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Ships of all shapes and Sizes

Starships are important, the ATF was founded to allow civilians to pilot their own ships, your ship has certains systems that are important to it’s operation, all ships will have the following.

Power Generation – Without which nothing will happen, it’s not a ship without power.

Life Support – Vital, without life support you’ll soon be breathing carbon dioxide, life support normally comes with it’s own emergency generator to keep it going should everything else fail.

Manuvering Thrusters – It’s all well and good sitting in a tin-can in space, but it’s no good if it cant move.

Jump Thrusters – being able to manuver is one thing, but if you want to get anywhere you need to move at high speeds, jump thrusters provide massive thrust in one direction, if you want to stop you’ll have to turn around, unless you have thrust vectoring.

Shield Generators – Even if you never get into combat, when travelling at several hundred thousand miles per hour even the smallest grain of dust can hit you with the equivalent of a ton of bricks, shielding helps protect your ship from small objects that it cannot detect and avoid.

Fuel Tanks – It might be the future but engines still need fuel, be it hydrogen to power plasma engines, or compressed air for turning thrusters you need to store it somewhere.

Cargo Hold – You might have a tricked out fighter, but I bet you still need to eat, where are you going to store your food and supplies, you need a cargo hold to keep stuff in.

Simulator – Why would you want to simulate a starship on a starship you may think, well part of your licensing agreement with the ATF requires you to take certain tests, these are done via simulation rather than in real space, just incase you should screw up. Also if you’re making a long journey in space you might choose to take time in the simulator, maybe join a deathmatch, or try out classic missions or even cooperate with other players in a virtual war.

Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) – Every ship must have an IFF circuit installed, there are too many objects out there and from a distance a gravity shadow is a gravity shadow, if one comes too close to a faction controlled station it will be destroyed, IFFs allow the station to tell that you’re a ship, of course they can also tell who you are, so if you’re planning something illegal it might be a good idea to turn it off first.

Ship Transponder – Unlike the IFF the transponder is a short range RFID device (or rather thousands of short range RFID devices), these are placed throughout the ship when manufactured and contain a unique ID for that ship, this can be used to find out who made the ship and who the last registered owner and pilot was.

Optional Equipment

Not every ship will have these, but if your going to travel via Etherspace you’ll need the first three

E-Driver (or E-Ripper) – The E-Drive is used to create a hole between our E-Layer (E0) and your destination, the hole will be created several miles infront of your ship for safety and you’re ship will plow into it as it collapses.

E-Shielding – Without E-Shielding your ship will not survive the collapse of the E-Rip used to enter E-Space.

E-Capacitor – A Very Large capacitor (or multiple capacitors) used to hold and deliver the power required to create the rip into (and outof) E-Space, even the best power generators cannot provide enough power for all but the lowest level rips, so you need these to make your jump.

Backup Generators – Accidents happen you dont want to be stranded in deep space (or even worse in E-Space) a backup generator will allow you to power essential system and limp home should your main power fail.

Astrogation Lab – Ship navigation systems may be good and work well, but sometimes theres nothing like viewing your journey in 3 dimensions and looking at every aspect of your trip, the astrogation lab allows you to plan journies and take them virtually, you can even just sit there floating in a realtime view of space as your travel through E-Space.

Crew Cabins – People like to travel, it’s a fact, and people seem to like paying to travel, if you place crew cabins on your ship you can take passengers, who will pay you for the journey, who knows you might make a few new friends.

Refinery – Maybe you like making things, well if you make things you need to refine resources, and since you’ll be spending time in space why not let your ship refine for you, then the resources will be on hand when you need them.

Manufactory – After refining resources you’ll probably want to build something with them, well if you have a manufactory you can place blueprints and resources into the machine and get new items out the other end, but watch out that you dont overflow your cargo hold.

Shuttle Bay – Maybe your new ship is too big to dock with a space station, well with a shuttle bay you can have your own private shuttle between your ship and the station, you can also allow other players to dock with your ship.

Weapons – Not everyone will fight, but it’s dangerous out there, so the ATF have instituted licensing for weapon systems, either for defense or offense, you choose, the ATF doesn’t care, as long as you dont attack those under the APS you’re free to use your weapons as you see fit.