I have a couple of threads I'm interested in taking to YKTTW
. However I don't really know what I'm doing. Iíve looked around and havenít seen any of these. If Iíve duplicated existing tropes tell me.
(Audience Reaction Trope)
Why Don't You Warp Out?
The ship is in danger. Maybe its a natural phenomenon. Maybe some bad guys are shooting at it. It could be a trap. The Captain has no motivation to stay in the danger. He's probably trying to get the ship out in one piece while klaxons blair and officers shout panicked status reports. People are getting thrown from their chairs.
And the audience is screaming "WHY DONT YOU JUST WARP OUT? We know you have an FTL drive. We've seen it in action. "
This happens when authors don't use a lampshade or show a legitimate reason why they couldn't warp out. Because FTL travel is essentially rules magic it can be dispelled by a character saying one line of dialogue such as, "The lady who chants in Welsh hit her head and is knocked out," "The phlebotinum field won't work because of the technobabble," or even "We need time to spin up the drives" It results in an entire starship seeming to dumb to live. Sometimes in fact being to dumb to live.
A captain desperately trying to engage his FTL drive and failing is not this trope.
Contrast no warp zone for a region of space, warp disruptor for a random effect that prevents warping or, warp scrambler for a technology designed to prevent FTL travel.
Star Trek is probably the main offender. Most of the time they will explain how they got warp disrupted. The times when they don't however...
The star wars movies don't often show people other than the protagonists trying to escape into Hyperspace. Somewhat justified in that it takes time to spin up the warp core. Still there are several occasions where a large ship comes under attack and at least spinning up the warp core would be a perfectly acceptable response. The star wars books explain that warships use warp scramblers.
I'm going to need to gather more examples.
(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL trope - Supertrope of Warp Scrambler and No Warp Zone ?Maybe of Spinning up the warp core?)
The good ship the Star Tripper is in danger. Lord Bad Guy is firing on it with his nasty death cannons. Fortunately the Star Tripper has an FTL drive that seems to be able to take it anywhere easily. Unfortunately something has just happened to that FTL system. Maybe Lord Bad Guy scored a direct hit on the warp core. Maybe there was an accident on the Star Tripper. Maybe they wandered into a no warp zone.
But now the Star Tripper can't just trivially run away from danger. Its been warp disrupted. It has to think its way out, fight its way out, or talk its way out of the danger. A hack writer might have it technobabble its way out. The point is that the threat is now serious. The audience doesn't have to ask "Why don't you warp out?" as the Star Tripper struggles for its continued existence.
The most common example of this trope is that the opening salvo the enemy fires will disable the FTL device.
This trope only comes into play when a ship would normally be able to use its FTL but can't right now. If a ship can never warp within a certain distance of a star or can only use static wormholes is isn't warp disrupted when too close to a star or not using a wormhole.
Comes from EVE online where a warp disruptor is a device used to prevent a ship from warping.
Star Trek (many times)
Farscape (I'm pretty sure but can't give concrete examples.)
I'm going to need to gather examples.
(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL Trope - Subtrope of warp disruptor)
"Sir I'd like to report that the enemy ship is larger than us. They have more guns. They have shinier guns. We can't penetrate their shields."
"Take us to warp Mr. Helmsman. Get us out of here."
"Sir the warp drive isn't responding"
"Sir the enemy ship is emitting an phlebotinum field. The FTL won't work. We've been warp scrambled."
This is a shipboard device for creating a no warp zone or beam. It is used by warships to force the enemy to fight. It is used by authors to close the escape hatch an FTL drive leaves in every scenario.
Comes from EVE online.
Star Wars books have ships dedicated to this role
Babylon 5 the humans got accidentally warp scrambled by sensors
I need to gather more examples.
(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL Trope)
Spinning Up the Warp Core
Sometimes your FTL drive needs some time to power up. It cant just turn on and work instantly. The computers need to chart a course. The engines need to accumulate power. Some things need to spin. In the meantime lets hope something bad doesn't happen to the ship.
The millenium falcon escaping Tatooine
Battlestar Gallactica ships are only able to jump once every 30 minutes or so.
More examples obviously needed.
(Science Fiction Spaceship FTL Trope / Useful notes maybe?)
FTL War Theory
FTL is effectively Rule Magic. Whenever an author wants to go into detail explaining the mechanics of a battle involving FTL expect things to start getting wierd fast.
There are some preestablish paths.
1 Ships donít fight in hyperspace or at relativistic distances. Either ships use warp scramblers, have to spin up the warp core, or the audience wonders why donít they just warp out.
2 Ships fight at relativistic distances using their FTL to propel faster than light weapons. They can probably do this while warping or in hyperspace. This eliminates the warping out problem completely because a ship doesnít get out of a bad situation when it goes to warp.
3 The only FTL is wormholes and most of the major battles happen on the wormholes. Tactics revolve around fortifying wormholes, and using formations designed to travel through a wormhole and defeat fortifications.
4 Their is no FTL but ships can reach relativistic speeds. A direct hit with a pillow can result in equivalent damage to tons of explosives. Time dilation is in effect. Planets can get wrecked by high speed projectiles. Sand is a deadly weapon.
Then authors start mixing and matching this stuff...
^Not very well written
(Science Fiction and Horror Trope)
Fire and Forget Biologicals
War is expensive. Troops need to be mobilized. Specialists need to be trained. Factories need to be geared up. People are going to die.
OR some scientists could develop a living weapon to do the fighting. Factories arenít needed. The living weapon will just eat biomass (enemy troops?) and reproduce. Troops arenít needed when Zerglings are growing out of pods. Specialists... The thing has everything it needs to know coded into its DNA. There isnít even a need for a general to direct it. Just code its DNA so the enemy are tasty.
An ancient race creating some Fire and Forget Biologicals is often the explanation given for why the protagonists have to fight some awful monster now.
Fire and forget biologicals are prone to eating their creators.
Fire and forget biologicals are often used as proxys for a more advanced but dying civilizations to fight a young vibrant and numerous civilizations.
People who use fire and forget biologicals are generally either not very nice or horribly misguided.
Remember fire and forget biologicals donít need further guidance once deployed.
Spoiler - The mysterious voice turned the zerg into fire and forget biologicals by inserting a desire to kill other races (specifically the protoss).
Fire and Forget Biologicals is a possible explanation for why the space jockeys had a ship full of alien eggs in something that almost resembled a bomber configuration.
The headcrab missiles in Half Life 2. First the headcrabs kill any humans nearby that can't defend themselves. Then they turn them into headcrab zombies which procede to attack everything nearby essentially turning areas hit with these missiles into zombie contaminated messes.
Lots of virus designed to kill off specific races.
The Species monster is created when an alien race sends us the DNA code of a fire and forget biological designed to kill us.
Almost there on examples, Im sure I can find multiple works with the virus variant if I look.