Designing a Hull

Every ship in this book was built to the rules in this chapter. You can use them to design a hull that does not appear in the catalog: a custom yard job, a one-off prototype, a rival's ship, or the vessel your crew has been rebuilding for three years.

This chapter covers the build sequence, Scale budgets, operator tiers, builder cost modifiers, the stat cost table, Heat Dissipation, validation, and how a finished design gets a price.

The Build Sequence

Work through these seven steps in order.

1. Choose a Scale. This sets your point budget and your free baseline hull.
2. Choose an operator tier. Civilian, Professional, or Military. This sets your caps and your weapon costs.
3. Choose a builder. This changes what individual stats cost you.
4. Spend points on stats above the baseline.
5. Set Heat Dissipation from the table.
6. Buy optional core systems.
7. Validate against the caps and the budget, then price it.

Step One: Scale and Budget

Your Scale grants a free baseline hull and a pool of build points. The baseline is what a bare, unremarkable hull of that size gives you before you spend anything.

The baseline also includes Speed 1, Handling −3, Armor 0, no weapon hardpoints, no module slots, and no cargo capacity. Everything else you buy.

The budget covers optional core systems too. A Slipstream Drive, an AI Core, an atmospheric package, and landing gear all come out of the same pool as Armor and cargo. This is why a hull that can cross a corridor, enter atmosphere, and land is meaningfully less capable in every other respect than one that does only one of those things, and why most capital ships do none of them.

Budgets climb slowly while baselines climb steeply. That is deliberate. A Scale 7 cruiser is not four times more designed than a Scale 4 freighter; it is four times bigger, and it starts from a far better hull. Design freedom stays roughly constant across the range.

Scale 1 is powered suits, escape pods, and drones. Scale 8 and above is stations, shipyards, and megastructures. Neither uses this system; build those to suit the story.

Block Sizes

Hull Points, System Points, and cargo are bought in blocks. Block size grows with Scale so that one point of spending means a comparable amount of capability at any size.

Step Two: Operator Tier

Every hull is built to one of three standards. The tier is not a label applied afterward; it determines what the yard is legally permitted to build and what components it can source.

Professional grade is what the trade calls corporate: commercial operators, security contractors, and certified specialists. It sits between open civilian construction and sovereign military work.

The discount applies to Armor, weapon hardpoints, and Deflection, and to nothing else. A Professional yard pays 85% of the listed cost for those three, a Military yard 65%. It does not apply to cargo, module slots, Speed, Handling, System Points, reactor stats, or hull structure. A military yard does not build a better cargo hold; it builds a better gun mount, a better frame, and a better Defensive Control suite, and it builds all three cheaper because it has the supply chain, the tooling, and the authorization.

Deflection is discounted, not gated. Screens are on open sale at every tier, as Step Four says. What the tier buys is cheaper Defensive Control to drive them, which is why a corvette carries the same screen a tramp freighter can and carries more of it.

Operator Tier Is Not Acquisition

Operator tier says who built the hull and to what standard. Acquisition, printed in every catalog entry, says what paperwork a buyer needs in order to own it legally. These are separate facts about a ship and any combination of them is valid.

A Civilian hull can carry Licensed acquisition. Bulk freight haulers and passenger liners are ordinary commercial construction that no private individual may register, because the charter, the route certification, and the insurance are regulatory requirements rather than technical ones. Nothing aboard such a ship is above civilian standard.

Acquisition never raises a hull's caps, never changes its Heat Dissipation, and never earns it the tier discount. Component Availability in Step Four does follow operator tier; a hull's Acquisition does not. Read operator tier off the build, and read Acquisition off the buyer's side of the transaction.

Where a manufacturer controls who may build, service, or resell one of its designs, that is pattern certification, a commercial arrangement with the builder. It is not an Acquisition rating and it has no mechanical effect on the build.

Tier Caps

Discounts alone would let a wealthy civilian buyer simply outspend a warship. They cannot. Each tier has hard ceilings on the stats that make a combat vessel, and no amount of points will lift them.

A military ship will always out-shoot and out-survive a civilian ship of the same Scale. That is the intended result and it is not a balance failure. Civilian hulls win on cargo, module slots, and operating cost, which is what keeps them in business.

Stripping on Transfer

When a Professional or Military hull is legally sold into civilian hands, the selling authority strips its proprietary components before release. Fire control cores, military sensor suites, encrypted comms, defensive coordination processors, and any weapon above the buyer's tier cap are removed.

