Increasing fuel limit and jump range

[szaumix]

Truly excellent expounding on these quibbles my man, your points here are salient and compelling. I especially like this one:

...think how tough Elite/Oolite ships have to be to survive space itself bending them! This can only be possible due to force fields rather than structural materials...since crew and cargo would not have a nice time of it without renormalizing forces.

We are getting into some quality wormhole handwave here

[Cholmondely]

We are getting into some quality wormhole handwave here

I could not agree more!

[Switeck]

Not all hand-waving...just exceedingly difficult and unlikely to ever happen naturally:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -suggests/

So microscopic wormholes might theoretically be possible/created...but the only thing they might be able to pass is precisely focused energy pulses.

[szaumix]

[deleted]

[Switeck]

Almost any RTS game has a weird concept of how resources reach units that need/use it.

[szaumix]

Sure, but it was especially appropriate and viable for TA given E/M, the concept of nanolathing, storage, and the unique-to-RTS role of construction units and factories generally.

Anyway if we are arguing about Elite/Oolite wormholes for practical (OXP) reasons, the fact of whether a wormhole is a tunnel or a space-fold is incredibly significant. That's the sort of quibble that once set into canon loses fans if it's violated. Taking T-LC theory as a basis, there is relativity here: the ratio of tunnel gap to the folding of space. Basically: to what degree is space folded, and to what degree does the wormhole fill that gap? Are we able to rule out total fold (instant or near-instant tunnel) in Oolite's iteration of wormholes, even if we don't have to rule out the possibility of total fold in theory? Yes, I think your points about wormhole-tunnel "drag" hold up.

[Switeck]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in my long post that the "the energy wall" at the end of a wormhole tunnel also happens to be the exit.

Anyway if we are arguing about Elite/Oolite wormholes for practical (OXP) reasons, the fact of whether a wormhole is a tunnel or a space-fold is incredibly significant.

Wormholes have to be both. The main quibbles is how time works inside them and how "deep" they appear to be from a ship's crew's perspective.

The whole reason why the clock has to be "adjusting" on exit is because there is a big de-sync. with local time...which implies less time is spent in the wormhole than passes in regular space.

I rather like the idea of ancient Pythons still being in relatively good working order because from their point-of-view they've only seen maybe 40 years of service not the 300-plus years since they were manufactured.
This also has the nutty benefit of making "retirement age" for ships' crews seem a little strange.