Organic Frigate

The subject of this article is from the Endurance update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 6 October, 2022.

Organic Frigate is a type of starship.

Summary[]

Organic Frigates are mid-sized starships introduced in Endurance. They are colloquially referred to as "living frigates" and "space whales." This article seeks to cover only the unique attributes of organic frigates. For information on frigates in general, refer to the article on Frigates.

These ships are larger than a single-user starship, but smaller than a freighter; roughly the same size as traditional frigates. With the exception of The Leviathan, they can only be obtained via random encounters in space after building the Dream Aerial. A player can own up to 30 frigates - this includes traditional frigates, and expedition reward frigates such as the Normandy and the Leviathan, once they command a freighter. Frigates can then be sent on expeditions to other star systems. Frigates can be damaged on expeditions; unlike traditional frigates, organic frigates cannot be landed on or teleported to in order to repair them and are instead repaired by feeding them via the Frigates terminal on the player's freighter bridge. Organic frigates will have crew members who can appear on the player's freighter between expeditions.

The frigate fleet is controlled by the Fleet Command Room, located on the freighter that commands the fleet. Building more than one Command Room allows the player to have multiple active missions with different frigates at once.

A list of documented frigates is available at Starship Catalogue - Frigate.

Dream Aerial[]

See: Dream Aerial

With the exception of The Leviathan from the eponymous expedition, players cannot obtain organic frigates without first building the Dream Aerial. The crafting blueprint for the Dream Aerial can only be obtained randomly as a reward for successful frigate expeditions. Sending The Leviathan on a frigate expedition has a higher-than-normal chance of returning with the blueprint for the Dream Aerial if the expedition is successful, and traditional frigates have an unknown, lesser chance of returning with the blueprint. Construction of the Dream Aerial is fairly simple - the recipe is 3x Living Glass and 1x Solar Mirror.

The player is then instructed via the item description to take the Dream Aerial to deep space, and on-screen prompts direct the player to activate their pulse drive. The Dream Aerial will then seek a signal and an encounter with the first organic frigate will occur.

Questions[]

This is followed by a series of hypothetical and philosophical questions asked of the player by the organic frigate. The answers given affect the primary trait of the frigate. Choosing "Wake" or "Flee" will abort the dialog.

This following table lists what effect each answer has.

Question	Answer	Reward
The whale-like creature opens its throat. A resonant lullaby sweeps over me, bathing my consciousness in waves of euphoria. The creature's voice grows distant, as strange visions manifest in my mind...	Look	No influence
	Feel	No influence
	Move	No influence

I am swimming with weightless limbs, across an ocean of stars. A system of celestial bodies pulls into focus. Three worlds invite me closer, yet I know my time here is fleeting. Only one planet can be reached. I tuck my limbs in tight and dive towards...	A bustling alien metropolis	Trade
	Indium-veined mountains	Industrial
	A megafauna ecosystem	Exploration

The creature's lullaby draws me onwards. My body is its body. As one, we swim through the dream. I stand on the exposed surface of a heat-scorched desert. Sulphurous clouds roil above. The sky rumbles, and my suit issues a warning: a firestorm approaches...	Patiently wait and refuel	Fuel
	Gather Storm Crystals	Industrial
	Leave this hostile world	Speed

The creature modulates its song in response to my choice. Though I am shaping the visions, I sense this is %NAME%'s way of finding its own place in our partnership. The images shift. I find myself on the bridge of my capital ship - alarms blaring, power levels critical, all systems failing. The engineering crew need time to make repairs, but opportunistic pirates will likely strike the vulnerable freighter at any moment...	Conserve power	Fuel
	Divert power to hyperdrive	Speed
	Signal authorities for help	Trade

The creature's song unfurls into language; I find myself fluent in every major alien tongue. Time passes unconventionally, and I spend a rewarding day training with and learning the customs of the...	Gek	Trade
	Korvax	Exploration
	Vy'keen	Combat

The visions darken and intensify. I creep through a derelict freighter. Grotesque egg sacs hang from the ceiling, oozing and quivering. The sacs are many, and I am alone.	Extract a sac to study	Exploration
	Shoot the sacs	Combat
	Make a tactical exit	Speed

A distress signal leads me to a remote sector of space. I discover a pilot adrift - their ship in tatters, their fuel tank dry. As I draw near, an outlaw makes to flee the scene...	Gift the pilot spare fuel	Fuel
	Mine fresh tritium	Industrial
	Seize the outlaw's fuel	Combat

I am lost in an unknown galaxy, unfamiliar stars all about. A threat crackles in my ears: "surrender your cargo, or die". The hostile starship is well-armed, its loadout superior to mine. It would be a tough fight...	Negotiate a deal	Trade
	Shoot before they do	Combat
	Outmanoeuvre them and flee	Speed

The song is beginning to fade. I gaze across the horizon of a breathtaking planet. Exotic herds graze peacefully on the fragrant grass. Sprawling underground caverns brim with tremendous wealth. I could linger, or leave this world as I found it...	Discover every species	Exploration
	Wring out every resource	Industrial
	Pause only to refuel	Fuel

The highest number stat will be the primary trait of the frigate. In case that two stats have identical values, they are chosen based on this priority:

Priority	Stat
1	Exploration
2	Speed
3	Fuel
4	Trade
5	Industrial
6	Combat

Hiring[]

Once the Dream Aerial has been completed and the first organic frigate attained with it, all future organic frigates can only be obtained through random encounters while pulsing in space. As with traditional frigates, in order to recruit an organic frigate, the player must have less than 30 frigates of any type in their armada. After finding the first organic frigate, the Dream Aerial does not need to be in the player's inventory to encounter others, and it serves no further purpose as it no longer has the summoning ability that it did for the first one. Contrary to early rumors, it also does not have a "cooldown" period. Players can safely discard the Dream Aerial without consequence, or they can transfer it to another player who has yet to acquire their own and it will work for them.

