How To Design a Starship
Follow these steps to design a tech level one starship. A starship can travel everywhere within a solar system and it can use wormholes to travel quickly to other solar systems. A starship can also travel directly to other solar systems without using wormholes, but this takes a long time. The final result is the starship pictured at the left.

Move to a design studio and enter a vacant studio using the Labor (F10) window. You will be placed in a private instance of a design studio.

It is best to design a spacecraft from the bottom to the top. It is also helpful to have a general idea in mind of what the final shape will look like. After designing a few spacecraft, you will get a feel for the sizes of rooms and the equipment needed.

Open the Spacecraft Design (F6) window. The lower portion of the window shows an analysis of the current design in progress. Review the design analysis as you make changes to see the affect of those changes.

A starship is distinguished from a spaceship by the presense of wormhole drives. A starship can travel quickly from one solar system to another by flying into a wormhole. Wormhole drives require Lumenite, which is rare and sometimes difficult to find. A spaceship aids in the exploration and colonization of a solar system when Lumenite has not been discovered yet.

The design grid forms squares using horizontal and vertical lines. Turn on the diagonal grid lines using buttons on the Spacecraft Design window.

Each room is filled by selecting a room type and click-dragging in the scene like a paint program. The cells formed by the design grid are filled as you drag. All the cells of a room must join with flat sides; there cannot be separate pieces or pieces joined by only a corner point, like an hour glass.

There are heavy lines in the grid to help guide your work. They don't affect anything; you can draw your design anywhere in the design space.

VERY IMPORTANT Be sure the front of your ship is oriented toward the front of the design space. Words at the edge of the design grid show the direction. Your ship design must be drawn so the bow is heading toward the front of the design space. You cannot rotate the design after you draw it sideways or backward.

Fill the rooms of deck one to match the following picture. The rooms used on deck one are:
Bridge
Engine Room
Fuel Cell
Hall
Hold
Vehicle Bay

To fill the second Fuel Cell, the room tag number must be changed. This distinguishes between multiple rooms of the same type on the same deck.



Add doors between rooms and hull doors to allow access to the outside. It is good practice to use crew doors on cargo holds to restrict access to the hold; a person in the hold can access all of the cargo on the ship. Use wall openings to remove the three interior walls that separate the vehicle bay from the cargo hold; a wall opening removes an entire wall from end to end.
Crew Door
Hull Door
 Large Hull Door
Wall Opening



Add crew stations and a motor bike spawn location. Use left and right arrow keys while placing the motor bike to rotate the point of the triangle to point to the left; that points in the forward direction of the motor bike. Add a captain's chair. The captain's chair is essential for a ship to be commanded by an NPC.
Captain's Chair
Engineer Station
Helm
Motor Bike Spawn Location
Navigator Station
Power Relay Station



Add life support units, power plant units and gravity drive units.
Gravity Drive Unit
Life Support Unit
Power Plant Unit



Move the design grid up one deck and draw the rooms of the second deck. Notice that the officer cabin is divided down the center into two officer cabins 1 and 2.

As with the first deck, room tag numbers must be changed to add more than one of each kind of room, i.e. the staterooms, cargo holds, engine rooms and officer cabins.

We can use tag number 1 for the fuel cell even though 1 was used on deck one. The room tag numbers only need to be unique on each deck. They can be reused on other decks.

Fill the rooms of deck two to match the following picture. The rooms used on deck two are:
Barracks
Crew Cabin
Engine Room
Fuel Cell
Galley
Hall
Hold
Lounge
Officer Cabin
Stateroom



Add doors between rooms and hatches down to the deck below. Add a wall opening to remove the wall between the lounge and the hall and the wall between the galley and the hall. Add a railing to the remaining galley wall in the hall; the entire wall from end to end becomes a railing instead of a solid wall.
Crew Door
Crew Hatch
Door
Hatch
Railing



Add wormhole drive units, gravity drive units and power plant units.
Gravity Drive Unit
Power Plant Unit
Wormhole Drive Unit



Add single and double bunks, a gaming table, and two turrets. Use left and right arrow keys to rotate bunks and the gaming table when placing them. It is good practice to place turrets where they cannot be accessed by passengers; that means putting them in rooms accessible only through crew doors.
Double Bunk
Game Table
 Single Bunk
Turret



Move the design grid up one level and fill in the room on deck three. Add two hatches. One of the hatches is a hull hatch down through the upper hull into the hall of deck two.
Crew Hatch
Hold
Hull Hatch



The final design analysis is shown in the picture at the right.

Press F6 to hide the Spacecraft Design window. This causes the design to be drawn as a solid spacecraft. Walk through all the rooms of the design to make sure you didn't forget any doors.

Save the design.

Burn the design onto a blank disk. You may need to purchase a blank disk from a design studio or a retail store.

Take the design disk to a spacecraft factory. You can pay a spacecraft factory to manufacture your design instantly. If you are in the chain of command of the city, you can configure the factory to manufacture the design using commodities from the city inventory, like other manufacturing processes.