I'm making a space opera setting. I have most of it plotted

Google negative matter or negative mass. Wormholes created from such mass locked to stars.

You can't.

>>51733640
>I've established that it works by sending you near the target sun by means of a straight line, so that you can only move between stars.
Sounds a bit like the Alderson Drive or Node Drive.

>I need this to need some kind of fuel
Hmm. That's a tough one.

>>51733640
Seems similar to what I'm planning on doing for my solar system based campaign.
Of course, it will be over much smaller distances than yours but the principle behind it remains the same.
As for the fuel, I honestly don't know what would work. You may just want to go with the classic "Dark Matter" or "Anti Matter."

>>51733640

Fuel for between stars only travel?

easy- use the energy created by solar winds. either direct slingshot off of it (solar sails) or harness the energy of the vibrations in the flow and have it charge batteries (vibration ion drive).

Exotic matter found only in certain regions.

The elementary particles its made up of don't occur in any other matter. Nobody has been able to find a way to produce these elementary particles in a lab - there's no way to produce the raw materials to construct this matter in any way, at least not yet. It has to be collected/mines/refined to be used.

The race of aliens have simply figured it out first - how and why is up to you.

>>51733640
Why not have it made from really common resources (stellar mass, harvested gas giants, enriched isotopes), but the refinement and enrichment is either so complex or its so economically infesible to set up the infrastructure that only a few groups do it. Sorta like the Edenists in The Reality Dysfunction

Eve Online warp drives require large gravity signatures or pre-set bookmarks to "lock" the warp drive on.

In-game it lets you go to planets and moons, but you could restrict it to suns. Then add fuel.

Other Eve FTL:

Jump Drives are basically teleporters/wormhole thingies. For accurate jumps you need someone at your destination holding a cynosural field generator (a wormhole) open for you, which costs fuel.

Stargates are paired, permanent wormhole generators between systems. Someone's got to warp (slowly) out to a system or make an inaccurate jump, then coast in and set one down. OLD lore said they had to be in binary star systems, which IRL are common and the stars are far apart so you don't notice most of the time. That got retconned in Eve though.

Some other FTL travel inspiration about laying down a stargate and things going horribly wrong:

https://community.eveonline.com/backstory/chronicles/old-man-star/

Maybe my solution is overly simplistic, but I've found that overly simplistic is not always simple enough, so here's what I got: All us cool humans that are into physics determined that such a drive was theoretically possible but would require unimaginable amounts of energy. Then some more cool humans determined the make-up of a fuel (using negative muons or some such technobabble) that could provide such levels of energy. Through decades of dedicated work in particle accelerators, we figured out a way to produce this fuel. Not mass-produce, but produce in sufficient quantities to allow semi-regular interstellar travel.

The catch: turns out some alien motherfuckers in their little corner of the galaxy found a way not to produce interstellar fuel, but harvest it from naked singularities. We find ourselves in your space opera setting where such aliens have just made a huge incursion into populated space.

Make it a blend of materials that have to be mixed properly or Bad Things Happen. After years of experimenting, and a few factories/colonies/worlds lost, the people decided to use the safest formula, it's a bitch to make, but you won't blow up.

The other race just got stupid lucky and found a mix that is as simple as modern ceramics.

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564KB, 1440x900px

>>51733640
I've got the solution for you!

Antimatter!

It's extremely hard to make but an advanced civilization could surely do it (right?); plus it provides the highest energy density of any material possible (~8.9876e16 Joules/kg)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(specific_energy)

>>51733640

This is the FTL system used in Outsider. Basically, the alignment of the stars, already a gravitic imprint on space time, makes a 'funnel' ships can use.

See here:

http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/forum_ftl_tech.html

>>51733640
>How can I make this work?
You can't. Faster-than-light travel is, under our current understanding, impossible.

So since you're already throwing away the laws of physics to tell the story you want, just make something up.

Many anons said antimater. That works.

You could make up a new element of compound that only occurs naturally and can't effectively be recreated.

Or Google relatively rare elements in our universe. Presto! Your warp drive needs those elements to bend space-time for reasons.

Someone mentioned Eve, but Elite uses the matter of stars themselves for fuel. Doesn't solve your problem, though.

>>51733640
I think the real problems arise when you take account of the relativist effects; the obvious twins paradox example.

In a somewhat exaggerated case, someone travels to a distant star and blows it up, then returns, will this star still shine in the sky?

How will this affect your setting?

>>51733640
>actually can be made by natural materials

Why is that a requirement? It's space opera, just throw in some unobtanium.

>>51733640


Wing Commander Master race

too bad that EA decided to fuck CR and hammil sideways after Prophecy, and the franchise is now hostage