If the player cannot afford the organic frigate encountered, they will not be able to interact with the Accept button. There does not seem to be any difference in appearance rate between classes - which is to say, S class organic frigates do not appear to be any more or less rare than A, B, or C class organic frigates. The pricing structure is as follows:

S-Class: 37,500,000 - 62,500,000 units
A-Class: 26,250,000 - 43,750,000 units
B-Class: 15,000,000 - 25,000,000 units
C-Class: 7,500,000 - 12,500,000 units

Locating[]

Locating organic frigates can be frustrating, as it is entirely dependent on chance. In order to narrow down the number of false positive encounters, it is recommended that players use Anomaly Detectors whenever possible, as this removes the extremely common random trader encounter from the list of possible events. There are two ways to use the Anomaly Detectors to locate organic frigates, each with their own pros and cons.

Efficiency - The most efficient way to locate organic frigates is to simply use an Anomaly Detector, pulse for the variable handful of seconds until an event is encountered, stop, deal with the event, and then use another Anomaly Detector and repeat the process until the player meets an organic frigate. Early testing shows that there is no lower bound to this and an organic frigate can theoretically be encountered at the first random space encounter, and there is presumably no upper bound either. The most encounters without an organic frigate being met during testing was 61. The downside to the efficiency method of using Anomaly Detectors is that it rapidly burns through them, and they are relatively difficult to obtain in meaningful quantities without save editing or duplication glitches.

Economy - The most economical way of locating organic frigates is much more time consuming, but massively cuts down on the number of Anomaly Detectors needed. The player can easily get one organic frigate per one Anomaly Detector this way, though it will take considerably longer. When a random event appears on the screen, the icon in the bottom right of the HUD will indicate whether or not it is an organic frigate. Instead of the usual "anomalous event" or "rare item detected" with a variety of icons, an organic frigate event will display "Whalesong detected" with a unique squid icon. If the event is not a Whalesong event, simply continue to pulse. It will expire after 20 seconds have elapsed, and a new event will be encountered almost immediately. Repeat until the organic frigate is located. This can also be used to farm Atlas language words, as there are two events, each with a unique Atlas icon, that will teach the player a word.

Note: Organic frigates can be encountered and recruited in any system, including uncharted systems and abandoned systems. Outlaw systems, as well as all stellar classes, work for recruiting organic frigates.

Expeditions[]

Frigates can be sent on daily expeditions to acquire resources, units, nanites, and other rarities. Any expedition with an organic frigate has a chance of returning with one or more Psionic Eggs, which are used to hatch into upgrade modules for Living Ships. For more information on frigate expeditions, refer to the respective section in the article on Frigates.

Stats And Traits[]

Like traditional frigates, organic frigates have stats divided into four classes and a number of modifier attributes with flavor text that grow and change with each rank up of the ship. All Organic Frigates use the same ship type icon, having the same description ("Organic Vessel") regardless of Rank and have the same type ("Temporal Aberration"), but they are still internally divided into the five standard Frigate types. Combat, Trade, Exploration and Industrial types will still have the normal +15 class modifier, though it appears Support types do not spawn with their -15 fuel bonus.

Unlike traditional frigates, organic frigates can be fed foodstuffs including raw ingredients in order to change, enhance, or downgrade these modifiers. Preliminary research has determined that food is internally divided into 65 groups, where any food in a group will have the same effect. Attempting to feed a Frigate food from the group that it currently has the stats from will display an error. However, the effect is not generic, instead being derived from the seed value used to generate that specific Organic Frigate. Therefore, while feeding a Frigate food from a particular group will always have the same effect on that Frigate, this does not allow any conclusions to be made about what effect that food would have on any other Frigate. This research has also determined that there is no link between the complexity or unit value of a food type and the stats it gives: raw ingredients will give some Frigate seeds better stats than cakes.

Organic Frigates appear to always begin with 0 completed Expeditions regardless of their Rank, allowing them up to 60 additional points over their base stats. They feature the same traits as regular Frigates in terms of bonuses, though with different names. Notably, Organic Frigates do not have the class-locking system which restricts more powerful versions of certain Traits on conventional Frigates: for example, an Organic Frigate whose primary stat is Combat is able to have -9 Fuel Cost Traits, which are normally restricted to Support class Frigates. They also do not appear to be capable of spawning with or acquiring negative traits.

Organic Frigates do not have the secondary functions of a conventional Frigate: a combat-type will not assist the player in combat even if it has the best combat stat out of the combat Frigates present in the system. Other types lack the resource generation and scanning capabilities of their conventional equivalents.

Types and Parts[]

Organic frigates are known to come in five different basic types, each with procedurally generated differences in carapace color, tentacle color, space barnacle placement, prominence, and color, and some variance in their body style.

Image	Type	Notes
	Leviathan	Original Leviathan-style with a multitude of long curly tentacles.
	Mono-leviathan	notable for having only one primary tentacle in the rear, thicker and wavier than the traditional Leviathans
	Runt	mass of short, stubby tentacles in the rear
	Gimp	lack discernible tentacles
	Ethereal	easily identifiable by the antimatter trail tentacles in lieu of tangible, organic tentacles
		detailed list of various frigate parts

Some have what's known as an anti matter trail.

 some are rarer than others

Additional information[]

The data for the influence of the questions for the first organic frigate are extracted from the 3.99.1 version of the SPACEPOIMISSIONTABLE.MBIN game file.

Release history[]

Endurance - Organic frigates were added.