Table of Contents

Ship roster and doctrine

The reference every ship ticket builds to: how ships travel, every class with its role, the weapons by tier, the realism rules the game keeps and the two doctrines that decide how fleets are used. It is the owner's roster (2026-10-23), written down once so a new hull or weapon is checked against it instead of against memory. The wider aims are in docs/VISION.md, and the rules for building on the game are the README.

Where the game already differs from this canon, the last section says so and names the ticket that closes the gap.

Three travel layers

Layer Scale What it is What it means
Jump gates Interstellar Fixed and expensive Whoever holds a gate controls all traffic through it, so gates are the main strategic chokepoints
Self-contained FTL Interstellar Rare and costly, carried by the ship Only these ships can strike a system without taking a gate
Hyper lanes In a system Magnetic linear accelerators that launch ships between planets, stations and gates Ships ride the lane, so they need neither huge engines nor big fuel loads; but routes are predictable, so ambushes and lane sabotage are real threats

Classes

Capital ships

  • Carrier. FTL-capable. A flight deck and hangars launch and recover piloted fighter and bomber squadrons, and a few corvettes or frigates can be clamped to the outside of the hull. Losing the carrier strands its pilots.
  • Dreadnought / Battleship. The spinal-mount heavy hitter: a railgun or coilgun, a tachyon lance or a plasma cannon, on a large power plant. It holds the rear. In the game (U.SPC-T490, Core/Combat/SpinalMounts.cs, Core/Combat/RearLine.cs) it is built around two ship-length spinal mounts, a railgun and a coilgun as designed, each fed by a spinal power plant inside the hull (a yard may put a tachyon lance or a plasma spinal cannon in either); its doctrine is to hold the rear behind its escorts and snipe from the extreme reach of its spinal guns, its bow laid on the mark, backing away from anything that closes.
  • Command Cruiser / Battlecruiser. Fleet coordination, and the sensor and comms hub. It handles light-lag. In the game (U.SPC-T477, Core/Combat/FleetCoordination.cs) it gives up guns for a sensor array, a communications suite and targeting computers inside its hull and carries the fleet's senior officers: ships within its reach in battle find their targets sooner, shoot truer, lay their guns on its shared sensor picture and concentrate on its mark; losing it throws them into confusion for a while, so it is a priority target, and navies build it to lead their groups.
  • Gate Breaker. A siege capital built to take or destroy jump gates: heavily armoured, with siege weapons, and with boarding and engineering teams to seize a gate intact.

Strike craft

All piloted. Inertial dampeners are what make a dogfight survivable (see the realism rules below).

  • Interceptor. Fast and agile with light guns. It hunts fighters and screens bombers.
  • Space Superiority Fighter. The balanced workhorse.
  • Bomber. Slow and tough, with torpedoes for anti-capital strikes. It needs an escort.
  • Heavy Fighter / Gunship. Armoured and multi-crew, with turrets. It brawls and hunts corvettes.
  • Recon / EW Fighter. Scouts, jams enemy targeting and paints targets for the bombers.
  • Boarding Shuttle / Assault Craft. Delivers marines to disabled ships and to gates. In the game (U.SPC-T486, Core/Combat/BoardingShuttles.cs): an armoured, unarmed craft a carrier keeps two of in its hangars beside its squadrons. When a hull lies disabled (or has struck on terms that open it to boarding) or a station or gate fort's guns are silenced, and no armed enemy is near it, the carrier sends a shuttle with a team of 24 marines from its barracks; it docks alongside, matches the prize's drift, latches on and lets the team in through the airlock, with no drill, no breach and no damage to the hull, then casts off when the fight aboard is decided and flies home. A carrier with shuttles sends them rather than closing to board with its own hull; a war fleet whose group carries them takes a silenced gate in a day rather than two. Figures in Settings > Broadsides.
  • Breacher. A whole marine team in an armoured round, fired at high velocity from an Assault Bay on a hull that carries a Marine Habitat (U.SPC-T465, U.SPC-T466).

