Encyclopaedia Galactica: Starships

Overview

A starship is defined as any space vessel capable of travelling interstellar distances through hyperspace. Often shortened to "ship", and also often colloquially referred to as "cruisers" by civilians (which genrally irritates Fleet personnel, who have a strict definition of the cruiser class).

This article will also include non-hyperspace-capable vessels (which will also irritate Fleet personnel as these are never, by any logial definition, classed as "starships"). These vessels are typically used only for ferrying from a planetary surface to larger vessels in orbit, and sometimes for travel between planets within the same star system. There is no official generic term for these vessels, other than "vessels". The Fleet will often refer to them as "boats", and colloqually they are often referred to as "shuttles", though technically a shuttle is a very specific sub-class designation.

Design Principles

There is no fixed shape for starships. Technically, the shape is limited by engineering considerations such as the geometry of hyperspace bubbles (a very long spindle design is impossible to get into hyperspace, for example), and fusion drive placement which puts constraints on where the ship's centre of mass can be. There is no requirement for a starship to be streamlined to operate in space. If a vessel is capable of operating in an atmosphere, some degree of streamlining will be evident, but even then it is not essential, as the power of a grav-assisted fusion drive, plus full-coverage energy shielding, makes the drag of an atmosphere irrelevant to a large vessel. In a warship, placement of weapons to maximise arcs of fire is also a consideration when choosing an overall shape.

Apart from a few practical considerations, therefore, the shape of a starship is largely a matter of aesthetic design, and as each space-faring species has very different aesthetics, it's usually easy to tell the origins of any particular ship.

Boluscans favour segmented designs, with a forward "primary hull" consisting of a saucer, or sometimes a sphere, linked to a "secondary hull" which is usually a variation on a flattened cylinder. Larger ships may also have a second saucer at the rear of the secondary hull. Engines are usually housed in nacelles separated from the crewed areas and usually paired symmetrically on either side of the secondary hull.

Boluscan civilian freighters usually follow more simple designs with a single hull, though engines are usually still housed in separated nacelles.

The Krai favour function over aesthetics, and their larger ships are simple tapered cylinders, a design that is quite ugly to Boluscan sensibilities. Smaller vessels are usually flattened wedges, still practical for their function but accidentally also looking elegantly menacing to Boluscans. Krai vessels tend to be much larger than their Boluscan or High Illonan equivalents, and the largest regular ship designs seen in known space are the Krai battlecruisers, ranging from 1000–2000 metres long.

High Illonan designs are characterised by a lack of any regularity. Visually, no two High Illonan ship classes look anything like each other. They also favour asymmetric layouts, which Boluscan engineers consider an insane choice (see, for example, the Millenium Jag, with its off-set, starboard-side cockpit).

Propulsion

A starship has two separate propulsion systems: a hyperspace drive (sometimes referred to as the "jump drive" or "warp drive") that moves the starship across interstellar distances, and a gravimetric fusion drive (usually simply referred to as a "fusion drive", or just "main drive") that moves the starship through normal space and within planetary atmospheres.

A fusion drive consists of a hydrogen fusion reactor that takes hydrogen fuel and uses it to create a plasma, held at enormous temperature and pressure in a magnetic containment field, and magnetically ejected behind the ship to provide thrust through simple action/reaction principles. The excess energy produced as a by-product of the fusion process is fed into a gravimetric field generator, which decouples the mass of the starship from the local gravitational field, and allows the ship to effectively ignore Newtonian limits on motion. A ship powered by a gravimetric fusion drive is capable of massive rates of change of velocity and vector. The gravimetric field also shields the ship's crew from what would otherwise be lethal acceleration effects, so a ship may make extravagent combat manoeuvres without the crew feeling any sense of motion. (Some very tight turns do require the crew to hold on the their consoles and lean against the acceleration, and certain unexpected effects can cause a crew to be thrown from side to side on the bridge.)

One more propulsion sub-system needs to be mentioned: manoeuvring thrusters, which are placed around a hull and use small, controlled, low-power bursts of fusion exhaust to perform fine manoeuvres such as docking operations, and for take-off and landing without annihilating the spaceport with the main drive exhaust.

Fusion drives can be used in atmosphere, though a starship's acceleration, manoeuvrability, and top speed will be severely limited.

Although all three galactic powers employ the same drive technology, it's acknowledged that High Illonan drive engineering is superior, with their vessels being faster than their Boluscan and Krai equivalents in both hyperspace and normal space.

