Subspace Transmitters

Subspace transmitters, also called warp transmitters, are static warp drive space stations that manipulate warp fields to produce subspace waves for interstellar communication. Unlike their spacecraft counterparts, warp transmitters remain locally in place and are optimized to produce rapidly fluctuating warp fields for the purpose of encoding information. They transmit data at around 970 times the speed of light, or around 0.38 lightyears per day.

The communication afforded by warp transmitters is fundamentally rudimentary. Messages are sent by fluctuating a warp field to produce the “1s” and “0s” of digital information, but the limits of a warp drive slow the process considerably. Directional movement and variable strength emissions are used to more efficiently encode information. Encryption is also a concern, as subspace wave emissions are omnidirectionally broadcast transmissions. Anyone with a sufficient receiver can tune it to any location in nearby space and detect any subspace waves in that region.

Though recognizably archaic in their function, subspace waves are the singular method available for rapid communication across vast regions of space. Communications end up bottlenecked at warp transmitters waiting for their turn to be transmitted. Within a star system warp transmitters can only be located at L1 points, though they can operate at even the closest inner-system L1 points as they don’t travel beyond them like spacecraft would need to. Arrays of transmitters are often also placed in interstellar space, where they are not constrained to certain points and where their electronics can operate at low ambient temperatures. The only alternative for faster-than-light communications is for warp spacecraft to physically carry messages.