Beatrice R&D

Originally a deep space exploration corporation under contract by the Federation, Beatrice became fed up with the poor build quality of Hammerhead's ships failing when they would jump to systems either filled with asteroids or already populated by pirates. To resolve this, Beatrice R&D began building their own ship designs with the express intent of being durable enough to withstand short bursts of weapons fire and maneuverable enough to navigate around asteroids to the point where they would be able to do a 180 and plot a hasty retreat jump back home. To help facilitate this, Beatrice hulls are made with a specialized "semi-stealth" hull metal originally used to reduce background signals from the ship when scanning uncharted areas of space and a top of the line FTL engine that allows for quicker jumps.

Upon seeing the general success of their ship designs, coupled with public requests to open their ships to the civilian market, Beatrice is now a major player in the entry level spacecraft game, with the income from ship manufacturing exceeding the profits from their Federation exploration contracts. Their general durability also make Beatrice hulls extremely common in the secondhand market, to Beatrice R&D's chagrin.

Bastion is the homeworld of Beatrice R&D, though the contracts they have with the Federation for deep space exploration exempt them from import tariffs, something they make great use of to keep the costs of their ships down.