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Ship Roster

The canonical ship catalog with cost, capacity, combat, sensor, and special-ability stats. For acquisition rules, ownership, maintenance, upgrades, insurance, and destruction flow see ./ships.md. For the schema shape see ../../DATA_MODELS/ships.md.

Types in code (models/ship.py:ShipType): ESCAPE_POD, LIGHT_FREIGHTER, CARGO_HAULER, FAST_COURIER, SCOUT, COLONY, DEFENDER, CARRIER, WARP_JUMPER, CITIZEN_CLIPPER (the Galactic-Citizen courier — see Citizen Clipper below).

Capacity & speed

Ship Cost (cr) Size Cargo Drones Genesis Speed (sec/turn) Shields Hull
Escape Pod — (issued) tiny 0 0 0 very low (high turn cost) 150 200
Light Freighter 80,000 medium 500 2 0 1.0 300 400
Fast Courier 50,000 small 200 0 0 2.0 200 300
Scout Ship 30,000 small 100 1 0 2.5 150 200
Cargo Hauler 250,000 large 1,000 2 2 0.5 400 600
Defender 300,000 medium 400 6 3 1.0 700 800
Colony Ship 500,000 large 1,000 2 5 0.4 400 600
Carrier 1,500,000 capital 800 12 5 0.75 800 900
Warp Jumper 1,000,000 (built only) large 200 0 1 jump-only 500 600
Citizen Clipper 50,000 small 200 0 0 2.0 200 300

The Size column is a 📐 Design-only ship_size enum on ShipSpecification consumed by the Carrier hangar (capacity 8 size-units; see ./ships.md#carrier-hangar) and the Tractor Beam tow surcharge (see ./ships.md#tractor-beam-tow-operations).

Combat & sensor stats

Ship Attack rating Defense rating Evasion Scanner range Attack turn cost Max colonists Default weapon
Escape Pod 0 5 10 1 10,000 1 Laser
Light Freighter 15 20 15 2 12 5 Laser
Fast Courier 5 10 35 3 8 2 Laser
Scout Ship 8 8 45 5 5 1 EMP
Cargo Hauler 10 30 5 2 20 10 Laser
Defender 40 45 20 3 18 8 Plasma
Colony Ship 5 25 0 2 35 50 Laser
Carrier 50 60 5 4 45 20 Missile
Warp Jumper 10 35 30 8 100 3 Plasma
Citizen Clipper 5 10 35 3 8 2 Laser

Default weapons reflect each ship's combat archetype: Scout's EMP fits the "disable, don't kill" recon role; Defender's Plasma is the workhorse combat platform; Carrier's Missile pairs heavy ordnance with its drone bay; Warp Jumper's Plasma gives the craft-only specialist adequate self-defense; civilian / utility hulls get all-purpose Laser. Source: services/gameserver/src/services/combat_service.py:SHIP_DEFAULT_WEAPONS. See ./combat.md#weapons for shield-vs-hull effectiveness ratios per weapon type.

Faction-gated ships

Two ships in the roster require reputation with a specific NPC faction before they can be acquired:

Ship Required reputation
Carrier terran_federation ≥ TRUSTED
Warp Jumper nova_scientific_institute ≥ HONORED

Faction reputation tiers run on the same 17-tier scale as the rest of the system (see ./factions-and-teams.md#reputation-scale). Without the required tier, the gameserver rejects acquisition attempts at any port.

✅ Shipped. The core/ship_specifications_seeder.py seeder stamps the canonical faction codes for these reputation gates: Carrier requires terran_federation ≥ TRUSTED (ship_specifications_seeder.py:427) and Warp Jumper requires nova_scientific_institute ≥ HONORED (ship_specifications_seeder.py:467), matching the mapping above.

Numbers above match core/ship_specifications_seeder.py:ShipType definitions. Per-ship Genesis capacity: Cargo Hauler 2, Colony Ship 5, Defender 3, Carrier 5, Warp Jumper 1. The Advanced Genesis tier sacrifices the Colony Ship and only consumes 1 advanced device. The high attack_turn_cost on Escape Pod (10,000) is anti-griefing scaffolding — escape pods cannot meaningfully attack.