Escorts and sub-capitals

  • Cruiser. Long-endurance patrol. It rides gates and lanes and needs no support fleet; sometimes it carries a small fighter complement.
  • Destroyer. The anti-fighter and point-defence screen: flak, laser turrets, interceptor missiles and phaser-style beam arrays.
  • Frigate. A torpedo and missile boat. Its doctrine is the alpha strike: burn in, fire, flip and burn out. Antimatter and photon torpedoes. In the game (U.SPC-T475, Core/Combat/AlphaStrike.cs) it is the fastest warship hull, engine-heavy and lightly armoured, with no guns but point defence: four long-range anti-ship missile racks and two antimatter torpedo launchers, fed from magazines deeper than any other hull's. It holds every launcher while it burns in, looses them together once its mark is in reach of all of them, flips and burns back out of the guns' reach while they reload, and comes round again; it goes for capitals first, and with its magazines spent it withdraws. It has no FTL drive (the gates, or clamped to a carrier's hull, two to a carrier).
  • Corvette. In-system defence with no FTL. It operates on its home system's hyper lanes. In the game (U.SPC-T476, Core/Combat/Corvettes.cs) it is a small patrol hull that puts the weight of a drive into deep tanks, a patrol search suite and a brawler's guns. Each navy stations one for good at each of its ports (a planet, moon or station), up to three a system; it rides the hyper lanes from there to the navy's ports round its planet and at the far ends of the lanes, always back to its station between runs, as local law enforcement: it hails and scans traffic, defends the ports on its beat and runs down the smugglers and pirates seen on its ground. It never leaves its home system, and is replaced when lost.
  • Lane Interdictor. Pulls ships out of hyper lanes mid-transit. The pirates' and raiders' favourite. Not a class of its own (U.SPC-T507, Core/Combat/LaneInterdictors.cs): the interdiction field projector is heavy equipment, a facility two sections deep (the emitter and the reactor that feeds it) fitted into the internal space of any warship, capital or freighter hull big enough to carry it and its reactor load (8,000 t dry and up), so a destroyer, a cruiser or a raider's converted freighter can each be fitted out as an interdictor. A yard fits and strips it, and its ring shows amidships on whatever hull carries it. Every raider band fits one to a destroyer escort, a navy's lane picket wing to its second destroyer, and the Lane security build plan to a hull of each group it builds up.
  • Gate Picket. Small, sensor-heavy early warning at gate exits. In the game (U.SPC-T480, GatePickets): every navy posts one at each gate it holds, which warns it of hostiles through the gate or dropping out of FTL nearby, and raiders kill it first. Not the destroyer patrol wing, which flies a beat of its navy's ports.

Logistics

  • Bulk Freighter. Truss and pods, built in space, never lands. No armour and no weapons. It rides hyper lanes cheaply. In the game (U.SPC-T482, Core/Combat/BulkFreighters.cs): its hold is its cargo pods and its tanks its fuel spheres, both facilities a yard clamps on or takes off; it pays a bulk share of the lane toll, is slow to speed up and slow down off the lanes, trades from orbit at a ringed world, and its escorts carry the guns.
  • Ice Hauler / Ore Tug. An engine with claws that pushes asteroids and ice. Large loads may need heavy lanes. In the game (U.SPC-T483, U.SPC-T498, Core/Economy/BeltMining.cs, World.Mining.cs): each of a belt works' tugs is a real hull in the fleet (MiningOperation.Tugs, role Tug) that lies at the field it works; sent out, it latches its load on (Ship.Tow, drawn ahead of its push plate), flies the haul at the acceleration its load leaves it (Ship.AccelG), on heavy lanes only while laden and at their slow pace, lets go at the refinery or depot and comes home empty. Raiders can take it only where it is, and the player can take its helm.
  • Lane Tender. Unarmed maintenance that keeps lane rings powered and aligned. A top target in war.

Every ship is a real hull

Settled by the owner (2026-10-23, U.SPC-T498, and a design principle in the README): no ship exists only as a number inside a simulation. Every hull any system counts is a Ship in its fleet, somewhere in the world, flying its own trips with its load visible and drawn at its level of detail, open to raiders only where it actually is, and one the player can take the helm of. A new class or a new system that needs ships raises hulls and orders them about; it never keeps a count and a timer. The ore tugs are real hulls; what still is not is in the table below.

Who has their own FTL

Class Own FTL How it crosses between systems
Carrier Yes Self-jump, with its wings and docked escorts
Dreadnought / Battleship Some Self-jump if fitted with an FTL drive, otherwise gates
Command Cruiser / Battlecruiser Some Self-jump if fitted, otherwise gates
Gate Breaker Yes It needs it
Cruiser No Gates
Destroyer / Frigate No Gates, or docked on a carrier's hull
Corvette Never Never leaves its home system
Fighters / Bombers / Boarding shuttles No Inside a carrier's hangar

Battleships are as big as carriers or bigger, so they never land on one.

