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Ship Classes

Ships come in different classes, however most larger ships have several classes, or a primary and secondary (and even tertiary) class. To qualify to use a ship you must have the minimum skill in each class the ship requires (note that a ship will never have a higher class requirement than a player can gain using their skill ponts), below are detailed the six classes that ships can be divided into, the highest class requirement is used to describe the actual class of the ship.

Warship

A Warship is a fighting machine, it’s designed to bring maximum firepower to a battle and to be able to deliver that firepower quickly and accurately to the enemy. To this end Warships tend to have big engines, small shield generators and little to no cargo/passenger space, warships aren’t tanks they cannot suck up damage but are manueverable and fast, and they need to be, since they dont carry turrets and the LAC weaponary they can deploy is both slow to reload and untargetted. The primary weapon class for this type of ship are energy weapons (such as fixed laser and plasma weapons), the secondary weapons are LAC Cannons and Missiles.

Frigates

Frigates are the opposite end of the spectrum to the warship, these craft are support vessels, they aren’t as heavily armed, but are the heaviestly shielded of the ships, they dont have a primary weapon system, instead they have support for docking smaller craft, but they do have both turrets and missiles for defence, instead they rely on other smaller craft for point defence if needed, frigates normally hang back and help smaller craft rearm between waves.

Cruisers

Cruisers are a middle ground, they dont have the shielding of frigates or the firepower of warships, they are also not big enough to dock smaller craft, they also aren’t as manueverable as warships, but they do have turrets and drones to help in combat. Their primary weapons are smaller energy weapons and railguns, their secondaries are turrets and drones.

Transporters

Transporters carry everything, from resources to finished products, to people (though in the most spartan of accomodations), transports dont have much in the way of manueverability or shielding, and have no primary weapons systems at all, however they can carry a compliment of drones that can be used to discourage other ships from attacking.

Liners

Liners are the height of luxury in transportation for humans wishing to travel the stars, they feature lots of facilities specifically designed to help their passengers pass the time in the most agreeable manner, including Simulators, casinos, cantinas/bars, swimming pools, assault courses and on larger atmosphere shielded liners they can even have parks and gardens open to space (behind the shields obviously)

Stations

While not strictly space craft stations are essential to space travel, these are natural meeting places and restocking locations, they also act as hubs of commerce with the planets they orbit (if they orbit a planet, they dont have to), stations provide a vital link between planets and space and make great bases for a corporation to place it’s headquarters.