Starship

A starship is any spacecraft that is capable of viable interstellar travel, Such as any manned spacecraft that has the ability to transport and support a crew across interstellar distances. Most starships accomplish this via the employment of some form of faster-than-light propulsion technology, Such as Mass Effect-based FTL or the Slipspace.

Artificial Gravity
Mass effect fields create an artificial gravity (a-grav) plane below the decks, preventing muscle atrophy and bone loss in zero gravity.

Warships normally turn off their a-grav systems during combat, reducing heat generated by systems and increasing combat endurance. To provide a point of reference for navigating in zero-gee, floors are painted a different color from the walls and ceiling, or reference lights are turned on.

Auxiliary Vessels
Auxiliary vessels are any manned vehicle attached to a "mothership" that may work seperately, yet still "piggyback" it for space travel. The category refers to shuttles, Captain's yachts, escape pods, and even IFVs stored in the hangar.

Crew Consideration
Cabins give each individual a minimum ten cubic meters of space. On larger vessels private rooms are common. As ships get smaller, the number of crew packed into a single wardroom increases. Asari prefer shared spaces even on large vessels while krogan territorial instincts make it impossible for them to cohabitate even on the largest ships.

On smaller vessels, "hot bunking" is the norm. Crew members are assigned different watches share the same bunk. When one gets off-duty, he wakes up the person in the bunk. While that crewman is on duty, the first gets his rack time.

Spacecraft compartments can be isolated by air-tight doors in case of decompression. The cinematic version of explosive decompression is fiction; holed compartments either take enough damage that the occupants are killed instantly, or leak slowly enough that they are able to reach protective gear.

Compartments are equipped with Emergency Life Supports Apparatus: fireproof plastic bubbles with air bottles. Small when stowed, ELSA comfortably accommodate one individual inflated. Damage control procedure cuts off ventilation to burning compartments. Without oxygen to consume, fires die in seconds. The compartment is re-pressurized afterward for crew recovery.

GUARDIAN
A starship's General Use ARea Defense Integration Antispacecraft Network (GUARDIAN) consists of anti-missile and anti-fighter laser turrets on the exterior hull. Because these are under computer control, the gunnery control officer needs to do little beyond turn the system on and designate targets as hostile.

Since lasers move at light speed, they cannot be dodged by anything moving at subluminal speeds. Unless the beam is aimed poorly, it will always hit its target. In the early stages of a battle, GUARDIAN fire is 100% accurate. It is not 100% lethal, but it doesn't have to be. Damaged fighters must break off for repairs.

Lasers are limited by diffraction. The beam 'spreads out', decreasing the energy density (watts per m2) the weapon can place on a target. Citadel high-powered lasers are short-ranged weapons.

GUARDIAN networks have another limitation - heat. Weapons-grade lasers require cool-down time, during which heat is transferred to sinks or radiators. As lasers fire, heat builds within them, reducing damage, range and accuracy.

Fighters attack in swarms. The first few will be hit by GUARDIAN, but as battle continues, the effects of laser overheat will allow the attackers to press ever closer to the ship. Constant use will burn out a laser.

GUARDIAN lasers typically operate in infrared frequencies. Shorter frequencies offer superior stopping power and range, but degradation of focal arrays and mirrors would make them expensive to maintain. Most prefer mechanical reliability over bleeding-edge performance where lives are concerned. Salarians, however, use near-ultraviolet frequency lasers with six times the range, believing that having additional time to shoot down incoming missiles is more important. Similarly, the geth have also been known to use ultraviolet frequency, And mirror/focal array degradation are not an issue for alliance warships.

Lasers, such as all energy weapons, are not blocked by the kinetic barriers of capital ships, though they will be blocked by plasma shields.

Heat Management
Dispersal of heat generated by onboard systems is a critical issue for a ship. If it cannot deal with heat, the crew may be cooked within the hull.

Radiation is the only way to shed heat in a vacuum. Citadel Civilian vessels utilize large, fragile radiator panels that are impossible to armor. Citadel and early Alliance Warships use Diffuse Radiator Arrays (DRA), ceramic strips along the exterior of the armored hull. These make the ship appear striped to thermographic sensors. Since the arrangement of the strips depends on the internal configuration of the ship, the patterns for each vessel are unique and striking. On older ships, the DRA strips could become red- or white-hot. Dubbed "tiger stripes" or "war paint" by humans, the glowing DRA had a psychological impact on pirates and irregular forces.

