EVA-001

Maneuverability

EVA-001 has above-average maneuverability for her class. The design is very lightweight, sacrificing weapon and cargo capacity for a favorable inertial profile. Though she is very long along her main axis, the frontmost sections are reserved mostly for electrical equipment, storage, and secondary accommodations; battle stations call for a slimmer crew profile, allowing for faster rotations.

The ship was designed to be entirely self-reliant; though it has docking for several shuttles, it is fully descent-capable and equipped for a wide range of atmospheric conditions. It can achieve escape velocity on worlds with levels of gravity that exceed habitability for 95% of spacefaring racse.

Though it was designed for long-distance methods, EVA-001 is not built for interstellar sprints. Its interstellar cruising speed is 1.55 megalumens, fast enough to reach the Outer Rim in less than 5 days. While this is an excellent speed, and well above average rating, there are certainly faster ships; however, few of those have even a fraction of EVA-001's endurance at cruising speed.

Defenses

EVA-001 is built upon an entirely different platform and with completely different methodologies than most High Elven ships. It was not intended to be piloted by High Mage Spelljammers, but rather operated by a skilled but mundane crew. It relies far more on powered and static defense systems than most High Elven craft, which extend and augment the crew's magical abilities.

The hull plating is a Mithril-Titanium alloy, granting excellent protection against energy weapons and nominal defense against projectiles; its defense is equivalent to much heavier (and much less expensive) traditional armor plating.

The shield system is a standard, if high-power deflection field generator, with polarity-swapping to foil shield-piercing munitions.

It is also equipped with a special catapsionic screen, which causes heavy power drain, but inflicts severe damage upon supernatural creatures in the ship's vicinity, and tends to have a repulsive effect. All crewmembers must report to safe quarters before the shield is employed, and psionic characters must take refuge in specially-shielded chambers, for fear of suffering horrible psychic damage.

Weapons

The weapons systems of EVA-001 are, by design, versatile. It was not designed to engage any particular type of craft, but rather boasts a diverse array of weapons.

Railguns

These weapons require a significant charging period, and must always be fired in synchrony to avoid causing a severe list to the ship. They can only fire directly forward, with a vectoring window of less than half a degree, and must therefore be aimed with the ship's maneuvering thrusters. All crewmembers must brace for the sudden acceleration caused by the weapons. Each gun fires a round of shot weighing no more than 25 grams in a sabot that dissolves during the firing process; the combined energy of the guns causes a lurch of 1.58 meters per second (at 0.896 m/s/s, dampened by the recoil absorbers) toward the stern of the ship, and the impact of the shot carries an energy of 1,034 terajoules (246 kilotons of TNT). Such a full-power shot requires 36 seconds to charge (both).

Missiles

There are six missile pods throughout EVA-001; two carry long-range torpedoes with variable yield (5,000 lb. minimum, 24,500 lb. maximum (conventional), 650 kt (nuclear)). The remaining four fire swarm missiles for individual or mass engagement; a single salvo can effectively destroy an unprotected bomber wing. The ship is equipped with 1,440 swarm missiles and 64 torpedoes (16 nuclear, 48 conventional).

Lasers

There are twenty-four laser pods throughout the skin of the ship. Eight are medium-power sustained beams meant to penetrate the armor of middle-weight ships such as cruisers and freighters. Fourteen are lower-power pulse lasers designed to intercept incoming projectiles and engage light craft such as fighters. Two are high-power pulse beams (9.5 sec charge, 2.5 second discharge) meant to penetrate heavy armor (such as that of a battleship or carrier) or drill into or explode large asteroids.

EVA-001 is designed to be operated by a standard crew of 27, with 6 senior officers. On a full two-shift rotation, with certain redundancies in place, a full crew complement is 92 persons.

For a vessel of this size, the full complement is relatively small; this, combined with the long-term nature of the ship's missions, means more favorable accommodations for crewmembers.

Room

20 officer staterooms, meant to house senior staff and any adjunct personnel of distinction, are appointed with double beds, personal washrooms, and separate office and lounge facilities.

Remaining personnel are housed in 40 twin staterooms, with each pair of rooms sharing one washroom. Each twin room contains a shared lounge and office area.

Board

Crewmembers enjoy not one but two independent mess halls, a common self-service cafeteria and a tavern-style lounge. Officers may dine there or in the officer's kitchen, where the ship's master chef prepares several meals per day in a dim-sum style multiple-course affair.

Recreation

There are four major recreation areas for crewmen onboard EVA-001.

