Living ships

How do you get a living ship? Carry a Void Egg into space. A living ship hails you, and 5 missions later you claim it as a crashed ship on a far planet. It is always class S. Each more ship costs one more egg and 10000 nanites, and from the second ship on you can turn down a ship you do not like and call another.

The first ship

With a Void Egg in your inventory, a ship of living flesh hails you in space, and the missions of the quest Starbirth begin. Each of the 5 sends you to a marked system and planet and asks for one part you craft or grow. Four times the game then makes you wait 22 hours of real time before the next step.

At the end the ship lies at a crashed ship site on a far planet, in your system or one nearby. 5 times it asks for one grown item, and the last one heals its inventory. Then you claim it as you claim any crashed ship.

Where it lands

The game picks the crash site for you. Among the crashed ship sites of the planet it chose, it draws one by the clock, so you cannot choose the site, and nothing tells you in advance which one it will be.

Each site holds one living ship, and always the same one: the site decides its shape, its colours, its name, its supercharged slots, and its base stats. Two players sent to the same site find the same ship under the same name and the same stats. The living ships page builds a living ship from its parts and colours.

More ships

The 5 missions come once. After them, every Void Egg calls a living ship again, and after each warp it may hail you. The same draw by the clock picks its crash site. Confirming the synthesis costs 10000 nanites. Reject the being instead and you keep the egg, and the ship flies away, so you can wait for another one on another site.

Name and colours

A living ship's name has one of two forms: "The" and a word such as Twitching, Starlit, or Haunted before a made-up name, as in The Twitching Yankarsalt, or a made-up name with two letters and a digit, as in Dorozavo PL8. The letters and the digit of one ship can read differently on PC and on PlayStation.

Its body has one of 3 looks: black ridges, stripes in a dark colour, or fine ribs in a muted colour. The head and the belly wear a pale skin colour, such as red, cream, mint, gold, lilac, pink, or white, and the stripes of the shell a darker one, such as green, plum, rust, or brown. The crash site picks them all, and the game picks the site, so turning a ship down and waiting for the next is the only way to another look.

Class and slots

A living ship is always class S: the game never rolls its class, so there is no class left to upgrade.

These are the sizes in the game's table for living ships. The table gives a living ship no range to draw from, so every one opens just these slots when you claim it, and upgrades take them up to the last column.

Supercharged slots

A living ship has 4 supercharged slots, all in its technology inventory, on a grid 10 slots wide and 3 rows high, the same grid as any starship. Its crash site picks them. The ship is class S from the start, so no upgrade adds or moves one: the 4 you claim are the 4 you keep.

Stats

The game's table holds a living ship's base stats for class S only.

A living ship takes its own technology, organs such as the Pulsing Heart and the Singularity Cortex, and upgrades grown from a Psychonic Egg.

Your freighter's fleet can hold living frigates too, and they come from a cosmic whale: organic frigates.

Every other ship plugs in the modules of starship modules.