For the factions that don't use the Imperium's method of warp travel, what can you tell me about their faster than light method ?

Also, which enemies of mankind use the astronomicon for navigation ?

Necrons use a reactionless drive to flip physics the bird and go FTL in realspace. Don't mix with relativity unless you're a big fan of row-boat planet busters.

To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of the Necrons all the other races use the Warp in some way for FTL. The Tau use a form of FTL that doesn't completely enter the Warp, but just "skims the edge" to make very short hops. The Elder, by contrast, use the Webway - a network of tunnels through the Warp that provide safe passage through the dangers of the warp. Orks and other races just use short "unguided" hops through warpspace. No one but humans use the astronomicon, because only humans have Navigators and only Navigators are "see" warpspace and be guided by it.

Tau use a sort of warp drive that lets them go with navigators, but not for very far or long.

Eldar have the webways, which is outside the warp itself.

Tyranids must have something that lets them go FTL, but I haven't seen any thing on it.

Squats used some sort of space folding technology that only they know how to use, when the Imperium copied it they blew up Ganymede.

Tyranids just travel through realspace, no need to bother with the Warp if you're an implacable engine of biological destruction.

Nids use the warp, there are numerous sources that speak of the nids coming out of warp. And how bad are they when it takes them 800 years t oget anywhere? If that were true the Imperium could beat everyone else and then take out the Tyranids without fear of losing anything important.

Orks use unreliable warp drives and navigate with Weirdboyz amplified by all orks on board. Chaos Warp drives and use summond daemons to steer.

Tyranids travel through the warp. They always have. They just leave warp space before entering a system as their constructs come out of hibernation. It's at the point they just jump out of warp space that they are at their most vulnerable as their forces aren't awake. It is at this point that the old advanced space crusade game was centered, scouts infiltrating and destroying the nodes within the ship.

Eldar have warp engines but they don't like using them much, due to Slannesh being on the otherside.

At the moment only the Necrons are capable of using realspace to travel faster than light. Although I think the name for their drive is a little strange -innertialess drives mean you have to keep applying force to get them to move otherwise they just stop. It would be more efficient to have a scaling inertia drive that effectively increased the inertia the ship has the faster it goes, giving it an exponential speed increase.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Inertialess drives are something of a sci-fi staple and, as i understand it, not all that oddly named. Inertia comes from Inert, a resistance to change and, in this case, is referencing an objects resistance to any change in velocity. So, an object with lacks any kind of inertia would offer 0 resistance to any change in velocity which also can be taken to mean that any amount of force at all could change it's velocity to most anything as it would offer 0 resistance to any change in it's velocity. Since this resistance is proportional to the amount of mass an object has, an object with 0 inertia could be thought of as having 0 mass and, since it has no mass, would be able to go the speed of light without all those wacky universe breaking exponential mass growths that objects would theoretically suffer from the closer to the speed of light they go.

...or something like that. Either way, in sci-fi, the name of the drive makes sense ;-)

Tau have the tech to travel through the warp. They prefer to employ a technology that lets them skim the warp. (This is based on Imperial warp technology.) It's much safer, but about x4 slower. (see tau section of BFG pdfs on GW's specialist games site)

Ideas to include Tau in the area.
1) In theory the Tau could have traveled across the galaxy avoiding settled worlds. Refueling their ships in deserted star systems.

2)They could have been transported by an allied Rogue Trader's fleet. Or in the case of #1 a Rogue Trader could have aided them by venturing in to Imperial systems to get supplies.

3)A colony fleet could have been swept up by a warp storm and ended up half way across the galaxy.

4)A warp portal to Tau space. Maybe the Tau found it. Maybe the PCs did.

In the case of 1&2 maybe the Tau have decided to create a splinter colony on the other side of the galaxy in case they are wiped out by the Imperium.

As for the Koronus/Calixian regional Xenos, it's a bit of a mystery how they get around, but here's some baseless speculation:-

-The Yu'Vath and Rak'gol Marauders probably use (used?) variations on daemon/warp tech.