The main observation deck, spanning the upper deck of the ship's largest section, contains several semi-enclosed terrariums. Within, crewmen can enjoy a soil floor, lush vegetation, and an uninterrupted exterior view.

The green deck, in the aftmost quarter of the main section, is fully vivified, with several raised platforms and walkways. The outer half of the deck is thickly vegetated, while the inner half is flat and open. The larger plant life is supported with subtle cablework to strengthen it during tactical maneuvers.

The gymnasium, one decks below the main habitat area, contains ample exercise equipment, sparring rooms, and a large swimming pool. The shower facilities contain a large, shared bath; since crew quarters contain showers only, these baths are often frequented for recreation and relaxation independent of exercise needs.

The rotunda, near the bow in the lower decks, can be used as a theater, music hall, or other gathering place. Crewmen on elvish ships frequently use such chambers to pursue various artistic and musical activities alone or in small groups, with occasional large events, such as dramatic or musical performances.

Medical

Sick bay, as well as various satellite installations in the main bridge, engineering, and the habitat rings, is well equipped for a wide variety of medical emergencies. In keeping with the ship's primary design intentions, the medical facilities are well-stocked with devices and supplies requiring minimal knowledge and healing ability. Also, many cures were included for exotic ailments which would never otherwise be anticipated but in a ship of this particular mission.

A normal High Elven ship would be equipped with a staff of master biomancers, and EVA-001 was no exception, but its staff was meant to be much smaller than normal, with less strict requirements. All medical facilities are equipped with devices that can diagnose the vast majority of ailments common and exotic and prescribe treatments; such treatments can be easily administered by personnel of nurse-level training, with staff doctors on hand to judge individual cases and direct triage during heavy casualty scenarios.

Sick bay includes eight chambers which can be all be accessed through unidirectional airlocks in the hangar deck. This allows for easy quarantine procedures for crewmen and even alien lifeforms. The chambers are heavily secured and each is supported by an independent, fully-enclosed life support system capable of sustain most forms of life for months at a time.

Main sick bay also includes three secure laboratories for use by senior personnel. It was anticipated that in-depth analyses of xenobiology and/or experimental surgeries would need to be performed during the ship's primary mission, and the laboratories are well-stocked for this purpose. While they are in addition to the two main surgery rooms, they can easily be used as surgical laboratories in the event of overflow.

Most injuries and ailments are easily dealt with in any of the seven Regeneration Chambers located in sick bay and other medical facilities. These chambers, or "pods" as they are colloquially known, are wooden enclosures which are filled with a viscous, organic fluid (or "slime"). The patient enters the chamber unclad and awaits the filling of the chamber. Many patients complain that the "slime" is too cold on contact, yet ultimately makes them too hot. It, of course, does its job, augmenting natural healing processes many times over, so they have nothing to complain about.

While suspended in the life-supporting fluid, the patient sinks into a deep sleep (patients often complain of strange fever dreams, but such are probably an invention of the imagination, as they are sleeping too deeply to dream). The patient's body enters a state of enhanced regeneration; his immune system is magnified in effectiveness many times, and his natural healing speeds up to real-time rates. Just one hour of immersion is sufficient to treat most gross battle wounds and advanced diseases.

For lesser ailments, a more compact but similar cure is often prescribed; various highly-advanced cultivars representing the latest in biothaumaturgical medicine are available for ready consumption or processing into pill or liquid form. Trees, bushes, vines, algal blooms, and other biological platforms provide a vast and ready array of such medicines, and a skilled staff biothaumaturgist can easily create herbal blends to remedy the most tenacious pathology.

For the most extreme situations, there are 12 stasis chambers which will preserve a patient in state utterly and indefinitely, for later analysis and treatment at a more permanent facility.

Most of the ship's heavy engineering equipment is contained in two hull pods flanking the aft of the main hull. The psionic spin drive hardware is contained within these pods, as are the main power distribution systems.

Power

The ship's primary power plant is its Psionic Spin Drive. As with all examples of the technology, the Spin Drive is a psionic construct formed in the space between two or more nodes of strong potential difference. Each motivator contains a metaphysical energy construct which spins at high speed to drive the larger, central "disk" of psionic energy. This disk acts as a flywheel, storing energy in a compact form with extremely slow decay when under no power drain. The motivators can either be used to inject or retrieve energy from the disk.

The maximum power that can be retrieved from the disk is 16.728 gigawatts, well in excess of the ship's normal energy requirements; such power levels are only needed during intense tactical situations. Running the ship's main instellar drive in cruise mode consumes less than 1 gigawatt, though this does not rely on the ship's power distribution systems (see Drive Systems).

