Ship design
I have tried to resurrect all the old design tools, all these screenshots were taken in 2021 !
Applets
Most of these no longer work because modern browsers don't support applets any more. However using JRE 9.0.1 you can run them locally and I have got them running either from the source code or the existing code archive. Both are available below.
To get them to run on modern systems you need to download the Java 9.0.0 appletviewer. It's included in this Java Development Kit archive.
Using Appletviewer
Unrar the Java Development Kit file locally
Add the /bin directory to your $PATH environment variable. Google it if don't know how to do this.
Start a command prompt (CMD/Terminal) and type appletviewer if the $PATH is right you should see something like this, next download the applets below and follow the specific instructions for each.
SpaceDock
FT Space Dock WM archive page, FT design applet -Joachim Heck, archive site source code only. I have compiled it and I have got this to run locally. The applet would email you the ship design but this depends on the long dead hosting server. I have got this to run locally. You can cut and paste the designs from the summary panel ★★
How to run it
Download the SpaceDock archive
Unzip the archive to a directory, from the /SpaceDock directory
Start a CMD/Terminal in the /SpaceDock directory run
appletviewer SpaceDock.html
ShipApplet
FB ShipApplet WM archive page, thje page looks blank because background image missing, just drag select highlight to see the text. FB design applet-Eric Fialkowski. Archive page applet doesn't work, but you can download the code archive, there is sadly no source code. ★★★
How to run it
Download the ShipApplet archive
Unzip the archive to a directory, from the /ShipApplet directory
Start a CMD/Terminal in the /ShipApplet directory run
appletviewer ShipApplet.html
Web & WebApps
Javascript and other scripting languages, the Javascript ones still work but VBscript is pretty much unsupported these days in browsers. There were some sites that have collected a lot of ship designs like the Full Thrust Ship Registry. I have attempted to resurrect them using Wayback Machine WM.
Full Thrust Ship Builder new modern Javascript browser design tool, has full range of systems and an very good and useful automated SSD creator. Ships can be imported and saved in JSON format. You can download the designs in SVG or PNG and it comes with all the Fleet Book presets. This is an open source project and you can help with the code on Github.
Full Thrust Fleet Tool modern Javascript ship builder using Full Thrust Continuum build rules. Site also has beam attack/hit and movement simulators. The ship builder is very comprehensive and you can copy and paste the ship data from the site as text data. Only criticism is that the hull boxes are not calculated from the hull strength type as outlined in the Fleet Book. This also doesn't build an SSD just a text ship data sheet.
Full Thrust Shipyard this is a modern webapp with great design & support for all the systems. You need to register with the site to use it and you can download the SSDs. Long term it relies on their site being up and creating an account to save the design info (we know how this pans out) and it's a pretty complicated Javascript app, so a bit buggy. ★★★★★
Full Thrust Ship Registry WM interactive online ship design -Brian Bell. This one was a right pain to find as it kept changing the hosts. I've coded a revised version here. It is very hard to get VBscript to run these days. I use the IE11 browser set in IE9 compatability mode. To run the site remotely you have to add the domain to your trusted sites. Or download and run it locally in IE11 (easiest option). ★★★
Fleet Book Ship Builder WM Armageddon Outfitter, Javascript browser design application -Sam Reynolds. The archive site page Javascript app seems to work OK, but all the help & graphics are missing, I've coded a revised version here that works in modern browsers and has placeholders for the missing bits. ★★★
Web Design Archives
Sadly the awesome Full Thrust Ship Registry WM has been offline for years. But you can access the Wayback Machine archive, it took a while to find it and it's quite slow. I will at some point download the Fleet Book (492) WM designs and Full Thrust (210) WM designs listings to single large files for long term reference. The current archives do work and allow you to sort the designs by size and faction for example so are quite useful even now. It's great to find this long lost resource again.
Apps
A lot of the old apps don't work on modern 64bit systems, they are here for historical interest and you can run them on a standalone Windows 95 emulator if you are so inclined. The Windows 95 emulator only works on Windows systems. It emulates a Pentium 90 with a Voodoo2 graphics card.
