![[Sideview]](fleet2.jpg)
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Tietjens-Class Cruiser
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Afterburner-Class Light Cruiser
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Varshavchik-Class Heavy Cruiser
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Mattocks-Class Battleship
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Clewis-Class Strike Cruiser
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Nitchals-Class Strike Carrier
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Leah-Class Transport
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Several times in the spaceship-building process I have to choose one design, one path, foregoing the others that I see. With these integrated pre-fab modules I can explore several designs. And thanks to Chris Lynch, 'ship components are available to everyone.
Scroll down to see a few of the ships I've made with these parts. Click on the pictures to go to a page with more pictures and lists of the parts that went into the 'ship. Note that the pictures of the individual parts is pretty blurry. Seriously. They're just indistinct blobs. Someday we'll have some good pictures (and prices). There is just a catalogue of parts you can go to directly. Seriously. They're just indistinct blobs.
The first explorers of interstellar space established a tradition of independence and cooperation whilst founding what became a loose network of Independent State Planets. Subsequent waves of settlers joined one ISP or another, adopted the culture, and flourished amidst the overall anarchy. However, a handful of later settlers, not content with the rewards in working within the existing culture, sought to make their living by stealing, however infinitesimally, the resources of their neighbors. These thieves, harried by the outraged interstellar community, eventually sought refuge in an ISP so large that the resource burden they presented was insignificant compared to the fees the thieves paid to reside. Even when the thievery escalated to...Piracy!
As the thief-haven ISP gained in notoriety and number of pirates, the depredations upon the settlers and infrastructure of the other ISP's eventually drove the leaders of the victimized ISP's to join forces, despite the anarchic quality of their culture, and construct: the Interstellar Defense Patrol. Comprising of at most one ship from each ISP, and sharing only a common hardware design and a common heritage of independence through cooperation, the fleet is only ever assembled as a last resort, and deployed to interdict piratical ISP's. Its power, once mobillized, is so great that often the mere threat of an IDP causes the leaders of an offending ISP to banish the pirates and once again behave as responsible members of the interstellar community.