Types of Ships

Spacers can no doubt differentiate the various types and classes of ships in great detail. Each one has a specific function in the greater celestial ecosystem. Some are better at research, combat, speed, or a thousand other things. Each vessel has its purposes and its limits.

Ships of Commerce

In the world of business, there are essentially just a few major, profit-making vessels. These are all built to make money and while they come in a variety of sizes, the biggest companies often fly the biggest haulers.

Cargo

Freighters are the backbone of corporate success. These enormous ships can be configured for gasses, liquids, or just common shipping containers. Typically speaking, these vessels are built as big as possible: more cargo is more money. That said, there are smaller ships, favored by smugglers, pirates, and small businesses alike.

The larger ships are built to haul fairly rapidly and over long distances, while the smaller cargo ships are nearly starfighters in their acrobatics.

While these ships lack significant armor, their shear bulk lends them durability. Their frames are typically overengineered to handle the stress of their payloads. What’s most impressive is their flexibility: these ships have been converted to serve as:

• Ice Haulers
• Mining ships
• Carriers
• Mobile bases

Passenger Ships

Passenger vessels come in larger sizes for long-distance runs and smaller designs for local and regional flights. These split their passengers by who can pay the most. Poorer passengers are crammed in like sardines while the wealthy can afford private suites. It’s worse on long journeys, where the cheapest seats are just that: a seat for a multi-day or even multi-week trip.

The nicest passenger ships are long-haul cruises. These are luxury ships that offer crusies and thrills around the system. They are unfortuantely extremely expensive. Only the most well off can afford such trips.

What’s worse is the lack of regulation: there’s no laws or courts that ajudicate cases. A passenger ship is a great place to rob or even kill someone. Executed properly and there’ll be no witnesses and no one who’ll do anything about it.

Automated Ships

Bot piloted ships make thousands of shorter journeys daily. While the larger ships are bot-assisted, these smaller ones are fully bot-operated. They typically carry a few dozen passengers at most or small quantities of cargo, even both at once. They’re most heavily used for low-quantity runs of any distance, but are most commonly used in short-hauls.

Onboard systems vary by ship size and purpose. The bare minimum is a bot-pilot. Slightly nicer ships carry a bot-pilot and a security system. The top-tier ships have actual med-suites with AI doctors.

Research

Science vessels don’t quite fit under the side of commerce. These vessels barely turn a profit, many are operated by non-profit collectives. Their most profitable enterprise is studying sites for future construction and mineral extraction. This is often enough to fund their operations at least.

The configurations on these ships varies. Some are used for studying complex physics, others conduct surveys, and many are used as a mobile base to conduct research and exploration of new worlds. They can linger in orbit or on planetary surfaces for years, some are even armored to dive deep into oceans or gas giants for deeper research.

Larger research vessels often carry incredibly advanced AI systems at the super-intelligence level.

Leisure

Private ships on the other hand are generally broken down to just two categories. Yachts and Racing Ships. Almost any private vessel is considered a yacht. They can be everything from a simple two person ship to a luxury vessel. The nicest of them have dozens of decks, private recreation, private staff, and every form of recreation avaiable.

Yachts

These ships aren’t fast and they’re barely regulated. Their designs are as varied as their owners. Some are built for simple expeditions, some are a show of wealth, others are nearly scrap - but they work. It’s rare for an individual to own a ship. They’re expensive, maintenance is complex, and a failure here is certain death. The only way to be even a little poor and operate these ships is with dedication and care - something most people lack.

Racers

Racing ships are easier to acquire. They’re the smallest ship design. These are essentially a massive engine and drive with a seat strapped to the front. They’re capable of extreme speed, manuevers, and acceleration. Every weight-savings possible has been made. While corporations will spend significant sums to build and operate the most advanced racing ships, older models sell for a song.

The extreme stresses these ships experience makes them dangerous in the second hand market. Failures are pretty frequent. It’s a matter of work and care to make one safe to operate. Stress on the frame is common. Reactor failures aren’t too far behind. These ships were designed to last one racing season and that’s pretty accurate.

These ships have one other achiles heel: they lack large fuel reserves. A stock racer was meant for only a short flight. With a well-planned course it is possible to cross the system, but it won’t necessarily be fast, only efficient.

