Farreach
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Together Advanced

Capitals

How a syndicate designs, builds, hauls and assembles a Monarch capital ship over about a week, and what it can do once it flies.

Capitals are the largest ships in the Reach: a few vast hulls that whole syndicates build together, designed by their builders and recognisable from across a system. Today that means the Monarch, a mobile fleet base about 6 km long. Building one is a group project of about a week: explorers, industrialists, miners, haulers and fighters all have a part.

Steps

  1. Be in a syndicate. Capitals belong to syndicates, not pilots.
  2. An officer starts a project and designs the ship. Open ProjectsPlay to try this
  3. Members build the parts at station industry slots. Open IndustryPlay to try this
  4. Haul everything to a Construction Yard, start assembly, and defend the yard until launch.

What a capital needs

  • A blueprint, earned, not bought. The Monarch Blueprint comes from the Wardens' Writ of Keel, a three-step chain offered to a syndicate pilot with Warden standing of 7 or more, once per syndicate per week.
  • A Span Core, the only power source big enough. Explorers find Span Core Fragments at Choir relic sites; ten of them make a Core at an industry slot.
  • Capital components: dozens of part types, each a real-time industry job of hours.
  • Materials: minerals in bulk, salvage from Cinder's fronts, Span Residue from Choir shrines, and faction parts bought with LP.

The project board

The Projects window holds the design and the board. Officers pick the frame (the silhouette), the manufacturer, the sections that sit in the hull's sockets, the livery and the name. Each section is visible on the hull and changes what the ship does. The design is fixed once assembly starts.

The board shows what's still missing, the jobs that can start now, an estimated finish, and tasks such as "Need …", "Build …" and "Haul … to the yard". Everyone who contributes lands on the ship's contributors' roll.

Industry

Jobs run at station industry slots in real time, even while you're offline. Each pilot runs up to 3 jobs at once. Officers can run jobs from the syndicate's shared hangar. Cancelling a job returns its inputs.

The Construction Yard

The yard is a structure, built as an item and deployed from cargo in Frontier or Void space, away from gates and stations. One per syndicate.

  • Pilots within 5 km move items from their cargo into the yard's hold. Every haul is in the ledger.
  • The yard burns Span Fuel Cells. Without fuel it goes offline and assembly pauses.
  • It has shield, armor and hull. When a layer falls, the yard is reinforced: it can't be damaged and assembly pauses, until a random moment in the owner's daily vulnerability window.
  • Starting assembly is announced to the whole Reach. Expect visitors.

Monarch assembly takes 72 hours of real time while the yard is online. If the yard is destroyed, half of its hold and of the consumed inputs drop in the wreck.

Flying a Monarch

  • Pilots with the role the officers chose (officers by default) board it within 5 km. One pilot at a time.
  • It can't dock, and it can't enter Core space. When its pilot logs off it stays in space.
  • A gate jump spools for 60 seconds, in plain view.
  • With a Refit Dock section, friendly ships within 10 km are slowly repaired, and syndicate pilots within 5 km can refit as if docked, using the Monarch's fleet hangar. Not within 60 seconds of combat.
From the archive
Only a Span Core can power a ship this size. That is why there are so few, and why the Choir guards its shrines so fiercely.

The Sovereign

The Sovereign, a 15 km flagship with a fleet aura, a Span bridge and a Span lance, is planned but not built yet. It will need a Monarch from the same syndicate first.