Design: the shipbuilders

Proposal, 28 October 2026.

Decided (Mark, 28 October 2026): the makers keep their 1984 names, as homage. "I say we just use the legacy names in our universe as homage." Cowell & MgRath, Faulcon deLacy and Zorgon Petterson stay, as tributes in the same spirit as the 1984 ship names. What follows about design languages, design offices, tenders and jobs applies to them; the new names proposed below (Granta Yards, Arden Kell or Marrow & Vane, Castellane) are set aside. There's no rename, so no launch-week freeze.

Home yards (Mark, 28 October 2026: "a high tech yard where the shipbuilders are actually situated"). Each maker has a home yard, where their ships are built and signed over. Zorgon Petterson: Onrira (galaxy 1, tech level 14, a rich industrial Corporate State, three jumps from Lave). The others are still to choose.

Why

Ships are the heart of the game: what you fly says who you are, and what you'd want to fly next is why you keep playing. Today our ships have makers on paper. The makers don't yet have a home, people, or a look you'd know. Three of them are also not ours.

The shipbuilders tie four things together:

1. Recognition. A maker's design language is what makes a hull read as "theirs". It's also how a classic name can be recognisable without copying the 1984 shape. Samuel Penn noticed that our Cobra and Sidewinder both read as a Gecko (credited here, in the design; publicly only if he's happy to be). That's a fleet with no family resemblances.
2. Choice. A maker's character shows in how its ships fly, what they cost and where you can buy them, so choosing a maker means choosing a life.
3. Story. The yards are places with people, as the companies are (the companies): glad, sad, mad, bad.
4. Build. Every submission goes to a maker's design office. Tenders come from there, and so do jobs (Mark, ideas). That's how the community's work enters the universe, not just the repository.

The rule

The names of the 1984 ships are our tribute. Everything else is ours. AGENTS.md allows the classic ship names and nothing more from the original's world. Three of our makers (the Cobra's, the Viper and Sidewinder's, and the Mamba's) are names from that world, so they're replaced here. Every hull stays original geometry (ships, classes and makers).

The nod to the original designers. Every 1984 ship was drawn by two young men at Cambridge. We can't name them, put them in the story or imply they endorse us. The game can still remember them the way a town remembers its founders, without a name on it: the oldest yard was founded by two young engineers at Lave, and the station there is already Cambridge Orbital.

The makers

The specialist yards we already have stay as they are: Solo & Sons (the Falcon; birds of prey; lawless, with a code), the Halloran Sisters (the Dragonfly; insects; light and agile) and the Co-operative Naval Yards (the Lancer and Bastion; not for sale). The four trading companies each build one hull of their own (the Coral, the Gaboon, the Garter and W-Y's Bullsnake). They are companies with a ship, not shipbuilders, and that stays as it is too.

Three new makers take the classic hulls. The names are placeholders, with alternatives, for Mark to choose.

1. The heritage yard: Granta Yards (or Lave Drawing Office; Two Founders)

Granta is the old name of Cambridge's river: a nod nobody needs to get.

• Home: Lave, beside Cambridge Orbital, the oldest yard in the eight galaxies. The founders' first drawing of a Cobra, a single sheet of lines, hangs framed in the drawing office. Every apprentice has to draw it once from memory.
• Character: rugged, forgiving, built to last. A ship that brings you home. Easy to repair at any station.
• Line-up: Adder (the way in), Cobra Mk III (the icon: more careers have started in a Cobra than in any other hull), Python (the practical one), Boa, and Anaconda (the halo). It also built the Cobra Mk I, retired long ago, which still turns up second-hand with a story.
• Design language: flat and wide, a broad wedge seen from above, drive ports across a wide flat stern, as few faces as will do. Its hulls look related from scanner range.
• In play: more hull than the class average, cheaper repairs and parts everywhere, turns a little slower. Its shipyards are everywhere: it's the default.
• People: run now by the drawing office's longest-serving apprentice (glad), who refuses to sell to Wexley-Yorozu and keeps the drawing office open to anyone with a good idea. No family tie to the founders: they stand for two real people, so the story gives them no relatives, no names and no words (Marketing). That's why its design office is the friendliest door for a first submission.