A stripped hull retains its Scale, structure, Hull Points, System Points, and mount capacity. It loses everything above its new tier's caps. Reduce Armor, hardpoint points, Power Capacity, and Heat Threshold to the civilian cap for that Scale.

A hull that still carries its military fittings after transfer was not stripped, which means it was not legally transferred. That is a fact about the ship that any competent inspection will discover.

Step Three: Builder

Every yard is excellent at some things and indifferent at others. A builder does not get more points; a builder gets different prices. This is why two freighters of identical Scale, tier, and cargo capacity are not identical ships.

The table gives each builder's cost for the stats it treats as signature or weak. Any stat not listed costs the standard rate.

These prices are the numeric expression of the Signature and Weak ratings in Chapter Five. A Kharos hull is faster than a Crown Meridian hull at the same cargo and the same Scale because Speed costs Kharos three points and Crown Meridian four, and Kharos spends the difference on the engine. Crown Meridian spent it on armor plate.

This is the whole point of choosing a builder. Do not treat the discounts as a bonus to be optimized; treat them as the reason the ship looks the way it does.

Independent and fringe yards use standard costs across the board with no discounts and no surcharges. They are competent and unremarkable. A hull with no builder identity is a legitimate design choice.

Step Four: Spend Points

A ship has two layers, and the build system treats them differently.

Physical space is what the hull is: structure, volume, mounting points, and room for people and freight. You buy it directly.

Systems are what the ship can do. Every stat on the block above the baseline comes from a system, and buying that stat means buying better hardware. Speed is the engine. Handling is the thrusters. Armor is the frame. Power and Heat are the reactor. Deflection is Defensive Control.

This is why a ship is upgradable. Find a better engine in a wreck, install it, and the Speed on your sheet goes up, because Speed was never an abstract number: it was always the engine. Chapter Ten's Component Catalog and the table below are the same economy read at different moments, one at the yard and one in a scrapyard three jumps from anywhere.

Physical Space

Weapon hardpoints are bought in hardpoint points, not mounts. A Light mount costs 1 point, Standard 2, Heavy 3, Capital 4. Buy the total capacity, then distribute it into mounts of whatever sizes the Scale permits. Minimum Scale by mount size is in Chapter Eight.

Some modules occupy more than one slot. A shuttle bay takes two, a luxury cabin block three. Buy slots to cover what you intend to install, and state which slots the factory package fills and how many remain open.

Systems

Life Support and Communications are required core systems with no meaningful grades. Every hull has them, they work, and they never appear on a build sheet. Their capacity is complement, covered in Chapter Three.

Component Availability

Components carry an Availability: Open, Licensed, Restricted, or Military. That is who may legally own the thing, and it is tracked separately from what the thing does. Chapter Ten covers both axes.

Your hull's operator tier sets what it carries as standard, at no extra cost, because it is already priced into being that tier.

A design may fit one system above its hull's standard for 8 points. That system's caps rise accordingly, and the ship acquires a paperwork problem: a civilian registry listing a Licensed reactor invites questions, and anything Military aboard a civilian hull is evidence before it is an advantage.

This is the salvaged-warship-engine rule. It is meant to be used, and it is meant to cost something other than points.

Deflection and Screens

Deflection is the ship's base Defense Bonus against energy weapons, and it comes from Defensive Control, which every hull carries as a required core system. Screens are available at every operator tier. A tramp freighter can mount one; there is no licence gate and no tier lock.

The limit is power, not permission. A screen draws 2 to 4 Power Load continuously and adds Heat every time it absorbs a hit, so a civilian hull with a screen cannot also run full weapons and a hard burn. The engineer chooses. That constraint is the balance, and it is a better one than forbidding the purchase.

Deflection is listed fore / aft. Buy each facing separately. The screen systems themselves, with their Power Load, Heat per hit, and damage reduction, are in Chapter Eight.

What the Budget Does Not Cover

These are real capabilities that cost no build points, because they are paid for elsewhere. Their absence from the table above is deliberate.

Consumables and crew requirements are not purchased either. Set them to suit the design: endurance follows from the hull's role, and crew minimums follow from its systems. A heavily armed hull needs gunners. A hull with few automated systems needs hands.

Crew berths are free. Quarters for the standard crew come with the hull. You only buy berths for people the crew did not hire.

Berths

Berth slots are bought in blocks at the same block size as cargo. One point buys one block. How many people that carries depends on how you fit it out.

Slots are allocated freely, so a ten-slot hull can carry six passengers and two luxury cabins, or twenty barracks bunks, or any mix totalling ten.