Weapons

All combat between vessels in space is conducted using energy weapons. Solid munitions (of a kinetic or explosive variety) have been obsolete since the earliest days of interstellar flight, for two reasons: the first is that the speed and distances involved in a space combat make a hit by a solid projectile (guided or otherwise) almost impossible; the second is that ships' energy shields are impervious to all practical kinetic projectiles.

Each of the three great interstellar powers have developed a variety of energy-based weapons.

The primary weapon of the Krai fleet is the disruptor. This fires a pulse of energy frequencies that will disrupt the molecular cohesion of any matter it interacts with, with explosive effects. Although Krai weapons tend to be more powerful than their Boluscan and High Illonan equivalents, they are also less predictable in their effects and impossible to use as pin-point weapons or to do controlled, limited damage to a target.

The High Illonans use particle cannons as their primary armament. These weapons fire a beam of sub-atomic particles that decay when they interact with standard matter, releasing vast quantities of energy. Though less powerful than the equivalent Krai disruptors, they fare better against hardened armour. Lasers are used as the secondary armament on most High Illonan vessels. Although relatively low powered in comparison to other space-based weapons, they are highly accurate and hard to evade at short ranges. A few High Illonan starships have been observed to use a variation of the Boluscan plasma cannon technology, which they refer to as plasma torpodoes.

The most common weapon used by the Emissariate fleet is the plasma cannon (sometimes refered to as a pulse cannon). This fires a short burst of magnetically-contained hyper-velocity hydrogen plasma. When it impacts its target, the magnetic containment collapses and the full energy of the fusing plasma causes immense damage. In addition to this armament, the Emissariate fleet has been known to employ lasers (on smaller vessels) and particle beams on certain ship classes.

Weapons can be mounted in a number of ways on a ship. The larger, more powerful weapons need to be in relatively fixed mounts, giving them a limited field of fire (usually directly ahead). Smaller weapons can be mounted in turrets around the ship, giving them greater fields of fire. This leads to typical combat tactics that involve smaller but more manoeuvrable vessels closing with a larger ship to allow them to manoeuvre out of the arc of their primary weapon mounts, while larger vessels attempt to maintain a longer range where their opponents cannot easily escape their weapons. This is also the reason why large vessels have multiple smaller secondary batteries or turrets, giving them the maximum possible close-in offensive coverage.

All starship weapons can be used in a planetary atmosphere, though usually with degraded performance.

Defences

All starships use energy shielding. Shields are projected from the hull of the ship and totally enclose the ship in a seamless barrier a few metres from the hull. These shields protect the ship from the impact of meteors and other solid space debris, as well as harmful radiation and other natural hazards. Shields also protect the vessel against energy weapons, dissipating or deflecting the energy before it can impact the hull. Generally, shields will always completely stop an attack below a certain threshold of energy, but some portion of an attack which exceeds its energy threshold will leak though shields to cause physical damage to the ship's hull.

A ship's own weapons can fire out through its own shields unhindered.

Any level of shielding will stop any incoming or outgoing teleport beam.

Shields have to be dropped when docking with another vessel or space station, and when on a planet's surface. Shields will operate when flying within an atmosphere.

Small, solid objects travelling below a certain velocity can pass through shields unhindered. This allows some of the more powerful Star Guard (and other powerful beings) to employ the tactic of flying through a ship's shields and literally punching a hole in the hull.

All standard energy weapons can be fired in a defensive mode to neutralise or dissipate incoming energy, even when it is an entirely different kind of energy. Against superior firepower, this is often the only tactic that can prevent your shields being overwhelmed by incoming fire, though obviously employing a weapon defensively like this means it can't also be returning fire on your enemy.

As a final defence when shields are penetrated, all space vessels have some degree of hull armour. This is of minimal use in a space battle, however, and the general rule is that if your shields fail you have lost the battle.

Teleport

Virtually every military ship employs teleport beams to move personnel around between ships and between ships and a planet's surface. Teleport beams play almost no useful role in a space battle, however.

Tractor Beams

Some large or specialised vessels carry tractor beams, which can be used to hold, pull, or otherwise manoeuvre nearby objects. These can have some limited use in combat.

Cloaks

Some ships (typically smaller ships) have cloaking devices. Contrary to depictions in popular fiction, the cloaking device is not an invisibility cloak. Rather, it is an advanced electronic warfare suite which allows the ship to evade sensor detection and interferes with incoming weapons targetting. This has definite advantages in combat.