Ships

Ship Editor

A supplement to Play Guide. The ship editor designs ships: their hull, armour, drives, weapons and other systems, drawn on the ship's control sheet (its SSD) just as you see it in a game. Ships you save here can go straight into a scenario with the Scenario Editor's New Ship.

Opening it

In the main window's Editor menu:

• New Ship starts an empty design.

• Open Ship... opens a ship file. It starts in the game's Ships folder, which holds every ship from the fleet books.

Two windows open: the ship itself, and the Systems picker beside it.

The ship's details

The left-hand side of the window:

• Name: this ship's own name. Designs from the fleet books leave it empty: it's the class that matters, and each ship gets its name in the scenario.

• Ship Class: the class's name, such as Vandenburg.

• Race: who builds it, such as New Anglian Confederation.

• Class Name and Class Short Name: the kind of ship (Heavy Cruiser, CH). The two lists go together: choosing one sets the other.

• Mass: the ship's size. The number after the slash is the mass its systems need. Type a mass and press Enter, or click Auto to make the mass exactly what the systems need.

• Nominal Points Value: what the ship costs in a fleet.

The mass needed and the points aren't worked out as you go: they change when you press Enter in Mass or click Auto. Do one of those after changing the ship's systems, and before saving.

The Systems picker

• To add a system: with + chosen at the top, click the system in the list (it gets a border), then click an empty spot on the control sheet. The system appears where you clicked.

• To remove a system: choose - at the top, then click systems on the control sheet to remove them. Choose + again when you're done.

• If you closed it: choose Window > Systems in the ship editor (⌘1 on a Mac, Ctrl+1 elsewhere) to bring it back.

Arranging the control sheet

• Move a system by dragging it.

• Place it exactly: right-click the system and choose Set Position..., then type its position.

• Hold the pointer over a system to see what it is: for example "Class 3 Beam (FP/F/FS)".

Changing a system

Right-click a system for its settings. What the menu holds depends on the system.

Weapons: choose the weapon's class. Beam batteries, grasers and plasma bolt launchers go 1 to 4, kinetic guns 1 to 5; More Sizes... takes any other class. The class the weapon has now is ticked.

Firing arcs: a weapon's circle is split into six wedges, one per arc: fore, fore-starboard, aft-starboard, aft, aft-port and fore-port. Filled wedges are the arcs it can fire into. Hold Shift and click a wedge to switch that arc on or off. The weapon's tooltip reminds you:

This works on beam batteries (heavy ones too), grasers, kinetic guns, pulsers, pulse torpedoes of every range, plasma bolt launchers, salvo missile launchers and salvo racks. Needle beams, multiple kinetic penetrator packs and submunition packs keep the arcs they have.

Main drive: Standard or Advanced, and its Thrust, 1 to 8 or Other... for any other.

Hull: how tough the hull is for its mass: Fragile, Weak, Average, Strong or Super, or Custom... to type the number of hull boxes.

Armour: right-click a row of armour circles. Increase and Decrease add or take away one, Armor Value... sets the number, and Add Shell adds another layer of armour. With more than one layer, Remove Shell takes one away.

Other systems have their own settings in the same way. A pulser has its modes, a salvo rack Standard or Extended Range missiles, a salvo magazine its capacity and missile types, and a cargo hold its size and kind (cargo, laboratory, passengers or troops).

Saving

• File > Save saves the ship. The first time, it asks where, starting in the Ships folder and suggesting the ship's name (or its class, if it has no name) as the file name. Keep it in Ships, where the Scenario Editor looks for ships.

• File > Save As... saves a copy under another name, and carries on with the copy.

• File > Close closes the ship. If it has changes that aren't saved, it asks whether to save them first. If you choose to save and then cancel, the ship stays open.

• File > New and File > Open... start or open another ship in a window of its own.

Using your ship

Open the scenario in the Scenario Editor (Editor > Open Scenario...), select the player who should have it, click New Ship and pick your ship's file: the dialog starts in the Ships folder, with the fleet books' ships. The Scenario Editor has its own manual.