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Hi,

again some background question to get some piece of fluff I have in my mind right. Is there background on the way ships drop out of the warp?
To better illustrate what I mean: some pictures I saw for example at the Warhammer wiki page for "warp drive" illustrate a kind of portal opening in real space through which the ship enters. My questions:
1. Is there some kind of visible clue that this "portal" is about to open that you can see from real space and if yes, how much time do you have? Does a ship waiting in real space has for example enough time to bring up its void shields and weapons before the other ship passes the portal?
2. Looking from the other side: can a ship that is about to leave the warp see/sensor something in the real space it is about to enter before passing the portal? Would you see that you are about to materialize one mile from an enemy Battlebarge before dropping out or is this a surprise? Can you collide with something because it is - of all places it could be in the endless void - exactly at your entry point?
3. Is there a mention on speed? Does it look like for example Babylon 5, with the portal opening and the visual impression of the incoming ship decellerating harshly from great speed? Or more like Deep Space Nines wormhole that there is no noticable shift in speed when crossing the border? Or like in the first Chris Pratt Star trek film with ships decellerating and from so incredible speed that it looks just like "PLOP, here am I!"?

1. I believe that Navigators can 'see' the ripples the ship makes as it approaches but they can be hidden if you have a good enough Navigator or psyker on board. So it really depends but generally yes.

2. I believe the Navigator knows roughly where they're coming out but there's something called a Mandeville Point which is the minimum safe distance to enter/leave the Warp. But again if you have good enough Navigators/psykers you can exit much closer to the destination without crashing or otherwise dying horribly.

3. My understanding is that you drop out of the Warp which looks a bit like Star Trek and then have to switch over from Warp engines to normal engines. So a portal opens, you jump out, you're running on momentum for a small amount of time then engines kick in and you go as fast as the Imperium can.

This is how I imagine a warp jump:

Edit: Apparently embedding the video doesn't let you use the time stamp. 0:54 skips to it though.

https://youtu.be/V93tCRSX1aE?t=54

I realise your question was more about exiting, so I found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XVPdFGzNXI

Fan made but still a good representation I think. As to speed, I'm not sure it is ever stated. However, I think that is because it rarely comes up. As has been stated, you have to be past the Mandeville point. That means it would be really hard for you to actually appear near anything.

This is how it looks in Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus (around 6:05): https://youtu.be/sUuQQugpxp0?t=365

I think there were some cutscenes in the Dawn of War games that showed ships exiting the warp, if you want to dig into these.

OK thanks, I can work with that. Based on the last video there seems to be at least enough warning to maybe get your shields up if you happen to be nearby, but not enough to have every torpedo in the tubes ready for launch.

Don't forget though, it takes time to bless your instruments and appease the machine spirit (if your an Imperial anyway). I imagine if your not ready for something to drop out of warp, it would be easy to get caught with your pants down.

Of course there is still distance and speed to factor in. Warp travel is not exact, and the enemy could easy over shoot your location and end up a few solar systems away (or 100 years late/early)

Also worth noting on distance: unless you have an archeotech warp drive, a truly first class navigator (the sort you find on Inquisition Black Ships), or a death wish, ship's enter and leave warp at the Mandeville Point - a quite sizeable height above nearby gravity wells.

Since a star has a gravity well too, this often means the outer reaches of a system, days or weeks at sublight from planets you give a damn about, and that basically means your odds of being close to another ship - by which I mean auspex or vox range, let alone shooting range - are essentially zero...

From what I understand the warp engines drag you into warp, and the geller field projects a bubble of ‘reality’ around you (through which you can drive with normal engines, but the bubble of reality also constantly recentres on you).

I think of warp travel as being similar to how glacier worms move through ice. The worm is able to melt a small area of ice immediately around it, and in this small area of liquid it can swim. If it swims to the left the ‘bubble’ of water will move to the left with it, allowing the worm to eventually traverse across the entire glacier.

Black Legion and Legacy both detail ships entering and leaving warp. There seems to be a little variation by author. Perhaps not all warp engines transition between warp and reality in exactly the same, or perhaps different navigators have their own ways of ‘landing’ after ‘flying the warp’.