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I've been through the lore a few times regarding faster than light travel, and to be honest I can't remember besides the Warp, Webway, and something the Necrons use, what forms of Faster than Light travel exist throughout the galaxy? Just asking since I honestly can't remember the other ones, I may have read up that a few races utilized non-warp technology, though I can't remember which, also noted that said race of aliens also used some form of weaponry which completely bypass void shields and tore apart Imperial warships easily.

Do the Eldar also use the warp? I think I read up that they did rarely use the warp to move Craftworlds or it may have been Corsairs.

Do the Tau have any long term initiatives for warp based flight? Or are they going to stick with what they have?

Virtually everyone uses the warp. Eldar use the webway, which are artificial constructs within the warp that are sealed off, acting much like a labyrinthine maze stretching across the galaxy (and possibly beyond).

Alright, and yeah I know about the webway, which actually I really wanted this answered, but do they use the webway for their craftworlds to travel through? I can't exactly remember whether or not they could do that, since all I read up on was that they usually had webway portals located at the back of them.

Yeah. The craftworlds would never go into the actual unshielded warp. That would be bad.

Okay, though I'd still like to know about that faction which uses non-warp technology, I know it's not Necrons, but I can't remember the name.
I know they had a force in Battlefleet Gothic, though I can't remember if they were ever retconned. They might not have been.

You are right, Craftworlds can make warp jumps when necessary. It's dangerous, but it is faster and allows for the Craftworld to move to places the webway isn't. They don't usually use it because it's so dangerous, but they do use it.

The reason Craftworlds rarely use the webway is simply because not many Webway arteries can accommodate a craftworld. This is why they don't just hide in the Webway all the time.

Yeah, though I'm actually amazed that there aren't any more webway ports, I mean the Dark Eldar constructed their big flipping city in the Webway, how is it that nothing of such scale was ever done in different places within the webway?

It's a little strange they were a massive galaxy spanning empire, did they just say 'screw it' one's enough?

The port might be big enough, but the Highway to the port may be to small to allow passage. Remember Craftworlds were designed to be space faring vessals, not within the webway, Ergo, the pre-fall ports weren't made for Craftworlds to directly access.

Guess not.
Anyway, in terms of FTL, it would be great to know what other forms of travel one could use, and I just recalled something, do the Tyranids use something like the Alcubierre drive? Gravity and all or is that something else?

The Tyranids use a "gravity tunnel" created by the Narvhals to achieve FTL. It's not instantaneous and it's not particularly fast (compared to every other faction) but it's there.

The Necrons use the Inertialess Drive and the Dolmen Gates to achieve FTL.

Both kinds of Eldar use the Web-way or the Solar Sails (only similar to the RL items in that they share a name) on some ships, which makes them both very fast and very agile.

Orks and the Imperium use various classes of Warp drives, as do the Tau (inexpertly).

The Tyranids use the Narvhal to open a gravity 'tunnel' that they pull the hive fleet through. Slower than warp travel, but 100% safe and with the added bonus of causing geological disruption in the target system.

Ninja'd!

 Evident-Disaster wrote:
Alright, and yeah I know about the webway, which actually I really wanted this answered, but do they use the webway for their craftworlds to travel through? I can't exactly remember whether or not they could do that, since all I read up on was that they usually had webway portals located at the back of them.

 Silverthorne wrote:
Yeah. The craftworlds would never go into the actual unshielded warp. That would be bad.

Well for that matter Craftworlds, as least for as late as 6th Edition, are still described as sub-light craft that slowly "floats" across the galaxy. Which is why Craftworlds sometimes get caught up and entire fleets of the Craftworld must be mobilized to defend it, instead of just leg it.

 Psienesis wrote:

The Necrons use the Inertialess Drive and the Dolmen Gates to achieve FTL.