Hot berthing halves the space any berth type needs. Military hulls assume it in their listed complement, so a warship's embarked troops are already bunked two to a rack. Civilian hulls may hot berth at need. It never raises complement, which is set by life support rather than by beds.

Sensor Grade

Sensors are a required core system, so every hull has them. What you buy is reach. The grade sets the furthest Range Band at which the ship detects a contact at all, and the full capability tables are in Chapter Seven.

Military sensors are tier-gated as well as expensive. A civilian hull cannot mount them regardless of points, which is why a warship can sit at Extreme watching a freighter that has no idea it is there.

Ten points is a real bite out of a Scale 3 budget, and it should be. A Shoiyan reconnaissance cutter spends a full tenth of its build on seeing further than anything it will meet.

Luxury cabins cost points for their space and credits for their fit-out. The space is why they cost points here. The service, fittings, and everything a passenger is actually paying for is a credit cost in Chapter Twelve, and none of it makes the ship perform better.

The design consequence is worth seeing plainly. A Scale 7 assault carrier fits four hundred embarked troops into one point of berths, because barracks bunks hot berthed take a quarter slot each. A Scale 5 liner spends twenty points to carry the same four hundred people in luxury cabins. Same headcount, twentyfold difference, and both ships are exactly what they should be.

Step Five: Heat Dissipation

Heat Dissipation is the Heat removed from the ship's Heat track at the end of each round. It is not purchased at baseline; it is set by Scale and operator tier.

Military thermal management is the least visible and most decisive advantage a warship has. A Scale 4 military cutter sheds twice the Heat of a commercial hull of the same size, which is what lets it keep its weapons and screens running while a civilian ship is forced to choose.

Buying more. A design may raise Heat Dissipation above its tier baseline at 4 points per step, to a maximum of 2 steps. Beyond that the hull needs radiator area it does not have.

Kharos and Antaean hulls carry published thermal drawbacks in Chapter Five that apply on top of this value. Their listed Heat Dissipation is correct; the drawback describes what happens when the ship is pushed past it.

Step Six: Optional Core Systems

The twelve required core systems are included in every hull at no cost. These are not.

A hull without Landing Systems never touches a planetary surface. Every capital hull in the catalog is in this category, which is why cargo moves through orbital transfer and why a shuttle bay is not a luxury on a large ship.

AI Core

The five AI Core grades are defined in Chapter Seven. What you buy here is how many crew the ship's intelligence can help at once.

An Active Channel supports one AI-assisted Trial per round, and an assist removes 1 Trial Die from the difficulty pool. In a ship fight with six stations manned, a Civilian Core helps one of them and the crew argues about which. A Military Core helps four at once. That difference decides engagements.

Your operator tier's standard fit is included at no cost.

Fitting a grade above your tier's standard costs 8 points for one step and 18 points for two. Military Directive AI is restricted to Military hulls and cannot be bought at any price by anyone else.

Fitting a grade below your standard costs nothing and refunds nothing. It saves credits, not points, and it is the commonest choice in the Verge: six of the civilian hulls in this catalog run Basic Automation because a bulk freighter does not need a mind, it needs a hold.

Match the Core to the ship's purpose. Cargo hulls run low and spend the money on cargo. Passenger, luxury, medical, and science hulls run high, because what they sell is attention. That is why a Viridian science cruiser carries an Advanced Core its civilian registry does not entitle it to, and pays eighteen points for the privilege.

Directive Packages come with the grade. A Core with no package for a task gives no assistance at that task, however advanced it is, and no Trial ever benefits from more than one package. The twelve packages are listed in Chapter Seven.

Module slot grades follow the operator tier and cost nothing extra.

Enhanced slots are pre-wired for heavy draw, so military-grade modules installed in them do not take the usual Bane Die for a foreign installation. Military bays accept military modules as native integrations. Civilian hulls have neither, which is why a salvaged military module in a freighter is always awkward.

Step Seven: Validate

Three conditions are hard. A hull that fails any of them is not legal.

1. Total spend does not exceed the Scale budget.
2. No stat exceeds its operator tier cap.
3. No mount is larger than the Scale permits (Chapter Eight).

One condition is a sanity check rather than a gate. Chapter Ten's module slot counts by Scale are design guidelines, not entitlements, and several published hulls sit at the top of them on purpose. An Antaean freighter fills the guideline range to its ceiling because Antaean buys slots cheaply, and that is the builder system working rather than a rule being broken. If your design falls well outside the range, check that a builder discount explains it. If nothing does, look again.