Strip radiators are not as efficient as panels, but if damaged by enemy fire, the ship only loses a small portion of its total radiation capacity. In most cases, a vessel's DRA alone allows it to cruise with no difficulties. Operations deep within solar systems can cause problems.

A ship engaged in combat can produce titanic amounts of heat from maneuvering burns and weapons fire. When fighting in a high heat environment, citadel warships employ high-efficiency "droplet" heat sinks.

In a droplet system, tanks of liquid sodium or lithium absorb heat within the ship. The liquid is vented from spray nozzles near the bow as a thin sheet of millions of micrometer-scale droplets. The droplets are caught at the stern and recycled into the system. A droplet system can sink 10-100 times as much heat as DRA strips.

Droplet sheets resemble a seaship's wake through water. The wake peels out in sharp turns, spreading a fan of droplets as the ship changes vectors and leaves the coolant behind.

Alliance Warships do not Radiate - They are equipped with thermoelectric conversion systems. Not only waste heat is transformed back into electricity, but the ship appears invisible to thermographic sensors, and when coupled with Anti-active scan armor and cloaking systems, allow for working stealth technology.

Orientation
Starships operate in zero garvity, and have no universally-defined up, down, front, back, left, or right. They do, however, have those movement axises:


 * Bow - Stern is the ship's motion axis.
 * Portside - Starboard is lateral and perpendicular to the Bow - Stern axis.
 * Dorsus - Ventrus is perpendicular to both.

Ships that can land are oriented as the following: the front-back axis corresponds to the stern-bow axis, and the left-right axis corresponds to the portside-starboard axis, allowing the crew can move about while the vessel is on the ground. Such vessels are Planitially-aligned.

In citadel space, Vessels larger than a frigate (which are incapable of landing) are oriented as the following: the top-bottom axis corresponds to the stern-bow axis, and the left-right axis is corresponds to the portside-starboard axis, allowing a-grav to work with the inertial effects of thrust. Such vessels are Inertially-aligned.

However, all ship's spatial measurements are assigned as height, length, and width as they were Planitially-aligned.

Propulsion System
A mass effect drive core decreases the mass of a bubble of space-time around a ship. This gives the ship the potential to move quickly, but does not apply any motive power. Ships use their sublight thrusters for motive power in FTL. There are several varieties of thruster, varying in performance versus economy. All ships are equipped with arrays of hydrogen-oxygen reaction control thrusters for maneuvering in space, and all ships capable of atmosperic flight are equipped with flaps for maneuvering in an atmospehere.

Ion drives electrically accelerate charged particles as a reaction mass. They are extremely efficient, but produce negligible thrust. They are mainly used for automated cargo barges.

In Citadel Space The primary commercial engine is a "fusion torch", which vents the plasma of a ship's power plant. Fusion torches offer powerful acceleration at the cost of difficult heat management, and are incapable of preforming the accelerations required by military vessels in combat. Torch fuel is fairly cheap: helium-3 skimmed from gas giants and deuterium extracted from seawater or cometary bodies. The propellant is hydrogen, likewise skimmed from gas giants.

Antiproton thrusters, used by all vessels in alliance space and military vessels in citadel space, and inject antiprotons into a reaction chamber filled with hydrogen. The matter-antimatter annihilation provides unmatched motive power. The drawback is fuel production; antiprotons must be manufactured one particle at a time. In citadel space antimatter production is done at massive solar arrays orbiting energetic stars, making them high-value targets in wartime. In alliance space, however, ships are equipped with specialized fabrication modules.

The exhaust of fusion and antiproton drives is measured in millions of degrees Celsius. Anyting caught behind them will melt like wax in a blowtorch.