Bright side, they’re often manueverable enough to dodge most torpedoes and other incoming weapons - if operated by a skilled pilot.

Millitary Vessels

Warships come in the same variety of sizes as the rest: enormous battleships, medium sized destroyers and cruisers, then small patrol boats, gunships, and the like. At the very bottom are Drop Pods, tactical ships meant to land marines, breach hostile ships, and put troops on the ground.

These ships are rare and expensive. They’re typically operated by only three entitites:

• Mercenary Contractors
• Pirates
• System Defense Forces

Boarding Ships & Landing Craft

It’s a beer can with a rocket glued to it.

Tactically, a boarding action or a ground assault needs to be fast. These ships are designed for just that. The mother ship gets in position and effectively fires the landing or boarding pod at the target. In the case of ship to ship warfare, the breaching pod magnetically attacks to the hull, secures itself with grapples, and automatically blasts an entry through the target hull. From there, a team of marines captures the ship.

These ships vary from a shipping container with a rocket on the back to more advanced Marine Combat Landing & Retrieval ships. The most advanced ones feature a single, compact PDC and basic countermeasures. Likewise, these can be operated by both bot-pilots for automatic assaults and human pilots.

Patrol Boats & Gunships

The most common military vessels are smaller, lighter, and faster. These are essentially gunships: small, lightweight, but loaded with weapons. These are used on routine patrols and to augment larger capital ships. One of the biggest equalizers in modern combat is that small ships and large can carry the same types of weapons. A fleet of PT boats can down a battleship.

Gunships can be fully autonomous or human operated. In most cases they’re a hybrid, with a bot operating the ship in conjunction with a human crew. The crew makes critical decisions and handles maintenance as well as boarding operations.

Typical armaments at this level include:

• Point Defense Canons
• Torpedoes
• Embarked Marines

While they don’t have MCLRs or other breaching craft, they do have breaching charges and can dock with other ships to board and investigate - by force if necessary.

Destroyers & Cruisers

Bigger, heavier, and more dangerous, these ships have crews in the hundreds. They’re better armed and have contingents of marines with their breaching ships. While destroyers and cruisers are not the heaviest ships in naval combat, they’re enough to take down most pirate and other military vessels. Typically these ships operate alone or with one or two gunships as support, when they’re not part of a larger fleet operation.

Standard missions are regional patrols and pirate interception. They’ll inspect cargos and impound vessels as necessary.

While the gunships have to manually dock with other ships to conduct a boarding, these big ships just launch a boarding craft. The MCLR’s don’t HAVE to breach the hull, they do have airlocks for a friendlier boarding procedure.

Typical armaments include:

• PDCs
• Numerous Torpedo Launchers/Burst Launchers
• MCLRs & Marine detachments
• (Rarely) Railguns

Battleships

These are the heaviest tier of ship built. A battleship is along the lines of a flying city. They carry a crew in the thousands. Most have an onboard hangar deck capable of carrying multiple gunships, acting as a massive carrier. An engagement with these is essentially suicide. The scale of training and cost to operate limits these to the most powerful of companies and system governments willing to foot the bill. It’s extremely rare for a pirate to have one - these ships are illsuited to pirate tactics but heavy freighters have been converted in the past.

One of these ships can be deployed to guard and manage the space around an entire planet. Their embarked gunships allow them to send out teams to manage boardings, while their heavy weaponry allows them to perform interceptions on any serious threats. The enormous amoung of manpower and equipment makes these capable of taking on essentially any mission.

A ship of this nature may have numerous AI systems onboard as well as a super-intelligence tier AI.

Typical armaments include:

• Extensive PDC network
• Extense torpedo launchers
• MCLRs & Marine detachment
• Heavy rail guns

Fighting a Battleship

There are only 3 strategies at beating a battleship. They’re all ill-advised, but they have all succeeded at-least once:

• Overwhelming firepower from a fleet of small ships
• Another battleship
• Sabotage

The name of the game is slugging it out with an equal ship or enough smaller ships to overwhelm the defenses. Otherwise, a team onboard must disable the ship directly.