The power systems attached to the motivators are built to handle 150% of the maximum power load and distribute it with full automation to all ship systems, with each motivator redundantly serving every system.

If one motivator is lost, the ship can still operate at up to 75% maximum power, although recharging the spin drive becomes less than 33% efficient. If both motivators are lost, the spin driver's power can only be accessed by powerful psions. The charging chambers in the main hull, designed to allow psionic power input, can also be used in emergencies to facilitate power output.

Auxiliary power is provided by two arcane furnaces, prestocked with residuum. Their combined power output is only 840 megawatts, which is enough for modest interstellar travel and minimal tactical capability. On auxiliary power alone, the ship cannot exit gravity wells in excess of 1.3g.

Drive Systems

The main instellar drive is a unique system engineered specifically for the ship's mission of efficient, long-distance travel. It is a psionic motivator, mounted at the aft end of the main hull, protruding directly into the metaphysical space of the Spin Drive. Depending on how far it is inserted into the drive, it converts power from the disk directly into motive force by forming a double helix of energy beams of opposite polarity. Due to the Coburn-Wash effect, this can produce forward (or backward) acceleration of local space an average rate of 68.0 c/s while accelerating to cruising speed. Effectively, this provides zero-to-maximum acceleration in just over six hours, with peak power performance while maintaining cruising speed. Due to relativistic effects, the six-hour acceleration/deceleration period takes only 4.2 seconds in Realspace.

Tactical maneuvering is accomplished through a fairly standard array of linear accelerators. There are six such accelerators in EVA-001, configured in two overlapping triangles. Each is capable of firing in any direction. These accelerators work by converting power into high-energy radiation, which diffuses over several hundred meters. They have the advantage of requiring no propellant and operating within extremely precise margins. Under normal circumstances, the ship uses all six accelerators for all rotations, to better maintain hull integrity by relying less on the ship's internal structure to synchronize rotation; however, only three accelerators are needed to maintain a full range of motion.

The auxiliary maneuvering system is a standard RCS, with 32 individual monopropellant rockets throughout the hull. These rockets are capable of higher acceleration than the radiative accelerators, and are used to augment high-speed maneuvers in tactical situations; they are also used in docking procedures and certain atmospheric maneuvers where the radiation from the accelerators is unacceptable.

For medium-range (inter-orbital) travel, the ship has two ion drives; these drives accelerate small particles to extreme velocity and eject them from rear-facing nozzles. The ejected mass decays rapidly, becoming harmless dust several kilometers behind the ship. These drives can accelerate the entire ship at 8.98 m/s² (0.915 g). The drives are used for orbital and tactical insertion. They are more efficient at lower energy levels, so most such maneuvers tend to be at accelerations so slight that crewmembers do not notice; for maximum burn, it is required that all crew are securely braced for acceleration.

Life Support

Primary life support is accomplished through standard means; there are two layers, one of vacuum, and one of trapped air, between the outer and inner hull. A mesh of heating coils keeps the outer air shell at optimum temperature for thermal shielding, and heat converters on the inside edge of the outer hull recapture lost heat for recycling. Under optimum circumstances, internal air heating and cooling needs are minimal.

A network of 44 air bladders of various sizes contain 250% of the required operating atmosphere. The air is cycled from room to room in a 24-hour cycle which filters, conditions, and oxygenates the air before returning to use. All primary air heating and cooling takes place in this filtration system. A combination of biological and electronic systems maintain the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The bladders can pump air rapidly to extinguish fires.

Artificial gravity is accomplished in the usual way, with a dark energy collection grid beneath the lowest deck and spot grids in various other locations. Operating the artificial gravity requires a constant power drain 0.445 GW, and can be reduced or disabled when extra power is needed. The struts connecting the main hull to the engineering pods have no artificial gravity; the pods themselves have 67% gravity in central chambers.

Each of the ship's 23 sections has two redundant force field generators to brace the hull in an outward or inward direction, and to rapidly seal breaches. These can also be used to replace bulkheads when they are damaged or nonfunctional, for various security reasons.

Though the ship's hull plating and structure are more than enough to protect the crew from cosmic radiation, the ship's primary shielding can vastly improve the ship's survivability in hostile space. At full power and concentration, the shields can protect the ship against thermal radiation in perilous proximity to a star, or from the full onslaught of focused gamma-ray bursts, or even from a 20 megaton nuclear detonation at 1 kilometer.

The ship's water delivery and reclamation system provides hot and cold water to nearly every corner of the ship, while reclaiming all waste water. Under optimum conditions, the system contains 480% of required water, with 212% pure water available under full load. The system boasts a waste-to-pure turnaround of less than 45 minutes. The ship's 6 water bladders are deep within the structure, making venting an unlikely concern.

