Classic player ship classes
These are the stock player classes in classic GE 3.2e. A new player receives an Interceptor; later ships can be purchased at Zygor. Prices, limits, and capabilities come from the distributed MBMGESHP.MSG source. A sysop can change them. See Ships for the role of a ship in play and Ship class configuration for editing the definitions.
At a glance
Shield / phaser gives the highest Mark the class can install, not the equipment currently installed. Warp is rated cruising speed; scan is range in displayed distance units. Price is in cash (C's), and kill points are the class's value to an attacker.
| # | Class | Shield / phaser max | Warp | Cargo (tons) | Scan | Price (C's) | Kill pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Interceptor | 10 / 10 | 10 | 1,000 | 100,000 | 65,000 | 750 |
| 2 | Stealth Fighter | 15 / 15 | 20 | 2,000 | 200,000 | 500,000 | 1,500 |
| 3 | Heavy Freighter | 5 / 5 | 8 | 60,000 | 50,000 | 40,000 | 500 |
| 4 | Destroyer | 15 / 15 | 25 | 5,000 | 100,000 | 600,000 | 2,000 |
| 5 | Star Cruiser | 15 / 15 | 25 | 3,000 | 200,000 | 700,000 | 5,000 |
| 6 | Battle Cruiser | 19 / 19 | 30 | 6,000 | 250,000 | 800,000 | 5,000 |
| 7 | Frigate | 12 / 12 | 30 | 12,000 | 250,000 | 1,250,000 | 5,000 |
| 8 | Dreadnought | 19 / 19 | 50 | 40,000 | 500,000 | 2,000,000 | 10,000 |
| 9 | Freight Barge | 6 / 3 | 15 | 200,000 | 200,000 | 3,000,000 | 5,000 |
Equipment and durability
Classic torpedo and missile entries are capability flags, not launcher counts or starting ammunition. Other systems lists permitted systems and planetary attack ability. Acceleration is the class setting; DAMF describes resilience for applicable damage, with 100 as the baseline. The final column is the class's unprovoked-Cybertron-fire flag followed by its configured simultaneous pursuer limit. Cybertrons will fire unprovoked on classes set to "Yes," the pursuer value is how many Cybertrons will be dispatched to pursue that ship. Although no classes are configure this way by default, a class set to "No" but with a positive pursuer limit will attract Cybertrons, but the Cybertrons will not fire unless provoked.
| Class | Torpedo / missile | Other systems | Acceleration | DAMF | Cyb fire / pursuers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interceptor | Yes / No | mines, decoys, jammers, zippers | 5,000 | 90 | Yes / 1 |
| Stealth Fighter | Yes / Yes | mines, decoys, jammers, zippers, planetary attack, cloak | 5,000 | 90 | Yes / 2 |
| Heavy Freighter | Yes / No | mines, decoys, jammers, planetary attack | 3,000 | 200 | No / 0 |
| Destroyer | Yes / Yes | mines, decoys, jammers, zippers, planetary attack | 5,000 | 90 | Yes / 2 |
| Star Cruiser | Yes / Yes | mines, decoys, jammers, zippers, planetary attack, cloak | 10,000 | 100 | Yes / 2 |
| Battle Cruiser | Yes / Yes | mines, decoys, jammers, zippers, planetary attack, cloak | 3,000 | 125 | Yes / 2 |
| Frigate | Yes / Yes | mines, decoys, jammers, zippers, planetary attack | 10,000 | 125 | Yes / 2 |
| Dreadnought | Yes / Yes | mines, decoys, jammers, zippers, planetary attack, cloak | 15,000 | 125 | Yes / 2 |
| Freight Barge | No / No | decoys, jammers, planetary attack | 1,000 | 200 | No / 0 |
The source also defines class 41, the Sysopian Death Star, intended for Sysop use rather than ordinary play. It cannot be bought through NEW SHIP. To use it, a Sysop can run SYS CLASSLIST to find its class number, then SYS CLASS followed by that number to change their current ship's class. With the default class table, the command is SYS CLASS 41. Its exceptional values, including Warp 255 and 100,000,000 tons of capacity, are not part of normal ship progression.
Earlier player ships and class changes
The 3.2e lineup above was not the original one. M.B. Murdock's release notes record several changes to player ships:
- 2.0a (April 1989): Version 2 introduced multiple ship types, described as ranging from the Light Freighter to the Dreadnought. The Light Freighter was the original free starting ship. See 2.0a and 2.0e.
- 2.0c–2.0g (May 1989): The Heavy Freighter gained the ability to attack planets in 2.0c: previously freighters had the cargo space to carry an invasion force but could not launch it. Fighter weight was reduced, and ship carrying capacities were increased again in 2.0g. See 2.0c and 2.0g.
- 2.0e (May 1989): New players began receiving an Interceptor instead of a Light Freighter so they could fight Cybertrons from the outset. This was a change to the starting ship, not proof that the Light Freighter was immediately renamed or removed: the 2.0i notes still mention Light Freighters, Heavy Freighters, and Interceptors separately. The 2.0e notes also say all ships began with Mark-1 phasers and shields. See 2.0e.
- 2.0h (May 1989): The release notes say Hyper-phasers were no longer identical across ship classes: Interceptors now had a harder time fighting larger ships. Phaser Marks already existed, but the notes do not specify how class and Mark affected hyper-phaser damage. See 2.0h.
- 3.0i and 3.0o (1992–93): A Sysop-only Sysopian Death Star was added in 3.0i. The class table was substantially expanded in 3.0o, allowing sysops to define more classes and specify equipment eligibility and Cybertron targeting behavior per class. See 3.0i and 3.0o.
- 3.1b (July 1993): The Freight Barge was added to the standard table as a very large-capacity ship for supplying planetary invasions. Offensive weapon damage was also revised to account for ship size, including changes to phasers and hyper-phasers. See 3.1b.
- 3.2c (December 1993): The Freight Barge was reduced in size and stripped of much of its offensive equipment after proving too effective as a fighting platform. The final 3.2e class still permits a Mark-3 phaser, but has no torpedo, missile, mine, or zipper capability; it retains its invasion role. The 3.2c release also introduced a separate DAMF value for each class, decoupling durability from cargo size. See 3.2c and MBMGESHP.MSG.
In the surviving 3.2e code, hyper-phaser damage is multiplied by the attacker's installed phaser Mark and divided by a factor based on the target class's tonnage; the attacker's class also limits which Marks it can install. The surviving release notes do not establish when this Mark-based calculation was introduced, or whether the 2.0h change already used class-dependent equipment limits rather than a separate class multiplier.
A surviving earlier ship configuration lists Light Freighter in class slot 2, whereas the distributed 3.2e table puts Stealth Fighter in that slot. Because that older file includes training-game material, it does not establish the exact stock lineup of a particular main-game release. The release notes do not say precisely when the Light Freighter disappeared from the standard selection or when the Stealth Fighter took its place. Ship tables were also customizable by sysops, so a class missing from the 3.2e default was not necessarily absent from every game.
See also
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