Starships

A **starship**, also known as a **star cruiser**, **spaceship**, **spacecraft**, or simply **ship**, is a vessel designed for interstellar travel between planets, star systems, and even galaxies in the Voidbourne universe. Starships are distinguishable from other types of spaceborne objects and vessels by the inclusion of interstellar drives, equipment that makes hyperluminal travel possible. Starships, both within the private and military fields, have a vast array of classifications, some of which are racially or factionally unique, and with this wide array of classifications comes an even wider array of design aesthetics. At the core, a starship is any spacefaring vessel with FTL capabilities. Most freighters and corvettes are starships, while most fighters are not.

## Propulsion

Interstellar flight became possible for the majority of spacefaring civilizations when they created working dual-drive systems: sublight engines for in-system transit, and FTL drives for travel between stars. The majority of Milky Way powers utilize warp travel for their extrasolar flight capabilities, and ion thrusters for sublight speeds due to their efficient power-to-mass ratio.

Most starships above one hundred metres in length are not able to enter atmospheres and land on a planet, due to their size and the lack of reliable antigrav / mass repulsion devices: only the Razorbird Empire and Murrcioun Syndicates make large-scale uses of the technology - the former on their dedicated ground technology, the latter on starships and spaceborne structures up to six hundred metres long - and only the Aetanii Consortium has perfected the techniques necessary to apply mass-repulsion units to even the largest vessels, such as star dreadnoughts and battleships.

## Classification

The **Terran Admiralty classification system** was a system developed by the Terran Alliance's Navy for the purposes of identifying warship types and general capabilities. It was originally developed during the Ravasect Wars, as the preceding class system had only classified starships up to the elderly six-hundred-metre-long *Hermione*-class cruisers of War for Sol vintage. In the aftermath of the war, it was adopted by most Galactic Council members to simplify classification, even when ships did not always fit the criteria.

### Classes

Under the system, military starships were broadly grouped into several categories depending on length, intended role and armament, in that order: a ship could be potentially moved up or down on the scale depending on these factors.

* **Corvettes** — Any starship up to four hundred metres long which has a military function.
	+ Examples: *Defender*-class gunboat (Ascendancy)
* **Frigates** — Starships of four to six hundred metres in length, usually armed to hunt ships smaller than themselves or specialized towards anti-starfighter defense. However, notable exceptions existed: the Murrcioun in particular treated warships of frigate classification as capital units, placing heavy emphasis on the ability to deal meaningful damage to targets far larger than themselves.
	+ Examples: *Tetrarch*-class frigate (Ascendancy)
* **Destroyers** — Starships of around five hundred to seven hundred metres long, armed to fight a variety of starships - from fighters to star dreadnoughts - in a broad range of scenarios. A versatile, unique, and highly modifiable ship type.
	+ Examples: *Eris*-class destroyer (Alliance), *Satsuki*-class destroyer (Consortium)
* **Light & medium cruisers** — A starship from six hundred to eight hundred metres in length, packing much the same versatility as a smaller destroyer whilst simultaneously being more effective against smaller targets.
	+ Examples: *Pallas*-class destroyer leader (Alliance), *Tenacious*-class destroyer (Ascendancy)
* **Heavy cruisers** — A wide variety of warships operate in this range: from eight hundred metre-long "large light cruisers" to one-kilometre-long small battlecruisers and pocket battleships.
	+ Examples: *Deimos*-class heavy cruiser (Alliance), pocket battleship *Bloodfin* (Consortium)
* **Star battlecruisers** — Capital ships which range from one kilometre to 1,200 metres in length, which trade away either firepower or protection to gain a speed advantage compared to their battleship rivals.
	+ Examples: *Venus*-class battlecruiser (Alliance), *Luna*-class battlecruiser (Alliance)
* **Star battleships** — The heavy bruisers of a star fleet, which range from 1,200 metres to 1,700 metres in length and are expressly designed to engage other battleships. Most interstellar nations which have not attained the status and prestige of a galactic Great Power treat these as their largest warships.
	+ Examples: *Mars*-class battleship (Alliance), *Iapetus*-class battleship (Alliance)
* **Star Dreadnoughts** — Any military starship above 1,700 metres in length could be classed as a "dreadnought": however, the designation only *seriously* applied to ships that exceeded 2,000 metres.
	+ Examples: *Terra*-class dreadnought (Alliance), *Miyagi*-class battleship (Consortium),