They are called Altairans, and are from the planet Altair 3. They are humanoid and they have different but very advanced technology:

Wide beam phasers:
This is a special type of phaser found on some of their ships. They look like phaser-strips, but can generate a wide phaser beam that comes from the full phaser-strip length (or part of it). This wide beam focusses on to the target.

Hyper Impulse: (located on deck 3 on the ship below.)
Using a special type of crystal, they have created a type impulse engines that has Warp capability. This system is different from the Federations Warp bubbles. The crystals allow Warp speeds upto about 1000 times the speed of light (Warp 8). Although these speeds can only be maintained by smaller ships for an hour at most. Most of the time they travel at speeds around Warp 6 or 7. The Hyper Impulse drives do not glow, and thus have no color.

Quantum Warp Wings^tm:
Q-Wings^tm for short. These are actually the main FTL (faster than light) 'drives'. The Q-Wings^tm create a Warp conduit similar to the Dauntless. The Wings are very flat, and most of the time they are double sided.
These are the minimum requirements for the wings to work:
- the wings must be flat.
- at least two wings must have have one active side.
- the wings must have the same (mirrored) shape, but the overall shape may be anything, as long if they are big enough.

This Warp system has about the same maximum speed as the Dauntless and the Borg ships, and is only used when really needed. Quantum Warp can be activated while the ship is moving with the Hyper Impulse drives at sub- and FTL speeds, or even from a dead stop. The wings glow blue-ish when active. The ships are colored in a slightly darker blue.

Torpedo's:
The torpedo's are mainly used for long-range attacks. Because they are equiped with Hyper Impulse drives, the can go faster than light by themselves. These torpedo's are about 20cm to 1m long. The Altairans also have larger torpedo's which are equiped with fold-out Q-Wings^tm. These torpedo's can only be launched by the motherships.

The Altairans use a different, lineair system to measure their speed. Because their Hyper Impulse drives are limited to about 1000 times the speed of light, they used this as a reference point for the Quantum Warp speeds. They call it the Q-factor (Q-factor 2 is 2000 times the speed of light, 3,75 is 3750 times... etc.).
For Hyper Impulse they measure the speeds with the speed of light. This system is also lineair. 1 L is lightspeed, 2 L is twice the speed of light, 0,5 L is half the speed of light... etc.

Here is one of their courier/scout ships, including the Altairan Vigilante logo, which is used by the Altairan space fleet:
(Yes, I know the ship looks like a hybrid from 2 SW1 ships with Minbari wings, that's the way I like it to be!)

[This message has been edited by Altair (edited September 16, 1999).]
 

I'm working on a few other Altairan ships, which will be more personalized.

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Altair's Sci-Fi Homepage

[This message has been edited by Altair (edited August 24, 1999).]
 

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All hands, brace for impact!
WHAM!!
 

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Altair's Sci-Fi Homepage
 

I'm dropping the Hyper Impulse is faster than light idea because of certain problems, instead it will be this:

Hyper Impulse:
Because of a special type of crystal, the Hyper Impulse drive can get VERY close to lightspeed. The engines are equiped with trust-vectoring capability which, in combination with 2 forward mounted mini-drives, are responsible for manouvering and landing (the anti-gravity system is also dropped, leaving only 2 drive systems).

The speed measurements will be changed to:
Q-factor 1 = lightspeed
Q-factor 1k = 1000 x lightspeed

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Altair's Sci-Fi Homepage

[This message has been edited by Altair (edited August 24, 1999).]
 

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"If I get lost, I'll just follow the ship infront of us."-Ensign Nog

 

If the hyperimpulse drive is used for only short bursts, I don't think the time dilation would be a problem.

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"What is he doing?" "Stop it! No heaving, thrusting, or splaying!"

-MST3K

 

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