Weapons by tier

Weapon Range Character Carried by
Railguns / Coilguns Extreme Kinetic sniping; a dreadnought's are spinal mounts the length of the hull Dreadnoughts, cruisers
Missiles / Torpedoes Long Volley strikes Frigates, carriers
Tachyon Lances Long Near-instant; ignore light-speed delay. Power-hungry, and kept rare and expensive so kinetics and missiles stay relevant Capitals only
Lasers Medium Point defence and radiator sniping Everything
Phaser-style Beams Medium Versatile, tunable energy Destroyers, cruisers
Plasma Cannons Short Devastating, bleeds off over distance Brawlers, gate breakers
Antimatter / Photon Torpedoes Medium Heavy guided warheads Frigates, capitals

Phaser arrays are tuned by beam shape, by the captain in battle, every array on the hull at once: a narrow lance that burns hulls at medium range, or a wide sweep that works like point defence against fighters and missiles close in. Plasma cannons lose damage evenly with the distance the bolt crosses (U.SPC-T488, Core/Combat/EnergyWeapons.cs).

Navies and raiders fit each weapon in its role (U.SPC-T505, Core/Combat/FleetPatterns.cs). Each role weapon has a place on its classes' stock designs: a destroyer's and a cruiser's two point-defence mounts take phaser arrays, a battleship's two bow heavy lasers take plasma cannons, and a battleship's spinal coilgun takes the tachyon lance. Antimatter torpedoes on frigates and capitals, and flak and interceptor missiles on destroyers, are in the stock designs themselves (U.SPC-T489). Every new hull a navy lays down, and every raider band's hulls, is built to those patterns or not by three things. The first is doctrine: the navy's build plan (a battle line likes plasma cannons and lances, a carrier navy and its screens like phaser arrays), moved either way by each navy's own fixed taste, so two navies under the same plan still field different mixes. The second is wealth: the owner must hold 25 times what the weapons add to the hull's price. The third is the yard: only the greatest lawful yards build a lance, so a raider never carries one. A lance goes on at most a quarter of the capitals of a navy that leans wholly to it. A navy that favours a weapon also refits its older hulls with it at its own yards, and one that favours the lance fits it before better drives rather than last of all. The figures are in Settings > AI.

Realism rules, softened

The game keeps the feel of real space and drops what would get in the way of play.

  • Inertial dampeners are why piloted dogfights work: pilots survive the manoeuvres the fight demands.
  • Bridges are buried at the centre of the hull with no viewports. The crew sees out through sensors and holo/VR displays. A warship's bridge is a hardpoint and a space marked buried (SubsystemDef.Buried, FacilitySite.Buried, Core/Combat/BuriedBridges.cs, U.SPC-T492): fire reaches it only through deep penetration, once more of the hull is shot away than its depth setting, and boarders reach it only by fighting through midships.
  • Radiators are a weak point on big ships, but not a constant worry.
  • Everything fights in full 3D: fighters, capitals and stations alike, with no battle plane.
  • Shields exist, so bombers knock the shields down first and then torpedo.

Construction

Hardpoints are places on the hull's surface. Facilities are things inside the body of the ship. Each hull has limited internal space for facilities (U.SPC-T470).

  • Hardpoints (Hardpoint, OutfitSlot, MountType in Core/Combat/Construction.cs and Outfitting.cs) are gun and turret mounts, launchers, torpedo tubes, shield emitters and engine mounts. Each is one entry of the design's layout, with a position on the hull and, for a weapon, a fire cone (see Fire cones below; a shield emitter has none: its field covers the patch of hull around it, see Shields below), and is never empty.

  • Typed hardpoints (U.SPC-T508, MechWarrior style). Each hardpoint is reserved for one kind of part and has a size, so a design is shaped by which kinds of mount its hull has, not just how many. A part goes only on a mount of its own type that is at least as big as it is.

