Spaceships

All the covert machinations on Earth and industrialization efforts in space are the path for factions to build fleets of ships to protect and advance their interests. Once the factions unlock the early-game orbital shipbuilding tech, and the follow-on space dock project for their habs, they can build interplanetary spacecraft.

With the right modules, ships can prospect and found habitats, but the primary role for most ships is combat.

At any time, you can design ships out of the modules you've developed. Once you have a shipyard, you can build the ships themselves out of your space resources and, if necessary, boost and money.

Hull
Designing a ship begins with selecting a hull. The type of hull determines the number of nose and hull weapon hard points, the number of utility modules, and the length of the hull.

Shorter ships will have a lower moment of inertia, meaning they will rotate faster than their longer counterparts.

Role
Each ship has a role, which informs the game on whether the ship is a combatant or noncombatant, what range it should engage in during combat and how much propellant will it want. The role affects the autodesigner behavior and where the ship is placed in a combat formation.
 * Ships with Long strategic range will emphasize propellant for interplanetary operations
 * Ships with Short strategic range will limit propellant mass in favor of maneuverability

Power Plant
A ship's power plant provides energy to both the ship's drive and other ship systems. The mass of the power plant scales with the greater of the power requirement of the drive or the ship's systems. The power plant also produces waste heat that must be stored in heat sinks or expelled by radiators.

Note: Many drives require a certain class of power plant to function, and in some cases, a lower-tech power plant of the correct class may not be able to produce enough power to support an advanced drive.

Drive
Drives expel propellant from the tail of the ship to make the ship go places. Drives come in a variety of forms, but are rated by two common values: thrust and exhaust velocity. High-thrust drives can achieve higher velocities more quickly, and high-exhaust velocity drives use less propellant to do so. Together these values determine the power required by the ship's power plant. Adding 100-ton propellant tanks to the ship increases the ship's Delta-V, or how much it can change its speed.

Note: Many drives require a certain class of power plant to function, and in some cases, a lower-tech power plant of the correct class may not be able to produce enough power to support an advanced drive.

 * Rounded

Propellant
Each ship must have one or more 100-ton propellant tanks. The number of propellant tanks determines the ship's Delta-V value. There is no hard limit to the number that can be placed on a ship. However, each tank of propellant adds mass to the ship, which reduces its acceleration and gives diminishing returns for delta-V. The resources used to make propellant is determined by the drive.

Radiator
Radiators remove waste heat produced by the ship's power plant. They scale in mass based on the power plant's output and efficiency. Because these are highly vulnerable in combat, they can be retracted if the ship has heat sinks in one or more utility slots. However, once the ship's heat sink fills up, the radiators must be extended again to protect the lives of the crew.

Battery
The ship's primary battery stores energy from the power plant and provides it to weapons, life support, and other key systems when the main power plant is unable to do so, either due to damage or when the drive is operating on ships that don't have an independently powered drive. High-power weapons can drain the battery quickly in combat. Improved batteries will have a larger capacity or a faster recharge rate. You may add additional batteries of the same type in utility module slots for greater capacity.

Armor
Armor plating on the ship will absorb incoming weapons fire, preventing damage to internal components. Each point of armor will absorb 20 Megajoules of energy at a single location on the hull before vaporizing. Different armor types require a different thickness and mass to absorb a particular amount of much damage. Note that a point of lateral armor is much more massive than nose and tail armor because it had a greater surface area to cover.

Utility Modules
Utility Modules perform a variety of functions to widen a spacecraft's capabilities. Extra batteries may also be put in utility module slots.

Drive Enhancement Module
Drive Enhancement Modules requires a certain type of Drive to be used.

Heat Sink
Heat sinks are important modules for combat ship so they may avoid exposing their vulnerable radiators to enemy fire.

Kit
Kits allow creation of a small hab with a construction module. Can be replenished by repairing the ship at a shipyard.

Hardpoints
Nose hardpoints fire in a limited arc, but are generally more powerful than hull hardpoints. Hull hardpoints come in pairs placed on opposite sides of the ship, and can fire in all directions around the ship. Weapons come in the following types:

- Guns: Good old-fashioned cannon (chemical slugthrowers) with performance characteristics similar to modern naval weaponry. Low-tech, cheap, and don't drain your battery.

- Missiles and Torpedoes: Will chase the target. Constrained by ammo limitations. Nuclear weapons are among the warhead types. The difference between missile and torpedo in this context is mass; missiles go fast faster and have larger magazines while torpedoes carry heavier warheads. Also doesn't drain your battery.

- Magnetic weapons: Covers railguns and coilguns that launch high-speed projectiles that can be dodged or shot down. Can be used in orbital bombardment.

- Lasers: Never miss. Damage falls off over distance. Higher input power, larger optics and higher frequencies lead to more damage. Can be used in orbital bombardment, with some limitations for high-frequency weapons trying to bombard through an atmosphere.

- Particle weapons: Short-range weapons that can do severe damage to a ship’s internal components if it penetrates a ship’s armor. Also effective point defense weapons.

- Plasma cannon: These are essentially high-speed, low-mass projectile weapons; their design is based on what descriptions are available of the real-world Shiva Star and Marauder projects. In practice, we’re modeling them as long-range, low rate-of-fire weapons to give them a distinct role in combat. Deep in the tech tree.