The 30 Most Famous Starfighters in The Outer Arm.
By G.G. Nubb
With Contributions from V.Y. Black
According to our survey these are the 30 most well known small space craft in the Outer Arm Sectors. They are in order from most the recognizable and well known ship to the least well known ship. The ships are named here by the Call Signs used by Galactic Scouting Guild.
Name Faction Score (Percentage) Purpose EPROM Dynastic Army 70.001 Ground Support CLUP Dynastic Army 65.6667 Ground Support Ithaca FTO 52.343 Space Superiority Magma Lance Dynastic Interests 47 Space Superiority Blade/Origin Dynastic Interests 44.2272 Scout/Skrimisher Vanderbelt FTO 32.43 Ground Support Newton Dynastic Interests 29.3232 Gun Boat Hatefist Alien/Ska'rug 29.321 Patrol Ship/Gun Boat MAG Dynastic Navy 28.32823 Boarding Craft Gest Dynastic Interests 28.3252 Pursuit/Interceptor Buckey Alien/Ska'rug 25.329 Space Superiority Assembly Dynastic Navy 25.309 Scout/Courier Glue Dynastic Navy 25.312 Electronic Warfare Fulcrum Union of Worlds 24.8 Gun Boat Rook Union of Worlds 23.45 Attack Fighter Crossbow Alien/Ska'rug 23.434 Ground Support TAB Dynastic Navy 23.43 Pursuit/Interceptor Viking Alien/Ska'rug 23.3009 Ground Support TAK Dynastic Navy 22.4 Attack Fighter TONG Dynastic Navy 21.3333 Space Superiority Horseman Alien/Ska'rug 21.32 Pschyological Warfare Orpheus Union of Worlds 21.221 Electronic Warfare Cornonis-7 Alien/Cornon 20.6667 Space Superiority Glasgow FTO 15.2321 Escort Fighter Nice FTO 15.3333 Courier/Scout Norfolk FTO 14.3333 Pursuit/Interceptor Ulysses Union of Worlds 12.2 Space Superiority Klaxon Dynastic Navy 11.2333 Bomber Thunderclap Union of Worlds 11.21 Bomber Joint Dynastic Navy 4.3333 Attack Fighter
It is easy for us to forget the magic of space travel. Not just because we have gotten to old for magic, but because the idea of space travel has become pedestrian. Even gravity born men and women who have never put on a vacuum suit and never felt the undignified liberty of weightlessness are saturated with the stories. Our brains have uploaded so many tales and images of outer space that each of us feels like an expert. We should forgive that armchair expertise. Because taking space travel for granted frees up our imagination and ambition for greater things. Yet I want to make a moment for us, and in that moment recognize the audacity of space travel. Because that is where the magic lies. What is magic if not audacity? Any time a man or woman looked at the laws of nature or the limits of their birth and chose to ignore them, they were casting a spell. The first thing that enchanted me about space travel was not that it defied some natural law, but was that every ship had a story. When I realized every ship I saw was going somewhere, and that every ship had a purpose I was awestruck. That is what this article is about. It is not about the ships, it is not about the outer arms, it is about where those ships are going and where they have been. Most of all it is about the mark they left in my mind and the minds of the people that knew or thought they knew ships.
Behind the Numbers: Asking the Wrong Question
When I set out to write this list I thought it would be easy. I was raised from birth on the Gamydeida orbital spaceport in Rabbit Sector with a bedroom view of the internal hanger. I spent hours as a kid, offline, watching small space craft through my view port, and every time I would see a new one I would tag it and go back online to read up on it. My favorites were the Sunracer Scout ships used by the Scouting Guild and the MAGI Assault Shuttle used by the Dynasty's Zero G marines. I kept lists of every ship that came into that hanger.(Skip to the Ships)
An FTO Norfolk makes a hard burn as it exits the atmosphere on New Fatlands.