    Type Parts (size)
    Ballistic autocannon, light railgun, flak cannon, auto turret (small); railgun (medium, spinal)
    Missile missile launcher, interceptor missiles, EMP launcher, mine layer (small); torpedo tube, antimatter torpedo (medium, spinal)
    Energy laser turret, point defence, phaser array (small); heavy laser, plasma cannon (medium); tachyon lance (large, spinal)
    Shield shield generator, hardened shield
    Engine fusion drive, torch drive
    Spinal a railgun, coilgun, tachyon lance or plasma cannon built to the hull's length (a battleship's two spinal mounts, U.SPC-T490, SpinalMounts)

    A spinal part goes only on a mount that bears on the bow, or on a fixed launcher (a stock torpedo tube, even one facing aft). Each module's type, size and spinal flag are data on its ModuleSpec, so a new weapon joins the scheme as one table entry. A mount takes the type of the part the design was built with there. Its size is small on a small craft and for the screen mounts (point defence, flak, interceptors) on any hull. Otherwise it is large on a hull a kilometre long or more (capitals, the defence platform, the orbital station) and medium below that. A mount is never smaller than its own stock part (Loadout.MountSize), so every stock design keeps its parts and fights exactly as before. Role limits still apply on top of the type: phaser arrays go only on destroyers and cruisers, plasma cannons only on battleships and breachers, and the tachyon lance only on capitals. Some examples follow.

    • A destroyer has a medium ballistic bow mount (its railgun), a medium spinal missile mount (its launcher, which takes a torpedo tube), small energy point-defence mounts (which take a phaser array), small ballistic flak mounts (which take an autocannon or auto turret) and a small missile interceptor mount.
    • A battleship has large energy mounts (heavy lasers bearing on the bow, which take the lance, and broadside lasers), large missile mounts, two large tube mounts that take spinal launchers, small energy point defence, and its two spinal mounts (a railgun and a coilgun as built).
    • A fighter has small ballistic gun mounts and a small missile mount, so it cannot swap its autocannons for a laser.

    The yard (Outfitting.Fit, CanFit), the construction plan (ConstructionPlan.Fit, FitFirst) and the AI's refits all go through the same check. The AI's refits are hardened shields, heavy lasers on a big hull's laser mounts, torch drives and a capital's bow lance, and each upgrade is offered only where the mount takes it. The outfitting screen (F2) names each mount by size and type, such as "Large energy mount (spinal)", and offers only the parts it takes. A model library binds parts by Hardpoint.ArtKey (the fitted part, or EnergyMount and the like when empty, plus the size) and sockets are named by type (energy-0, missile-1).

  • Spare internal space is not a hardpoint. It takes facilities (below), such as extra armour plate, a scanner suite, a sensor array, cargo racks and a brig. Heat sinks will be added as facilities once radiators and heat exist (U.SPC-T491).

  • Facilities (FacilityKind, FacilitySite in Core/Combat/Facilities.cs) have no fire cone, only a size: the share of internal space they take, in sections. A hull's internal space is its design's own facilities plus its free space (FacilityLayouts.SpareSpace: one to six sections by class, as many as it had internal bays before). A design is a trade-off: whatever goes in uses room something else could have had, and a hull with less free space than a facility's size cannot fit it at all.

  • The registry. Every facility kind is data registered with FacilityKinds.Register: its size, mass and bill of materials (scaled with the hull or fixed), the hull categories that may fit it (null for any), whether a yard fits and strips it, the boarding compartment it is (CompartmentKind, or none), the module it stands for if any, and an optional Effect on the hull's fighting spec, applied by Loadout.Build with +1 for each one fitted and -1 for each of the design's own taken out. A new facility (a Marine Habitat, an Assault Bay, an FTL drive room, radiators, a buried bridge, a sensor suite, pods on a truss) is a new registered kind, plus any system that reads Loadout.CountFacility. Fitting code, prices, the yard, the outfitting screen and the boarding interior need no change.

  • What is registered today. Structure that comes with the frame and is not fitted: bridge, engineering, crew quarters, hangar deck, hold, battery magazine, bow section, midships, assault bay. Fittable, each one section on any hull: armour plating, cargo racks, scanner suite, brig. These four were the internal-bay modules before, and they keep the same effects, mass, bill and price. Fittable on hulls big enough for one (freighters, warships, battleships, carriers, stations and service hulls, never fighters, small craft or satellites): the marine habitat (below). Fittable on capitals only (U.SPC-T477): the sensor array (two sections), the communications suite and targeting computers (one each), which the command cruiser is designed with and which make any hull that carries a working suite a command ship. A truss freighter's cargo pod (2,500 t of hold) and fuel sphere (3,000 t of tank), each one section, clamp only to a truss (BulkFreighters.TrussClasses), and a truss bars plate and racks (FacilityLayouts.Bar). A facility that carries cargo says so in its kind (CargoTonnes, HoldRows), and Loadout.CapacityTonnes and ExtraHoldRows add it up.