Well 5E explicitly says that Dolemen Gate (whic is a device that breaches into the webway) is the only way Necrons manage galactic travels. So at that point the inertia-less drive is effectively retconned out of the fluff. By 7E there are a total of two mentions of the Dolmen Gate (one in a fluff panel, another in the timeline section) and zero mention of the inertia-less drive. I wouldn't put the Inertialess Drive back on the map just yet. It made sense for the writer (Ward) to put the inertial-less drive out of cannon, given how powerful the Necrons are, with the ability to go anywhere with brutal efficiency, there's literally no reason why any aggressive Necron dynasty hasn't taken over hundreds of systems in the centuries following their awakening (both in the old fluff the Star Gods commanded them and there's no reason they should stop and same as in the new fluff for expansionists like Imotekh). There has to be something to slow them down to give the loyalist a chance, no? So they must slowly reactivating/repairing Dolmen Gates to get around.

Alright thanks for all the additional fluff.

there's literally no reason why any aggressive Necron dynasty hasn't taken over hundreds of systems in the centuries following their awakening (both in the old fluff the Star Gods commanded them and there's no reason they should stop and same as in the new fluff for expansionists like Imotekh). There has to be something to slow them down to give the loyalist a chance, no? So they must slowly reactivating/repairing Dolmen Gates to get around.

They have. See: The Orpheus War.

 Psienesis wrote:

there's literally no reason why any aggressive Necron dynasty hasn't taken over hundreds of systems in the centuries following their awakening (both in the old fluff the Star Gods commanded them and there's no reason they should stop and same as in the new fluff for expansionists like Imotekh). There has to be something to slow them down to give the loyalist a chance, no? So they must slowly reactivating/repairing Dolmen Gates to get around.

They have. See: The Orpheus War.

Actually, the Orphen War is only a very limited war -- it takes place in one single sector; not a small area, yes, yet it is a regional assault. Perhaps the Dynasty's tomb worlds are situated within the Orpheus sector, or their Dolmen Gates leads to only a few sectors/sub-sectors, and they chose Orpheus. This does not show the Necrons having the ability to traverse the galaxy with anything else but the dolmen gate. Whether it's the Necron's strategy or not, nothing contradicts the 5E retcon that Dolmen gate retconning the inertia-less drive out. Perhaps the system has Dolmen gates conveniently placed close to the dozen planets the Necron struck with the swiftness as shown in the campaign. That would be enough to explain their activities without needing the Inertia-less drive.

A whole new form of travel is in the making. Currently Ghazzy, thanks to Gork and Mork, seems to have the ability to communicate to his Lootenants across the galaxy in real time. This outstrips the telepaths who send messages across the Imperium. In the final entry of W!G's timeline Ghazzy is on Octaria having just cleaned the planet of Tyranids and another tendril on the way. It reaffirms his ability to see some of his speed freaks in a battle on Armegeddon and he was able to give orders to them and they responded immediately..real time clairvoyance as well. Most interesting of that final entry is that it state Orkimedes believes he has nearly perfected his tellyporta so that Ghazzy can appear beside his Lootenants across the glalaxy in an instant. Something Orkimedes and Ghazzy is keeping secret even from their own Orks. I still don't even understand how they tellyport blindly even short distances with complete reliability without ending up in solid matter and yet they do it over and over on a grand scale, probably another effect of the Waaaaaagh! energy. If perfected for galactic range this will become the fastest form of travel in the galaxy.

 lcmiracle wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

there's literally no reason why any aggressive Necron dynasty hasn't taken over hundreds of systems in the centuries following their awakening (both in the old fluff the Star Gods commanded them and there's no reason they should stop and same as in the new fluff for expansionists like Imotekh). There has to be something to slow them down to give the loyalist a chance, no? So they must slowly reactivating/repairing Dolmen Gates to get around.

They have. See: The Orpheus War.

