Starships are vessels capable of travelling through space and even reaching distant stars. There are many different ship specifications reflecting the job they have been designed for. The typical roles they perform range from transport of goods for trading, to exploration of new worlds, to combat. A merchant ship will have a large cargo capacity while an exploration vessel will have sensors and exploration modules. Warships will be packed with weapons and armour.

Travelling through space, trading, exploring and virtually all other actions require time to complete. While certain actions take a set amount of time, such as picking up and delivering items, the time requirement for other actions is based on the design of the ship and the type of action performed. Having more thrust engines will increase take-off speed for example.

• Manifest
• Movement
• Transport
• Trading
• Scanning
• Integrity
• Refit
• Squadrons
• Exploration
• Officers
• Ship Bays
• Ship Classes

A ship consists of a specific number of hulls - the type of hull and the quantity determine the basic parameters of the ship. These include is resistence to damage and stress and how large (internal capacity) it is.

There are four types of hull that span a range from large volume but thin and weak through to small volume but thick and able to withstand damage.

Hull Type	Internal Capacity (mu's)	Integrity Loss Multiplier	Notes
Heavy	30	0.5	Thick and strong, generally used for warships and exploration vessels
Normal	50	1	Used by freighters that see action from time to time
Light	70	2	Weak, used by standard freighters
Xtra Light	90	4	Used by freighters in very safe regions of space.

Ship Size
The quantity of hulls multiplied by the internal capacity of the hull determines the size of the ship. It can therefore be seen that a ship constructed out of 100 light hulls will be much larger than a ship constructed out of 100 heavy hulls.

Internal Capacity
The internal capacity of a ship determines the maximum mass that can be installed. These items include engines, living and cargo space, exploration equipment, weapons and a plethora of other things that will define the role of the ship.

All items have a mass (measured in Mass Units, or mu's). These items can be functional parts of the ship, cargo or crew. Functional items on a ship are those that are installed, the hulls themselves and the armour coating the hulls. Functional items require crew to operate them. This is called their crew factor cost. Mercenaries and other troops provide crew factors. Cargo space indicates how much space is available. Certain cargo can only be placed in specific types of storage facility. For example, living things can only be carried is there is sufficient life support. Specialised holds exist allowing for either more efficient storage of goods (such as minerals in ore bays), or to perform a specific task, such as fighter bays (used for the launching of space fighters).

Installed and Cargo
While the same item can exist in both the cargo and installed section of the ship, items in cargo cannot be used by the ship. Therefore carrying weapons and shields in the cargo section will not be of any use should the ship be attacked. Removing items that have been installed in the ship can be achieved either by destroying the item, or keeping the item intact. The latter option reduces the integrity of the ship (see advanced rules).

The hulls of a ship are the bare bones. A ship needs items installed within it to make it functional. There are a number of basic items required in order for a ship to be serviceable.

ISR Drives - these propel a ship through interplanetary space. Without them it would take a ship from months to years to get from one planet to another.

Jump Drive - this is used to move a ship from one planetary system to another.

Thrust Engines -these are used in order to perform manoeuvres in gravity wells such as around planets. ISR drives cannot be used in these circumstances due to interference with the ISR field.

Quarters - crew and life forms need to have a number of basic living requirements satisfied. Quarters cover everything from sleeping booths through to mess halls and limited recreation facilities.
Where insufficient quarters (and other items providing life support) are installed there is a reduction in crew factors shown with <crew factors> / <max crew factors> [LFS] on turn reports.

Bridge - while this is optional, not having one places a greater burden on the crew. As very small ships can easily have more crew than are needed, they can often go without a bridge and accommodate the drop in running efficiency.

Sensors - these are the eyes and ears of the ship. They use a battery of scanning techniques in order to observe the region of space near the ship. Further, they are used for specific actions such as scanning for minerals or other ships.

Cargo Bays - these are used for the transport of items (see section on Interaction and Trade)

As well as a number of basic items installed into the ship, there are several other requirements. The most important of these is a crew to run the ship. Each item installed in a ship requires someone to look after it. This is known as the crew factor requirement. For a ship all these requirements are totalled giving an overall crew factor requirement. In order for the ship to run at normal operating efficiency (100%) the ship requires a crew whose total crew factors equals or exceeds this requirement. While crew are the most able at running ships, other troops can also be used. The table below gives the crew factors provided by various troops. Veterans (troops that have gained experience) are better than normal troops.