  • Marine habitats (MarineHabitats, Core/Combat/MarineHabitats.cs, U.SPC-T465). Marines live and train in a habitat, one section of internal space whose Berths (a facility kind's, fifty a unit of hull scale, or a layout site's own) are the hull's marine complement: CombatSpec.Marines is its facilities' berths (FacilityLayouts.Complement), not a flat figure per class, and Loadout.Build adds a fitted habitat's berths and takes away a stripped one's. Every stock design is drawn with the habitats that hold the marines it always had (carrier 320, battleship 260, cruiser 140, destroyer 50, a freighter's security post 4, a defence platform's garrison 60, an orbital station's 180); a Breacher round's team of 70 rides in its troop compartment, which is no habitat. The habitat is the barracks compartment (CompartmentKind.Barracks) the defenders muster from, and the crew work the rest of the ship. Each day out of battle the marines in it drill (Interior.Drill, Interior.Training, 0 to 1), fully trained in 180 days and 30% better man for man (Interior.DrillFactor), repelling boarders and boarding from the hull alike; recruits who make up losses start raw and dilute it. Both are in Settings > Broadsides. What a habitat has ready (MarineHabitats.Ready, TeamsReady, Draw) is what the Assault Bay's teams are drawn from (U.SPC-T466).

  • Layouts. Each class's facilities (FacilityLayouts.For), and a platform's for stations and satellites, list its spaces from bow to stern with their names and places, and say where a branch such as the bridge leaves the keel. Interior.For builds the boarding compartments from them, so a hull's interior is its facilities. A facility fitted later that is a space of its own opens off midships, and the interior is rebuilt with its people carried over. A HullFrame may bring its own layout.

  • Who reads it. The yard (Outfitting.FitFacility, StripFacility, QuoteFacility), the construction plan (ConstructionPlan.FitFacility, its bill and price), the outfitting screen (F2: the hardpoints, then the facilities, then the free space), the AI's designs (Outfitting.NavyFacilities and RaiderFacilities, lists of kind ids filled as far as the free space goes) and the boarding interior.

Two doctrines

  • Gate fleet. Large, but predictable, because it must come through a chokepoint.
  • Jump strike group. A carrier, FTL-capable capitals and docked escorts. Smaller, but it can show up anywhere.

Capital ships fight in full 3D

Settled by the owner (2026-10-23): capital ships fight in full 3D, like the fighters, never on a battle plane. U.SPC-T499 builds the capital flight model that way (it replaces U.SPC-T442, which assumed a plane).

Fire cones

Every weapon hardpoint aims within a cone, not a facing arc (U.SPC-T533, Core/Combat/FireCones.cs; the owner's call, 2026-10-24). Since everything fights in full 3D, there are no bow, starboard, stern and port arcs any more.

  • A cone is a direction and a half-angle. Each weapon mount aims about a direction on the hull, by default its mount's normal (the way the hull's surface faces where it sits, FireCones.MountNormal), and can traverse within a half-angle of it. A gun bears on anything inside its cone, seen from where the mount sits, above or below the hull as well as to the side (BattleUnit.Bears).
  • Turrets wide, fixed mounts narrow. A turret's cone is wide round its normal; a spinal mount, a fixed tube or launcher, a fighter's fixed guns and a bomber's slung torpedo have a narrow one along the keel (astern for a tube that faces aft), so the hull itself lays them.
  • Every cone is data. The half-angle is a datum on the mount's ModuleSpec (ConeHalfDeg: laser turret 110°, heavy laser 100°, phaser array 110°, plasma cannon 90°, autocannon 110°, light railgun 90°, point defence, flak, interceptors, missile launcher and auto turret 120°, EMP launcher 110°, torpedo tube and antimatter torpedo 15°, railgun, coilgun and tachyon lance 10°, a mine layer anywhere). A hull frame may give a hardpoint its own direction and half-angle (SubsystemDef.ConeAxis, ConeHalfDeg): a battleship's heavy lasers bear 60° round the bow (the aft one round the stern) and its broadside lasers and launchers 75° round either beam, a light fighter's guns 20° round the bow, a spinal mount 10° (SpinalMounts.ConeHalfDeg). A refit keeps the hardpoint's cone, and a lance fitted on a bow mount takes the narrow keel cone.
  • Batteries are the guns that bear. At a capital's helm a battery is every gun whose cone takes in the line the player is looking along, and each gun keeps its own order (fire at will, hold fire, volley; Broadsides.CycleOrder, OrderAlong). A gun in volley holds until every gun of the volley bearing on the same hull is loaded, then they go together; the telegraph names the hull a volley is building on.
  • The AI captain brings its guns to bear. It weighs the headings that would turn each ready gun's cone onto its target (and the bow on it) by the firepower of every gun whose cone would then hold the target, and turns to the best (Battle.ConeFirepower), so a broadside hull turns a flank in and a hull whose guns bear best ahead points its nose. Against a target that fires back it also weighs its strongest battery's heading slanted 30° either way, so it can lay its hull at an angle to the fire while its guns still bear (Armour angling below). Rolling the weak patches away (Shields below) weighs the same headings, rolled about the line to the target, which keeps the target where it lies in every cone.
  • The player's fire control. The guns the player lays down the nose are those whose cone takes in dead ahead; a volley at the helm fires the guns whose cones take in the look line; a turret the player mans traverses only within its cone (a spinal gun never past its gimbal).
  • Armour angling is on the hull's real surface. The three-face armour angling (bow, beam, stern) went with the arcs; angling is measured against the hull's surface where each shot strikes it in 3D instead (see Armour angling below).
  • Every tunable is a setting. How far every turret can traverse against its design and how far a fixed mount can be laid off the keel (Settings > Weapons), and whether AI captains bring their guns to bear or simply point the bow at the target (Settings > Broadsides).

