Its main role in the New Dusk Conclave Navy is to transport thousands of colonists and act as the initial infrastructure of the settlement.

The Ferryman-Class Colony Ship was designed around the concept of long-distance travel and giving a head start to the settlers after landfall.

Taking queues from the Yamashuto-Class, the Ferryman-Class is meant to land on the planet and provide an initial home for the colonists. It is equipped with a wide range of industrial facilities that allows the ship to mine asteroids, fabricate parts and equipment, and other necessary capabilities.

What sets the Ferryman apart from other colony ships is its capability for long-term travel. Theoretically, the ship can support several generations before it arrives at its destination. Each prospective colonist must go through a rigorous selection process meant to weed out anyone not able to meet the high standards needed for colonization. After being selected a colonist is then trained to handle long-term space travel and the challenges associated with it. While during the flight the colonists must follow a semi-structured lifestyle to maintain the ship's resources and ensure continuing functions of the ship.

Work cycles on the ship are set around a seven-day workweek with five eight-hour days split into three shifts, one day on call to help cover any manpower shortage, and one day off that can be used based on one's discretion. An individual's schedule is assigned to them by the AI core of the ship in order to maximize efficiency, though it is possible to request a certain schedule it is not guaranteed that one will get it. While working a high level of discipline is expected on par with or greater than the military of the NDC.

During space flight, each compartment from side to side of the ship is oriented towards the bow and aft, The Ferryman-Class is kept at a low g thrust to eliminate traditional floors on certain decks, this was done with the idea to help speed along with navigation through the ship. When landing, all rooms then rotate to orient from top to bottom and floor sections slide out to form the floors for the new settlement.

After arriving at its detestation the Ferryman-Class will permanently land on the surface to act as the first city of the newly founded colony and giving a boost to early development.

The Ferryman-Class is used for large-scale and long-term colonization projects. Its large size allows anywhere between four to seven thousand colonists to be safely transported and established to a new world.

• Colonization
• Production of goods and equipment.
• Providing the colony's initial infrastructure.

A massive cylindrical main body with four wing pylons running up and down it at each corner.

The Ferryman-class Colony ship began its development during the Kuvexian invasion crisis of YE 41, intending to aid the New Dusk Conclave’s efforts to colonize its home system and to support its new frontier populace with new future colony worlds. Having taken the lessons learned from the exodus that led to the formation of NDC, the now experienced Engineers built the Ferryman-class starship to handle moving the growing population in expansion as well as in case of emergencies.

Using the funding, they sought technology outside of the NDC hoping the new technology that they hadn’t thought of could be of use for their purpose. Finally, after some time their ship was ready, and just in time too, because Yamatai had given the NDC new works to colonize, which meant that there were Ferrymen colony ships that witnessed the battle, with the Kuvexian backed Pirates.

The Ferryman is bulky and slow, but is capable of being self-sufficient and can quickly establish a colony once it lands on a planet.

• Class: NH-CV-1a
• Standard Nomenclature: BW-L1-1A
• Type: Colonization Vessel
• Designers: Department Of Fleet Development (D.O.F.D.)
• Manufacturer: Black Wing Enterprises
• Fielded by: New Dusk Conclave
• Price: 3,750,000 DS

Crew: 1300 operators are recommended for operation of the ship but only 600 are required for a skeleton crew.

Maximum Capacity: There are accommodations for 4000 passengers to be put into cryostasis. About 7000 people can fitted in emergency stasis, but the system would be under a great amount of strain and risk deadly failure if left in that state for more than 2 years.

• Length: 2400 meters
• Width: 900 meters
• Height: 900 meters
• Decks: 120 (7 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: 12 Years
• Lifespan: 220 Years
• Refit Cycle: 60 Years

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

• Unordered List ItemDRv3 Tier: Tier 14 Hull and shields. Heavy armor.

The Ferryman is a large ship even for a colony ship. Inside, it resembles a city both in space flight and after landing.

The interior of the ship's layout is meant to reflect districts like those seen in cities, with industrial compartments on the lower decks then transition into compartments dedicated to housing.

There are many NDC Armories throughout the ship, which hold small arms such as from normal New Dusk Conclave Loadouts¹⁾. These are places for security personnel, and those few of military occupation to gear up when needing to, in the event of having to combat a hostile threat to the colonists.

The bridge of the Ferryman-Class is built in the shape of a hexagon with stations for navigation and flight control at the front. Engineering and mining on the port while life support and long-range sensors on the starboard side, at the center there is a holographic map display with a seat for the captain and first officer, to the bow of the bridge, are two elevators and doorways. Depending on the station there are either a single individual or team handling operations. In the bow of the middle section of the ship.

