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Ship Builder — Palimpsest

Status: Private GM construction and retrofit procedure Works with: SHIP-SYSTEMS-QUALITY.md, SHIP-CLASSES-AND-REGISTRY.md, ECONOMY-AND-UPKEEP.md Design rule: Build the vessel the mission needs, then make it pay for every tonne, kilowatt, bunk, hatch, and bad decision.

This is an original table framework. It borrows the useful questions asked by serious ship-builders—volume, power, crew, heat, maintenance, and tradeoffs—without copying a published construction sequence or table.

Part I — Build a new vessel

Step 1: Write the mission sentence

Finish this before buying anything:

> This vessel carries [who/what] from [where] to [where], under [hazards], for [duration], while earning its keep through [job].

Examples:

• A three-person bounty crew crosses gate systems, lands at rough ports, carries prisoners and equipment, and survives on irregular contracts.
• A survey team spends eighteen months beyond dependable yards, maps ungated systems, and returns samples without contaminating itself.
• A short-haul liner moves eighty passengers between a gate shell and three inhabited moons, every day, without making them wear suits.

If the mission sentence changes halfway through the build, the ship changes with it. Usually expensively.

Step 2: Choose registry class and physical envelope

Use Concord Hull Class for fees, crew minimums, yard scale, and the broad physical envelope. Use displacement-tonnage for internal volume and hardpoints.

These are campaign economy bands, not showroom guarantees. The low end is plain civil work with ordinary systems. The high end is mission-heavy, Certified or Precision work. Frontier and Near-Miraculous systems can cost more than the rest of the hull and may not be for legal sale.

Hardpoints

The table rule remains one hardpoint per full 100 displacement-tons. A hardpoint is structural permission to mount one turret. It is not a free gun, magazine, fire-control suite, power feed, or license.

Small craft below 100 dtons may use up to three fixed mounts instead of turrets. A third hardpoint on a 200-dton hull means increasing displacement or rebuilding enough structure that the registry stops calling it the same design.

Step 3: Draw the pressure plan

Before choosing shiny machinery, draw the ugly boxes:

1. occupied pressure zones
2. bridge or control station
3. reactor and drive spaces
4. tanks and feed routes
5. heat rejection surfaces
6. cargo and access path
7. berths, galley, sanitation, and medical space
8. airlocks, docking collar, and EVA ready point
9. emergency isolation and escape routes
10. service crawlways and a removal path for major components

If a reactor cannot leave the ship without cutting the hull, write that down. Future you will otherwise curse present you in several languages.

Step 4: Rate every subsystem

Assign Capability / Build Quality / Condition using SHIP-SYSTEMS-QUALITY.md.

• New construction normally begins Fresh after commissioning.
• A new hull can deliberately use refurbished systems. Rate those at their surveyed Condition.
• Do not average the ship. Record each subsystem.
• Record Unsurveyed instead of inventing a number because the row looks lonely.

The minimum build sheet covers:

1. hull / structure
2. armor
3. maneuver drive
4. reactor
5. power distribution / storage
6. reaction-mass / fuel systems
7. navigation / flight controls
8. sensors
9. comms / transponder / EW
10. computers / automation / security
11. hardpoints / fire control / armament
12. defenses / damage control
13. life support / environment
14. medbay
15. mana-garden / biodome
16. galley / food storage
17. habitation / common spaces
18. crew quarters / sanitation
19. cargo handling / storage
20. airlocks / docking / EVA
21. workshops / fabrication
22. rescue / escape
23. carried craft
24. onboard interstellar drive, if any

Step 5: Pay for Capability

Use a C3 / Utility system appropriate to the hull's mission as the ordinary quote. Then modify the quote.

This multiplier applies to that subsystem's quote—not the whole ship. A C6 coffee maker should not cost twenty complete starships unless it also edits causality and your insurer has noticed.

Step 6: Pay for Build Quality

Improvised does not mean stupid. It means the owner is part of the maintenance manual.

Step 7: Balance the six ship budgets

Every design must close all six. “The reactor can handle it” closes only one.

Add legal exposure as the seventh budget if the ship carries weapons, jump machinery, reconstruction medicine, synthetic crew, restricted Life-Cells, or a transponder that tells creative stories.

Step 8: Check dependency chains

Do not buy the end of a chain without its beginning.

• Higher acceleration: structure → drive → reactor → distribution → tanks → heat rejection → restraints → flight controls → medical support.
• Energy weapon: hardpoint → reactor headroom → storage → sensors → fire control → cooling → registry.
• Missile weapon: hardpoint → fire control → magazine → cargo handling → explosive isolation → registry.
• Advanced medbay: clean life support → sterile water → buffered power → feedstock → species library → trained supervision.
• Mana-garden: pressure shell → water → nutrients → lighting → quarantine → botanist labor → Null separation.
• Carried craft: bay volume → attachment → launch handling → fuel or charging → recovery → crew.
• Jump drive: restricted drive → jump fuel volume → navigation → structure → isolation → license, secrecy, or both.

Step 9: Choose crew and support doctrine

List every watch and weekly maintenance job. Automation may reduce staffing, but no legal registry accepts “the computer will probably notice” as damage-control doctrine.

For each major system, name:

• operator
• maintainer
• emergency backup
• consumables
• required tool level
• nearest plausible spare source

If one person owns five critical jobs, the vessel has a single-point failure with a birthday.