Armour angling

A capital ship's armour turns a slanted hit (U.SPC-T534, Core/Combat/ArmourAngling.cs; the owner's call, 2026-10-24). There are no bow, beam and stern armour faces: each hit is measured against the hull's own surface where it actually strikes.

  • Where the shot strikes. The shot's line is followed in to where it first meets the hull's real shape, the capsule its beam wide (its straight length and its two rounded ends), and the hull's outward normal there is what the strike is measured against (ArmourAngling.Entry, StrikeCos). So a shot square on the side, or square on the back from above, or on the tip of the bow is square; one raking the hull lengthways, striking the curve of its side or the shoulder of its rounded bow is slanted. A line that misses the hull's body (a mount standing proud of it, struck at the edge) is measured where it was aimed.
  • Thicker plate, partly turned aside. Plate crossed at a slant reads one over the cosine of the strike thicker, never more than the obliquity cap (3x by default), and a fully glancing strike loses the angling strength's share of the hit (40% by default), both scaled by that strength (ArmourAngling.Angling). A weak point struck from its open side has no armour to angle, and the brace still applies on top.
  • The captain slants its hull. A hull lying slanted to the fire shows it more slanted surface, so more of the hits glance off (ArmourAngling.Harm, the share of the harm that gets home over the face the hull shows a line of fire). An AI captain weighs that against its guns' bearing by doctrine: against a target that fires back it lays its strongest battery slanted off the line of fire while its guns still bear, and rolling the weak patches away (Shields below) weighs the slant of each attitude to every hostile's fire along with its holes.
  • Every figure is a setting (Settings > Broadsides): the armour angling strength (0 turns angling off), the obliquity cap, and how much of its guns' bearing an AI captain gives up to slant its hull.

Shields

Shields come from emitters on the hull, not facing arcs (U.SPC-T501, Core/Combat/ShieldEmitters.cs). Since everything fights in full 3D, there is no bow, beam and stern shield any more, and no angling the shields to a facing: the arc model of SHIELD_ARCS_SPIKE.md is retired.

