It's a Normandy class dropship, intended for orbital drops of soldiers and light equipment into combat zones. Measuring 30 metres in distance, it can carry about 100 soldiers in full combat equipment and up to 10 light combat vehicles. Since it's intended only for short transports, it has no SPEC drive, and no shields. Instead, it uses a powerfull booster to reach orbit and escape from possible threats in space. While it's not very good at space-maneuvering, it has wings and side-boosters which allow it to maneuver avay from any threats on land. Due to it's limited usefullness, it has to be deployed in massive numbers to have an effect on the battle on the surface. Because of that drawback, it's normally only used for first-strike invasions and emergency reinforcement&supply drops where gathering larger dropships in sufficient time is impossible. After dropping it's "cargo", it can support the land army by providing navigation intel and, if necesarry, assume the role of a heavy atmospheric fighter. Since it's main booster is too weak to reach the escape velocity of most of the planets, and spends most of it's fuel (which it can't hold much) to get to the surface, it has to be returned to orbit by a larger craft.
As I said, this is my first try at modeling without a tutorial.
; --no 'design' needed at all: Just make the system generator leave out most systems, and only populate a central are out of the full universe, just so that there IS a "fronteer with the unknown". And you could ask "where's the patch?", and that's a fair question, but I could also ask "where's the post from the VS powers that be, saying "Yeah, we like that idea, would you like to implement it?, we'll help you..." ". Nowhere is where; got the silent treatment. But in any case, the idea was so simple it almost needed no implementation at all. Well, 'explorer upgrades' would... And I'd be willing to help model those, even for Vegastrike the game, in spite of my divorce; but nothing's going to come of this, either; you'll see...