Integration Status

A design built entirely from one builder's systems has Integrated Architecture and gains that builder's full signature benefits. This is the default for a new hull from a yard, and it is why factory ships run better than the sum of their parts.

A design that mixes builders is Patchwork. It works, it is common, and it carries the compatibility penalties in Chapter Ten. Most ships become patchwork eventually; few start that way.

State which one your design is. It changes what the crew can expect from their own ship.

Upgrading After the Build

Unspent points are not lost. A crew can keep improving a hull for as long as they own it, and most do. But work done in a yard on a hull that does not exist yet is cheap, and work done on a hull that is already flying is not.

A retrofit costs double the points and 2.5 times the credits of the same purchase made at build time.

That is not a penalty for being poor. It is what the work actually is. Buying +1 Speed at the yard means the engine goes in before the deck plates do. Buying it three years later means cutting those plates out, pulling a running reactor offline, refitting mounts that were never sized for it, and putting the ship back together around a component the original architect never allowed for.

Worked example. A crew's Model 20 was built at 95 of its 190 points, leaving 95 unspent. Those 95 points will buy 47 points of capability if spent as retrofits, not 95. The ship can grow, and it will never be the ship it could have been if the money had existed on day one.

What cannot be retrofitted at any price: Scale, and the operator tier the hull was built to. A civilian hull is a civilian hull forever. You can smuggle military systems aboard one, and Chapter Ten covers what happens when someone finds them, but you cannot convert the registry.

This is the honest version of the tramp freighter fantasy. The ship grows with the crew, every improvement is real, and the arithmetic quietly reminds them that the wealthy bought theirs finished.

Underspending Is Legal

A design does not have to use its whole budget, and most commercial hulls do not. Across the fifteen published commercial models, none exceeds 86% of its budget and the Model 20 sits at 50%.

Unspent points are not wasted and they do not convert into anything. They represent a hull that was built for a purpose other than maximum performance: comfort, cost, appearance, cargo access, ease of maintenance, or the simple fact that the customer did not need a warship.

A luxury fitting is not a stat. A ship with panelled cabins, a real galley, wide corridors, and a garden module is more expensive to buy and no better on paper. Fittings cost credits, not points. Price them under Chapter Twelve. A bed is a bed.

This is why an underspent hull can still be the most expensive ship at the dock.

Pricing a Finished Design

Convert the design to credits using Chapter Twelve.

Base price = points spent × the per-point rate for its Scale.

These rates are derived from the catalog prices in Chapter Twelve divided by each published hull's validated point spend, so a custom design prices consistently against the ships already in the book.

Then apply the grade multiplier for the operator tier (Chapter Twelve: Professional ×1.6, Military ×3.0), the builder's market modifier, and any condition multiplier if the hull is not factory new.

Finally, add fittings and luxury as a flat credit cost. These never touch the point budget.

What the rate covers. This is the price of a bare hull: structure, systems, and capacity, with nothing installed in its module slots and nothing bolted to its hardpoints. A Model 20 spends 68 points at Scale 4, so its bare hull is 68 × 2,250 = 153,000cr against a catalog price of 350,000cr.

The gap is real and it is not markup alone. The catalog price includes the factory module package, weapons where fitted, interior fittings, delivery, and dealer margin. Across the ten published commercial hulls, the bare hull runs between 45% and 60% of catalog price, with weapon-heavy and luxury models sitting at the low end because more of their value hangs off the frame rather than being the frame.

If your custom design prices well outside that band against a comparable catalog hull, check your point spend before you trust the number.

Worked Example: A Scale 4 Kharos Freighter

A crew commissions a rugged hauler from a Kharos yard. Civilian tier, Scale 4: 190 points, baseline Hull Points 16, System Points 11, Power Capacity 7, Heat Threshold 9.

Kharos prices: Speed 3, Hull Points 1, Cargo 1, System Points 3, Heat Threshold 3.

Legal: 108 points against a 190 budget, Armor 2 at the civilian cap, 4 hardpoint points at the civilian cap. Heat Dissipation is 2 from the Scale 4 civilian row. The AI Core costs nothing: Basic Automation sits below the Civilian standard fit, and going below your tier's standard is free.

Eighty-two points unspent. The yard put them into a reinforced cargo ramp, a proper workshop, crew cabins that a family could live in, and paint. None of it appears on the stat block, all of it appears on the invoice, and the crew would not trade any of it.