The warp drive is built as a Stardrive (Standard Reactionless) plus a Heavy, Two-Way Force Screen (total of two systems). It is not a pseudo-velocity drive. The composite system requires two power points, three to make an FTL transition, and most ships carry antimatter reactors to provide this. More Stardrive modules can be added (taking one extra power point each) to increase both acceleration and FTL speed, but the Force Screen may not be augmented. If either the Stardrive or the Force Screen is knocked out, the ship loses all acceleration and screening.
An in-system drive consists of a Standard Reactionless drive plus a Light, Two-Way Force Screen; it requires two power points to operate and cannot achieve FTL. More Standard Reactionless drives can be added, as above.
The maximum FTL speed of a ship with a single stardrive unit is the dDR of its drive field at full power, multiplied by c/4. In practice this means that speed depends directly on vehicle size:
| SM | +5 | +6 | +7 | +8 | +9 | +10 | +11 | +12 | +13 | +14 | +15 |
| Speed/c | 10 | 15 | 25 | 35 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 150 | 250 | 350 | 500 |
Each additional stardrive unit increases speed by half as much as the last one; so an SM+5 vehicle with two units would travel at 15c, with three units 17.5c, and so on.
Almost all sensor operations through an active drive field are
penalised by the vehicle's SM, with a further -2 if the field is
augmented. The exception is a sensor elsewhere attempting to detect an
active drive field; gravitational sensors give a bonus equal to the
target's SM-2 (or SM if augmented).