Vong in SW galaxy

lance · Post by **lance** » 2006-06-22 10:28pm

When do the vong first reach the SW galaxy? I was playing KoTOR and Canderous described a creature that sounded like a vong craft that he chased out of the galaxy. Could it have been a vong scout ship or something of that sort?

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-06-22 10:34pm

It probably was, although at that point, IIRC, the Vong are still busy screwing up their own galaxy, so even if the scout made it back, they couldn't act on the information it might have carried.

I believe that Vong inflitrators first started arriving around 35 BBY, advanced spies for the main conquest force and the smaller group that attacked Zonoma Zekot (sp?) between TPM and AOTC.

Cykeisme · Post by **Cykeisme** » 2006-06-23 11:59am

Did I somehow misunderstand, or are the Vong supposed to have travelled to the SW galaxy at sublight speeds? I heard they used their "worldships" as generation ships to cross the intergalactic distance.

Or perhaps it was merely supposed to be low FTL speeds. I'm not sure. What's the Vong's intragalactic FTL like, anyway?

Whatever the case, if it takes the Vong a considerable amount of time (say, about 2000 years) to make a one-way trip, then that scout ship could have gone back to make its report just as the Vong finished fucking up their galaxy, followed by the departure of the invasion force.

I'm not a big fan of the Vong tbh. The idea of an invasion from outside the galaxy seems kinda contrived.. like they wanted to do a cliched "alien invasion" the way you'd do with stories set in modern Earth, but they realized that the SW galaxy already had a galaxy-spannic multi-species civilization.. so extragalactic invaders whee! Pfft.
Still wondering about those things, though.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-06-23 02:25pm

Apparently, their FTL (they did use FTL to cross intergalactic space) is based on latching onto foreign gravity sources and pulling their ships towards them. In a galaxy, they seem to be able to move just as fast as hyperdrives, but in the transient void, they move far less quickly.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2006-06-23 03:00pm

Noble Ire wrote:Apparently, their FTL (they did use FTL to cross intergalactic space) is based on latching onto foreign gravity sources and pulling their ships towards them. In a galaxy, they seem to be able to move just as fast as hyperdrives, but in the transient void, they move far less quickly.

They evidently still travel in hyperspace, though. (They call it "darkspacec" I believe.)

Cykeisme · Post by **Cykeisme** » 2006-06-24 05:25pm

Ah, okay.. so the Vong FTL technology goes slower outside a galaxy, as opposed to hyperspace travel that is easier when there are no gravitational shadows to get in the way.

Is there a hard number on the duration of the Vong fleet's trip between galaxies?

Shadowtraveler · Post by **Shadowtraveler** » 2006-06-24 05:54pm

Cykeisme wrote:Ah, okay.. so the Vong FTL technology goes slower outside a galaxy, as opposed to hyperspace travel that is easier when there are no gravitational shadows to get in the way.

Is there a hard number on the duration of the Vong fleet's trip between galaxies?

Not really. Considering, however, that Outbound Flight was supposed to head to the nearest galaxy and come back (including a detour into the Unknown Regions) in around 10-15 years, the most we can deduce is that the Vong Galaxy is really, really far away.

Acidburns · Post by **Acidburns** » 2006-06-24 09:34pm

Shadowtraveler wrote:Not really. Considering, however, that Outbound Flight was supposed to head to the nearest galaxy and come back (including a detour into the Unknown Regions) in around 10-15 years, the most we can deduce is that the Vong Galaxy is really, really far away.

Or just really, really slow when travelling between galaxies.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-06-24 10:05pm

Noble Ire wrote:Apparently, their FTL (they did use FTL to cross intergalactic space) is based on latching onto foreign gravity sources and pulling their ships towards them. In a galaxy, they seem to be able to move just as fast as hyperdrives, but in the transient void, they move far less quickly.

If this is the case, then it would make sense if their drive is governed by the inverse square law: if you're far away from a gravitating object (some distance r>>0), then your drive can only "see" about 1/r^2 of the gravity of that object; they can compensate for this in a (relatively) dense galaxy by "leapfrogging" from star to star -- pulling themselves to a near one, then to another near one -- rather than going in a straight line and avoiding gravity shadows as Imperial/Republic hyperdrives are wont to do. Finally, they would have time to map the galaxy as they approached it, as well as having sent scouts out who could procure starcharts along with military information.