From the beginning I knew what list I wanted to write; I had been writing it since I was 6 years old. I wanted a list of 30 small spacecraft that brought back the feeling of awe and wonder I had gazing out my window at the ships of the Outer Arms (Rabbit Sector, Dragon Sector and their spinward frontiers). I naively thought this list would be the same as any list enumerating the 30 most common ships in the Outer Arms. Thus, I called up my assistant, an autonomous A.I. construct named Tangent. Tangent had previously managed a worldwide epidemiology program for decades before deciding to scale down his processing power and get into journalism. Based Tangent's experience with large sets of data, I thought Tangent would have no problem telling me the 30 most common ships. Armed with that list, I could provide detailed and personal write-ups of each ship (after all I spent my childhood as an armchair astronautics experts).
We ran into two problems right away. First Tangent wanted to know what I meant by a small spacecraft. This is a fair question, but it required we define two variables: small and spacecraft. In terms of spacecraft I was looking for autonomous ships capable of space flight. I didn't want drones: programmable or remote operated. I wanted vehicles that employed an intelligence when they functioned. Thus, I wanted craft that required a crew or were equipped with an autonomous learning A.I. But even than I ran into another problem, because these criteria could also be met by some satellites, probes or buoys.
In order rule out these non-craft we defined spaceships as reusable physical constructs that due to design or function had to travel through outer space in order to deliver material between multiple locations. This material could include military ordinance, cargo, people, programs information, or energy. As for small, I told Tagent a small ship is what I say it is when I point to it. May time keep Tangent, because he was game for this one. He showed me several dozen starships and had me classify them as large or small and then he developed an algorithm to select the type of ships I wanted (The details of the algorithm are unimportant because we didn't use it for the final article).
Behind the Numbers: Our First Attempt
With this information, I set Tangent loose on the FTO's and the Dynastic Marshall Service's spacecraft registry for the Outer Arm. We then enumerated the ships and determined which were the 30 most common. The first list of 30 ships was a huge disappointment.
The 30 most common ships according to that list were all short range shuttle pods. The kind of ubiquitous little taxi ships you see drifting around space yards and ports. What was even more disappointing was that numerically there wasn't much difference between the ships on the list. For example, the OldErie-84 is a cargo skiff designed and manufactured by the FTO. It is used to carry equipment and parts to repair crews working on the outside of ships and space stations. It is the most common small craft in the Outer Arm and it makes up 0.001997% of the ships in the Outer Arm. The second most frequently encountered craft is the LeVeL-000067. The LeVeL-000067 is a surface to space shuttle manufactured by Dynastic Interests in the Mayflower system. It makes up 0.001996% of the ships in the Outer Arm. The 30 th ship on the list made up 0.00198% of the ships in the Outer Arm.
Furthermore, I had never heard of the LeVeL-000067 and this because it is only found in the Mayflower system. This was true for 23 of the top 30 ships in the Outer Arm. They were found only in a single system. What was more disturbing is that no Union of World craft were listed. A third of the Union controlled systems are in the Outer Arm and I wanted a list that spoke to the unique character of the Outer Arm.
So using the same data set we changed our parameters for selecting the top 30. Tangent's solution was a little more advanced than my summary here, but essentially we cross-referenced the list of ships so that our output would only be ships found in more than one star system. When Tangent gave me the list, we both knew we had a problem because the most common ship the Outer Arm by these measurements was the Peoria.
As a journalist I recognize fully how import the FTO's fleet of Peorias is to the Outer Arm and humanity in general. For those of that you that don't know, (and most you likely don't know) the Peorias are courier ships that keep all the interstellar communication open. The Peoria is an A.I. operated craft that has Jump-D drives (thus can move faster than light) and a huge memory bank. Peorias are continually jumping from system to system transmitting or downloading their data packages and then uploading new data and carrying that information to the next system. Your next letter to Grandma would take decades to reach her home planet if it wasn't for courier ships like the Peoria.
But who has ever seen a Peoria? Who will notice when the Peorias are replaced by the next generation courier ships? These ships do not physically interact with the people of the Outer Arm, and the people of the Outer Arm do not physically interact with them. Furthermore, I am sure that by using this cross reference system the Peoria will be the most common ship all over human space. That is a terrific honor for the Peorias I am sure, but is this not the article I wanted to write about the Outer Arm. Also, this new list did not include any Union of World ships either, and 27 of the ships listed were cargo skiffs or tugs that served redundant functions. And again we ran into the problem that most the data we were getting came from densely populated systems such as the Mayflower system.
