuvestaa Corporation started their own development of a similar module, with little success. Combined with losing contact with their agent in Lai Dai soon after the leak, later discovered to have been compromised, Sukuuvestaa’s efforts amounted to little as they lacked enough information to continue development. Unknown to them at the time they also lacked key Sleeper technologies that were introduced to Lai Dai’s project, giving them the breakthrough which Sukuuvestaa lacked.
Sukuuvestaa realized their attempts with a micro jump drive was unsuccessful due to their inability to control the unstable and brief formation of exotic particles, created as part of the bridging process in wormhole connection. These particles had been observed by many research corporations involved in the study of wormholes since the Seyllin I incident in YC111. While attempting to perform a successful micro jump these particles were too unstable on such a small scale, and easily disrupted by the other energies unleashed in the chaotic maelstrom of a wormhole formation. While this disruption is also present in larger wormholes, Sukuuvestaa found that they were sufficiently stable to withstand the interference. A reason for this has not yet been found by physicists studying wormhole phenomena.
Even though this amounted to an impasse for Sukuuvestaa the development team saw the potential for another technology. Sukuuvestaa diverted their development away from copying Lai Dai’s micro jump drive technology, maintaining a tight lid of secrecy over their espionage activities, and began seeking a means to combat micro jump drive usage by artificially disrupting micro jump drive wormholes.
Adaptations
The Sukuuvestaa Corporation began extensive theoretical simulation to test their goal of interference generation against small-scale wormholes. The results showed that small pockets of space could be effectively safeguarded from these particles forming by using a more refined wave, tuned to mimic the interference observed in their failed micro jump drive tests.
Sukuuvestaa was also in possession of Sleeper technologies acquired from multiple third parties, most notably capsuleers selling salvaged Sleeper technology on the market. Of the most use to them among these discoveries were advanced broadcast nodes, capable of being configured to emit a correctly modulated interference signal with the requisite power and precision.
Using the already proven mobile warp disruptor platform as a base they retrofitted them with the adapted broadcast nodes and began testing in conjunction with their previous simulation data.
Prototype Development
Sukuuvestaa forged ahead without a functioning micro jump drive to test with, focusing their initial efforts on perfecting the interference signal modulation on the test platform. They conducted various stages of tuning with the broadcast nodes and power core, seeking the most optimal range while maintaining the required interference strength found in early simulations.
There were greater hopes of amplifying the interference to an extent that large areas of space could be covered. Sukuuvestaa desired to cover areas as great as 200km from the deployed platform. Even with the advantage of reverse engineered Sleeper technology, the power requirements for this could not be met.
Declaration of Intent
Sukuuvestaa’s efforts soon became known to the Caldari Providence Directorate and, in the interest of State security, the megacorporation was required to disclose the current state of their development and its intended application. Sukuuvestaa declared their overall ambitions being to provide a countermeasure to a technology that would radically change the face of conflict in space.
Lai Dai first discovered Sukuuvestaa’s attempts to counter their technology when the Caldari Providence Directorate report reached the Chief Executive Panel. Outraged by this, and suspecting Sukuuvestaa of espionage, Lai Dai sought to block Sukuuvestaa’s development through the Caldari Business Tribunal. The Tribunal quickly dismissed the case, citing little evidence of foul play on Sukuuvestaa’s part. The Tribunal, instead, ruled that both technologies should be released at the same time; a decision neither disputing party was happy with as it prevented them from capitalizing on their technology before their respective rival.
Further Application Testing
Nearing a finished product, Sukuuvestaa was not entirely clear of scrutiny by the CPD. The Directorate approached the megacorporation with an order to divert some of their efforts toward wider applications for their new technology in combating Sansha's Nation incursions through natural wormholes. Sukuuvestaa, complying with the Directorate order, field tested their platform against several naturally formed wormholes. While documenting the results they noted that exotic particle formation was notably reduced, though there was no discernible effect on the stability of the wormhole itself.
Several phases of testing were conducted with an earlier prototype, no longer needed by the primary development team. Attempts to increase the power of the interference signal proved ineffective and, eventually, the secondary project was cancelled. The means to effectively counteract the magnitudes of power of a natural wormhole were acknowledged to be beyond the reach of current technology, even modified Sleeper technology.
Final results were recorded for future application and copies of the findings were turned over to the Directorate.
The Final Product
The final product selected by Sukuuvestaa for mass distribution was a deployable and anchorable structure containing the modified broadcast nodes. The nodes, and their power source, were configured to enable a 32km radius of interference in which a micro jump drive cannot form a destination point wormhole.
Sukuuvestaa was to make the technology available in mid YC114. Complying with the earlier ruling of the Caldari Business Tribunal, they planned to coincide the release of their countermeasure to micro jump drives with the public release of that same technology. However, when it turned out that micro jump drives themselves would not be released, and might in fact not even exist as a viable interstellar war tool, production of all countermeasures was put to an immediate and total halt.
Technology
The prevailing technology behind the anti-micro jump drive centers on the bubble’s ability to stabilize an area of space up to 32km from the deployable beacon. As the interference waveform is emitted by the device, it prevents the formation of a destination point wormhole created by the micro jump drive module inside the sphere of influence.
As a micro jump drive attempts to project the short range wormhole into this sphere the interference wave effectively creates a wall that causes the destination point to be cut short. The micro jump drive is forced to resolve the destination wormhole outside the sphere of interference along the original line of travel. The micro jump is completed, though not within the confines of the bubble.
Sukuuvestaa’s ambition was to prevent the micro jump drive from performing any jump, however, without having tested the technology on a functioning micro jump drive the ability of the module to still complete a partial jump was unforeseen. Lai Dai’s own expectations of the rival corporation’s technology rendering their own useless when deployed was expected to be unfounded once both technologies were pitted against each other. Either way, Sukuuvestaa have claimed their efforts to be a great success, even in the absence of a module to counter.
Natural and Sansha Wormholes
While the technology for the anti-micro jump drive is based on research into combating natural wormhole formations, used by Sansha’s Nation incursions, the interference signals are still too weak to effectively disrupt wormhole formations on such a powerful scale.
The same is true of stargate technology, which utilizes artificially created wormholes to instantly send ships over interstellar distances.
Cynosural Field Jumps
The bubble is ineffective as a means of altering the jump in destination point of a conventional jump drive due to fundamental differences in how the destination point is formed. A conventional jump drive locks onto a cynosural beacon, which does not emit the same exotic particles seen in wormhole formation. With anti-micro jump drive interference being specifically tuned to cancel out these particles, and nothing else, the bubbles cannot be used to disrupt the formation of a cynosural field.