Design: the Dragonfly

Design, 24 October 2026. Agreed: shape A, wings that fold by themselves. Not built yet. Modern only; Classic keeps 1984's fleet.

Mark asked for a ship like a dragonfly, and named it after one. The film ornithopters are someone else's design, so this one starts from the insect itself (homage rules): no flapping, no film names, nothing traced. Insect-winged craft are an old idea (da Vinci drew them); the shape and the story here are ours.

The ship

• Name: the Dragonfly (an ordinary word, like Cobra and Mamba before it). There's a nice echo in NASA's Dragonfly, a rotorcraft bound for the air of Saturn's moon Titan.
• Shape: a long, segmented tail ending in the engine; a deep middle where four narrow wings root; a short head with two big canopy domes like a dragonfly's eyes. About 63 m long, 69 m across with its wings spread (a Cobra is 50 by 68).
• The wings aren't for air. There's none to fly on (the Falcon's notes say the same). Each wing is a radiator vane with a manoeuvring thruster at its tip: spread, the tip thrusters give it the tightest turn in the game; folded back along the tail, it's slimmer and faster, but turns like anything else. It spreads them by itself below a third of its top speed, and folds them above.
• Sunlight on the wings (Mark, October 2026). Spread in sunlight, the wings charge the fuel cells (solar-powered fuel-making, a little at a time):
  • By distance: strong near a star, weak at a planet's distance, nothing in deep space or in a planet's shadow (sunlight falls off with the square of distance) (to tune: about 1 LY of fuel a minute close to the star).
  • Only when slow: the wings spread below a third of top speed, so charging means drifting in the light, not flying.
  • Gentler than scooping: slower than skimming a star with fuel scoops, but no heat and no risk. The patient pilot's way to refuel, and why explorers and smugglers like it: it can top up wherever there's a sun, station or not.
  • And the rest: shields and laser charge also recover faster with the wings spread in sunlight.
  • Balance: slow enough that fuel prices and scoops still matter.
• In neo-vector: each wing is a few glowing lines with fine veins across it and a small dark cell near the tip, so it reads as a dragonfly from any angle. Iridescent blue-green.

The sketches

Three shapes, rendered in the game's own style, each from three-quarter, from above beside a Cobra, and from the side (regenerate with the scripts in the review):

• A, long-tailed: the classic dragonfly. Slim, unmistakable, and the most like the insect.
• B, compact: a short, sturdy body and broad wings: more fighter than insect, and closer to an aircraft.
• C: A with its wings folded back for cruise, like a damselfly at rest. Not a separate ship: what A (or B) looks like at speed.

Chosen (Mark): A, with C as its folded state. It's the one that reads as a dragonfly at a glance, and the fold between A and C is the ship's character. The wings fold and spread by themselves with speed.

What it's for

• Role: an information runner (Mark: data, not goods). A 6 t hold is too small to make goods pay, but data takes no hold at all, and everything about the ship favours it:
  • Speed is what data is worth. Prices and news travel at the speed of ships (trading), so a fast ship with fresh reports arrives ahead of the news wave: market reports, news and saloon tips carried to traders who'll pay for them, and to companies who want to know first.
  • Survey data fetches most far from where it was gathered (exploration); a fast ship that can charge in sunlight reaches the far, stationless systems and brings it home.
  • It doesn't look worth robbing. Pirates scan holds and go for valuable cargo; a Dragonfly scans as nearly empty. Unless someone's told them what it's carrying: then it's a target (a story hook).
  • Sensitive data wants discretion, not capacity: sealed reports, shipping schedules, the Ninefold report. One-person, can't-be-late runs, delivered by settlement pad if nobody at the station should know.
  • Express contracts pay for time, not tonnes. Scouting second; planet-pad smuggling (below) the risky sideline. Light hull and shields, one missile.
• In a fight: it doesn't out-gun anything; it out-turns everything. Spread, it can stay inside a Viper's turn. Folded, it can run.
• Who sells it: the Halloran yard and stations near it. Mid-price (to tune: about 90,000 Cr), less than a Cobra: it's a specialist, not a workhorse.

Who makes it

Halloran Sisters, a family yard on an agricultural world's moon, two sisters running what their father started. They name every hull after an insect: the Dragonfly first, and later perhaps the Lacewing and the Skimmer (they'd say "the insects were here first").

• Nell Halloran (glad) builds them, and still can't believe people buy them: she signs every wing spar.
• Ide Halloran (sad) does the books, and knows the yard is one bad year from being bought out by Wexley-Yorozu. Every Dragonfly sold is another year.

A story hook: Wexley-Yorozu's offer for the yard, and a commander who flies a Dragonfly deciding whether to help the sisters keep it.

Its arrival (Mark: introduced properly, not at random)

The Dragonfly doesn't just turn up in traffic one day. Its arrival is an event, with its people:

1. Word first: news from the Halloran yard's region ("Halloran Sisters fly a new hull: something with wings"), and talk in the saloon: a courier who's seen it on trials, and doesn't believe what it can turn inside.
2. The launch: the first Dragonfly leaves the yard on a set day, from the clock, for everyone at once; the news carries it across the region at the speed of news.
3. The first runs: Nell Halloran wants it proved, so the first express data contracts in the region are flown by Dragonflies, and commanders see them working: arriving ahead of the news, slipping past pirate packs.
4. Then it's part of the galaxy: Dragonflies in traffic near the yard, and (once ships can be bought) for sale there, with Ide Halloran's thanks for every one sold.

Building it

1. The ship file (content/ships/dragonfly.json): the chosen shape, with the wings as separate parts so they can fold.
2. Folding: the wings swing between spread and folded with speed (a few tenths of a second), and the turn rate follows them. NPC Dragonflies do the same.
3. In the game: introduced as above (news, launch, first runs), then flown by couriers near the yard and, once ships can be bought, sold there.
4. The sisters: a small story line, later.

Later: down to a planet (Mark, October 2026)

In air, the wings would really be wings, so the Dragonfly is the natural ship to take commanders down to a planet. There's nothing below the orbit yet (planets are wireframe globes, and flying into one is fatal), so this is a staged idea, in exploration:

1. Skimming the upper atmosphere: only a Dragonfly can dip into a planet's outer air on its wings. A glowing horizon, the surface far below as a wireframe grid, survey data worth more, and a place to lose pursuers who can't follow.
2. Landing pads: settlements with a pad to glide down to, like docking: the Arkwrights, miners' settlements, frontier outposts that only a Dragonfly can reach, with contracts to match.
3. Real surfaces, to fly over, land on and explore: a project the size of the exploration road, much later.

Smuggling (Mark): a settlement pad on the surface never sees the station, so there's no docking inspection (at a lawful station that's a 50–80% chance, the black market).

• Settlement buyers: a frontier back room that pays well for what the station won't let in.
• The risk moves to the sky: customs cutters patrol the upper atmosphere in lawful systems. A hot, fast dive leaves a trail they can follow; the skill is a slow, quiet descent, best on the night side in the planet's shadow.
• A Dragonfly's job, at first: the only ship that can make the run, which gives smugglers a reason to want one despite its small hold.

It glides and banks on long, still wings, never flaps.

Open questions

• Buying ships isn't in the game yet (every commander flies a Cobra): the Dragonfly arrives in the galaxy first, and goes on sale when buying ships does.

Think something here should change? Say so on the ideas board, where others can vote it up, or email hello@witchspace.org.uk. If you code: this page is docs/design/ship-the-dragonfly.md on GitHub, open to pull requests.