One-Stop Fantail

The Fantail is a light multipurpose personal spacecraft designed and manufactured by One-Stop. Its light and affordable engineering makes it suitable for travel, hauling, combat, and transportation. Green pilots, traders, and travellers often get their start flying in a Fantail thanks to their low upfront and ongoing costs; Its manoeuvrability, familiarity, ongoing support for pilots, and easy modification makes it appealing for more experienced pilots.

A Fantail, with a pilot for scale

Turnaround of Fantail with landing gears retracted. (15 MB .gif)

The Fantail's design was originally devised as an affordable planetary patrol craft and ultralight fighter for law enforcement. However, the needs of the police forces demanded an interplanetary travel capability to be implemented into the design, as criminals would go into system cruise to escape. With this new parameter, the size of the proposed vehicle expanded to house the necessary components for system cruising, and the extra space gave One-Stop's designers ideas to expand the craft's role. This lead to a highly modular interior, exterior, and components.

Above all else in the design, it had to be cost effective and versatile, without feeling 'cheap'. A balanced light reactor and reliable engines were factored in, as well as aerospace performance in a class of ship usually strictly meant only for spacefaring. An initially bizarre decision was made to allow the Fantail's landing gears to drive in some of its configurations - meaning if the vessel is stranded, damaged, saving fuel, or relocating without asking for an air clearance, the Fantail can taxi on roads.

First time buyers or those able to demonstrate an owner's licence brought from a first-time-buyer receive discounted repairs and upgrades from One-Stop as an affiliate as well as discounted access to public transportation infrastructure such as warp-rails, mass-drivers, and space-gates. This makes the Fantail ideal for light businesses and entrepreneur ventures. It isn't unusual in many cases for the ship to be rented on credit rather than brought all at once.