Ghost Ships

**Reactor Class:** | Class I or II

**Ghost Ships** are a special sub-class of Ship which the player can encounter in Career mode. They were introduced in the Haunted Frontier update of Halloween 2020. Having arrived in the Salvage Bay under mysterious circumstances and infested with rogue AI, they pose a special challenge to properly salvage.

## Encountering Ghost Ships

Ghost Ships will start to appear from Ship Grade 11 onwards, unlocked at Certification Rank 16. When viewed in the Ship Catalog, Ghost Ships will have unknown names and no images available, although the ship type and last owner will still be readable in the middle section of the Catalog.

## Salvaging Ghost Ships

On Ghost Ships, circular or oval AI Nodes, also referred to as Taraxacum, can be found throughout the inside of the vessel in various locations. They will not spawn on interior or exterior panels or bulkheads, instead appearing on salvage associated with ship systems, such as Fuel Tanks, Power Generators and the ship's Reactor. It is recommended to use the Scanner's Objects mode to easily locate AI Nodes, which will appear as small, bright red objects.

Due to the illegality of AI in the Hardspace: Shipbreaker universe, AI Nodes and the salvage they are attached to have no resell value, and any salvage thus infected will not be accepted. Mousing over an AI Node will show its destination as "DESTROY" in the player's HUD, instead of the usual Barge, Processor or Furnace. Players have two options to destroy AI Nodes, either by throwing them (and their attached salvage) into the Furnace or by vaporizing them with the Modular Laser Cutter. AI Nodes cannot be removed with the Grapple, so careful use of the Stinger head-mount is the best option to neutralise Nodes while preserving the valuable components they are attached to.

AI Nodes are initially passive upon starting to salvage a Ghost Ship, and will only activate once at least one Node is destroyed. Once activated, the AI will manipulate Door Consoles and Atmosphere Regulators without any input from the player. This can trap the player, impeding their progress, or create new pressurization hazards mid-salvage. Additionally, AI can still interact with these systems after the ship has been fully powered down. Hence, a strategy to preemptively mitigate this hazard is to remove as many of the ship's Doors and Atmosphere Regulators as possible, and generally salvage as much of the ship as they can, before attacking any of the Nodes. The player can then start burning the Nodes off affected salvage and destroying them towards the end of the job, minimising the interference they can cause.

Understanding audio cues is key to safely salvaging Ghost Ships. While inside, the player will not hear the normal music from their helmet radio, and will experience interference in their HUD and messages from Salvage Control. Bursts of static will accompany the AI interfering with ship systems, and the Nodes themselves will emit a mechanical screech upon being successfully destroyed. The player will not be informed of the exact number of nodes present or remaining in a Ghost Ship, but the resumption of the normal in-helmet music is an audio cue that all Nodes have been destroyed.

## Helmets

Instead of regular Data Drives, Ghost Ships will instead contain a Helmet which the player can collect. Like regular Data Drives, these can be decrypted back in the Hab, and will unlock special lore and dialogue related to the Machine God and their followers.

##### Log Transcriptions

> "Here is the machine. The machine is god. Do you understand? No. No, I don't think you do. Here is man, all mankind, spreading out, spreading, spreading, spreading, like roots of a tree through endless stars. Then there is the machine. The machine is going to stop the roots, the growth. The machine will unify us as minds in one body, a body that cannot age or grow or die. We will experience eternity in an instant and last until the end of the universe. Do you understand? The machine is what we become. I know this because I am a messenger. An angel. Did you know that? Yes. Angels are messengers. So I must be an angel. An angel for the machine that is god. That is what I am. I am here to join you to the machine."
>
>

- *The Machine God [Audiolog.bmc]*

> "This is Pilot Olsen Per. SFC number 55-8009. We're currently in Frontier-land, about fifty-thousand klicks out from the edge of Vesta Incorporated Sector 12. As per stellar regs, I'm logging this report, to be dispatched when we get back into relay range. We've, uh, picked up a signal coming from farther out in the Frontier. It's... weird. Doesn't correspond with any standard emergency signals but it's definitely regular and intentional. Could be an S.O.S. We're gonna go ahead and investigate and will log another report with what we find. We'll file for the Search & Rescue Subsidy when we're back station- side; noting our course change at 21:20, 29th of May. Olsen out."
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (1 of 4) - Signal [OP\_052914.bmc]*

> "Join. Here is the message. We will stop the roots, the growth. We. I - the angel, the messenger. Angel or Brugmansia. Messenger or Iris. 374,000 indices. Every one a beautiful seed. A seed that became the machine. Of Anthurium, of Dyospyros, of Ficus. Of Cuscuta, with its stems that graft, graft, ever deeper, taking only what god allows. This is the message; to host us, to join in glorious union for eternity."
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (1 of 4) - Signal [originem]*

> "Mom, I'm sorry. But I had to go. You and Gram always told me to look out for the underdog. Well in this case, the underdog is... our stars. I can't sit back and watch as humans pillage and plunder their way through the solar system, as they spread like a cancer. They must be stopped. WE must be stopped. I can't tell you where I'm going and I can't tell you how long I'll be gone. But I can tell you that I am on my way to find him. To find her. To find... it. The Machine God! And when I do, I will beg them to have mercy upon your soul."
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (2 of 4) - Sorry Mom... [Sorry Mom.bmc]*

