Starships

Starships are the means by which Noble Houses move cargo between Worlds. Inevitably, they are also employed to disrupt the shipping of other houses and to protect shipping of their own house. They can also be effective weapons against rival estates if fitted with advanced rail weaponry.

Starships are built at Estates with a shipyard. Starships need at least one character as captain to receive orders and may have any number of crew provided there is a bridge installed in the command section of the ship.

Configuration and Types
Each starship is built to a specific configuration that also determines its type. The configuration is what the ship was designed to do when it was built although ships may change their installed sections and purpose at a later date.

The type of a ship specifies what kind of hulls are used in its construction and how many of the different section types it may house within its structure. To build a ship the estate must have the specific type of hulls when a character assembles them.

The sections listed in a ship's configuration are installed automatically when the ship is fully assembled, provided the estate where it is built has the items in its inventory.

Hulls
Ship hulls come in three flavours:
 * Standard: These are the basic multi-purpose designs suitable for either freighters or light warships. They are unrestricted technology available on all worlds.
 * Reinforced: These dense hulls are suited towards scouts and warships. They require a world project to be in place to build at an estate but may be moved to an estate on another world as needed.
 * Light: These loose hulls are suited towards cargo ships. They require a world project to be in place to build at an estate but may be moved to an estate on another world as needed.

The ships hulls determine its Hull Points per hull of the ship type. Example: A runner is a 20 standard hull type which has 20 x 2 = 40 hull points maximum.

Sections Categories
Each starship consists of a number of sections organised along the following categories:
 * Command: This is the bridge, sensors and battle computers used to command a starship.
 * Mission: This is the functional area of the starship that denotes its purpose. Examples include cargo bays, magazines for ammo, bunks for marines etc.
 * Engine: This is the power and drive section of the starship that enables movement.
 * Utility: Some starship designs have space for special function utility sections such as cloaking devices.
 * Primary Weapon Mount: These allow the fixing of launchers, beam or kinetic weapon systems to the ship's hulls.
 * Spinal Mount: These large mounting points are only available on the largest reinforced hull type ships. They allow the fixing of special weapons such as tractor beams, plasma or ion cannons.

Cargo
Ships fitted with magazines may hold ammo for use by their weapons. Each magazine holds 200 mass of ammo.

Ships fitted with quarters may hold workers for transportation between estates or world markets. Each quarters hold 200 workers. Workers do not need to be paid whilst onboard a spaceship.

Ships fitted with bunks may hold troops for transportation by the ship. Each bunk holds 100 troops. Troops onboard a spaceship need to be paid £1 per chronum.

Ships fitted with ore bays can hold 2500 mass of ores whilst ships fitted with cargo bays can hold 1500 mass of everything but lifeforms and ammo.

Starships may transfer items to and from estates they are docked at or any estate on a world they are orbiting if they have a gravity anchor installed.

Starships may also buy and sell items on the world market from orbit if they have a gravity anchor.

Embarking Characters
As long as a ship has a bridge any number of characters may be embarked upon it at any one time. Characters become Lieutenants when they board a ship except the first character to board a ship becomes its Captain. Novices who are assigned as apprentices to a captain also join the crew as Ensigns.

Embarking Armies
To embark an army a starship needs sufficient bunk space for all troops in the army and cargo space for all other items of the army.

Starship Movement
See Starship Movement, Sensors and Cloaking

Starship Combat
See:
 * Starship Weapons
 * Starship Defenses
 * Space Combat
 * Orbital Bombardment
 * Boarding Ships
 * Starship Repair