Ship Types
There are 5 basic ship designs to choose from. Your starting ship type gives you extra modules appropriate to your ship. A ship of the line will begin the game with extra gun sections, a survey ship with extra engines, etc. Later, you can change your ship's type by adding modules to it, so you aren't locked in to using the same type of ship you begin with.

• Garbage Scow
  These ships aren't fast or well armed. Their only redeeming quality is that they can push a lot of cargo.
  
  
• Passenger Liner
  Before the wars, these luxury liners shuttled wealthy tourists to and from the outer planets. Some of these liners now carry colonists who are fleeing the homeworld, or attempting to become wealthy landowners or prospectors in distant star systems. Other liners carry mercenary troops, either to seize control of colonies for their wealth, or to fight xenophobic wars of attrition against the other races.
  
  
• Survey Ship
  If you're interested in exploring distant star systems, this may be the ship for you. It has more engine power than anything else on the lot. Founding a new colony can be extremely lucrative, as long as you can defend it against raiding mercenaries and aliens on the warpath.
  
  
• Ship of the Line
  During the colony wars, these ships lined up and blasted away with their guns at the enemy formations. With modern fighter technology, those tactics are now obsolete, and these ships are military surplus. Their guns can still throw up a wall of flak that would make any sane fighter pilot think twice about attacking, but who ever heard of a sane fighter pilot?
  
  
• Ore Miner
  These ships were seized from bankrupt asteroid mining companies. Some shady organizations buy these ships, put fighters in the mining equipment bays, and conduct pirate raids against merchant ships. You don't look like the type who'd do that, however, so I'll sell you one.
  
  
• Smuggler
  Smugglers are heavily cloaked ships. We run a reputable business here, you won't find anything like that on our lot.
  
  
• Starbase
  Starbases are ships without engines, permanently parked in orbit around a planet or asteroid. Starbases may only be built by the owner of a colony.