Sneak Preview: Ship Refits!
Refitting a ship is the term for adding rooms to your ship, from galleys to holding cells to hydroponics stations and so on. This is Starmourn's version of player housing as found in IRE's other games. The rooms can be built in any configuration, starting with your ship's bridge. So you could have rooms directly off the bridge for convenience (especially if you're on a smaller ship), or you could build a catwalk with all your additional rooms connected to that, or make everyone walk through the head to get anywhere else, or whatever you want!
All ships have a certain room capacity based on their class. An interceptor class ship (like the one you get when you start the game) has a room capacity of 2 - the bridge uses one of these slots, so without a mod, you can only add one additional room. A ship in the heavy freighter class, on the other hand, has a room capacity of 14.
The capacity can be raised with a ship mod, though of course smaller ships are also very limited in how many mods they can have. You're not going to be able to load 20 rooms onto your starter ship. 
The cost of building a new, larger ship from scratch is not astronomical, though, and ships can also be bought/sold between players.
The cost of building a new, larger ship from scratch is not astronomical, though, and ships can also be bought/sold between players.Some of what you'll see in the game:
LOOK
The bridge of a travel-seasoned starship.
The interior of this starship has a distinctly well-worn appearance, every piece of equipment battered from use, but still cared for and clean. The bulkheads are dinged and dented from passage through asteroid fields, but have no structural breaches. Edges of consoles and sensors are rounded and shiny from years of forearms leaning against them. Clattering underfoot are corrugated metal floor panels, the hollow reverberations suggesting there may be compartments beneath them. The bridge spreads out here in an array of blinking lights and navigational computers, and rad-shielded formglass windows set into the ship's blunted nose look out into space. Installed in a nearby bulkhead is a large control panel. A plain, cushioned bucket seat has been bolted to the floor. A small row of viewscreens flicker on the bridge of the vessel.
There are no obvious exits.
SHIP REFIT
Refit Info
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SHIP REFIT STATUS Show status of the ship's refit.
SHIP REFIT ROOMS List all rooms in the refit.
SHIP REFIT OPTIONS <ROOM|DOOR> List options for doors and room types.
Building
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SHIP REFIT BUILD <roomtype> <dir> [mod] Build a new room.
SHIP REFIT BUILD EXIT <dir> <room#> Add an exit between rooms.
SHIP REFIT BUILD DOOR <dir> [type] Build a door.
SHIP REFIT REDESCRIBE ROOM Redescribe the current room.
Destruction
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SHIP REFIT DESTROY ROOM <dir> Destroy a room.
SHIP REFIT DESTROY DOOR <dir> Destroy a door.
SHIP REFIT DESTROY EXIT <dir> Destroy an exit.
SHIP REFIT STATUS
-- Refit status for The Starskipper -------------------------------------------
Can refit here: Yes
Room capacity: 1 / 2
Rooms:
The bridge of a travel-seasoned starship
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SHIP REFIT OPTIONS ROOM
The following room options are available:
airlock, armory, avionics, barracks, brig, captainscabin, cargobay, catwalk, commandcenter, commonroom, communications, crewquarters, engineering, engineroom, escapepod, galley, gunnerstation, gym, head, holdingcell, hydroponics, labs, lifesupport, lounge, lowerdeck, maindeck, medbay, messhall, navigation, observation, recroom, showers, stateroom, upperdeck, utilityroom, weaponslocker, and workroom.
(when you build these rooms they will have a set room title, like "The bridge of a travel-seasoned starship" above, but then you can write your own paragraph for the room description)
SHIP REFIT OPTIONS DOOR
The following door options are available:
airlock, blast, double, down-swinging, energy, gate, in-swinging, iris, out-swinging, sliding, and up-swinging.
(these all have different messages for how they are opened)
10
Comments
Just kidding, cost is in marks.
Also, are all of those door types airtight? Is air leaking out even a thing?
(Those are just thematic.)
https://countingdownto.com/?c=2341194
People will obviously want to customise them still, and that part would cost in credits, but generic NPC crewmembers would be an ingame cost only, for flavour only (i.e. without mechanical benefits - at least for pvp).
I ask because despite the discussions people have had about players banding together to RP as a crew, it isn't feasible unless it's a close group of friends all playing at the same time, to a schedule. Yet I (and I'm guessing I am not alone) would still like our ships to feel a bit less empty.
Will there be any mechanical variation among ships based on their manufacturer? I could swear there was a blog or forum post about this somewhere, but I can't seem to find it now.
Oh, and are more room types possible? Thinking of some kinda library/study/office type room heh.
https://countingdownto.com/?c=2341194
And yes, there's variation in the same class!
And definitely more rooms are possible, but not before launch!
is there any mechanical difference for the door types? Are some more inherently secure/lockable than others?
Jin
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