Mega-carrier

Mega-carriers are enormous entirely space-borne vessels consisting of the largest known hyperdrives in the Local Cluster. Their ability to transport everything from billions of tonnes of materials and consumer goods to starships make them a popular, if not ubiquitous method of long distance and inter-circuit travel.

Classification
Containing a variety of subclasses, the name derives from immense cargo capacities, often of volumes of up to a billion cubic metres. Although popular synonyms typically evoke enormous beasts of the sea or sky; titans, leviathans, worldships and the like.

Official distinction of a vessel as a super-carrier is a large, purely-spacefaring vessel of more than a kilometre long possessing a hyperspace drive. Other groups might qualify by operational range, defining a mega-carrier as being any vessel that can travel further than 40,000 light years on a single fuel store.

Common construction
Supercarriers rely on several principles that allow them to be larger than even the most sophisticated of dedicated starships. Dwarfing even orbital structures. All known mega-carriers are permanently space-borne. Constructed and operating exclusively in deep space, interacting with stellar bodies via local orbitals and shuttles, the latter provided either by the local body or the carrier. Secondly, all mega-carriers carry some of the most potent FTL engines in known space. More advanced mega-carriers dedicate propulsion solely to their FTL drives, which allow them to circumvent the use of thrust by entirely using a bubble of warped space-time. Carrier crews typically describe this technique as "drifting at the speed of space."

This combination of never interacting with stellar atmospheres and never having to face accelerative forces puts few limits on their size. Mega-carriers can, theoretically, surpass most conventional spacecraft in size. Mega-carriers can but don't always take the form of orbitals capable of moving orbits or travelling though hyperspace.

Because gravity via thrust-induced acceleration is unavailable for the most part, mega-carriers generally use alternative methods of artificial gravity. The common most either being rotational gravity - gravitational pull via centripedal force - and confined gravity wells such as the pull of a super-high-mass object. Failing either, gravity can be mimicked with magnetic boots and gular exercise to prevent bone and muscle atrophy.

Mega-carriers are a popular method of travelling across large distances as their enormous drives can travel far further than most starship FTL engines. To accommodate riders, it is common for mega-carriers to host moorings where smaller ships can dock, or berths to allow a smaller ship to ride inside the carrier.

Carrier Culture
Because voyages between terminal destinations can span years, possibly even decades, mega-carrier crews have garnered a reputation as a breed of person somewhat apart from broader galactic society. It is not unheard of for crews themselves to form their own communities, with crews having members born and knowing their carrier, with officer corps consisting of a single family unit passing their positions down across generations. Memorialising notable crew members and officers, even sharing myths across carriers. The turnover of freighter crewmen means many freighter crews are multi-species. Picking up whatever hands are available at an orbital and dropping off whoever served their contract for long enough to move on.

Because there is often a hesitation to scrapping a mega-carrier, rarely is one ever put permanently out of commission if it can be helped. Such vessels can be many millennia old, some even older than the modern Imperium. Their commanders likely passing their rank from parent to child over several generations and their bodies having myths or stories formed about them as if they were sentient beings. Stories of unlikely events or memorials to notable carrier captains can make up the complex fabric of many mega-carrier histories while architecture can vary wildly from their original construction based on the adaptations of the crews.

While the fastest and most legendary mega-carriers can date themselves back to the Era of Diamonds, very few such vessels will visually look it unless crews have made painstaking efforts to preserve the carrier's original design. More often though, even superliners - great cities designed to be luxury travelling cities - will mix or even replace their original architecture with newer styles based on the tastes of the crew.

Carrier Cooperatives
The vast resources required for constructing and supporting such large vessels is rarely ever managed by a single individual. Even the richest individuals in the galaxy would find operating a large-sized mega-carrier a significant expense. More often, a mega-carrier's maintenance is carried out by a Carrier Cooperative. Corporations functioning specifically to finance the operation of the galaxy's largest known vessels. Most cooperatives take responsibility for only a single mega-carrier. And are made up of carrier officers as an executive and its crew as stakeholders. Larger cooperatives - or ones backed by one or more wealthy patrons - can afford the expenses to operate multiple such vessels.

