Help: In building aethereal space.

I am building a Dieselpunk-ish science fantasy setting and for reasons stylistic deiced to make the aether a real phenomena in the setting.

Later I realized that aether could be a tool justify space combat as commonly portrayed in space opera, that is taking at relatively slow speed and close range with big slow ships and small fast ones.

This is what I have for the aether so far.

The aether is a omnipresent field of exotic-particles giving space a faint silvery hue. Aether particles flow the aethereal plane into the material plane and back in an unending cycle. Aether particles disrupt radar along with radio and microwave communication, they also diffuse coherent beams making lasers and charged particle beam weapons useless.

Aether particles can also be used for levitation a kind of aetheral buoyancy, as well as propulsion which differs slightly from levitation in that pushing against the aether generates potentially destructive feedback that must be compensated for;because it could potentially tare a ship apart.

An idea I had was that the aethereal feedback compensators, scale up poorly leading to a prevalence of small nimble craft.

The Aether field behaves like a fluid(which air technically) is so aether-engine craft maneuver as though they were in atmosphere, and must deal with shifts, currents, up and downdrafts.

All of the above works out just fine doesn't at least to me need any more refinement;though I am open to ideas. There still some out standing issues.

Why is everybody using aether-sails, then later aether-drives? rockets still work,as would gravitational engines. The only explanation that I can come up with is that Aether really clings to normal matter,stops it from moving almost like quick sand the harder you fight the more aether clings to you. The aether field also doesn't like gravity and is placed by it. This displacement doesn't become significant until an object is planetoid mass or greater. Meaning that all large bodies in a solar system move about freely in near aether vacuums.

While this does work it percents several logical problems that need be solved if the aether is to stay as it is.

• How to large objects like planets(don't worry about stars) form with aether inhibiting the movement of matter. I suppose that planet could form normally as the gravity of star inevitably pulls in matter the whole process would just take longer,much longer. This would also make meteors and comets extremely rare.

• Should a star's gravity well displace all aether? I find myself asking a similar question in stories where gravity adversely effects FTL jumps. While your in system your inside a star's gravity well even if your outside of a planet's so why is the FTL drive working? Heck as long as your in a galaxy your inside a gravity well.

• aether currents are partially caused by the movements of planetary bodies, so one how intense would the aether waves be planets are large and moving at a high speed. Also what would the trade routs look like on a system map.

• what effect if any should gravity have on the Aethereal Realm.

Lastly the aethereal plane can be used for FTL travel, ships dive into and surface from the sub-aether. The only thing the needs to be decided about this is whether or not sub-aether drive should be free flight or have fixed jump points.

If it diffuses light, you can't have stars. Earth would also need to be closer to the Sun... in Venus' position?

I would just make the planets "born" of the aether. In a sense, since it is replacing one of the four forces, you can't really have it any other way without devoting a textbook to explaining why it makes sense.

I would take the FTL and have it be a portal system into "non-aether" space (our universe), from which a portal can then be created to the intended destination. This makes things prohibitively difficult for all but the most determined FTL-using crews, as your craft would need to be capable of surviving in both types of space environments. It would be like having a craft that is capable of both deep sea and zero-g travel. This does, however, also avoids the thornier questions of "how" as well as "why".

How populated is this universe? We have gravitational waves under our universes' physics, but they aren't generated the way aether waves are, nor are they at the same intensity. The interesting thing here is that you're looking at aether as both a 2-D and 3-D environment (the surface of the ocean, versus the micro-currents beneath it or possibly those in the air - supertankers don't care very much about the sub-surface currents, but airplanes need to be very paranoid about air currents), and that's difficult to picture let alone describe to a layman. But my point is, it really depends on how dense the aether is, and how heavily the celestial bodies affect each other if the aether waves are great enough to need to plan around.

First aether doesn't diffuse light, it just reacts adversely to coherent beam, almost though it were a reactive material it tense when beams try to pass through it.

The aetheral plane is a analog to both the ocean depths and hyperspace. With the aether particles the flood all of space being mist blow off the surface of the seas.

The story that I'm putting together takes placer in a single solar system. The 2nd,3rd, 4th and 5th planets they share an orbit, 6th, as well as the terraformed noons of the 7th planet a gas-giant, are inhabited. as well as the moons of the inner planets. there are also a multitude of space habitats.

I'm not sure how denses the aether field is or how strong gravity waves effect it.If I follow the rules of cool and drama then ships having to be careful of aether wave is definitely something that would become an issues once a ship was far enough away from a shore(a planets gravity well).

Also why do you want to change how FTL works?