Using Windows 95 emulator
Unzip it
Start emulator using Run.bat
Emulator starts Windows 95 fullscreen, it contains Thrust program and two 3dStarmap versions. Run these in Windows 95 as you did back in the day.
When finished use the Start > Shut down > Shutdown the computer? option in Windows 95. Then use CTRL+ALT+PAGE DOWN, to exit full screen and choose System > Shutdown from the emulator menu, select OK to stop emulation, this will save the state of the programs as you last left them.
Thrust
Thrust was an app for playing GZG games and did things like chit drawing and die rolls - John L Izbrand ★★
Sadly it doesn't work on modern system. I have ported it onto a standalone Windows 95 emulator. You can use it in all it's glory! I don't have any documentation for it I will need to check the mailing list for that.
Ship Builder
Ship Builder is a filemaker pro app that allows the design and printing of Fleet Book SSDs - Bill Wilcox ★★★
Instructions on how to use it are included in the main display when you run it. This runs fine out of the archive, on Windows 7.
Full Thrust Dockyard
FT Full Thrust Dockyard is a Mac Hypercard app for design - Ed Allen ★★
So Hypercard is no longer supported on modern Macs. I have found a OS 9.0 hypercard emulator.
Download hypercard.sheepvm.20200115.zip unzip on Mac and run the hypercard.sheepvm this starts Mac OS9
Download the Full Thrust Dockyard 1.01.hqx archive to your Documents folder on Mac and de-compress the hqx file to get Full Thrust Dockyard 1.01 this is the hypercard app.
From the OS9 SheepShaver window access the Unix disc this will give access to your file system, navigate to your documents folder and copy Full Thrust Dockyard 1.01 to the local Macintiosh HD in the OS9 emulator. It should have a card stack icon now as it's recognised as a hypercard app.
Double click to start the app.
Full Thrust Ship Creator
FT Full Thrust Ship Creator WM archive page, has no code download. Easy to use program for creating ship designs and printing them (Windows), it only covers second edition systems -Andrew Ayres ★★★
The archive site download is broken but I had a working version stashed from years ago. It's actually a nifty tool for generating graphical SSDs.
How to run it
Unzip & install the Full Thrust Ship Creator base version in a directory of your choice using setup.exe
Unzip this Full Thrust Ship Creator Upgrade file into the base version installation directory.
This runs fine out of the archive, on Windows 7. Note it won't install on Windows 10.
Full Thrust Ship Builder
FB Full Thrust Ship Builder WM archive page Java ship builder app. The page looks blank because background image missing, just drag select highlight to see the text - Eric Fialkowski ★★★
This great Java app supports all the Fleet Book races and systems. You can save the SSD as a GIF or the design as a text file. This one originally passed me by but I have rediscovered it and it's a fantastic tool. Runs on any system with Java installed. Program is a bit buggy, it doesn't always paint the screen properly.
How to run it
Start a CMD/Terminal in the /ShipApplet directory run
java -jar FTShipBuilder.jar
FULL THRUST SHIPYARD
Polish language program for designing ships. Only covers Human fleets. Their website has more details.
How to run it
Standalone application download V1.3 from the website
Design Spreadsheets
Note to tool makers, these are the most reliable ship design & build tools, these are now hosted on Google Drive. If you have a Google account you can use them there. A variety of approaches for the different design systems:
FT Ship Design Spreadsheets (XLS) -Greg Bierl
FT Builder (XLS) -Michael Blair
FT Ship Design Reference Sheet (XLS) -Michael Blair
FT Ship Construction Sheet v1.1 (XLS) -Rob Finamore
FB Designer Workbook v1.1 updated version includes workbooks for designing the new alien races from FB2, the Kra'Vak, Sa'Vasku, and the Phalons (XLS/97 only) -Dean Gundberg
FB Ship Design System v0.5 (XLS) -Sean Bayan Schoonmaker
FT FB Design Workbook 0.4 (XLS/Palm Pilot) -Jared Noble