Groupings of several cooperatives are known colloquially as Carrier Guilds.

Bulk haulers
The most ubiquitous form of mega-carrier in galactic space. Bulk haulers form the mainstay of universal shipping. Typically such vessels are modular, with a "core" of a hyperspace drive, crew compartment, command module, fuel store, ship moorings and other essentials for operation. Followed by provisions for external modules.

A typical bulk hauler will transport tens to hundreds of bolted-on cargo modules. Depending on the hauler's manufacturer these can be attached to a central rail or bolted to a connector running along the container module. For easy transfer during stops, these modules can be easily and quickly installed and removed based on the profile. Economy is the watchword with bulk haulers, and typically crews will rely on services found on orbitals for rest and relaxation. Bulkers are also only likely to provide gravity to habitation compartments. The rare exceptions being goods known to separate or break down in microgravity conditions.

Utilitarian as they may be, bulk haulers still offer provision for smaller starships to moor and ride the hauler's warp bubble. Amenities are rather sparse compared to other varieties of mega-carrier. Lacking in shopping or leisure beyond pragmatic facilities to keep the hauler crew healthy and sane. With the most common available facilities being gymnasia, cafeterias and bars. Although modules for more luxurious services, including no-frills hotels are made available for hauler captains offering passenger accommodation as a side-service.

Superliners
While the majority of interstellar travel in the universe is done over somewhat short distances; to neighbouring systems or provinces. There are journeys taken which are much longer. Superliners approach design very differently to bulkers. With more solid and contiguous structures, a-grav facilities such as rotational gravity or artificial gravity wells. Artificial gravity may even be required for compartments where liquids are present, such as pools, bathhouses, restaurants and spa facilities.

Larger superliners go even further, providing shops, luxury hotels, even ecospheres featuring a variety of flora in a wide range of available climates. Unsurprisingly, travel by superliner is considerably more expensive for the traveller and overheads for liner crews is larger. Superliners can, as a result, offset their costs by providing their own shipping services alongside their cargo stores to cater to their passengers.

Passengers' reasons for travelling on a superliner vary wildly depending on the individual. While a bulk of passengers are transient, superliners can support a permanent population of travellers. usually retired and wealthy patrons or businesspeople whose employment depends on bouncing form planet to planet. Families of crews are also known to live and work alongside their passengers. Conjuring the image of superliners doubling up as travelling cities. The very largest even hosting services identical to a major orbital or planet-side metropolis.

Ark-ships
While the bulk of mega-carriers in the universe serve as a means of transporting goods or peopel from one part of a galaxy to another, ark-ships stand out as vessels of more or less permanent residency. Distinct from superliners in being places of largely permanent habitation, ark-ships are the real starfaring cities of the Local Cluster. Featuring residential blocks, industrial centres, agriculture, such mega-carriers.

Like bulk haulers, ark-ships typically feature modular constructions. Older arks can be vessels that have been expanded to meet population demands over the span of generations. Depending on method, funds and available materials, these expansions can run a spectrum of organised to chaotic.

Generally, ark-ships fall into two broad categories worldships and star-capitals. Worldships are star-cities in the truest sense. Occupied by either nomadic or permanently space-bound societies and designed with permanent habitation in mind. Such as hydroponics, ice-processing, residential blocks, ecodomes and manufacturing sectors. And can far surpass even larger superliners in size. Worldships can also serve as a means of deep-space exploration by nations such as the Draknid Imperium. Providing a base of operations and a lunching point for scouts and explorers tens to hundreds of thousands of lightyears beyond known commercial routes.

Star-capitals meanwhile are space-travel-capable metropoli usually of imperial allegiance. The most prominent being the headquarters and personal bases of operation of the princeps of the imperial circuits. Unlike worldships, star-capitals are not necessarily self-sufficient. But can be the grandest displays of a nation's wealth. They may not even have large populations, as cities designed specifically to act as political centres are known to lack commercial viability. Their most well known use - headquarters for the office of a local princeps - relying on the star-capital's ability to cross vast distances.