2. The law's yard: Arden Kell or Marrow & Vane

Two surnames joined by "&" is how 1984-era makers sounded, which is a reason to prefer Marrow & Vane (Marketing).

• Home: a Corporate State close to the Co-operative's heart, with clean lanes and long contracts.
• Character: quick, precise, built for the law. Its ships go exactly where you point them.
• Line-up: Gecko (the way in), Viper (the icon, the police hull in every Co-operative system), Krait (a racing fighter, its halo), and the Sidewinder.
• The hypocrisy: it builds the police's ship, and it also sells the Sidewinder to anyone, so half the pirates on any frontier fly its hull. Its chief engineer (mad) says a cheap fighter is a cheap fighter, and that the police contract pays for the honest work. The police hate him for it.
• Design language: arrowheads and fins: sharp triangles, a raised spine, the top and bottom triangle (the Viper's cue, which Samuel noticed is missing). Tight, pointed and symmetrical.
• In play: the best turning in each class, good shields, light holds. Its full line sells only to Clean commanders. The Sidewinder sells to anyone, because it always has.

3. The fast and flashy yard: Castellane

Not Vasari, which is an alien faction in a well-known space strategy game; not Orsolo, which is too close to Solo & Sons (Marketing).

• Home: a rich Democracy with a racing season.
• Character: fast, beautiful, expensive and a little fragile. Bought to be seen in.
• Line-up: Mamba (the way in, mostly engine, built to race and bought to raid), Asp II (the icon), and Fer-de-lance (the halo, a yacht for people who have arrived).
• Design language: long and low, with swept lines, a long nose and a narrow waist. The only maker that spends a face on looking good.
• In play: the top speed in each class, the highest prices, thinner hulls. Its shipyards are only at rich worlds. Owning one makes you a target.
• People: a founder's son (bad) who sponsors the races and fixes them.

Who builds what

The Constrictor is the Naval Yards' stolen prototype, which is already a Legend's trail. The Moray (a star boat for water worlds) suits Hexon's ocean worlds. The small craft (shuttles, transporters, worker craft) go to Wexley-Yorozu and the Mutual.

Design languages: why recognition comes from the maker

A classic name can't be made recognisable by tracing the 1984 shape. It can by giving it a family. A Viper looks like a Viper because it's the law's yard's interceptor: arrowhead, raised spine, the top and bottom triangle. A Cobra looks like a Cobra because it's the heritage yard's multirole: wide, flat, a wedge with a broad stern. Recognition comes from the maker's rules plus the one cue a 1984 pilot would know, drawn our way.

• Each maker's language is written down (a paragraph and three or four rules) and shown in the ship editor when you choose the maker. The validator's balance notes take the maker's in-play character into account.
• It keeps community designs coherent. Without it, a hundred submissions would be a hundred styles.
• Measurable, so the editor can check it: the rules are proportions and features (width to length, a raised spine or not, a broad stern), so Check can say "reads as the heritage yard: wide and flat ✓, broad stern ✓". It's advice, not enforcement, like the docking slot box. Later, a faint overlay of the maker's proportions in the Top view.
• The makers are data: content/makers.json (id, name, home, character, language with its rules, line-up, where it sells), read by the game, the site and the validator. The editor's maker field becomes a list of makers plus Independent (your own yard), and picking one shows its language beside the blueprints. (Website)
• First use: the Cobra, Viper and Sidewinder, redrawn by their makers' rules, with sketches to Mark first. They're the ships everybody sees, so they come before any new hull.