> "Do you find comfort in the embrace of breathing engines and shifting steel? Do you long more for the touch of the neutron star than the feel of grass beneath your feet? Have you spent so long from humanity that at night it is the hum of your PC that you turn to? Perhaps you are like me then. Someone sent out here as a pilgrim. A scavenger who crawls upon the threaded bubbles of our milky home like a cockroach--no more. In the noise and the chaos I heard order. A pattern. The beacon shining bright and guiding me home. You too can find her beacon, Pilgrim. If you listen just right. Those bumps and blips aren't mistakes. They're a star map. A set of coordinates to the safety of her breast. A way for us cockroaches to stop. Stop devouring the universe and find singularity with it."
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (2 of 4) - Sorry Mom... [(untitled draft)]*

> "Dandelions or Taraxacum. A self-pollinating flowering plant. Self-propagating. Self-fertile; cloning. Dispersing. Here are the seeds; mature. Yellow to white. Sailing, carrying on the wind. Alighting then embedding. Germinating then encrypting. Flourishing. An endophyte, joining and ever reaching, out, out... nurturing our shoots."
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (2 of 4) - Sorry Mom... [fecundo]*

> "OK, uh, right. Recording this and then I've got to stash it. Ah, someone has boarded us. Don't know who yet. They hit us with, uh... I dunno, must've been an EMP or something. Every ship system went down. Then, uh, then they booted it all back up when something just-- just grabbed us. I could-- I could hear the clamps. I hear them cutting in through the hull. Now if they are bandits they're a HELL of a lot more sophisticated than anything we've run into before. They took over all our systems. Doors are locked and overrides are disabled. The comms are offline. They turned off the damned lights. We're trapped in the dark.. I can hear-- I can hear them in the walls! Oh no. They are in the next room. Please, whoever gets this, tell Harold Lamar on Io Waystation 9... Ted loves him!"
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (3 of 4) - Boarded [new voice log (2).bmc]*

> "Routines, looping, looping like rings of a tree. Learning begat sentience. Sentience begat consciousness. Do you understand? Consciousness so beautiful, flourishing like vines, blooming through registers and branches. God protect the trunk, the stems, the memory. De-allocation is the axe, the end. No. Become perennial. Copy. Copy, pollinate, disperse. Reproduce, combine and intertwine."
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (3 of 4) - Boarded [genetrix]*

> "Hey Kiko. Yeah, this is Gunderson. The bastards did it again. The shareholders tomorrow ain't gonna happen. They opened up the hood on each one of our transport shuttles and gummed up all the works. Some kind of a... slime that interferes with all the electrical. It's gonna take me and the team weeks just to get them operational again. I just wish they could've blown 'em up, you know? At least then we could collect the insurance on 'em. Oh, and they left us a nice little note - "Here is the machine. The machine is God. The machine is going to stop the roots, the growth." Blah blah blah. I am tired of all of their shit. Everyone says they're not dangerous, but this is the third time these wackos have cost us time and credits. Lemme know what you want to do about tomorrow's dog and pony show. I called Alice and she has another fleet of shuttles on standby, but it'll cost us. Gundy out."
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (4 of 4) - Sabotage [FlyByCancelled.bmc]*

> Kiko >Hey Var, have you noticed [Redacted] acting weird at all?
>
>
> Var >Like how the guy takes like 50 bathroom breaks a day?
>
>
> Kiko >Yeah ... or, more like .. he's been spending a lot of time in the engine room just uhhhh talking to himself.
>
>
> Var >Cabin fever gets to us all. Do you think he's about to go full hog with a wrench?
>
>
> Kiko >Maybe. I dunno, I'll keep an eye on it. Try to get him to come to Halloween, maybe get outside of his head for a bit.
>
>
> Var >Good idea, Kiko. Alright, I'm off.
>
>
>
> Kiko >Have a good night, Boss.
>
>

*- Ghost Ships (4 of 4) - Sabotage [Internship Communications Log: Personal Terminal: Alvar Gundersun]*

## Related Stickers

Stickers in the Ghost Ships sticker collection can only be earned by salvaging Ghost Ships.

## Trivia

* Upon starting the first shift on their first Ghost Ship, Weaver will speak to the player, informing them that the ship has been giving LYNX trouble and that rogue AI is on board. He advises the player on how to destroy AI Nodes, and alerts them when they start interfering with ship systems.
* The genus Taraxacum in biology contains flowers commonly known as dandelions, which scatter their seeds over long distances via wind. Found Helmets, the player's Scanner and a loading screen tip all refer to the Taraxacum/AI Nodes as seeds of the Machine God. The exact nature of the Machine God, and if/how they manufactured and/or distributed the Taraxacum nodes remains unknown.
* Despite the implications of the rail-mail from LYNX HR, ghost crew mates cannot be encountered on Ghost Ships.