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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ It depends on how much you want to avoid time travel, because every form of FTL allows for that without additional handwaving, such as rejecting the lack of a preferred reference frame in Relativity. $\endgroup$
    – Vakus Drake
    Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:17
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    $\begingroup$ What is physics breaking? If I have some negative mass/energy thing and get the associated time travel effects, I am not really "breaking" physics. It predicted the time travel effects and I got it. Causing irresolvable paradoxes is a concern, though. $\endgroup$
    – PipperChip
    Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:25
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    $\begingroup$ I think that inventing an FTL solution is your job. So is balancing the trade-offs between alternatives. Trivially: the least physics-breaking way is to simply assert that things can travel at or above the speed of light. If you want more than that, you must imagine it for yourself. $\endgroup$
    – Tom
    Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 19:51
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    $\begingroup$ Become a photon. No physics breaking necessary. $\endgroup$
    – RBarryYoung
    Commented Jun 21, 2022 at 15:15
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    $\begingroup$ @PipperChip: That's my question as well. The Old Man's War series, proposes that their skip drives (where you disappear from point A and appear in point B instantaneously, with the only limitation being that point A must be far enough away from gravity wells) are not actually FTL travel, you just shift between adjacent universes to one that's exactly the same as the one you started in, except your ship is at point B instead of point A in the new universe. Is that more or less physics breaking than shifting all of space around? $\endgroup$
    – ShadowRanger
    Commented Jun 21, 2022 at 17:01