Analytical Equipment

EVA-001 has an extensive array of information-gathering equipment.

There are no less than 144 external instruments, 32 of which operate directly through hull plating, while the remainder are all selectively retractable behind the armor shell.

These sensors provide all standard input, with Full-Spectrum Rapid-Analysis clusters for situational awareness, High-Resolution Imaging scanners for long-range purposes, and a diverse array of sensitive instruments for various physical and metaphysical forms of radiation, from the ordinary to the exotic.

This system, the most complex and thorough of its kind, provides not only unmatched tactical awareness and scientific analysis capability, but also provides methods of gathering known and unknown forms of information in exotic locales, particularly Farspace. The central computers are designed not only to analyze and record the data, but to preserve it in real-time, both on standard holographic crystals, and through molecular imprinting in long-half-life heavy materials which will presumably survive even total and catastrophic ship loss.

Practically, the ship can perform all of these common functions, and much more:

• Full-spectrum imaging of a terrestrial body from high (geosynchronous) orbit, to 1m resolution at mean terrestrial/sea level.
• Deep-field differential scanning of black space, capable of positively identifying a fighter-class stealth vessel at minimal profile at a distance of 1000 km, either at rest or at tactical speeds.
• Long-distance astronomical survey, sufficient to provide an accurate profile of star systems within 100 light-years, with small-body planetary imagery within 15 light-years.
• Real-time tracking of up to 256,768 tactically-relevant vehicles and projectiles traveling at near-relativistic speeds, with mean time-to-acquisition of 1.66 nanoseconds and positive friend-or-foe analysis within 22 nanoseconds with known profiles.

The ship can launch up to 96 probes, with 12 launchable inside a 3-second window, all unmanned and independently automated, capable of 97% of all programmed tasks of the main vessel. The probes can maintain real-time communication at interplanetary distance, and have maneuverability sufficient to outmaneuver most known ships and weapons systems.

While no logs exist from the ship's original mission, the orcs and other short-term owners of the vehicle have noted several things in the maintenance logs.

Conveyor System

One of the most striking features of the ship, at least to those without the eye of an engineer, is the design of its main habitation decks. Two blocks of staterooms, each two stories tall, open into central courtyards focused around long fountain arrays and green plazas. A third deck above spans two-thirds of the main hull's length and most of its width, with a high domed ceiling and impressive window coverage with armor retracted.

The 219-foot span of this upper deck contains two separate conveyor systems. Each is a network of platforms half-encircled with railings; each platform can hold up to 5 people safely. The platforms wait at various stations along the length of the conveyors, and respond to verbal commands, joining a "train" of platforms of like destination, ferrying the passengers at high speed to any point along their length. At one end, they terminate at the entrance to the main bridge; at the other, they link with escalators heading to engineering and other aft sections. Along their length are numerous connections to lifts servicing the main habitat rings.

The system is meant to fulfill a function in the most convenient and elegant way possible; it is essentially a patch for what might have been a major design flaw, an affectation of artistry which would result in unacceptably-slow travel between important sections of the ship, such as engineering, sick bay, and the main bridge. Theoretically, the system makes for faster, more convenient, and more enjoyable intra-ship travel than even a luxury star cruiser.

However, the system is not without its flaws. The moving platforms are programmed to avoid posing a hazard to pedestrians, and will not come anywhere near one in its path, preferring instead to stay in a holding pattern in the long loop of the conveyor. In theory, this was meant to guard against the unlikely scenario of a pedestrian wandering into a dangerous area. In practice, people have to known to mingle and linger near critical junctures, either prior to boarding or just after departing the system, which can cause long delays and frustrating loop-arounds. With a minimal crew, this is, of course, not highly impactful, but under full load, it can become quite a nuisance.

Also, the platforms have been known to err, misinterpreting even simple directions like "sick bay" or "engineering" to drop pedestrians off at a lovely terrarium in the middle of the observation deck. The problem seems to be caused mostly by poor pronunciation of elvish; because, of course, for those who don't already know, it is the only language to which the ship's voice-recognition systems respond.

It is hard to categorize that particular quirk as a design flaw or primary feature; however, the orcish captain Kronn may have said it best in his logs, with the quote "I hope your trees rot, you pointy-eared clowns" (language cleaned for general audiences).

The ship is equipped with five fighters and one shuttle, although there is room for several more small craft.

Short-Range Fighters (5)

EVA-001 has 5 identical short-range fighters: designation SV-4F.