The OldErie-84 deserves more than a passing mention. There are more of these short range cargo ships registered with the FTO and Dynastic Marshall's service than any other space craft in Rabbit or Dragon Sector. According to Tangent when he and Dr. Nubb started this process there were 23002 OldErie-84's registered in the Outerarm and on the day we submitted this article there were 23058. She is a reliable craft and easy to operate.
There are several factors that have lead to her popularity. First she is a relatively low-tech class craft. Her control systems are built using basic electron circuits made from conductive metals. This means that most of her spare parts can be fabricated on worlds with nothing more than 20th century human technology. Aside from her matter converter reactor and her the magnetic field projector (tractor beam) there is no advanced computer or circuitry systems. The OldErie's reactor is another selling point, because as a coarse matter converter it does not require refined fuels. The ship can be fueled with water, methane, graphite, nitrogen or any other nonmetal compound. Additionally, she just has very a versatile design that encouraged innovation. The forward thrusters can be rotated 360 degrees to give the ship good and nuanced mobility. The underbelly as landing claws that can allow the ship to stably interact with other masses in space, and the cargo bay opens on either side of the ship to provide a stable working platform for boutique mining operations or in-space repair duties. Finally, she is capable of making atmospheric landings. Although, her atmosphere handling has been compared to that of paper airplane in the rain she can get to the ground reliably and safely. She can also get back spaceside with the help of a launch tower. The OE-84 can break away from up to a 2.2 level gravity with her endemic configuration engine configuration. She is hard working ship and most populated planets have at least one if they have any ships at all. -V.Y. Black
The Catalog Image of the OldErie-84
(Art by Karanak http://karanak.deviantart.com/)
Thus, we decided to change data sets. Instead of working from starcraft registration records we got access to copies of the sensor buoy records from the FTO, the Galactic Scouting Guild (GSA) and the Union of Worlds. The Dynastic Navy would not share their sensor buoy records. These records would tell us the most common ships moving through any system. When Tangent gave me the results I was again a little disappointed that the Peoria was the most commonly encountered ship. But there was something very striking about the records. A large portion of the ships encountered by the buoys had encrypted transponders: they were military ships. When we had access to overlapping records from the Union and Scouting Guild it became clear that the Union had redacted information about the movement of their military ships even with encrypted transponders. Additionally, there were numerous 'unknown' craft encountered by sensor buoys.
Because we didn't have any information about these military ships half of this top 30 were cargo skiffs and mining ships. This was not a list of 30 ships that have would have sparked any imaginative fits in a young boy. But the list seemed to have core of truth to it. So I took the list to my editor and asked him what he thought.
Behind the Numbers: What I see and what I remember when I look out the view port
On this occasion, I arranged to meet my editor in person. But this required for me to make the 3 AU journey from the orbital station above Gamydeida-3 to the Galactic Scouting Station on Gamydeida-7. I took a shuttle. I know. It was a Cord-0009713. The Cord-0009713 is a Dynasty made (as the name suggests) low gravity sub-light cargo shuttle. This one was partially converted for cryo-passenger transport. With my mind on starcraft I took careful note of all the ships I saw before entering cryo-sleep outside the station and upon walking up at the scout base 13 days later.
Around Gamydeida-3 I noted all the ubiquitous tugs, crew shuttles, cargo skiffs and fueling scows. But I also observed a brand new squad of Magma Lance space superiority fighters from the station's fighter cap making their way to patrol Gamydeida Prime's orbit, and there was a GEST-9091 combat shuttle belonging to the Dynastic Marshall's service leaving Gamydeida-3's atmosphere. At the scouting station things got more interesting. The Scout's station is on the surface of Gamydeida-7 a frozen airless little rock that still had too much gravity for the Cord-0009713 to land. So I had to take a thruster Taxi from my parking space in orbit down to the station, then exit the Taxi in a vacuum suit and walk across the tarmac to the station's public airlock. As the taxi pilot and I were crossing the Tarmac an Orpheus-7 buzzed the station and then landed next to my Taxi.