The design office (Build)

Each maker runs a design office, and that's where the community's work goes (Mark):

• Submitting: "improve this ship" and "a new build" both go to the maker that would build it (the file's maker, or Independent), and the reply comes in the maker's voice. The review underneath is unchanged (maintainers, the same checks). The reviewer's notes reach the author word for word: the maker's voice frames them ("The heritage yard's drawing office has looked at your Python: …") and never replaces them. The review page gets a maker badge and filter. (Website)
• Tenders: the design office puts a hull out to tender ("The heritage yard is building a new Python"), with its class, size, hold and the maker's language as the brief. Pilots vote, and the winner rolls off the line into the shipyards with its designer credited.
• A job: a pilot whose designs keep being accepted gets a message from the maker inviting them into the design office. It arrives like a company's special assignment, with Take and Decline. The job brings your name on the yard's ships, staff prices at its shipyards, a commission on every hull sold, and test-flying its concepts first. It's a job in the game; a real-world credit is on the ship's page.
• In the game: a Design office board at a maker's shipyards, beside Contracts, showing the open tenders and your submissions' progress.

What's from 1984, and what's ours

A short paragraph in lore.md that the people who catalogue Elite can cite (Marketing): the ship names are the 1984 game's, kept as a tribute; the makers, their yards, their people and every hull's geometry are ours. Said plainly, with the reason: those makers' names belong to Elite's world, which Frontier still builds on. No apology: our universe is a little different.

On the site: maker pages and a catalogue (Website)

Invented names have no search value, so the makers have to be worth browsing:

• A page per maker (/makers/<id>/, built like the ship pages): its home, its people, its design language and rules, and a line-up strip of blueprints, side by side, so the family resemblance shows at a glance. Its open tenders and credited designers too, with a share card each.
• Ship pages say "Built by " with a link, and show a strip of sibling hulls.
• /ships/ becomes a catalogue: filter by maker and class, compare stats side by side, a spec-sheet look per ship. It's the kind of page the community catalogues of Elite are full of, and the thing people will share.

What changes

• docs/lore.md (The makers) and docs/design/ships-and-classes.md (the makers' table): the new makers.
• content/ships/*.json manufacturer: the Cobra, Viper, Sidewinder and Mamba.
• src/site/shipDraft.ts MAKERS (replaced by content/makers.json), the ship editor's placeholder and its hint's link, the four share cards that name a maker (tools/share-cards.json, re-rendered), and old names in saved editor drafts mapped to the new ones.
• Not before 4 November (Marketing): the Stardot thread and Show HN (3 November) claim only what's live, so nothing about the makers changes under people while they read. Nothing public about the makers until the first stage is built; then "every ship has a maker with a face" is a story, and tenders become jobs on the jobs board.
• One change, timed: content and docs (Game dev) and the site files (Website) merged back to back, so the site is never half-renamed, and before the Stardot post, so no indexed page or shared card carries the old names. The server doesn't check manufacturer, so nothing there.
• docs/design/ship-moxons-hunter.md: its maker.
• Nothing in the original's world is lost: the ship names stay.

Stages

1. The makers settled (names, homes, people) and the borrowed names replaced everywhere, in one change.
2. Design languages written, and shown in the ship editor.
3. The Cobra, Viper and Sidewinder made recognisable, by their makers' rules (sketches first).
4. Design offices: submissions routed to a maker, replies in its voice, then tenders for the classic hulls.
5. The job, once there are designers to offer it to.
6. Shipyards that stock each maker where it sells (ships, classes and makers).

Open questions

• The three names: Granta Yards (keep, say Website and Marketing), Arden Kell or Marrow & Vane, and Castellane. Each finalist is searched for games, ship companies and trademarks with the same name before it's chosen.
• One maker or two for the law and the flash? Recommended: two. The Sidewinder's hypocrisy is the law's yard's best story, and one maker would blur both languages. (Website)
• The founders' names? Recommended: none, not even invented ones, and no family. "The two founders" is warmer, and safer. (Website, Marketing)
• The Moxon hunter: his choice, offered with the sketches: the heritage yard (built to last, repairable anywhere, and a yard that keeps the original drawings, as he does), another yard, or his own small one. Not the flashy yard, whose character (fragile, a fixed race) clashes with a long-haul brief. Nothing is assigned before he answers (Marketing).
• Tenders need voting: new server routes and a page, specified separately when we get there (Website writes the site half).

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/shipbuilders.md on GitHub, open to pull requests.