  • Emitters are hardpoints. Like turrets, a hull carries shield emitters (shield mounts, see Construction above) at places on its hull. Each projects its own field over the patch of hull around it: the part of the hull nearer to it than to any other emitter, in 3D (ShipCombat.PatchAt). An emitter's field holds its rating's share of the hull's shield (evenly, on a stock hull; a hardened emitter holds more).
  • A shot hits the field of the patch it strikes. Beams and aimed rounds strike where they meet the hull; a guided munition where it crosses into the hull on the side it came in from; a hit on the hull as a whole lands on the side it came from; a collision at its contact point (ShieldEmitters.StrikePoint, ShipCombat.EmitterFor). Only that emitter's field is drained.
  • Holed in one place, covered elsewhere. A field shot away, or its emitter destroyed, leaves that patch of hull bare: fire there goes straight to the armour and hardpoints under it, while every other patch stays covered. Each patch regrows on its own clock once it has gone unhit for a while, so the patch under fire stays down while the rest recover. A torpedo bomber's bare-hull bonus and a boarding pod's bounce go by the patch they strike.
  • Focus fire. Gunners favour the hardpoints in a weakened patch, the more the weaker its field (ShieldEmitters.FocusWeight in Battle.PickSubsystem): AI crews by doctrine, and a player's crews at the helm unless the captain orders the fire spread (key 2). The player's own aimed shots hit whichever patch they land on, so aiming at a holed spot gets through.
  • Emergency repair. A capital ship's damage control teams also crew emergency repairs: given time they bring back a shield emitter or gun mount shot away, to part of its health, and a restored emitter's field regrows from nothing (Broadsides.StepDamageControl). Engines, reactors and the rest shot away still wait for a yard. The damage control focus on shields sends them to emitters first.
  • Seen on the hull. Each emitter's field glows over its patch in the shield colour at its charge (ShipView), and a patch shot away shows dark; a hit raises a bubble on the patch it struck.
  • Rolling the weak patches away. Capitals fight in full 3D, so a captain rolls and turns its hull to keep a damaged, unshielded or holed patch away from the heaviest incoming fire and show fresh shields instead (U.SPC-T502, Core/Combat/WeakPatches.cs). It weighs where the fire comes from (every armed hostile, heavier for its firepower, lighter beyond its reach, heavier with a broadside building on this hull) against which patches face each way, and trades that against keeping its own guns bearing: it rolls about the line to its target, which keeps the target where it lies in every gun's fire cone, or turns its hull to another heading that brings other guns' cones onto the enemy if that shows it fresher shields for the firepower it gives up. It weighs the fire again every second and changes its mind only for a clearly better attitude, so it settles rather than hunting, and it rolls no faster than the hull turns. AI captains do it by doctrine. At the helm the HUD reads out the patches by name (starboard beam, dorsal bow, port quarter), which are weak (holed, or how far down their field is) and which one faces the heaviest fire, red while that one is weak; Shift+Delete orders the helm assist to roll the weak patches away while the player steers the nose (Z/X still roll by hand while held), and again hands the roll back.
  • Every rate is a setting (Settings > Broadsides): how long a field waits before it regrows and how fast it does, how strongly gunners focus a weakened patch and whether AI gunners do, and the emergency repair rate, the work it takes and how whole a restored mount comes back, and whether AI captains roll their weak patches away and how much of their guns' bearing they give up to do it (and, under Armour angling above, to slant the hull to the fire).

