The Sunfish is a small personal starship belonging to the Neptunian android, EV3R. It is a heavily-modified Martian gunship recovered and refurbished by the Red Raven Towing & Salvage Company. The Sunfish was originally built to be a short-range scouting craft deployed from larger starships to quickly survey areas with its front-mounted flood lights, maneuver around asteroids and break up space rocks with its pair of front-mounted magcasters. It draws energy from a magnetic centrifuge which feeds a set of three primary thrusters, making these starships nimble and very reliable.
EV3R's Sunfish was recovered from the wreck of a Martian warship found heavily-battered just outside the Asteroid Belt. It's been given The Amy Special, where its original design has been heavily modified to go faster and live louder than its base specs would allow. Red Raven's Amy has altered this particular gunship to remove ammunition reserves for its magcasters and replace them with two magnetic centrifuges, doubling the ship's power generation. The rear-central space where the centrifuge originally went has been replaced with a small, very cozy cabin area to make the craft habitable on long voyages. The gunship's outer two thrusters have been moved apart to make room for a pair of salvaged Mercurian "Skipping Imp" racing engines, built to amplify power output through a special reverb-feedback mechanism designed to get more bang out of an engine's buck. These engines are connected directly to the dual centrifuge power houses and route their amplified power to the ship's original thrusters, giving the craft an even burn as it rockets through space. A mid-sized forcefield generator has been mounted above the cabin, and its magcaster cannon array has been routed directly into the twin centrifuges. And to top it all off, the normally-dreary Martian hull has been repainted a bright teal, buffing out and covering up the nicks and scratches that accumulate on all active starships.
The cherry on top of the Sunfish's redesign is its dynamic power allocation system, controlled by a triangular touchscreen Amy installed in the pilot's cockpit. Since the gunship has twice the power generators, its engines, shields and guns have all been wired directly into those power sources, consolidating the ship's original engine-and-ammo reserves into one pool while adding the forcefield as a third route from this wellspring of energy. The three points on the triangular touchscreen represent 100% energy output into thrusters, shields or magcasters, and a simple touch can dynamically reallocate that energy to the three systems in different proportions- for example, dead-center on the touchpad gives the ship a balanced output; setting it close to the gun/shield axis lets it act as a potent fighter punching well above its weight; and placing the array just outside of the thruster corner along the shield axis will disable the cannons while giving the ship a light protective barrier from space debris as it cooks along on its bass-boosted engine array. Amy recommends keeping it in the latter setting by default for a real good time, and mentions that a shift into full-shields can let the Sunfish carry on its thruster momentum and act as a tumbling bowling ball in the event of a sudden debris field encounter. Maximum gunfire mode can be used as an emergency brake in a pinch, and when EV3R is planetside, the Sunfish is balanced to float on water.
There are many choices for discerning starfarers looking to purchase a personal-use starship, but Red Raven has built a reputation for offering unusual ships at affordable prices. By salvaging their parts, Red Raven keeps their overhead costs low and passes the savings on to You! There may be a very small number of ships in their yard at any time compared to traditional used ship dealers, but all Red Raven craft are one-of-a-kind Frankenships built to hot sauce standards- they may require more expert maintenance, but their prices are as hard to beat as their performance. Need a ride? Call Red Raven Towing & Salvage today!