Sensory
"Light lag" prevents sensing in real time at great distances. A ship firing its thrusters at the Charon Relay can be easily detected from Earth, 5.75 light-hours (six billion kilometers) away, but Earth will only see the event five hours and 45 minutes after it occurs. Due to the light-speed limit, defenders can't see enemies coming until they have already arrived. Because there is FTL travel and communications but no FTL sensors, the niece is filled by remote systems - frigates used for scouting and picket duties in citadel space, and sophisticated FTL-Capable sensor drones in the Alliance.

Passive sensors are used for long-range detection, while active sensors obtain short-range, high quality targeting data.

Passive sensors include visual, thermographic, and radio detectors that watch and listen for objects in space. A powered ship emits a great deal of energy; the heat of the life support systems; the radiation given off by power plants and electrical equipment; the exhaust of the thrusters. If not disgusied, Starships stand out plainly against the near-absolute zero background of space. Passive sensors can be used during FTL travel, but incoming data is significantly distorted by the effect of the mass effect envelope and Doppler shift.

Active sensors are radars and high resolution lidars (Laser Illumination Detection And Ranging) that emit a "ping" of energy and "listen" for return signals. Lidars have a narrower field of view than radar, but lidar resolution allows images of detected objects to be assembled. Active sensors are useless when a ship is moving at FTL speeds.

Deceleration
Starships conform to Newtonian physics, rather than Aristotelian physics. Among other things it means that "A body in motion will tend to stay in motion, in the same direction and at a constant speed, unless acted upon by an outside force."

There are two methods of Deceleration: Vacuum-halting, Fielding, and Diving.

In order to Vacuum-halt, Starships accelerate to the half-way point of their journey, then flip 180 degrees and apply thrust on the opposite vector, decelerating as they finish the trip. The engines are always operating, and peak speed is attained at the middle of the flight.

In order to field, Starships can achieve full speed in point of their journey they choose, shutting down their engines afterwards. Near the end of the trip, the vessel "stops" itself with a Positive ME field, deccelerating to a point in which any movement is negligible. Even if the field collapses, the vessel remains in this low speed.

In order to dive, Starships can achieve full speed in point of their journey they choose, shutting down their engines afterwards. Near the end of the trip, the vessel disables it's negative ME field, deccelerating to sublight speeds and using an atmosphere to complete the decceleration.

Take-Off and Landing
Citadel vessels of frigate weight and smaller, as well as all Alliance Vessels, have VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) capability.

In the Alliance, Frigates are the largest weight capable of using concrete runways situated at airports. Other vessels either land vertically or land in water.

When do you operate FTL?
FTL Drives are to be operated when the journey time will be inconvininetly long when done in STL - such as a vast majority of interstellar and interplanetary voyages.

FTL Speeds
Interplanetary voyages, though decipted as impossible or unsafe according to science-fiction, are in fact an ugly reality. Most ships operate in speeds measurable in AUs per second.

Interstellar voyages have a speed defined by the speed of light. It is ultimatley limited by the drive core's top capability, which is measured in X MC (Which stands for "a maximum of X times the speed of light"). On average, Citadel Vessels are capale of travelling a maximum of at least 4,000 MC (~1199169832000 meters per second), Reapers are capable of 10,958 MC, and alliance vessels are capable of 16,437 MC.

Why do you operate FTL In-System?
On average, LUNA is 384,400 kilometers away from earth. This is a distance equivalent to nine times the circumference of the Earth. It would take a human approx. eight years to walk that distance, without stopping to eat or sleep. When travelling at a speed of 100 Km/h, this would take approx. 160 days.

On cosmological terms is roughly equivalent to shuffling about in your seat slightly.

SOL is A single Astronomical Unit, or 1,392,000 kilometers (three times the distance between the Earth and Luna) wide and about 149,600,000 kilometers away from earth. If Sol was the size of a Football (22 cm in diameter), then Earth would be about two milimeters wide and 23.57 meters away. When travelling at a speed of 3,529.6 Km/h, the journey would take 15 years.

ERIS is one of the farthest planetary bodies in the Sol system. At its closest it is 37.77 AU (5,650,000,000 km). When travelling at a speed of 3,529.6 Km/h, the journey would take 566 years. (For reference, leaving during the Battle of Varna means arrival in 2010 AD)

On cosmological terms the Sol System roughly equivalent to one's house.