Warp Drive

Warp Drive is an FTL technology used by many races, in many universes, dimensions, and more. It's one of the most common forms of Faster than Light travel due to its relative ease and cost of development compared to other technologies. As such, Warp Drive is often the first FTL technology a race implements for deep space travel, or the second, if they began their journey using Hyperdrive instead, and then later upgraded. Some begin their journey with warp drive technology by discovering and inventing it themselves, and others come into the technology (such as Earthfleet by either purchasing it, or having such technology gifted to them.

In some rare cases it's been acquired by races who came upon the technology after it was either intentionally, or accidentally left behind by others. Warp Drive itself is made possible by a wide variety of means, including the mixing of matter and antimatter, singularity, quantum eclipse, subspacial ellipse, and more. The only thing needed to achieve warp flight is the generation of sufficient energy to power anywhere from one, up to half a dozen or more nacelles that create the actual FTL flight. This energy, which is generated within the ship's warp reactor, is then sent to the nacelles, which process it into a field of energy that draws the ship down into subspace, and propels it forward on a wave of subspace energy like a surfboard.

Also, while warp drive shares many similarities to hyperdrive technology (thus why they're often developed so closely together, as they share many of the same principles and concepts), it differentiates itself by traveling through a different Level of Space than hyperdrive, or most other FTL technologies, and thus its fight characteristics, and overall maximum potential speed, are different than them. Also, because the actual type of FTL drive a ship uses is dependent on which level of subspace a ship enters, not everything that's called "Warp Drive" is in fact warp drive. At least not in the literal sense, because it's not the power core that's used to achieve FTL flight that truly determines what type of FTL drive it actually is.

So, in summary, a "Warp Drive" isn't a name for a specific type or class of FTL drive, but rather a more generalized naming convention used to identify what type of FTL travel is being used or employed. This is especially true since it's the nacelles that determine the method of FTL travel, and not the power course itself. So, to say one is using "Warp Drive" is equivalent to saying that, "I have a car," but then never specifying what kind of car, how many wheels, what type of engine, what type of fuel used, etc. With warp drive, it's basically the same thing.

Speed Scale

In the universe of Earthfleet, warp scales run the gambit of different velocities, with each race having their own standardized scales, as well as the standardized scale issued by the UGW. But even that's not strictly followed, as there are many different opinions on how the scale should be calculated. In general, warp levels are calculated on a power curve, with each higher level (there is no top end, like in some other writing/story universes, only a power limit) with each level producing slightly less of an exponential speed increase to the last one. The only commonly agreed point on the scale is Warp 1, which is light speed. Beyond that factors 2 and above are somewhat arbitrary in value. Earthfleet, throughout the period in which they were using Warp, used the scale set down by the Gayik'Von, and avoided the discrepancies created by scales used by other races. Since they operated primarily in Gayik'Von space, this was to their advantage to do so.