The Orpheus is a fast ship, with a C-drive and thus it wasn't even on my shuttle's sensor array when I parked above Gamydeida-7. There is something so badass about a ship that can flip into orbit at near C and then land on a planet's surface. The pilot of the ship floated out the airlock in a skintight tech level 10 or higher vacuum suit before the Orpheus's thrust trails had even dissipated. I wanted to share my awe and amusement at this sight with somebody. I glanced at the Taxi driver, a retired scout named Uwell, and saw through the transparent faceplate of his suit that he was not pleased with actions of this pilot.
The three of us entered the air lock together and while Uwell and I were stumbiling out our standard issue short use vac suits all the Orpheus pilot felt the need to do was whip off her gloves and helmet. 'That is an impressive ship,' was all I said to her as Uwell and I hung up our bulky suits in the lockers.
She shot me a smile that I didn't understand and said 'Good to see ya again Uwell' before gliding away.
After she was gone I looked at Uwell and said ' I wish I could afford to fuel a C-drive ship like that.'
'Could! If you don't mind strapping yourself to a damn planet killing bomb.'
I looked at Uwell for a moment and then realized what he meant with that hyperbole. 'You mean that still has an anti-matter/matter reactor in it?!?' I looked out a nearby view port at the Orpheus on the tarmac and felt a strong tingle of fear. I knew ships still used those reactors, but I always thought that was something that happened in frontier systems and on wild Union worlds. I never thought I would see an anti-matter driven ship in Gamydeida or somebody brazen enough to fly so deep into the heart of Dynasty controlled space. As I pressed my nose against the viewport I whispered to myself 'Baddass'.
A Union of World's Ulysesus. Note the four anti-matter projectors on either side of the craft and the tiny gun well in the nose. They seem awfully close together to me. -V.Y. Black
Behind the Numbers: Why we read list articles.
In few a minutes I was meeting with my editor. I had sent him the list before I had left Gamydeida-3 and he was now sitting at the Stations cantina reviewing the list with Tangent. He asked me how my trip was and I related to him what ships I saw around Gamydeida-3, how I wished the Cord had enough thrust to negotiate a gravity well and about the Orpheus parked a kilometer away. He looked me and as if responding to the recollections regarding my trip said that he didn't think the list I had would make a good article. He explained it this way.
People don't read list article to learn anything. For example the GSA did a of survey of several dozen readers that had download one of three list three articles: the Thirty Greatest Battles of Earth's Petroleum Era, the Thirty Fashion Trends We Wish Would Come Back and the 17 Greatest Vacation Spots Ruined By Their Own Popularity. Based on follow-up interviews that assessed the reader's knowledge base we found that the readers chose articles regarding topics they were already familiar with. We looked at the meta data from their media software and found that readers spend more time on the screens when the list was enumerating a topic with which they were already familiar. This was best exemplified in the third list because we included two fictional vacation destinations. The average reader spent more than 300% less time on the pages describing things of which they were ignorant. People want to read a list article that repackages things they already know or articles that confirm things they think they know. G.G. Just think about the way you looked at ships on this trip.
Tangent and I took this advice and developed a new plan. We compiled a larger list of ships, this included all the named ships that came up on our previous top 30 lists generated from sensor logs and ship registry. Though, we excluded short-range cargo ships from our list. So the LeVel, the Peoria and the CORD were on the list but the OldErie-84 cargo skiff was not. Then Tangent went through the StarShip design and Marketing trade publications and pulled up another list of 30 ships based on how frequently the craft were referenced. Finally, Tangent went through the Scouting Guild's encounter memos and pulled up a top 30 based on frequently they were encountered by Galactic Scout over the last few hundred years. Finally, I add a few of my favorite ships to this list including the Sunracer long-range scout ship, the Magi Assault shuttle and the Boldwen mining scout. We combined all these lists into one and in the end we had a database of 147 ships.
Behind the Numbers: The Survey and Final Product.
Tangent took that list of 147 ships and assembled a survey. The survey presented the subject with images and information about the 147 ships, and then determined whether or not the subject could correctly identify the ship.
