Hyperspace

I'm in the preparation phase of the next part of the Game. I've set a start date of July 1st, and most of the background I've already got worked out, so there's no rush, but I'm always looking at the next thing (when I should be concentrating on the current thing).

The thing that's bothering me at the moment is hyperspace. 

I need to decide how starships will travel between worlds, and as I've set a previous precedent for using hyperspace in the Heroes Universe, I really ought to stick with that.

It's a pretty standard concept in space-opera type science fiction: the ship enters hyperspace (we don't care about the physics), and then cruises along for days or weeks until it emerges near another star entirely. It's neat, it's simple, it avoids lots of awkward questions about relativity, and nothing can touch the ship in hyperspace so it moves the emphasis of the story away from the journey and on to the destination.

The problem is, when you want to design a set of warring space empires, hyperspace blows all "normal" practice out the window. War using hyperspace is nothing like any known war in human history. Every way you think warfare "should" happen makes no sense because of hyperspace.

What's a border in hyperspace? Ships can "jump" past it unopposed, untouchable, and undetected (according to most popular visions of hyperspace). So what's the function of a border? It's not something you can, or need to, defend. Should war break out, the enemy will leap past the border via hyperspace and emerge right above your capital world.

The concept of "front lines" in warfare now makes no sense. Military campaigns don't crawl across a map, they erupt at completely random points across it via hyperspace shortcuts. There's some analogy to a strategic bombing campaign, where your aircraft can strike targets deep inside your opponent's territory, except that's still not an equivalent situation. You can station anti-aircraft guns on the border to stop bombers before they reach your cities, but we've already said that hyperspace ships are jumping untouched over your border.

So is it more analogous to a submarine campaign? Your killer U-boats range undetected through hyperspace, striking your convoys when and where they will. Well, no. They can't raid your shipping lanes, because your shipping lanes don't exist. Your merchant shipping is travelling through hyperspace, undetected and untouchable until it arrives at its destination.

The problems continue to mount up.

There are solutions, of course. I've already identified several. My job now is to pick one that makes logical sense (within the established Game universe) while still providing game balance and, most importantly, allowing interesting and challenging storylines.

Luckily I've still got 10 weeks...