Actually, the Orphen War is only a very limited war -- it takes place in one single sector; not a small area, yes, yet it is a regional assault. Perhaps the Dynasty's tomb worlds are situated within the Orpheus sector, or their Dolmen Gates leads to only a few sectors/sub-sectors, and they chose Orpheus. This does not show the Necrons having the ability to traverse the galaxy with anything else but the dolmen gate. Whether it's the Necron's strategy or not, nothing contradicts the 5E retcon that Dolmen gate retconning the inertia-less drive out. Perhaps the system has Dolmen gates conveniently placed close to the dozen planets the Necron struck with the swiftness as shown in the campaign. That would be enough to explain their activities without needing the Inertia-less drive.

It's an entire Sector, which is some 200 LY on a side. That contains (potentially) thousands of inhabited systems.

Warp travel is at times fast seeing as you can arrive before you departed

Warp Travel is going to be fast regardless. What might take months in the Warp would take millennia under impulse speed.

Wait, what speeds does Warp move at?

 Evident-Disaster wrote:
Wait, what speeds does Warp move at?

There's no set speed. You could cross the universe in -3 minutes or take a million years to cross the street.
It really depends on the conditions of the warp and the skill of the Navigator.

Wow that seems highly unreliable, so no one has produced some kind of chart or ay kind of lore around it?

 Evident-Disaster wrote:
Wow that seems highly unreliable, so no one has produced some kind of chart or ay kind of lore around it?

It is indeed very unreliable, often the ships will not arrive at all, but such is the way of the Realm of Chaos.
And that is the lore.
I think there maybe some Warp travel game mechanics in the Rogue Trader RPG that make speeds and travel times more concrete, but I never actually read through it.

Alright, I do know this fellow who actually created a chart and mechanics for actual Warp flight which could work, but it didn't take into account for the warp discrepancies, it just calculated an average in speed and time taken in warp to get to its destination.
As for the rest of it, it was mostly trying to apply real work physics to 40k, which I know is pretty out of place.

The Warp defies and, in fact, actively mocks any concept of real-world physics. It is, after all, a literal hellscape of emotion and thought-made-manifest.

In FFG's Rogue Trader game, there's a short chart that provides basic statements like "If you're going this far, it will take you an average of this long" and provides a dice roll to determine how many days/weeks/months it takes to go from Point A to B.

Somewhere, it is mentioned that flying from one side of the galaxy to the other in a single Warp Jump, provided no accidents or calamities, would take 2-3 years... which is *crazy* fast. Like, exponentially greater than light-speed fast.

OK, to properly put an image in your head of what navigating in The Warp is like.

Imagine a jacuzzi. One bubble is your ship. Imagine you can blow on the bubble to steer it through the water. You want to get from the vent into the tub to the little flap that lets excess water out on the opposite side of the tub.

Then start dropping rocks in the jacuzzi.

If you touch another bubble, your bubble pops and your ship is destroyed. If the shockwave from one of the rocks touches your bubble, it pops and your ship is destroyed. If one of the rocks touches your bubble, the bubble pops and your ship is destroyed.

Now start dropping marbles into the jacuzzi. The shockwaves from the marbles are time. They won't pop your bubble, but they will push it around. There are a lot more marbles than there are rocks.

Congratulations if you make it to the little flap with your bubble. If you've done it without being touched by any of the shockwaves from the marbles, you've arrived on time, as if you'd travelled in realspace. If you're lucky, you got a bunch of marbles behind you that pushed you forwards quickly and you get there early. You've achieved FTL. If you're unlucky, you've had a lot more marbles behind you and you've been pushed so fast that you arrive before you left!

if you're unluckier, you got hit by marble-shockwaves from the sides that did really weird things to your ship like making subjective ship-board time go really fast or really slow. If you're the unluckiest git in the galaxy, you had to plow through a ton of marble-shockwaves in front of you and may arrive hundreds or thousands of years after you would have in realspace.

As for making charts, the marbles are random. The rocks are random. And the bubble jets are set to random. You're in luck, though - someone is shining a bright light from somewhere to the left, so you can always orient yourself on that single point of confirmed locality and work out a course by dead reckoning.

