Shih (ship)

The Dark left the Windfall system not only isolated, but also ill-equipped for ship building, since it lacked both a wharf and capable engineers. For nearly four decades, the inhabitants largely had to make do with an aging fleet of stranded ships that were taken by surprise by the Jump Gate shutdown. The few remaining engineers in the system were mainly occupied with maintenance, but experimented when they could with custom ship designs. They slowly learned the craft, and became creative with the resources they had to hand. Most of their custom creations were built from repurposed luxury mass traffic vehicles, spare engines disassembled from the leftover fleet, and various parts from scrapped ships that were beyond repair. It was only in 821 (NT), after the Jump Gate to Avarice opened, that a proper supply of resources allowed the engineers to finally abandon their custom creations and develop blueprints for mass production. Arguably, those blueprints still bear the hallmarks of the haphazard designs of the past.

In response to the turmoil caused by the introduction of the Lux fighter, the Syndicate leadership commissioned Scrapyard engineers to develop a heavy fighter. The Syndicate plan was for it to outperform the light fighters, forcing them off the field of combat, while being too expensive for smaller gangs to afford in significant numbers. The Scrapyard engineers based their design on the Kyd, and in 824 (NT) proudly introduced the heavy fighter, the Shih. With a strong focus on durability, the Shih manages to power up to three shield generators. Although they managed to double the firepower of the Kyd, the engineers failed to increase it sufficiently to match that of the major Commonwealth factions. Despite its shortcomings, the Shih was regarded as a major success, and was widely deployed to protect Syndicate property and territory, further securing their power and stabilising the system.