Nanojumping

In fanmade FreeSpace campaigns and, more broadly, in the unofficial FreeSpace jargon, nanojumping refers to a specific technology and tactic by which a warship or spacecraft performs an instantaneous, short range jump across the battlefield. Such a maneuver would grant a notable tactical advantage by allowing the asset performing it to exploit enemy blind spots and bring weapons to bear on key targets by catching the opponents off guard.

The term is distinct from microjumping as defined in Predator, a short story by Fred Saberhagen released on July 8th, 1998 during the marketing campaign of FreeSpace 1. The canonicity of this story, and therefore the term microjumping, are both disputed. However, microjumping has become a synonym for "short range precision jump" in campaigns such as Blue Planet and has therefore regained popularity among FreeSpace fans.

The concept of nanojumping was first introduced in the original Inferno Release 1 campaign, released in 2003, and was later carried over Series Resurrecta, which is an independent satellite project to Inferno. After over two decades, this technology is still present in Inferno, Nostos included, thus making it one of the most peculiar, recognizable and long lasting features of the project.

Only certain assets such as the EASD Nemesis are known to perform nanojumps. Though details on this technology are as of today undescribed, it is assumed that such maneuvers are well beyond the capabilities of standard warships and spacecraft, thus implying that a single nanojump would be either immensely energy consuming, and/or it would require extremely advanced navigation systems to be performed.

Ships/weapons performing nanojumps

Please note that this list refers to presently released campaigns. It is likely to change in the future.

• In Inferno, nanojumping is performed exclusively by the Earth Alliance superdestroyer Nemesis.
• In Series Resurrecta, select Shivan units rely on this tactic against GTA and PVE forces. The subspace torpedo Mandragora also executes a nanojump towards its target.