Hangarships: Your Mobile Base
Hangarships are more than just big transports; they’re your home, your workshop, and your safety net in the vast emptiness. Capable of carrying smaller ships, stations, and cargo, they allow you to relocate entire operations across a star system.
Traveling with a Hangarship
- Fuel Requirements: Hangarships run on Eonite fuel - a refined energy source extracted from asteroid deposits. No fuel, no movement.
- Navigation: From the Starmap, select your Hangarship in the left menu (a green outline confirms selection), choose your destination, and initiate travel.
- Instant Travel: Once set, the jump is immediate - at least, from your perspective. Behind the scenes, your ship’s systems calculate and execute the move in real-time.
What Hangarships Can't Do
- They cannot jump between star systems. That’s what Gates are for.
- Without proper shielding, they’re vulnerable to anomaly radiation near certain travel points.
Commanders: Local Transport Specialists
If a Hangarship is a spaceborne carrier, a Commander vessel is a tactical utility ship. Commanders are restricted to short-range jumps within a planet’s orbit or local operational zones.
How to Use a Commander for Travel
- Requires 10,000 energy stored in its capacitors.
- Can only move between local sites within its current planet’s orbital range.
- Like Hangarships, travel is instant once initiated from the Starmap.
Gates: The Only Way to Leave a Star System
Interstellar travel isn’t just about picking a direction and engaging thrusters. If you want to reach Lalande or Alpha Centauri, you need a Gate, and building one isn’t trivial.
How Gates Work
- Anomalies (which are WIP right now) serve as natural transit points - think of them as weak points in spacetime where Gates can be constructed.
- One-Way Travel Risk: [olist]
- Once you build a Gate on an anomaly, you can jump through - but there’s no way back unless you construct a second Gate on the other side.
- If you jump into Lalande without preparing, you’re stranded until you secure enough resources for a return trip.[/olist]
Gate Construction Challenges
- Hostile Environment: Some anomalies emit dangerous radiation, making them lethal without proper shielding.[olist]
- Solution: Deploy Shield Domes before starting construction.
- This means you first need to mine and clear debris, set up shield generators, and only then begin building the Gate.[/olist]
- Defensive Threats: [olist]
- The sheer energy output of a Gate attracts hostile forces.
- Expect a “boss wave” scenario - a Mothership-class enemy spawning waves of attackers to destroy your structure.
- Defending the construction site will be as crucial as the building process itself.[/olist]