Troop	Normal	Veteran
Crew	4	8
Marine	2	4
Mercenary	1	2
Soldier	1	2
Startrooper	1	2

Ship designs generally assume that crew will be used to run a ship, therefore it is most often the case that there will not be enough quarters to run a ship using other types of troops.

As space is a premium on ships, more advanced items, if available, such as bunks or cryogenic booths can be installed instead of quarters. This increases the life capacity of the ship per installation space used. Ships designed for war, for example may encounter boarding actions. For this reason it is better to use marines as they are suited to close-quarter fighting. But as warships are made out of heavy hulls in order to resist damage, space is tight. As a result they will often install bunks, instead of quarters. These are both more resilient to damage and cram more life forms into the same space as quarters. Bunks though are both restricted technology and require the use of expensive minerals. As such they are generally considered a frivolity on a lighter hull ship.

Under normal circumstances the captain is non-commissioned officer, i.e. one of the crew. With time however a crewmember could be given a commission, using the 'Create Officer' political order. Once created, the new officer (a unique item in the game) will begin to accumulate experience. This experience can be used to train the officer in a number of skills. Some of these skills are will aid in combat while others are for civilian and commercial use.

An officer can be either a civilian or a naval officer. Naval officers are able to utilise combat lists in order to engage in combat rather than fleeing at the first available opportunity.

Wages are paid every week. These are drawn either from the player’s political position, or from the individual ship if the player does not own a political position.

Standard weekly wages are equal to one stellar per troop (crew are classed as troops). The captain is also paid 5 stellars per week, such is the price for having somebody more experienced than the standard crew.

Should a player so desire, they can set the wages to be less than the standard amount. The primary reason for this is if the ship is transporting troops. In such cases there will be vastly more crew factors than the requirement of the ship. As such the drop in efficiency will not prove to be problematic.

At times however due to various events such as combat there may be a shortfall in crew factors. This would normally mean that the ship is running at less than 100% efficiency. Setting the wages to greater than 1 stellar each per week can be used to increase the efficiency. For example, setting the wages to double will double the crew factors available.

It is important to remember that having more crew factors than necessary - either through extra troops or by paying extra wages - will never increase the efficiency of the ship above 100%. Only a recreation visit will do this.

When a crew visit recreation complexes they will spend some of the wages that they have been paid over the last six months. The quantity of recreation complexes present, as well as the amount of stellars they own, will determine the amount of stellars that they will spend in any one visit. All the stellars spent in the recreation complex visit go to the starbase owner. It is therefore in the interest of the starbase governor to build lots of complexes and entice ships to visit their starbase. They may offer incentives to visit their starbase instead of another.

For example, a warship with a crew of 200 marines will have a wage bill of 5200 stellars over 6 months. Even if the crew blow only a quarter of their wages in a single visit, this is still well over a 1000 stellars, or enough stellars to run 50 complexes for a month! Few governors are going to pass up on this.

When orders are pending a new turn will not be automatically run until one or more of the following criteria occurs:

• They submit more orders for the position which will then be appended the current outstanding orders.
  
• The player submits an update request.
  
• They have issued a wait for tu's order and sufficient TU's have accumulated.
  
• They have accumulated over 240TU's (effectively 1 full week of TU's).
  

Some ships will have a race associated with them - shown in the ships design.

Design: Hunter Killer (xxx) Class Capital Ship [G] [Naplian]

	NON	HUM	DEN	FEL	NAP	HIV	WBL	FGZ	AQU	KAS	FCN	KRL	NAT	ARC	MOH
NON	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1/4	1/4	-
HUM	-	-	1/4	1/4	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
DEN	-	1/4	-	1/4	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/2	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
FEL	-	1/4	1/4	-	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/2	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
NAP	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1/4	-	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
HIV	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	-	-	1/4	-	1/4	1/2	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
WBL	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	-	-	-	-	1/4	1/2	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
FGZ	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	-	-	-	-	1/4	1/2	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
AQU	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4
KAS	-	-	1/2	1/2	-	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/4	-	1/2	1/2	1/4	-	-
FCN	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/2	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	-
KRL	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/2	1/4	-	1/4	1/4	1/4
NAT	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/2	1/4	1/4	-	1/4	1/4
ARC	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	1/4	-	1/4
MOH	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1/4	-	-	1/4	1/4	1/4	-