Space-Time Pinching

Pinch Drives
"Pinch Drives" are special engines enabling FTL travel, made up of ERBs, GMC components, and an antimatter reactor to utilize antimatter as an energy catalyst to kickstart a "pinch."

These units are bulky and cumbersome modules to integrate into a ship, needing to be coupled with storage for antimatter, which is a highly unstable energy source without special stasis measures put into place.

Due to the size of such a closed system, most vessels would need to be of at least Corvette or Frigate classification to be fitted with a pinch drive and respective fuel storage units.

These limitations of course apply to humanity and human-collaborated technology with allied races, there may be more advanced engines that have been perfected and downsized by other races that might allow smaller craft to pinch, but they are not yet known to humanity, or shared in that regard.

Pinch Drive Functionality
A "Pinch Drive" works by expending an enormous amount of energy to fold or "pinch" the space-time continuum or "fabric of reality" around the volume of your craft in such a way that your current location becomes the target destination.

A carefully calculated linear velocity of any magnitude in 3D space is required to physically determine in what direction a pinch will take a craft. Any sudden change in this velocity and direction may DRASTICALLY alter the destination in which a craft lands.

Linear velocity in 3D space is preserved on completion of a pinch. Objects in motion stay in motion.

Distance traveled by the pinch is directly proportional to energy consumed to catalyze the pinching process. The amount of antimatter your vessel can hold and utilize at one time determines your maximum pinch distance.

Flight Computers in Relation to Pinch Drive Functionality
A flight computer coupled with a Quantum Entanglement Communications Array is a standard and necessary installment in conjunction with any pinch drive.

A flight computer is necessary to handle thruster orientation and ship heading to the precise degree required to exit a pinch within safe tolerances.

All flight computers must be paired with QE communications to upload and download information from registered destinations that host large volumes of ship traffic. These destinations must keep a carefully managed, partitioned map of 3D space within a hundred kilometers designated with remote probe installations, centered around the location of high volume traffic. The purpose of this measure is to safely define "parking space" for any ship exiting a pinch.

All properly constructed ships, fitted with flight computers, should have a rough approximation of the total volume in 3D space their craft will feasibly occupy, with maximum tolerances accounted for, stored onboard the ship for the flight computer to transmit via QE comms before executing a pinch to a managed destination. The managed destination will "reserve" that space and choose an exit location roughly in the vicinity of the requested destination, responding to the ship's query via QE, which would then execute a safe pinch with the metrics given. The destination's computer system would then register the space as occupied after the pinch completes.

Pinch Drive Pitfalls and Hazards
Pinching to unknown destinations has a high risk of landing your craft inside of a stellar body, or other form of space debris, or dangerously close to stellar anomalies. Emergency pinching should be avoided at all costs unless situations are extremely dire.

There is a possibility that two ships can pinch to the same unmanaged coordinate at the same time. While this is inconceivable rare, the chance is not 0. Managed coordinates are implemented on a first-come, first-serve bias. The coordinate and dimensions are reserved for the first ship to trigger a pinch request, with a "hold" signal sent to any other crafts queuing to enter managed space. At times, the managed destination might run out of managed space to fit ships requesting to pinch into local space. If this is the case, the managed system should send reject messages to any probing ships, notifying that managed pinch zones are saturated.

If you lack amount of antimatter needed to execute a pinch to a coordinate, a standard flight computer will prevent the pinch, displaying an obvious warning that the destination is unreachable until further fuel is acquired. Many manufacturers will include the capability to override such a warning and execute the pinch anyway, but this is almost always after voiding personal liability in an installment contract, as the risks are comparable to a random emergency pinch to an unknown destination.

The mere fact that antimatter must be stored on a vessel for use in pinch drives presents an extreme danger should stasis modules fail. Standard antimatter stasis and containment modules are equipped with several failsafes designed to eject the antimatter a safe distance away from the vessel in the event of powerloss. The antimatter would then react with matter around it and obliterate itself, releasing tremendous amounts of energy without risk to a pilot and their crew.