Starship

An interstellar vehicle: A spacecraft which has a jump drive and can cross interstellar space. Contrast with spaceship and Small craft.

Starships are designed to carry people from one star system to another, for the purposes of exploration, survey, trade, patrol, raiding, tracking, information gathering, conquest... in a word, adventure. Typically, starships have a large percentage of their volume dedicated to fuel, because the jump drive requires a huge investment in energy to transition to jumpspace. This limits the available space for other uses, severely in the case of ships able to jump long distances, or rejump repeatedly (which is a lifesaver if you can afford the space). Some ships greatly enhance capacity without sacrificing safety by mounting external tanks to the ship known as droptanks.

Starship Classes

There are three general classes of starship: ACS, BCS, and FCS.

ACS: "Adventure"-Class Ships are a smaller class of starships, typically with a crew size ranging from 1 to perhaps two dozen. They range from 100 to 2400 tons.

BCS: "Battle"-Class Ships are larger. Despite the "battle" moniker, some are built for commercial purposes. BCS range from 2500 tons to about 100,000 tons.

FCS: "Fleet"-Class Ships are usually ships of the line: for example, dreadnoughts. They displace hundreds of thousands of tons (with a practical maximum of about a million tons).

Typical Small Starships

Most ships are constructed from time-tested design plans and features. The standard small starship designs are:

1. 100-ton Scout/Courier
2. 200-ton Free Trader
3. 200-ton Far Trader
4. 200-ton Yacht
5. 200-ton Safari Ship
6. 300-ton Armed Packet
7. 400-ton Corsair
8. 400-ton Subsidized Merchant
9. 400-ton Lab Ship
10. 400-ton Close Escort
11. 500-ton Patrol Escort
12. 600-ton Subsidized Liner
13. 800-ton Mercenary Cruiser

Other standard plans may be available at various localities.

Ship Construction

Most ships are constructed from standard design plans which use time-tested designs and combinations of features. Shipyards work from these plans which cover every detail of construction and assembly. Construction times are measured in months, with larger ships generally taking longer to complete.

Space ships are constructed and sold at shipyards throughout the galaxy. Any Class A Starport has a shipyard which can build any kind of ship, including a starship with jump drives; any Class B Starport can build a small craft or ships which do not have jump drives. The military procures vessels through these yards, corporations buy their commercial vessels from these shipyards, and private individuals can purchase ships that they have designed through them as well. The major restriction on the purchase of ships is money.

References & Contributors (Sources)

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Marc Miller. Starships (Game Designers Workshop, 1977), TBD.
• John Harshman, Marc Miller, Loren Wiseman. Library Data (N-Z) (Game Designers Workshop, 1982), TBD.
• Loren Wiseman. "Starship Malfunctions." Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society 15 (1983): 16-26.
• Loren Wiseman. "Sublight Drives." Challenge 72 (1994): TBD.
• Robert Prior. 101 Starships (BITS, 2002), TBD.
• Marc Miller, Robert Eaglestone, Don McKinney. Starships (Far Future Enterprises, 2019), 33.
• Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science