Step 10: Commission the ship

A proper commissioning sequence includes:

1. pressure and leak test
2. cold electrical continuity
3. reactor start and black-start test
4. full continuous-load run
5. peak-load and automatic-shedding test
6. heat-rejection soak
7. docking and low-thrust handling
8. rated acceleration with cargo restraints loaded
9. life-support endurance and contamination drill
10. fire, breach, casualty, and abandon-ship drill
11. mission-system test
12. registry inspection and insurance survey

Passing dockside lights is not commissioning. Commissioning means the galley, garden, drive, medbay, and fire-control bus can all wake up during a burn without the ship choosing which room gets electricity by smell.

Part II — Upgrade an existing vessel

Step 1: Survey before quoting

Record:

• installed Capability, Build Quality, and Condition
• actual dimensions and removal access
• mass and center of gravity
• continuous and peak power
• cooling and radiator margin
• data, software, and control standards
• structural load path
• pressure boundaries
• species compatibility
• permits and registry history
• undocumented owner work

No survey means every quote is a story told by someone who wants the deposit.

Survey depth

For other classes, use the facility's CHC price multiplier: 0 ×0.25, I ×0.5, II ×1, III ×3, IV ×8, V ×25, VI ×100+.

Step 2: Name the retrofit scope

These are starting bands. A clean modular swap can beat them. A cracked CHC II with three undocumented owners will not.

Step 3: Choose the retrofit facility

Facility level determines what work is possible, how many crews can work in parallel, whether calibration is real, and how much money gets burned making the wrong tool do the right job.

Apply the facility's time modifier to baseline dock time and its cash modifier to labor and integration—not to imported hardware the yard cannot manufacture.

The cheap R0 job saves labor because the crew is doing it. It can still cost more in parts, mistakes, and lost contract days. The R5 yard is brutally expensive but finishes quickly because five specialist teams and a machine the size of a neighborhood work at once.

Tool packages inside a facility

A yard may be R4 overall and lack the one package your job needs. A famous warship yard without an ecological dome is still a lousy place to rebuild a mana-garden.

Step 4: Apply job modifiers

Multiply time and integration cost. Hardware cost changes only where noted.

Multiply only the factors that truly apply. If every row applies, the project is not a retrofit anymore. It is a cautionary tale with invoices.

Step 5: Resolve cargo, mass, power, and crew losses

Every upgrade must state what it takes away.

• Volume: lost cargo, removed berth, smaller galley, reduced tankage, or hull growth.
• Mass: lower payload, reduced acceleration, landing restriction, or stronger structure.
• Power: load shedding, reactor upgrade, storage upgrade, or operating restriction.
• Heat: larger radiators, lower duty cycle, detectable plume, or thermal shutdown.
• Crew: new specialist, more maintenance hours, training, or automation.
• Law: permit, higher insurance, inspections, hidden installation, or seizure risk.

Write the loss beside the gain. If the upgrade has no downside, the survey missed something.

Step 6: Commission and set final Condition

New hardware does not automatically make the surrounding installation Fresh. A new C4 sensor on a Worn C2 power bus remains a C4 sensor whose screen goes black at exciting moments.

Step 7: Update the ship record

After any completed project:

1. update Capability, Build Quality, and Condition
2. record new mass, volume, power, heat, consumables, and crew load
3. update deck and pressure plans
4. update hardpoints and magazines
5. update permits, insurance, and registry class
6. add the maintenance interval and required tool level
7. note displaced rooms or cargo
8. write one failure consequence the GM can actually use

Part III — Worked retrofit patterns

Install a defensive turret on a CHC II hauler

Goal: Raise hardpoints / fire control from C1 to C2.

Required work:

• engineering survey of the hardpoint ring and conduit
• light turret and weapon
• sensor and fire-control integration
• power feed for an energy weapon, or magazine volume for missiles/sand
• thermal path
• cargo and mass adjustment
• live-fire commissioning
• registration and insurance change

An R2 dock may physically install a sandcaster. An R3 yard can certify the mount. An R4 military yard can finish faster and calibrate combat fire control, but its labor bill and questions both have sharper teeth.

Upgrade a failing C2 medbay

There are two different jobs:

• Overhaul: Keep C2, replace bearings, table actuators, sterile stores, patches, and species data. Lower cost; weeks.
• Capability +1: Build C3 treatment—reliable auto-surgery, intensive care, blood/tissue support, and registered-species libraries. Requires clean life support, buffered power, medical feedstock, isolation, and R3 species certification. Months.

Buying the C3 surgeon arm without the support chain produces a C3 machine installed as Improvised and commissioned Serviceable at best. It will still look impressive while doing the wrong thing.

Raise a drive from C3 to C4

This is almost never “replace the engine.”

Expect:

• keel survey
• frame and mount reinforcement
• reactor and distribution review
• larger pulse storage
• greater reaction-mass flow
• tanks and baffling
• radiators and coolant
• cargo-restraint and crew-couch upgrades
• new flight-control laws
• medical review for higher acceleration
• registry and insurance reclassification

R3 can perform the conversion if the C4 hardware is commercially available. R4 cuts time and can commission Precision integration. R1 can help remove panels and swear at fittings. It cannot certify the result.

Blank ship build record

Identity

• Name:
• Registry:
• Owner:
• Mission sentence:
• CHC:
• Displacement-tons:
• H-tons:
• Length / decks:
• Legal crew minimum:
• Build yard and facility level:
• Purchase / build cost:
• Build or refit dates:

Performance

• Cruise thrust:
• Emergency / redline thrust:
• Reaction-mass endurance:
• Gate rating:
• Onboard jump drive:
• Hardpoints:
• Mounted weapons:
• Carried craft:

System record

Open survey items

-

Current retrofit

• Mission effect:
• Scope:
• Facility:
• Tool packages:
• Baseline quote:
• Time modifiers:
• Cost modifiers:
• Dependencies:
• Displaced volume:
• New legal exposure:
• Commissioning tests:
• Final rating: