Each race (see section XX.XX) will have it's own distinctive ship design and technology. Some will use fairly simple technology whereas some will use technology hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than the average. The technology will start at a level where hyperspatial travel is attainable as I have assumed that any race capable of sustainable spatial travel will inevitably contact a race with hyperspace technology. Ships will be build from a variety of materials depending upon technology level ranging from simple metals to highly complex metal/organics and true organic technologies. In this section I will mention hyperspace and hyperspatial travel. These terms are explained in section 1.3 and 1.4.
The major ship groups will include the following types. Only private craft, shuttles and log-range shuttles can be purchased from dock yards. Larger ships, or ships designed with specialised military purposes, can only be bought from specialist yards, or not at all. Despite this it will be possible to fly, or at least command, nearly all of the ships. The player WILL NOT be able to fly ships developed by the Vaipen or Ovaska among others. The reasons for this are given in the section on races. BioTech craft are considered in a sepearate section as they are very hard to classify.
Private Craft: Single pilot or small crew ships, small in size with limited range, cargo and weapons capabilites. These craft will normally be used within a single system or neighbouring systems. Due to their small size they may only enter hyperspace via jumppoints created by a jumpgate or large ship. These ships will be favoured by pirates which have a large base ship to provide firepower support due to their relative cheapness and availability.
Private fighters: Custom or ex-military craft which are normally only available on the black market. Often owned by pirates, raiders and bounty hunters.
Shuttles: These craft range in size from ships similar to private craft up to transport vehicles capable of carrying up to about 200 passengers with some cargo room. They are not suited to long-haul flights, only being able to carry enough fuel and resources for about 36 hours travel. Shuttles are the main form of transport between space stations and surface ports, as well as between space stations and ships too large to enter the station docking tunnel. Only the largest shuttles can create their own jumppoints and none of them have very good weapon capabilities.
L.R. Shuttles: Long range shuttles are more suited to the demands of long distance travel than standard shuttles. They have better EM damping, allowing longer periods in hyperspace, and larger fuel stores and power plants. L.R shuttles can take between 400 and 2000 passnegers and are used by many tansport lines for interstellar package holidays. Again, only the larger craft have jump engines but only the smaller craft can dock with stations. The larger shuttles require 'ferry' shuttles to load and unload passengers. These are either provided by the station or are carried in the shuttle's docking port.
Cruisers: These ships can carry up to 5000 people and the largest is a mile long. All of them can create their own jumppoints and can stay in hyperspace nearly as long as military ships. None of these ships can dock directly with a space station and they normally carry between 10 and 15 shuttles to load and unload passengers.
Traders: Traders range from shuttles with the passenger spaces replaced with cargo space up to custom traders which will accept cargo modules (large, normally sealed, modules which are attached to pylons on the ship). None of these ships have built-in jump engines, although some could accept them if cargo space was sacrified. Traders rarely have good weapon systems, relying more on escorts or blind chance. Nearly all of these ships can dock directly with stations, although only the smallest ones can enter atmospheres or high-g wells.
Bulk traders: Larger relations of traders which have integral jump engines, large cargo holds and cargo module pylons as standard. These ships also have much better offensive and defensive weapon systems than traders. Their size prevents them from docking with stations, or entering atmospheres, so loading and unloading is normally done in zero-g docking areas or in a holding position outside a station.
D.S Traders: Traders and bulk traders do not have the capability to travel very long distances, usually no more than 48 hours travel. Deep space traders have modified power plants, more powerful EM damping hulls and nearlt twice the fuel reserves of their smaller cousins. This gives them almost 96 hours flight time (even though the ship must make a charge jump every 24 hours). D.S traders are usually much larger than normal and bulk traders (the latest model from XianTech is 2 and a half miles long and can carry over half a million tonnes) and can be narly as well armed as a small military cruiser.