✅ Shipped — the seeder ships Escape Pod at hull_points: 200 / max_shields: 150, matching the canon hull 200 / shields 150 in the table above.

✅ Shipped — seeded base_cost values in core/ship_specifications_seeder.py match the Cost (cr) column above: Defender 300,000, Colony Ship 500,000, Warp Jumper 1,000,000, Light Freighter 80,000, Cargo Hauler 250,000, Fast Courier 50,000, Scout 30,000, Carrier 1,500,000.

Citizen Clipper

✅ Shipped. The Citizen Clipper is a buyable, flyable, Galactic-Citizen-gated courier hull (ShipType.CITIZEN_CLIPPER).

The Clipper is a membership-issue re-skin of the Fast Courier: identical speed (2.0), handling, cargo (200), survivability (hull 300 / shields 200 / evasion 35), and combat axis (attack 5 / defense 10 / attack-turn-cost 8). It carries no edge in combat or income — a badge of citizenship, not a power spike — keeping it inside the monetization P2W firewall (paid membership buys access and expression, never power).

Citizen gate on the buy. Acquisition method is "citizen" — Galactic-Citizen membership unlocks the purchase at the catalog/purchase layer, but credits (base_cost 50,000 cr) still pay; it is neither an open-market "purchase" nor a "reputation_reward" faction grind. The gateserver rejects a buy attempt by a non-citizen.

Slot layout. The Clipper carries the small baseline grid (3 open, non-supercharged slots) plus one extra slot (index 3) that is supercharged and class-locked to maintenance, and whose requires is citizen-gated. The existence of that extra slot is the citizen perk — a dedicated maintenance bay, capped utility rather than power or income (see ship-systems.md for the slot-grid model).

Lapse-neutralization. Because the extra slot is citizen-gated, a nightly re-bake sweep evaluates the "citizen" requirement live against the owner's subscription and re-derives the baked stat columns through the existing bake path. A lapsed owner's citizen slot drops to a zero-stat contribution — the hull persists and stays flyable, and re-subscribing restores the slot on the next bake — while an active citizen's slot is left byte-identical (idempotent). The ≤24h re-bake lag is firewall-safe: the perk is capped utility, not power or income, so there is no exploit window worth a tighter trigger.

Special abilities

  • Light Freighter — Versatile Configuration (no mechanical bonus).
  • Cargo Hauler — Cargo Compression (+15% storage).
  • Fast Courier — Stealth Systems (25% pirate-encounter avoidance).
  • Defender — Shield Projection.
  • Carrier — Fleet Coordination (+20% to nearby allies).
  • Colony Ship — Terraforming Modules (−30% Genesis sequence time).
  • Scout Ship — Advanced Sensors.
  • Warp Jumper — Quantum Jump (5–10 sector directional, 24h cooldown). Craft-only. ✅ Shipped — the jump runs as a multi-phase loop (bearing/scan → commit → resolve), and the bearing/scan phase discloses a resonance-band reading on the destination sector's signature. The Warp Jumper's own Tractor Beam is the only Tractor that operates through Quantum Jump (medium-max towed ship, one per jump, +5 turns flat surcharge). See ../galaxy/sectors.md#quantum-jump-warp-jumper and ./ships.md#tractor-beam-tow-operations.

Insurance tiers

models/ship.py:InsuranceType — BASIC (50% / 5% deductible), STANDARD (75% / 10%), PREMIUM (90% / 15%). For the full insurance flow — premiums, deductible math, payout, worked examples — see ./ship-insurance.md.

📐 Design-only — the Warp Jumper is non-insurable. No insurance company in-universe writes policies on a hull whose canonical use sacrifices the ship at Phase 3 of warp gate creation. The 1,000,000 cr investment is the gate-builder's risk capital, not a hedged premium — combat-destruction in transit pays out nothing either. The Escape Pod is also non-insurable (issued, indestructible). See ./ship-insurance.md#non-insurable-ships.