-The Slaugth seem to use a lot of human technology, slowly infiltrating human space via their catspaws, the Amarinthine Syndicate. However, it is stated that their technology is extremely advanced, so they may have their own way of getting around, perhaps some sort of Necron intertialess drive.

- No idea how the (intriguing) Strixis get about, but they do seem to have their own eclectic technology base, so it may be a hybrid of many other xenos technologies. They seem to have something against the Eldar, though, so you can bet they're not using the webway...

SomVone said:

The 'nids don't seem to target anywhere specifically, they just send out spores. Alright, a spore takes a while to arrive but the hive queen has been releasing them steadily for a few hundred years, there are a lot more behind it.

As for tyranid warp navigation, I believe the hive queens are massively psychic. The 'nids may have made their own astronomicon.

Graver said:

An inertialess drive is the same as a reactionless drive. I.e. a drive that doesn't need to expel matter in the opposite direction you wish to travel. There's no opposite and equal reaction and thus no fuel needed. You put power in and get speed.

Or am i terribly wrong?

The Glen said:

Hey! Squats don't and have never existed, along with the fifth chaos god!

If we're looking beyond the Koronus Expanse there's clearly a universe of diverse societies and alien cultures out there, so a more thorough treatment of the subject of alien space travel capabilities would be interested - beyond ad hoc explanations pertaining to the races in the expanse. As far as I can tell, we are looking at a couple of likely scenarios, all of which probably exist somewhere or in some form.

Solar system-based cultures: Probably the most common form of alien civilisation: the one tied to one solar system or indeed just one planet. The civilisation can still be very advanced and travel between planets, but most likely lacks large scale contact with the surrounding universe, and remains disconnected from interstellar trade.

Generation Arks: Only provides limited interaction with the outside universe due to the slowness of the vessels. But on the other hand: you could easily explain a wider diffusion of one alien species outside of its home solar system through some sort of generation ark.

Traded tech: It seems likely that most minor cultures use tech traded from Humans, Eldar or Orks. Either they'll use their own form of navigation in the warp/webways or they'll just do very short calculated jumps.

Home-grown tech: A brand new take on interstellar travel per race seems over the top. It seems more likely that many non-major alien cultures will use the warp just like humans etc, but in their own fashion (like the Tau or the Orks etc). The odd species with space-folding or multidimensional quasi-scientific methods would be a nice touch, but it can easily be overdone.

I quite like this list of FTL drives. www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3v.html

Of course, it's not very grimdark but it has interesting ideas that could be used for minor alien species if you desire them to use other FTL methods than the imperium.

Here are a few from my own games

The Drizeen a rae of amicable worm-like creatures, use advanced computer calculations to skip across the warp, like a stone over water. They can't go as fast or as far as Navigators, but it's a good start for their mercantile expeditions

The Resh Gell an evil breed of armor plated tentacled gas-bag, have colonized a large part of the Segmentum is the distant past, and have deposited stable worm-hole gateways deep within the Gas Giants they call home connecting the with even more distant Gas Giants. This allows them to quickly strike at human worlds to take slaves, and then slip back into the safety of the depths of a Jovian world.

The Kalerwolves have traditional Warrp Engines, but they have a highly developed soul sense, which allows them to home in on populated worlds

Spook said:

Is that by any chance inspired by the book "The algebraist"?

Truth be told yes, but the Resh are not nearly as hax as the Dwellers.

Orks use warp drives to enter the warp, weird boyz to steer and ad-hoc shields/big scary teeth on their ships. Thats according to the to most of the fluff anyway, they have also been suggested to go randomly via space hulk and also as orks are psycic as a species at a low level which is boosted by being together and being excited so during a waagh orks might be able to psycically alter the warp so they end up where the fighting is.

Eldar (and therefore presumably dark eldar) use the webway. As far as the fluff goes it seems that realspace distance and travel time doesn't have a link with systems on the otherside of the galaxy being on occasion closer via the webway then neighbouring systems. This seems to be the only way that eldar travel interstellar distance with the fluff saying that captured eldar ships have not been found to have a warp drive or geller field generator (whether this is because they don't have them or the Imperium is not capable of finding them isn't made clear).