Explorer/Mapper: These ships are exclusive to Earth and are among the largest ships in the known universe (nearly as big as a Vaipen Hiveship, the largest seen was 12 miles long) with the largest, Excaliber, at just over 7 miles long. These ships are used by companies for deep space mining and exploration and by the Earth government for jumpgate and station construction. These craft can stay out of contact for over five years without difficulty and can house over 200 ships. Despite the fact that there are only 30 of them in use (4 are in construction as of 14 Jan 2260) all but 8 of them are owned by corporations, the other 8 being owned by the government and either in deep space or on loan to one of the other races. These craft have weapon systems as good, if not than, any of the ships in service in the Earth Stellar Forces and can carry as much as 2 or 3 deep space traders. It has been suggested that one of the ships in custruction, provisionally called 'Archon', is going to be bigger still and may be used by the military as a mobile caommand station.
Colony Ships: These ships are similar to explorer ships but normally only about half the size. They are primarily used to transport colonists and their equipment to new outposts which are not suitable for passenger cuirsers. These craft have integral jump engines and docking facilities so they can function as orbital stations while the final outpost is being constructed. Ship suggested by Karl A Rostrup.
Military Ships. These are only very basic classifications as in many races the lines between the craft types are blurred.
Recon/ Patrol: Small, lightly armed, very fast craft with no jumpengines or cargo/ passenger space or other capability. Normally only used when quick recon missions are required.
Fighters: These range in size from craft barely larger than recon ships up to well armed, powerful heavy fighters. None of these craft have jumpengines and the weapons capabilities are dependant upon the ship type and race.
Troop Transports: Modified deep space shuttles which are used to move ground troops and milirary hardware around.
All the following craft have jumpengines and heavy em damping hulls for prolonged hyperspace immersion.
Battleships: Well armed craft with limited fighter storage facilities. Normally used as escort firepower for Destroyers, Heavy Cruisers, Dreadnoughts and SuperDeadnoughts.
Destroyers: Heavily armed craft which can carry up to 30 fighters and recon craft. Normally they also have troop transportation space and cargo areas.
Heavy Cruisers: Fighter transport craft. These ships also include cabins for piolts and engineers. The space restrictions this poses means that these ships do not have brilliant weapons systems and must have a battleship or destroyer escort.
Dreadnoughts: Very well armed ships which can carry up to 100 fighters, their pilots and engineers, troops, hardware and still have room for fast, powerful drive systems.
S.Dreadnoughts: SuperDreadnoughts are among the most powerful ships in the galaxy. Each can carry over 200 fighters and a crew of nearly 1000 people. The weapons systems these can carry can literally flatten the surface of a planet or destroy space stations.
This is still an emerging field of research and very little is understood about life which can survive in space without difficulty. Only the Vaipen and Ovaska appear to have mastered organic spacecraft and the appear to follow more or less the same trend; the smaller ships look very similar to the larger ones, and there have been some suggestions that that is exactly the case; the smaller ships are just younger relations of the larger ships. Organic technology has many advantages over normal technology, not least in that it repairs itself and can reproduce (although no-one knows how... the Vaipen and Ovaska are very secretive and no-one who has even come close to finding out much about them has ever been seen again). What is known is that these ships have a symbiotic relationship with the pilot (although this link can be broken) and, in the case of the Vaipen and probably the Ovaska, they are part of a single, race wide, hive mind.
There will be 'other things' out there.. and at least one group of them are not nice.... at all. Be on your guard for unknown ships: some may be friemdly but some will be, beyond doubt, quite the opposite. One of things I will be including which will give you something to look for (or run away from if you have any sense) will be huge machines left over from wars thousands of years ago which roam space destroying anything which displays a technology level above it's programmed level.
Due to the large number of races in the Explorer universe it is not possible to give exact classifications to the weapons sytems. What follows is a rough outline of the general types of weapon and defense systems.
Small ships will either be unable to accept weapons (some private craft) or will have a single, possibly rotating, weapon pylon. Larger ships can have many weapons pylons (20-30 on a Super Dreadnought). The turrets will be controlled by the computer unless the player takes over control. One problem with weapon systems is that they take power.. a lot of it, so if all the weapons are in use then the ship's jumpengines will have to be taken offline (and it can take up to 15 minutes to get them back on again)
Blasters: Small, low power weapons which are not much use for anything except as a last resort. Normally based around laser technology or low energy plasma generation.
