Modular starship

“So we’re a taxi service,” he concluded.

''“Yeah,” Çrom grunted. “Comes with the territory when you’re running a modular. Cargo, personnel, occasional muscle-flexing on dumbler borders … ”''

- Drago Barducci and Çrom Skelliglyph, Black Honey Wings

The smallest official classification of AstroCorps starship, the modular is a "flying saucer" style vessel with a round plan section. Docking blisters break the hull at one point but otherwise the design is seamless and smooth to allow the relative drive field ease of adaptation. That's the plan, anyway. Modulars do tend to get kicked around.

The vessel is designed with a single gravity exchange deck, or plane, on the central line of the ship. The exchange creates artificial gravity in both directions, allowing decks on either side of the exchange to be traversed although from a planetary perspective the exchange pulls objects on one side "down" against the "floor" and objects on the other side "up" against the "ceiling". The decks are constructed, of course, so that the floor is always what you're being pulled towards. Otherwise it would be silly.

On one side of the exchange are decks steadily decreasing in size to the relative drive torus and culminating in a domed common area also incorporating communications and some other functions. On the other side of the exchange, the decks decrease in size to the opposing relative torus and a dome assigned to the Captain's quarters and a reception area for the entertainment of visitors.

Subluminal and superluminal drives
Main article: relative drive.

Modular starships have subluminal engines capable of speeds of up to approximately one-third the speed of light, and relative speed engines capable of speeds of up to twelve to fifteen thousand times the speed of light.

Oxygen farms
Modular starship life support is enabled with heat from the main engines, gravity from the exchange, and breathable atmosphere (for five of the Six Species) from the oxygen farms. Also called algae farms, oxygen rings or freezers, the oxygen farms are deeply refrigerated rings of deck built close to the relative toruses. They contain banks of altered algae blocks that only fully activate in temperatures of approximately -40°C, otherwise remaining dormant. The algae is high-yield and produces large volumes of oxygen to replenish the modular's air supply.

Airlocks and emergency seals
Aside from the main docking blister, modular starships are fitted with numerous external-access airlocks at strategic locations around the hull. Modulars have vertical emergency doors that can close along corridors, access routes and internal spaces to prevent widespread loss of atmosphere, as well as horizontal between-deck seals that perform the same function for deck breaches.

Hull plating and shields
“Those aren’t electronic, they’re good old-fashioned impact-shielded transparent plates of … of … damn it, I don’t remember the name of the alloy - ”

''“Dexostalic metaflux … ” Decay started, then trailed off with a cough when the humans turned to look at him. This had clearly been one of those ‘rhetorical’ things that they didn’t really want answered. It’d be nice if they signposted those a bit more clearly. “In the interests of saving time and syllables, let’s just call it ‘metaflux’,” he concluded. “Not entirely without an electronic component, insofar as the shielding is dependent on the drive, and the plates harden as we accelerate, or in the case of an at-rest combat situation they harden as we redirect power from the drive to … but anyway..."''

- Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed and General Moral Decay (Alcohol), Eejit'''

Modular starships are clad in metaflux hull plating, through which is fed a defensive reinforcement field powered by the ship's main engines. Only technically active while the ship is in normal subluminal space, the shielding is designed to increase in intensity as subluminal velocity increases, according to the proportionate rise in the danger posed by impacts.

Catchers
The hull of the modular is equipped with inset and nominally-sealed rail-mounted whip-arms designed for the interception and (if necessary) collection of debris. They are usually only used as a precaution or in emergency situations, as the hull shielding protects against most small impacts.

''This entry is a bit of a stub. To be continued. Hur hur hur, stub.''