Where the game is today

Canon In the game now Closed by
Cruisers and destroyers have no FTL; carriers and gate breakers always do, battleships and command cruisers only when fitted In: the roster is data (FtlRoster in Core/Systems/CruiseDrive.cs); carriers and explorers always have a drive, a battleship or command cruiser only while its design fits the FTL drive facility (two sections; each stock design has one, a yard can strip it), cruisers, destroyers and frigates have none and no berths and cross by the gates (a frigate also clamped to a carrier); corvettes never leave their home system (U.SPC-T476); gate breakers always carry the capital drive, built into engineering, not a fitting a yard can strip (U.SPC-T478) U.SPC-T472
Carriers clamp a few escorts to the hull; a lost carrier strands its wings In: a carrier has four docking clamps on its hull besides its hangar berths (FtlCarriage in Core/Systems/CruiseDrive.cs); a destroyer takes two, a frigate one, a corvette none (it never leaves home), and clamped escorts go through the carrier's jump and are lost with it. Craft still out when their carrier is destroyed, taken or leaves the field land on another friendly carrier with room or a friendly station on the field, else put in at a friendly port at the world when the fight ends, else are lost and their pilots eject (StrandedWings, Core/Combat/StrandedWings.cs) U.SPC-T473
Gate fleets and jump strike groups, used differently Navies do not yet raise the two kinds of force U.SPC-T474
The Breacher is a fired marine round In: an Assault Bay (a facility fitted only beside a Marine Habitat) fires a whole team in an armoured round that flies like a bullet with only a slight course correction (the ballistic flight family), drills into the hull it strikes and lets the team out into that compartment for the boarding fight; the bay reloads as fast as the habitats ready teams; raider band leaders carry one, and no wing, patrol or band flies a Breacher any more U.SPC-T466
Marines live in a Marine Habitat In: a hull's marines are what its habitats quarter, they muster from its barracks and train in it; the AI's designs do not yet fit extra habitats U.SPC-T465
Boarding the player takes part in Boarding only resolves on its own U.SPC-T468
Gate breaker In: a class of its own (GateBreakers, Core/Combat/GateBreakers.cs), the most heavily armoured hull afloat (armour 14, more hull than a battleship, the slowest warship), its siege guns eight plasma cannons (a pair in the bow, three down either beam) and nothing longer-ranged, so it brawls; in a gate battle it picks the gate's forts before anything else. It carries boarding teams (a 340-marine barracks and two boarding shuttles) and engineering teams (a siege engineering bay), and on campaign a war fleet with one storms a gate whose forts are silenced the first day and takes it intact, its engineers making good the damage the ring has taken, so a sabotaged gate is back in service at once. It never wrecks a gate (the owner's call, 2026-10-24). It always has its own FTL drive. Navies at war lay one down when they have none afloat. Figures in Settings > Broadsides and AI U.SPC-T478
Corvettes defend their home system In: a class of its own with no FTL drive, deep tanks, a patrol search suite and a brawler's guns, stationed for good at each navy's ports and patrolling the hyper lanes from there as local law enforcement against smugglers and pirates; it never leaves its home system U.SPC-T476
Frigates alpha-strike In: a class of its own with deep magazines of long-range missiles and antimatter torpedoes, flying the alpha strike; no FTL of its own, carried by a carrier; navies build it in the carrier-group and strike-flotilla plans U.SPC-T475
The lane interdictor, a sub-capital, has no FTL of its own In: no drive of its own; a raider band (a cruiser or destroyer and its escorts) crosses between the stars by the gates, its interdictor with it, and only hulls with a drive go out to lie in wait on FTL routes U.SPC-T472
The lane interdictor is heavy equipment, not a class In: the field projector is a facility fitted into any hull big enough for it and its reactor load (a destroyer, a cruiser, a converted freighter), fitted and stripped at a yard, its ring drawn on the hull that carries it; raider bands, the navies' lane picket wings and the Lane security build plan fit it to suitable hulls U.SPC-T507
Truss-and-pod freighters In: a truss with cargo pods and fuel spheres as facilities, unarmed and unarmoured, a bulk lane toll, a weak drive, never landing, its model showing its load U.SPC-T482
Ice hauler / ore tug In: a class of its own, each one a real hull of its belt works that latches its load on, flies the haul (heavy lanes while laden) and can be seized where it is or flown by the player U.SPC-T483, U.SPC-T498
Every ship a real hull In for the ore tugs. Not yet: a works' capture tugs, its raw-material convoys, colony ships and navy supply convoys are counts and timetables, and a carrier's wings are a number aboard until a fight launches them U.SPC-T522, U.SPC-T523, U.SPC-T524, U.SPC-T525, U.SPC-T526
Recon / EW fighter In: a class of its own (ShipClass.Recon), an interceptor's airframe with a pilot and an EW officer; every carrier berths a recon pair beside its squadrons and flies it ahead to the capital its bombers are going for, where it holds off outside point defence, jams every enemy ship within 8 km (they fire 30% less accurately) and paints its mark (bombers go for it first, and their torpedoes steer 2.5 times as hard onto it and ignore its decoys four times in five); aboard, it stretches the carrier's sensor reach by half. Figures in Settings > Dogfighting (ElectronicWarfare, Core/Combat/ElectronicWarfare.cs) U.SPC-T485
Boarding shuttles take prizes and gates intact In: the assault shuttle is a class of its own carried in a carrier's hangars; it docks with a disabled hull or a silenced station or gate fort, latches on and puts its marine team in through the airlock for the boarding fight, slower and gentler than a Breacher round; a war fleet with shuttles takes a silenced gate sooner U.SPC-T486
Antimatter / photon torpedoes, flak, interceptor missiles In: battleships and carriers carry an antimatter torpedo launcher (a frigate two, from a magazine twice as deep, U.SPC-T475); destroyers carry two rotary flak cannons and an interceptor launcher beside their point defence and keep between their capital and the threat; tunables in Settings > Weapons U.SPC-T489
Dreadnought spinal mounts and rear-line doctrine Not yet U.SPC-T490
Radiators and heat on big ships Not yet U.SPC-T491
Bridges buried at the centre of warships In: every warship's bridge (carrier, battleship, cruiser, destroyer, command cruiser, frigate) sits at the centre of its hull with nothing of it on the outside; a hit aimed at it stays in the hull until enough of the hull is shot away (Settings > Broadsides > Buried bridge depth, half by default), collisions never reach it, and in the boarding interior it opens only off midships, so no pod, Breacher round or airlock lands in it U.SPC-T492