Necrons use an inertialess drive as the warp is anathema to the necrons and Ctan (it strongly being hinted that the Ctan have tried to shut realspace of from warpspace (Cadian monoliths)

Chaos uses warp drives and geller fields (as while they are chaos they arn't that stupid) and chaos psykers/possessed psykers/summoned deamons to stear them about.

The Tau use a drive that takes them into a sort of interface between realspace and warpspace which they travel in for a while and then fall out, tau advances in space technology allows them to glide along for a longer distance before falling out of the interface but they still cannot enter the warp successfully (probably a good thing as they cannot percieve the warp at all and so couldn't steer basically) it's slower on average but you move at a set rate regardless of the conditions in the warp (so you have two systems, under good conditions an imperial ship might take 1 week but under bad conditions 3 weeks but for the Tau it would take 2 weeks regardless). I also remember reading that it was 4 times slower on average but I can't remember where.

I think the Tyranids do use the warp but how the specifics are unknown to me. They also have something called the shadow of the warp which causes difficulty with astropathic communication and travel through the warp.

The Nicassar don't do FTL, they might however do NTL (near to light).

The Demiurg are an unknown

The Kroot use ork technology so presumably what is read for orks is read for them, though I'm not sure about Kroot psykers.

The Tau use Calculated Jumps, just like Imperial ships that don't have Navigators do and the ships from the Dark Age of Technology before the creation of Navigators did.

I'm quite surprised Chaos uses chaos psyker navigators. Isn't the warp where they live anyway?

The Warp is where Daemons live. It's not where the human cultists live if they have anything resembling sense.

Is there a slippery slope there though? What starts out as a bunch of maverick void pirates with a deamon possessed psyker as a navigator gets more and more chaos-ified, and ends up as mutated monstrosities who may well spend most of their time in the warp?

Etepete said:

It does depend on the Chaos forces in question. For example, the Word Bearers Chaos Space Marines navigate through daemonic intervention, and do not have Gellar Fields, relying on the provenance of their gods to see them safely to their destination. A traitor naval force, who may be tainted but not utterly damned, may rely on enslaved psykers or captured Navigators instead.

As for the Eldar, they are known to occasionally use conventional Warp travel, but due to lacking Navigators and the fact that the Warp wants to eat them, they do so only infrequently and only over short distances where another route cannot be secured via Webway in sufficient time (this is mentioned in passing in the original Eldar Codex). The Dark Eldar actually live within the Webway, and thus tend to use Warp travel even less frequently than Craftworlders.

One thing to note is that while most races make use of conventional Warp travel of a sort, those that don't have a particular advantage. A ship in the Warp approaching a translation point can be detected before it arrives (this is specifically mentioned in the recent novel Dark Creed , which has a few bits of information interesting to this subject). Eldar and Necron vessels, however, cannot be detected in this way - an Eldar vessel emerges from the Webway without causing the same disturbances in the Warp that a vessel translating into realspace does (this is mentioned in either Farseer or Shadow Point , I can't remember which), and thus can enter a system undetected. Necrons simply arrive, hurtling into a system at otherwise impossible speeds and stopping when they get there (with Inertialess drives, they don't even need to brake; turn the engines off, and they stop moving).

Etepete said:

The warp is not a nice place even for chaos aligned mortals. There are 4 major Chaos Gods, all of them hate one of the others, and aren't horribly fond of one of the others. Plus not all daemons are aligned with any God. (Thus all daemons see your soul as yummy. More than half don't have any not to eat you.) Not to mention they are all insane from a mortal point of view. Then there are the non-Chaos beings in the warp like the Enslavers.... So unless you have major mojo, and powerful daemonic allies protecting you. You are going to keep that gellar field up.

The average mutant cultist type whorship the Ruinous Powers out of fear and lust for power. Most don't want any more mutations as the more mutations they get the closer they are to being chaos spawn (big balls of arms, legs, tendrils....). Running without a gellar field would push them all to that state sooner rather than later.