The Captains Suite is lavish, fitting with the status of mayor or governor. The suite consists of a bedroom with a king-sized bed, a large bathroom with a shower and bathtub, a full kitchen, and a living room. It also includes an office with a workstation and desk. Much of the interior is polished wood finish with stainless steel surfaces for the kitchen and bathroom. The office and living room coffee table come with integrated smart terminal interfaces for the captain to check reports, and handle documents. The ceiling of this compartment is a false exterior view of space as it is designed like a large ceiling spanning skylight when it is just a screen connected to the hull's optical sensors at the top of the hull.

It is located near the bridge, which is in the central aft portion of the ship.

The Ferryman-class has several holds for cargo, each spanning multiple decks. All are located along the lower section of the interior, the aft, and bow. These are where larger storage bins and containers are stored, as well as larger secondary equipment, along with emergency supplies.

Completely different the NDC Standard Crew Quarters a better term to describe the crew cabins would be an apartment as it is meant to provide a permanent home to the colonists and are well furnished allowing inhabitants to live comfortably. Each apartment is equipped with standard amenities seen in Obsidian City. These include two bedrooms, each with a queen-sized bed, dresser, desk, and couch. There is also a living room/dining room with a couch and dining set, along with an entertainment center, a bathroom with a shower in it, and a kitchenette.

The cabins are organized in block rings of twenty-five spread through the Habitation Sections of the ship, located in the midsection from the bow to the aft of the ship. Each ring block is a deck when the ship is landed, with each quarter's compartment, being of a rotating cylinder in design. When in flight in space, the rooms are arranged respectfully from side to side, oriented from bow to aft. When the ship is landed to form a quick establishing colony base, the rooms are re-oriented to top towards the bow, and bottom towards aft, where the deck floor plates deploy to form the floors as previously mentioned.

The crew recreation sections of the ship are designed to provide long-term leisure to the passengers to relieve the stresses of space flight. The inspiration behind the design was recreation districts in Obsiden City with the hope to provide a sense of familiarity and put the passengers at ease. Styled after shopping malls, containing several varieties of shops, restaurants, a few theatres, an arcade, and a small park equipped with a viewscreen showing the outside of the ship. Located mid-ship on the upper decks just above the life support and water reclamation systems.

The cryo bays are where the colonist sleep in cryogenic hibernation until they arrive at their destination, which is very rarely not used unless it is a very short trip. Even then, the colonist will likely sleep, minimizing the use of resources that will be put to use during actual colonization of their destination world. These rooms adhere to the cylindrical shape of the ship itself, pods lining the ring-shaped interior wall, as well as the central mast running through the middle of the room, and are oriented with the top towards the top of the ship, and bottom towards the engines as if it would be when landed. Deck plates like those that extend to form the floor along with the rings of living quarters are also used here, to give a surface to stand on when the ship is in landing orientation.

Otherwise, these floor sections are retracted, and gravity is kept to a minimum in this space. Mechanized arms retrieve pods to dock them at a diagnostic station for examining a colonist who is asleep if something seems amiss in their biometric readings. Or in this case, specific personnel are needing to being awakened separately.

The Ferryman uses a freespacer-designed automanufactory to produce mecha, military and industrial equipment, commercial goods, and refine materials. It is located on the lowest levels of the ship. Included are also work stations for the resident engineers and technicians aboard the ship, for working on repair orders, or fine-tuning smaller equipment and parts. A vast array of tools and other repair equipment is kept here, and the compartments are connected to the ship's service ways, and maintenance conduits.

A network of maintenance conduits run throughout the ship built to be large enough for a Junkers to move through and perform repairs and maintenance as needed. There are also smaller conduits for Liquid Allies to perform more delicate repairs. These are lined with cover panels, along with intermittent diagnostic terminals, in which the panels can be removed to access areas needing attention along the conduits.

The NDC Medical Bay uses the standard NDC design for its facilities. To support the colonists and any future population the bay is meant to mimic a large hospital that spans multiple decks. Shaped like a hexagon slipt into six sections with the same number of elevators at the center of the hexagon. Each deck is dedicated to different medical treatments from intensive care units, maternity wards, ERs, and others. From there each of the six sections is divided into a number of rooms, the size depending on the room's purpose. Near crew habitation, in the upper decks towards the aft section of the ship.

The passageways in the Ferryman-class vary greatly with most passages meant for on foot travel for the crew, some are designed around a rail system for moving cargo or harvested materials to where they are needed on the ship, and a small amount at the bow of the ship for ground vehicles after the ship had landed.