The Gest also known as The Bull is the principle craft of the Dynastic Marshall's service. The IDF hull is actually a single molecule, and the hull is constructed to specification as an entirety before any other hardware is attached to it. This makes the super structure very tough but very difficult to repair. The Gest's design is sometimes classified as a trapezoidal design and sometimes as an oblong design.-Tangent
(Art by Karanak http://karanak.deviantart.com/)
We sent out via direct messaging over 500 million copies of this survey all over the Outer Arm to registered Deepspace Traders and registered Vacuum Miners working in the Outer Arms, we got permission to contact people via the Union of World's veteran's association and we sent one to every member of FTO in the Outer Arms. We included this survey in issues of the Galactic Scouting Almanac and, full disclosure, we got sponsorship from the FTO and the Dynastic Interests. They allowed us to imbed this survey in their advertisements for starships. This survey was actually embedded in advertisements for the Magma Lance and the Ithaca (two starfighters which ended up in our top 30). But with that sponsorship money we were also able to include the survey in the trivia pings provided by the Navigation Buoys in both Rabbit and Dragon Sector. By the deadline we had received 643,741 responses to survey and from that data we assembled a list of the 30 most famous ships in the Outer Arm. I was both pleased and surprised by the list.
First of all I was pleased because the top 30 list did not include the Peoria (Figure 1). Secondly, I was not expecting that the most recognizable and famous ships in the Outer Arm were the EPROM and the CLUP. Both the EPROM and the CLUP are ground support craft manufactured employed by the Dynastic Army. To my mind the CLUP barely counts as a starship, but I had tweaked the numbers enough already and decided to let the data stand. I was also surprised and pleased that six of the thirty ships were not human craft.
Figure 1: This represents the same data presented in Table 1. The yellow bars signify craft produced by non-human factions. Green Bars are ships produced and used by the FTO. Red Bars are produced and used by the Union of Worlds. Periwinkle colored Bars represent ships used by the Dynastic Navy, Sky Blue represents Dynastic Interests, and the Light Blue represents the Dynastic Army.
However, the raw survey results were not enough. Being a straw poll we were guaranteed a responder bias. Looking at the breakdown of the survey responders it did appear that we encountered any of the intuitive factions biases because the most recognizable ships were part of the Dynastic Army and they were the second smallest group of responders (Figure 2). While we only had 43 Ska'rug responders to the survey, there were five Ska'rug ships in the list (Figure 2).
In addition to this demographic information, we wanted more data than pure recognize-ability. Thus, Tangent proceeded to confirm the results by seeking follow up interviews with responders that fit our FFFDS criteria. FFFDS stands for responders that have Flown, Fought, Fixed, Designed or are the Ship in the case of A.I.s. From the followup interview requests Tangent sent out he was able to communicate with 672 humans, and 1,201 A.I.s that fit our FFFDS criteria. Tangent was able to use the interviews to generate the relative ranking of the ships' abilities included in the list below.
After the list was compiled I realized that even with the results of Tangent's interviews I was not familiar with all the ships on the list. Thus, I reached out to my former mentor V.Y. Black. V.Y. Black is over 600 standard years old. He had worked for the Union of Worlds as an intelligence agent before the Migration Wars and then as a military commander on world of Neo-Accra once during the wars. He has since worked as a Galactic Scout, a Free Trader, a Diplomat, a Journalist and is currently an instructor of history at the FTO academy on Lostvirginia. I gave the list to V.Y. Black and he offered to write up summaries for the ships with which he was familiar. Between Tangent, V.Y. Black and myself we attempted to give each ship the personal touch it deserved.
Figure 2: Using the same color scheme as in figure 1, we have broken down the origin of the survey responders. What is notable here is that although the majority of the responders were from the Union of Worlds, the Union of World Military Craft were not the most recognizable ships. The absolute number of responders is located on the bottom axis and the left-Axis is how the responder identified themselves when taking the survey.
Overall, I was little disappointed that the Outer Arm doesn't remember my Sunracer Scout with same energy that it remembers the Nice, but our list is not an editorial. This list embodies the current collective consciousness of the Outer Arm. These are the ships that excite the minds of children with their noses' pressed against view ports. These ships have earned a place among the top 30. Perhaps in a generation the Peoria will be on the list but not yet. This list is limited to the exceptional ships such as the Joint or the unforgettable ships such as the Thunderclap.
Honorable Mention: The Peoria
She fit all our criteria and she likely travels more than any ship on the list. But I can see why she is not well known. She doesn't even look like a ship.
