Time Dialation?

[Viper Tesla]

Sooooo... theoretically, since Transit Gates are "bending"/breaking space(-time?) to get people from point a-to-b.... could a group of colonists still manage to get where they're intended to going but have not get there at the right time? I'm not even sure something like this would be "possible" in the SC calendar but this is why I'm asking for guidance!

[gusindor]

If I recall correctly, transit gates work by opening wormholes, which could theoretically lead to different times, but it seems awfully unlikely. With a wormhole between two gates, the chances of arriving at the wrong time are probably next to nothing, since the gates lock on to each other. With one-way transits, however, it gets a lot more unpredictable. Who's to say some of the ships that take one-way trips and are never heard from again didn't come out in the wrong time?

Source: The MFZ wiki article on transit gates.

[Soren]

To the degree that we're using real physics, we're sticking to non-relativistic space travel. Getting into the inherent causality violation potential of FTL travel is a little bit like peeking behind the curtain, only to discover that the wizard is a guy yanking on levers; to get FTL travel without breaking relativity and/or causality, you are basically waving your arms real fast and saying 'nobody look over there!'

At a guess, if I had to justify it, I'd say there's some kind of special frame of reference involved, but it's basically nonsense. So, it's far more likely than not that things have become displaced in time, go to it.

[Viper Tesla]

Thanks! I was just trying to think of some interesting things to do with "lost" colonies being "aliens" or the like... i.e. Expedition X to Colony Y is never heard from again... and when Expedition Z to shows up at the site for the old Colony Y... *gasp* aliens/alien ruins?!

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I think it's a good hook, but I also think you don't want to treat it as something that's controllable. Time travel is great for comedy, but once you use it for strategy, it becomes much less funny.