___________________________

As for the Inertialess Drive, the Necron Empire would be impossible to maintain without it. A) it was retconned back in with Orpheus, B) the Dolmen Gates in the 2014 'dex are clearly base-to-point teleportation, not webway tunnels, and C) the Sautekh Dynasty controlled four dolmen gates, and yet have an area of influence that covers a massive chunk of Ultima Segmentum.

Inertialess Drive is here to stay.

The two races that have not yet been mentioned at the Nicassar and the Hrud.

The Nicassar use telekinesis to break relativity in realspace, but their FTL is even slower than the Tau or Tyranid methods.

The Hrud are the strangest. Using their inherent entropic fields, they somehow sidestep reality and the warp entirely to instantly translocate infinite distances. This one passage from Gods of Mars is pretty much all we have on their method;

 Psienesis wrote:

It's an entire Sector, which is some 200 LY on a side. That contains (potentially) thousands of inhabited systems.

The planets the Necron attacked are not of a large quantity. The initial wave maybe some tens of worlds. They were simultaneous, which means groups of Necrons could have initiated from a point relatively close to the population centers of each star systems that were attacked. They needn't travel 200 light years.

Maynarkh Dynasty had years to planned for this and there is no reason why they cannot coordinate it such that the attacks can be done in a relatively short time. While Dolmen Gates are mostly damaged and their numbers are far less than the webway gates. But what's 1% of virtual infinity? The system could have some hundreds of Dolmen Gates. We don't know. All we know is that inertialess Drives are rectonned as of 5E and IA12 came before 7E. Therefore inertialess drives are not canon at that point.

 Evident-Disaster wrote:
Alright, I do know this fellow who actually created a chart and mechanics for actual Warp flight which could work, but it didn't take into account for the warp discrepancies, it just calculated an average in speed and time taken in warp to get to its destination.
As for the rest of it, it was mostly trying to apply real work physics to 40k, which I know is pretty out of place.

Which type of warp travel did this chap base his work on? Because 40K warp travel is eh... highly impossible to predict. Given GW's description, imagine a piece of paper, with two point on two different sides of the paper are, say, 20cm apart, how bend the paper on both sides, the distance can now be just a few micrometers, if you press the points against each other. Now image the paper is actually a body of moving water, like the ocean, and any two arbitrary points in it have a constantly changing distance in between[/i]... some thing like that. the distance of any two point can change according to the "currents".

That being said, there use to be a very defined speed to warp travel. In the rogue trader rule book, warp travel is described to be traveling at 1-4 light years per hour of perceived time/36 hours of real space time, should a craft enters warp space at random. A "typical jump" is usually around 1-4 light years and takes 1 to 6 realspace time and 1 to 4 hours for the craft.

Except that Dolmen Gates are incredibly rare to the point where the Sautekh Dynasty eliminated another dynasty outright just to control a single Dolmen Gate orbitting around a piece of gak world in the middle of nowhere that doesn't even have a name - reference Hammer and Anvil, James Swallow, released at the same time as the Warddex.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Except that Dolmen Gates are incredibly rare to the point where the Sautekh Dynasty eliminated another dynasty outright just to control a single Dolmen Gate orbitting around a piece of gak world in the middle of nowhere that doesn't even have a name - reference Hammer and Anvil, James Swallow, released at the same time as the Warddex.

Please, as if the Necron Dynasty aren't eliminating/assimilating each other already.
For an expansionist such as Imotekh sometimes even just one tomb world can be worth eliminating a dynasty for; not to mention for an expansionist any Dolmen Gate is worth total annihilation for due to the potential area for conquest it can open up. The Maynarkh Dynasty can be amongst those with access to more than a handful of Dolmen Gates.
The fact that Dolmen Gates are so highly contested shows just how little option the Necrons have; had inertialess drives been canon there would be no need for such inter-dynastic conflicts.

How large are Warp drives for Imperial ships? I mean the size of most vessels they've gotta be massive. Or is that just for warships?