The Hephaestus Class Industrial Vessel is a large scale industrial vessel, designed by Osman Heavy Industries to provide them with materials and to serve as construction locations for future projects up to a small starship scale. While ships of the class are commercially available, they take time to build because of their immense scale.

The Hephaestus class is a massive industrial starship, equipped with an impressive array of mining equipment that allows it to clear out swathes of asteroid fields and belts, and industrial modules that can serve as production centers in their own right, or as storage for massive amounts of refined materials.

The Hephaestus's key offering is the ability to be an all-in-one industrial powerhouse, capable of mining away resource rich asteroid belts and fields to ship to other locations, as well as having the ability to churn out starships at a considerable rate by using some of its industrial modules as small-scale shipyards instead of storage space, making it a valuable addition to any group looking to increase their industrial capacity.

The Hephaestus class is used for industrial purposes, as its name implies. Its large modules can be repurposed for many different uses, but it mainly excels in two areas.

• Large scale mining.
• Production of goods, up to small starships.

The Hephaestus class industrial vessel is best characterized as blocky. Its main body is a long ribbing section in the center of the ship, with the main living and control quarters in the wedge-like front end of the ship, with the engines and engineering sections towards the more rounded rear end of the ship.

The Hephaestus class began design during the Kuvexian Invasion of YE 41, as analysts working for OHI had predicted a severe shortage of resources as resources usually available to companies were turned to the bent of the YSE's war machine. To alleviate this shortage, as well as to provide the company additional production facilities, the Hephaestus class was designed as a large scale mining platform, as well as one able to turn out goods like any other factory. After the war had ended, the large starships provided OHI with the ability to procure their own resources, and produce goods onsite for customers, and so were kept in service.

With no need to move exceptionally quickly, the Hephaestus is a lumbering giant. It has a low top speed, does not turn quickly, and has bad acceleration. However, it has exceptionally durable armor and shielding systems, with many redundant emitters, so as to remain safe in the middle of the densest of asteroid fields.

• Class: OH-L1-1A
• Type: Industrial Vessel
• Designers: Osman Heavy Industries
• Manufacturer: Osman Heavy Industries
• Fielded by: Osman Heavy Industries (5), buyers.
• Price: 1,500,000 KS

Crew: 700 operators are recommended, 200 are required.

Maximum Capacity: There are accommodations for 700 people. About 1000 people can fit aboard in an emergency, but the ship would be extremely cramped.

• Length: 1,605 meters (5,265 feet)
• Width: 250 meters (820 feet)
• Height: 233 meters (764 feet)
• Decks: 40 (5.5 meters each)

• Continuum Distortion Drive: 3,652.5c (10 ly/d) with Geshrinari Continuum Distortion Drive
• Hyperspace Fold Drive: 195,192c (0.2 ly/m) with Geshrinari Hyperspace Fold Drive
• Sublight Engines: .25c
• Range: Six Months
• Lifespan: 90 years
• Refit Cycle: Once every 3 years

See Damage Rating (Version 3) for a guide to damage ratings to include.

DRv3 Tier: Tier 14 Hull and shields. Heavy armor.

The interior of the Hephaestus class is minimalist, but not uncomfortable. The high-ceilinged decks and large size allow for spacious living spaces.

The Hephaestus class's decks are organized in such a manner that as one travels towards the rear of the ship or towards the bottom of the ship, spaces become more utilitarian and dedicated to the operation of the ship.

While ship captains and crews often make alterations to their vessels, a brand new Hephaestus class vessel's interior is roomy but minimalist.

While the Hephaestus class is not a warship, weapons are sometimes needed to repel pirates and/or boarders. The Hephaestus class has three armories, one aft, one amidships, and one fore. They do not come stocked by default, but have lockers and space for ammunition for small arms.

The Bridge of a Hephaestus class is only one of several parts of the ship that are in the tower complex in the fore of the ship. Like the rest of the ship it is utilitarian, with stations for the Captain, section chiefs, and a few other crewmembers. Stations found on the Bridge include the Captain's console, the senior mining officer's console, the navigator's console, and the chief of engineering's console. These consoles allow section chiefs to communicate with their sections of the ship to give commands to their subordinates, or take direct control of certain systems.

The Captain's Suite is large, but not especially lavish. The size of a large apartment, it includes several amenities that the rest of the crew does not enjoy, such as a private bathroom, a full kitchen, an office, and a separate bedroom.

The main cargo storage area for the Hephaestus class is located at the front of the ship. While the Hephaestus class is not a cargo hauler in its base layout, there is ample space for storage in the 200m long by 50m tall by 40m wide cargo bay.

Crew cabins on the Hephaestus class are specially designed to offer comfort on long mining voyages. Each houses 2 crew members in a miniature apartment style housing. Each has a common room with a kitchenette, a small bathroom, and two bedrooms.

