Hyperdrive...how

Yeah, that never made sense to me either, but then the backstory doesn't really work in anything but a campaign game. In sandbox mode, you have races meeting each other for the first time, that supposedly once shared a planet, or had a horrible war. But none of that is reflected in the diplomacy screens. Like when you play the Iconians and first run into the Yor. "Hi, we're the Yor, watch out, we're dangerous." Yeah, I KNOW you're dangerous, and remind me why we aren't immediately declaring war against each other? For that matter, why don't the Iconians know where their old home planet Iconia is located in the galaxy? I know the map is randomized for every sandbox game, but that breaks some of the backstory elements.

So I just ignore the backstory, or other things that don't make sense in a sandbox game... like how all the races have the same starting level of technology. In real life, that would never happen. The odds are that tech levels would be VASTLY different between any two civilizations that evolved in separate star systems. But that doesn't make for an interesting story, or a competitive game. It would be like playing a game where you're the Europeans making first contact with the Polynesian islanders, or Australian aborigines... only worse.

On the specific issue of hyperdrive, I just imagine that one race developed it first, but lost control of automated probes during testing, and that's how the tech was seeded among the various other races. I can't imagine any race just giving it away on purpose, because it has such strategic advantage (see the "Man/Kzin Wars" sci-fi stories).

The same way they shared Beatles music with space   

I don't believe any tech could match the advantage that hyper drive would give. Humans could colonize more then 3/4 of the galaxy before the other races get the other 1/4 of it. Also the campaign is a total pain in the ass the Dread Lords ships should have ZERO defenses.

With superluminal transportation comes superluminal communication. The humans were supposed to have limited FTL contact with the Arceans in the process of building a stargate (prior to figuring out the hyperdrive). Moreover, many of the spacefaring races like the Drengin and Arceans were using stargates.

Ultimately, though, the main issue is that humanity let the information out freely until they realized the issues. They disseminated fusion energy technology to anyone they came across, which is supposed to draw a straight line between stargates and hyperdrive for any race with reasonably competent engineers.

I suspect that they simply gave the information to the few races they had any contact with it, and it spread from there. How it got to individual races varies... the Korx just bought it, for instance. That's my understanding of it, at any rate.

Radio waves travel at sub-light speeds through normal space it would be hundreds or thousands of years before other races got the message and then they wouldn't all get it at nearly the same time.

So how does non-point to point superluminal communication work in any case? The humans had contact with an automated probe from the Acreans didn't they? No Superluminal communication involved.

They used an ansible...thought everyone used those.

Mine's pink, and it's bluetooth capatible and can hold up to 30 mp3's at once

I think it'd be less a matter of doing a "broadcast" and more about exploration. You send out probes, find civilisations by their (now millenia old) radio signals, and set up contact. The races you don't find don't get the hyperdrive in time, and become minor races.

Well they invented Hyperdrive. And when you are able to to move whole spaceships at speeds faster than light, then you can also send information that way.

You all have been mis-informed. The Terrans had discovered an ancient artifact made of Plot-Device-ium, and after activating it, their lead scientist's brain was instantly downloaded to each race's current version of ipod. They then simply read the Hyperdrive idea he had been working on from the text screens, and built their own Hyperdrives. The Terrans, being embarassed (and the ultimate diplomats), then claimed they had "shared" Hyperdrive. [But all us Drengin knew this story already, anyway, right?]

Shhh! We like meaningless conjecture!

It would not be very hard to build satellites with the warp drives strapped on to them and send them in different directions till they ran out of power/collided in to a object or programed to stop in a certain area (Object in motion stays in motion, blah blah blah. ). Each satellite could even have a blueprint/schematics of the warp driver. Or, the information could be broad casted out in to space via mathematics on multiple types of freqencies and wave types. The time frame however is issue, along with the almost simultaneous alien races/civilizations receiving the warp driver prototype/blueprints. At least to me..

Hmmm... Mulfia, are you a Terran Diplomat? (Read my previous message)