Cannons: Range from small lasers not much bigger than a blaster up to lasers capable of generating pulses in excess of a terawatt. The largest cannon available is the Todhoeman650 which is a gigawatt beam laser with petawatt (10^15 watts) pulse activator (ie: it has a continuous beam at 120 gigawatts and a pulse capability up to 2.5 petawatts, even during beam generation)
Projectile: These systems fire unguided missiles of various types and sizes. All these require ammo stores. All projectile weapons will have built in self destructs which will stop them causing too much damage to surrounding planets.
Shells: These are basically hull piercing metal 'bullets'. Some have explosive charges.
Mass drivers: fire everything from small metal spheres up to large lumps of rock. The largest of the family is the planetary bombardment driver, banned in nearly every system (but proclaimed as a holy weapon by the Dervishes of Eie).
Masers: Microwave lasers. Produce extreme heating upon contact which can cause the hull of a craft to melt or explode. Very useful on organic technology.
Missiles: Guided projectiles with high explosive charges.
Magnetogravitic: Use magnetic and gravitational fields to disrupt the electronics and control systems of another craft. Requires large amounts of energy!
Particle Beam: Fires a highly charged stream of particles, to remove ECM protection, followed by a high explosive projectile. Only any use against slow moving targets.
Positron Cannon: Fires a pulse of positrons (anti-electrons). As you can imagine this is rather destructive.... :)
Fry Cannon : A very thin cable is shot at the target and, upon contact, the full power of the attacking ship's power plant is sent down the cable, fusing all the other ship's systems. Only useful agains small, slow moving, close range targets.
Mines: Proximity and contact mines, some carry explosive charges others have large batteries that discharge through the mine casing upon contact (like the Fry Cannon)
Atmospheric Incinerators: Highly reactive substances are launched into the atmosphere of the planet resulting in atmospheric ignition and the depletion of oxygen and other gasses.
Nerve Gases/ Biological agents..... guess!
Interceptors: Projectile cannons which fire specially designed rounds consisting reflective coatings, defraction gratings and explosive charges which destroy, diffuse or slow and weapon they get in the way of (in theory at least). These are normally fitted to highly sensitive scanners (see section 3.1.3)
ECM: Static fields which upset the guidance systems of missiles and can prematurely destroy explosive charges in unguided missiles. Useless against lasers, masers or mass drivers.
EM Dampers: Not really defensive, these devices reduce the speed at which hyperspace drains e.m energy. This allows ships to spend longer in hyperspace (about 10 or 15 percent longer)
Decoys: Self explanitory really...
AMsystems: Anti-missile systems consist of missles which are designed to intercept other missiles in flight be they guided or unguided. These weapons are only partially effective against mass drivers.
Stealth: Reduces the overall visibility of the craft. This is either in the form of a visual cloak or IR/EM cloaks. Systems with visual cloaks must be specially designed to take such systems... and they are VERY expensive.
IR/EM: Various devices for detecting the infra-red/ electromagnetic signatures of other craft. More advanced forms of this technology can even detect the hearbeats of the crew of a ship at close range!
HS detectors: Hyperspace propogates em radiation much faster than normal space so it is possible to detect the firing of missiles or lasers before they are visible. Most interceptor cannons rely on these systems.
Visual: Erm... looks for other ships....
Organic technology is much more diverse than normal technology, and many variations exist. Many of the weapon types outlines above have organic technology counterparts in addtion to:
Worms: Teeth with tails. These are fired from the host ship towards a target which suddenly becomes dinner for several hundred mouths. Any ship caught in the way of these voracious beasts will find itself full of holes...
EBeam: A favourate weapon of the Vaipen these are something of an enigma. They appear to be a single beam of electrons at high speed and energy. No-one knows how the ships manage to produce these beams, or how they are controlled into a cohesive weapon.
Several other form of organic technology have been reported but no more information is available.
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