There are several small recreation rooms throughout the ship They house board games, gaming systems, and projectors for playing media. In addition to this, there is a decently sized gym near the crew quarters. However, most of the large scale recreation facilities are in the ship's tower, including a small movie theater, with four different showrooms, an arcade, and a commissary.

While there are wardrooms along the length of the Hephaestus class, primarily near the crew quarters, but the primary cafeteria on the ship are located in the tower so as to provide the crew with a view of space while they eat and to alleviate feelings of isolation. There are fully stocked kitchens at the main cafeteria, and food is shipped to the wardrooms at the beginning of each 'day' cycle.

The primary engineering space of the Hephaestus class is located near the engine cluster at the rear of the ship. It includes a machine shop inspired by Freespacers automanufactories to create replacement parts for the ship.

Maintenance conduits snake throughout the ship, allowing mechanics and technicians to access and repair systems all across the ship.

The ship's hospital Is a part of the tower, taking up several decks worth of space in the structure. It has the facilities to treat most injuries and diseases but cannot treat anything requiring extremely specialized equipment.

Passageways on the Hephaestus class are fairly large, allowing unrestricted walking even with many people moving through the passages. Special cargo movement passageways exist, connecting locations where large equipment may need to be moved.

A large 55m long by 50m wide by 21m tall shuttle bay sits on the underside of the ship, allowing it to carry shuttles equipped to ferry crew around or mine. In this bay, shuttles are held in adjustable racks while they are being worked on, and each shuttle is given an allowance of space¹⁾ to allow for easier maintenance and traffic throughout the bay. The shuttle bay is kept in Zero Gravity.

Each of the industrial modules consists of three main sections: The ore hold, the machine shop, and the assembly zone. Each module is self contained, and attached to the main ship by mounting points, allowing it to be removed in a matter of hours. Each module has two mining lasers, which are controlled remotely, and large ore holds that allow it to store large amounts of mined and refined ore.

The Industrial Module's most outstanding feature is its ability to act as a factory by using a similar style of machine shop as the engineering section of the main ship, albeit geared towards factory production of parts. This shop makes producing anything from mecha and weapons to small ships, up 120m by 50m by 30m in size possible.

The top third of each module is used to store vast quantities of ore, the middle third is taken up by the machine shops that convert the raw materials into parts for whatever is being produced, and the bottom third is used as the assembly zone. Once assembly is complete, the final product can be held inside the module, or released out a large hangar style door on the bottom of the module. Gravity in the assembly bay is kept off, allowing the product to be assembled in whatever orientation best allows it to fit within the confines of the assembly bay.

The Hephaestus is a rugged ship, and has many redundant systems.

The hull of the Hephaestus class is rugged, composed of a 2-meter thick honeycombed structure filled with hardening gel that can seal small to medium-sized hull breaches. The hull structure was developed to make it resistant to hull impacts while mining.

The Hephaestus class has a main computer that handles the basic running of life support systems, as well as basic navigational tasks. It has advanced mining sensors that allow it to detect the mineral content of asteroids and planetoids from several AU away. While it does not have combat targeting systems, it does have sensors that can track the mass, heading, velocity, and other characteristics of thousands of low velocity objects such as asteroids, meteors and the like.

The Hephaestus class has emergency damage control systems that can account for impact damage, engine failures, fires and loss of atmospheric pressure through various measures. These measures include bulkhead doors, automated Fire Extinguisher 🧯s and hull sealant gel amongst others.

The life support system of the Hephaestus class is not especially sophisticated, but it is more than capable enough to sustain a 1000 person crew for a year.

Power for the Hephaestus class is provided by two class three and one class four Hyperspace Fuel Taps linked to individual reactors for the sake of redundancy, rather than one large powerplant.

The Hephaestus class uses five class five Vortex Plasma Thrusters to provide its propulsion. Similar to the ship's powerplant, this was done in the name of redundancy.

The Hephaestus has many redundant shield systems, with two emitters each for Electromagnetic shields and Gravitic shields located in the fore, aft, and middle of the starship. This helps to relieve the risk of failure due to impacts. and to share the load of protecting the ships between many emitters, reducing wear.

The Hephaestus has, stock, two large sized Multistruct miners on every industrial module, each of which feeds into ore holds in those modules. The Hephaestus class also has four massive versions of the multistruct, designed especially for mounting only on the Hephaestus class.

While the Hephaestus class has no weapons, its mining beams can be used in an emergency to protect the ship.

• Massive Custom MultiStruct Multitool: 4, Tier 13
• Large MultiStruct Multitool: 16, Tier 7

The Hephaestus class carries a shuttle complement, to assist it with mining tasks and with transferring materials and crew.

The Hephaestus class can carry as many shuttles as an owner is able to fit into the bay, but was designed to carry 30 shuttles with standard allowances for hangar space²⁾.

• Approval Thread