There are several dozen NDC Power Armor Bay located in the lower sections of the ship, inside each is several Revenant Power Armor R1-SPA and standard equipment. These come with stations where armor users can step in and mechanical arms attach their armor components or swap as the user requires. This allows for faster deployment and equipment exchange times and is also connected to the armories for immediate equipment retrieval after suiting up. A quartermaster's booth and workshop connects the two, generally not much bigger than a small one-two-person office.

There are shuttle bays located adjacent to each cargo bay in addition to the larger ones in the middle section of the ship. The smaller ones are capable of holding three BW-RTTS "Bolt" while the larger ones can hold eight. These are where all light craft is stored for transport when not deployed for various tasks, from recon, to even transportation and combat purposes when needed. They are utilitarian in design, minimal, and not sleek. This compartment will not see much use hopefully until the colony ship reaches its destination. Finally, each bay has a small flight control station on the upper deck to handle departures, and arrivals, as well as logging anything coming and going via the craft there.

Located adjacent to each block of crew suites, these wardrooms are utilized for a multitude of roles. Entertainment and education are the foremost of these roles. Entertainment rooms are equipped with holotables for computer access and entertainment. Uniformly, all are comfortable in design and are equipped with couches, tables, video screens, and network terminals along one wall. Opposite of this, those used mainly for education include one half of the room being mainly desks with built-in terminals for teaching purposes. Finally, all have a kitchen attached for mealtimes, which is covered by panels when not open to serving personnel aboard.

These kitchens come fully equipped with appropriate appliances, as well as food stocks, which are used to prepare and serve meals to the crew and personnel awake and on duty.

A little closer towards the ship’s bow, on the middle decks, education rooms use holotables with all standard NDC education programs installed.

The Ferryman-class' hull is composed of layered Osmanium and reinforced with ADNR. Much like those craft designed before it, a layer of thick aerogel is packed between this and the hull's sub-layer, allowing the hull to endure more stress, and better handle kinetic and heat energy. The lowest layer behind this is composed of Madite which takes and penetrating energies and recycles them to the ship's systems, as well as adding further support to the vessel's superstructure.

The AI core of the Ferryman-class is a Autonomous Mech AI “EVE” with backup cores scattered throughout the ship. These are connected to network nodes spaced throughout the ship's structure, which connect all devices to the ship's internal data and communications network. This is linked to the ship's comms array as well for receiving and sending distant communications when possible, and these are all powered by a graphene circuit-based mainframe located on the lower decks. There are four main nexuses of these nodes where each subpart of the mainframe can be found.

This handles all the data storage and processing of the ship's systems and information collection components. A smaller mainframe which is located at the back of the cyro-bay, monitors with an installed virtual intelligence, over the sleeping colonists until they are automatically, or manually awakened. It maintains a remote connection with the mainframe, but this is severed if tampering or a ship-wide emergency is detected. It will remain locked until an all-clear verification series of codes are sent to it.

The ship features both standard sub-light, as well as FTL-based communications systems, as well as sensor arrays of similar type. Among these are also atmospheric, and terrain mapping sensors for giving a detailed readout on their destination upon arrival.

Inline aether to plasma drives are used to power the ship. In case of emergencies, BW-PC-1A Plasma Core are used to provide backup power, with most terminals having an internal slot for a BW-PC-1B "PowerPak" if needed to be powered in an emergency. Additionally, the ship features air recyclers throughout the ship, that can clean and filter the air on the ship for up to five years if the majority of the crew is in cryosleep, but only up to a year if the majority are awake and active. Also throughout the ship is a connected fire suppression system that uses flame extinguishing foam, and in the hull is a series of field generators for in case of a hull breach.

The main life support systems of the Ferryman-class are in the middle section, near the fore of the ship. Several backup systems are scattered throughout the rest of the ship. These systems provide several functions, including recycling of atmosphere, humidity control, atmospheric chemical composition, and toxin filtering.

The central waste processing unit of the ship is located in the middle section at the stern of the ship.

The Ferryman-class uses inline aether to plasma drives for its initial thrust, supplemented by Helix Plasma Engines. From there gravity drives located throughout the ship are used for acceleration and maneuvering. This leaves the ship with a low top speed for its size, but it is still able to remain maneuverable enough to pull off the turns needed to avoid large debris and collisions.

The IAPD's are located at the aft of the ship in a circular pattern. The gravity drives are located along the back of the pylons and at intervals on the outer hull of the ship from bow to aft to handle maneuvering needs.

The ground vehicle complement of the Ferryman consists of thirty-six BW-MRGT "Hound" for use after the ship lands.

The Ferryman-class carries a complement of a dozen BW-VTOLT "Hammer" and twenty-four BW-RTTS "Bolt" to assist it with any task required by the crew.

Morrs13 created this article on 2020/04/15 15:40.

Approved by Andrew on 03/19/2021.²⁾