The Pioneer Ecks was designed as a flexible, high survivability craft to act as a focus for exploration and trade with high survivability and multi-mission capability.

Unfortunately, the initial design specifications were highly over optimistic, with many ground breaking technologies that did not work out in practice. Combined with certain oddities in the procurement process, various limitations were discovered in operation.

The design of the Pioneer Ecks was very high profile within the Postmark Design Bureau was was heavily overseen by Marquise Alia Usssuul, head of the Emerging Products Division. Having psionic dolphin in charge of the project did have some interesting effects.

The core of the ship is an unstreamlined cylinder (technically a dispersed structure) to which can be mounted up to 6×550sdt craft by external grapples. The grapples are designed to hold cylindrical craft of specific designs (so that the airlocks and power couplings line up).

The modules are connected in a triangular fashion, three connect to the top half of the ship, and three to the lower half aligned with the decks on the main ship. The modules available include fuel, hangar, exploration and trade. Although any module can be put in any position, certain configurations are preferred. For example, the lower 16 decks of Pioneer Ecks are engineering and if fuel modules are connected here, they can be used to provide fuel for jump for the power plants and direct into the jump drives. Additional fuel modules modules can be connected but their fuel cannot be used until they have been connected to the engineering section. The other modules are designed to integrate with the accommodation decks.

The base functionality is jump-3/2G , a small cargo capacity, backup jump-1 flexible accommodation, good protection and a superior sensor suite. The Pioneer Ecks uses state of the art computer and laser technology. The laser communications division has provided prototype x-ray laser arrays, allowing an impressive (even paramilitary) capabilities of the weaponry. In particular the forward array benefits from the long range and high efficiency.

Pilots are reminded not to treat this ships as either a fighter or a ship of the line since it performs both roles badly.

The accommodation and life support is designed with long duration missions in mind. Of particular note are the negotiation and function rooms. There is also a specially designed owners cabin. This has been designed with waterproofed consoles and capabilities for aquatic occupants (The board of directors including some notable dolphins)

Fuel Module

This module acts as a fuel tank for the main ship. It is fully streamlined and capable of high-G for ease of wilderness refuelling. The fuel modules cannot be used as drop tanks. The fuel shuttles are only designed for short term occupation - long term accommodation is on the main ship.

Hangar Module

This module has limited power and no independent manoeuvre capability. It is designed to carry 1x100std and 2x50std ships with maintenance facilities for one 50std craft. It also holds the crews for these ships.

The complement for the prototype was an albatross long range courier, a 50std fighter and numerous utility grav craft including 4 APCs for use by the security teams whilst planetside (the grav craft usually being transferred in the cargo space of the trade module). the albatross is a jump-3 unstreamlined sphere, with fuel for 8 parsecs. It is intended to relay communications to a frontier depot in the shortest possible time. For missions further from base, an alternative courier, such as the type s is recommended.

It is recommended that missiles are considered for any fighters due to the lack of these systems in the ship.

Trade Module

Capable of independent operation including hypersonic atmospheric operation, this has lots of cargo and accommodation space plus function rooms and an owner's aquarium. The trade module has limited point defence capabilities, an x-ray turret for space use and a high power tunable laser short range turret for planetary use. All of the turrets have integrated lidar trackers, computer control, sandcaster defences and battery power

Exploration Module

Capable of independent operation including hypersonic atmospheric operation, this module has excellent sensor suites and scientific and computer resources. It is able to accommodate several teams of expert trade specialists. Ideal for finding trade in the most unlikely of places.

Noted Deficiencies

There is only one grav lift operating the full length of the ship. Whilst several people can use the lift at the same time (even in different directions in different parts of the ship) they cannot pass each other unless one group steps out of the lift shaft. There are lifts in each of the modules which can act to reduce the problem. (Hint don't let someone who can teleport design the stairs:-)

The ships are designed with their thrust axis perpendicular to the decks. The only impact this has is that the exploration and trade modules are not ideally designed for cargo or people access after planetary landings. This has no particular impact on the exploration module and can be alleviated by use of grav vehicles. Due to the small volume of cargo carried, swapping a shuttle or modular cutter for the fighter in the hangar bay is not recommended.

The module designs (and the self powered laser turrets) were originally intended to use a revolutionary power system known as TAKAFP. When the claimed benefits of low cost and small size for intermediate duration power needs were not met, traditional fusion plants were used instead. This resulted in a significant increase in cost and some decrease in performance but provided for longer independent operations.

The craft were also hoped to be able to use an advanced active structure, where power was used to increase the strength of the ship with no increase in mass. When this technology proved to be unreliable, traditional Superdense was used. Unfortunately, the additional weight of the basic hull meant that the required performance could only be met by eliminating most of the component armour that had been intended to protect the vital areas of the ship. This was exacerbated when it was realised that the original mass calculations for the armour was too low.

The system of using three external fuel tanks to provide jump fuel caused the loss of the prototype ship in a misjump. Telemetry indicates that irregularities in the fuel flow were the source of the problem. It is recommended that anyone operating these ships uses jump-2 in normal operations unless the engineering team has completed the advanced type approval course.

The use of state of the art computers and holographic controls usually causes problems with crew not trained on this technology. Typically they tend to reconfigure it to resemble the dynamic boards that they are familiar with, thus losing many of the benefits. However the suggestion of reliability problems with either the controls or the (x-ray) laser focussing systems has been denied by the company.

The problems of mass and power caused by the materials technology failing has meant that the structural integrity of the ship is marginal compared to its performance. To assist the operation of the external grapples the test pilot devised a system where the thrusters on all of the modules are powered along with the main engines if more than 1G is required. However extreme care is required when doing this because it is possible to run the fuel modules at over 5G if near a planet, at which point the grapples would fail. It should also be noted that the hangar module is unpowered and can be shaken loose by high G manoeuvres. It is also true that the indicated performance implies that 6 exploration, hangar or trade modules are fitted. If there are no modules (or just fuel modules which are very light) the performance of the ship can be pushed beyond its structural integrity.