Starsail
A Starsail is any medium-to-large size pleasure yacht, typically crewed by anywhere from 6 to 30 personnel, designed solely for low-security civilian travel through The Cluster.
In the context of Starsail Bordello, the term Starsail almost exclusively refers to the specific ship that the player controls in the game.
The Starsail is an upgradable vessel that is composed of a series of connected Rooms. Each Room provides some unique advantage to the player, while consuming Power and requiring Crew to operate. Some can be upgraded in-place. Almost all Rooms can have duplicates built, for a cheaper cost than upgrading them, at the cost of consuming more Room Slots.
The Starsail has a fixed number of Room Slots that can be populated with Rooms. The number of Room Slots can be increased by upgrading to a larger hull, which is an expensive and irreversible operation that comes with its own unique downsides. Rooms take up a variable number of Room Slots.
Resources
The Starsail has five major resources that the player is required to manage for optimal play:
- Power is generated by Reactors, and consumed by all other Ship Rooms. A Ship Room can not be built if there is not enough free Power to support its cost.
- Crew are hired at various Docking Locations, and are required to operate Ship Rooms. A Ship Room will not function if there are insufficient Crew to operate it. Crew require Supplies and Mess Halls in order to operate effectively, and their efficiency is dictated by Crew Morale.
- Crew Morale is an intrinsic property of Crew, and fluctuates depending on the current state of the game. It naturally decays over time, with various conditions impacting it negatively, and a handful of ways to increase it.
- Supplies are purchased at various Docking Locations, and are served by Mess Halls to Crew to keep Crew Morale high and keep the Starsail operating efficiently.
- Room Slots are a fixed resource that is tied to the Starsail hull, of which Ship Rooms expand into. Room Slots can only be increased by purchasing a larger Starsail hull at a Shipyard Docking Location.
Size
The number of Room Slots available to the player is dictated by the hull size of the Starsail. Larger hull sizes allow for more Rooms to be constructed, but have a negative effect on both Navigation and The Hunt: larger ships require more energy to move, and are easier to spot.