Phasing nodes

The concept of phasing jump nodes is an extrapolation of Volition's rules for subspace node travel, motivated in part by some of the Node Inconsistencies in FreeSpace 1. In brief, phasing jump nodes are nodes that are stable at certain times and unstable at other times. The concept was originally developed by Mad Bomber, then subsequently featured prominently in the Unification War and Silent Threat: Reborn campaigns. It has since gone on to be adopted as fanon by several other campaigns as well.

A related, but distinct, concept is contingent or dependent nodes, which are nodes whose stability depends on the stability of one or more other nodes. This concept appears to have been first formulated by Snail before being featured in Silent Threat: Reborn. See Snail's theory.

Mad Bomber's description

This description was originally posted on Sectorgame in May 2005, then adapted with permission by the Terran-Vasudan War Project.

Phasing Jump Nodes

All jump nodes fluctuate. They need to, to account for gravitational shifts in the systems they're in. To a lesser degree they also fluctuate to accomodate the ships that travel through them.

Some jump nodes, however, fluctuate wildly, phasing in and out of alignment. This is often the case in binary (or trinary) star systems, or systems with large planets in very elliptical orbits.

When a node of this type is aligned, it can be stronger than a normal node, but when it's out of alignment it's often useless and impossible to traverse. This phenomenon also causes phasing nodes to often die off faster than the more stable nodes that are sanctioned for travel. Oftentimes, it's not a function of nodal-corridor stability so much as it is the inability of modern technology to force its way through such nodes without prohibitively high power requirements.

Because of their unstable nature, phasing jump nodes are not sanctioned for travel by the GTA or the PVN, and are thus not marked on the nodemap. A few phasing nodes are known to exist -- most famously the Deneb-Altair node that allowed a strike force to rescue the Altair scientists, the Delta Serpentis-Sirius node that allowed Terran colonization of the Sirius, Regulus and Polaris systems, and the Ribos-Beta Cygni node which is a main thoroughfare.

This is probably also how the Lucifer got from Ribos to Vega, by using a phasing node (although this node in particular has not yet been located).

There are probably more than twice as many more which the governments have not catalogued. For this reason, phasing nodes are popular smuggling routes when they are aligned. Civilians are strongly advised to avoid phasing nodes with an Estimated Node Strength Factor of less than 80.

The Handelsson Equation

The Handelsson Equation is a complex mathematical formula designed to predict approximately how many jump nodes are in any given system at any given time, based on the system's composition, local densities, ellipticity, planet resonance, and gravitic shifts.

What it can't do is pinpoint exactly where in the system the nodes appear, or when. Nor can they figure out exactly how strong they are. This is why Faustus-class science vessels must often be sent out to analyze potential jump points.

Estimated Node Strength Factor

Phasing nodes are graded with an ENSF score on overall stability and usability. The scale ranges from 0 to 99, and it depends on how long a fluctuation period the node has and how long its periods of stability are.