Why cap-drives use the L1

Thanks Duncan.



<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Why have it gravitationally based at all? We know from the events of I-War 2 that EM interference can distinctively affect L-points. We can also infer that there's more to the L-points then just gravitational effects (since L-points don't move when ships approach them. Even a small ship will have a gravitational effect.) I'd imagine total gravity nullification would be limited to a single point if that, and it would be darned hard to fit a capship through a point.

Wasn't the rationale for using L-points in I-war based completely on energy usage? I seem to remember there being a blurb that you could theoretically use a capsule drive anywhere, but gravity fields signifigantly raised the amount of energy required. They use L-points because they wouldn't be able to produce the energy neccessary to open a portal anywhere else.

Might I suggest you might ditch the gravitational effect and justify the stuttering Electromagnetically? Perhaps a 'nearby' pulsar or or perhaps just a very electromagnetically active but small body with a moon. The L-point can't function due to the EM interference except when it's in the shadow of the moon?