Prison Hulk

It is a "Space 1666 Convict Transport Module" from Siria Planum.

The really bad convicts (like Dr Immoral, The Red Bulk, Unkillable Blob, The Mad Mahdi, etc) were locked up in these mega-pods and fired out of the Verne-Gun on a one way trip to Ye Outer Limits.

Sadly once FTL travel became common they started turning up again. The magnetic grapple harness (that riveted iron thing) locks onto passing ships and pulls them along. Eventually the greedy and curious open them to find what Lies Within. (Ohhh, bad move Rimmer......)

At this point Tim needs to add code to Host to do Bad-Stuff(tm) to the ship that tractors it. Better have lots of High Guard Rangers aboard. Only Aragorn gonna save you from that bad shit!

These ships are scripted into the game on turn 1 with a start position and vector and "Lost" parameter defined by the Host. "Lost" is a ship stat not actively used yet, but basically if it is set to "13" it means you won't appear for 13 turns.
The Prison Ships float into the galaxy and all traffic around them grinds to a halt until they drift on. The traffic jam effect round them grows as the game goes on. They CAN be captured, at which point they can be driven off somewhere, but it is very tricky to capture them.
The only way you will take it out (capture it) is by sending in huge swarms of Assault Pods. I shall have to try a few simulations to find out just how awful pods are at taking over ships, but the general idea is - very poor indeed.

Passengers : 5000 troops, 100 HG and the rest colonists (prisoners)

Devices: Inderdiction Zone (cannot be turned off). All ships and Wings within (game turn number) of LY run out of fuel at the start of movement. Can only be approached via Assault Pods. If captured, it can be moved (slowly) to become a navigation hazard for someone else.
Weapons: things like Phasors which are quite good at blowing up assault pods. A few sandcasters, turbo lasers, photon torps and stuff on general principles.

STATS:

Hulk Name: Mystery Pod or Prison Ship
Mass: moderately high, they are essentially a space station. Say 8,000.
Max speed: let's say 30
* special ability: auto-repair * ie indestructible
* special ability: immune to Web mines *
Armour: 5,000. Shields: 3,000.
Tech level: 8

Crew: let's say 5,000
Guests: let's say 5,000 troops, 100 HG and 100,000 colonists (ie prisoners)

Weapons
Large: 7
Small: 10
Point Defense: 10

Fighter bays, Pod bays, cargo: To Be Decided
Warp Sig: high. Um. Like a Great Western.
Warp Drag: high. Like a Great Western. With a large mass and poor max
speed, it will be h8ll to move.

Very small vulnerabilities. (1 ?)

Bags of fuel. No cargo or crew (the would just die with the horror anyway).

Special effect: happiness -15% an all bases within 30 lyr (you can hear the screams on the leaky ultrawave transmissions).

Max.Large Size 2000. (This <expletive deleted> is huge.)
I agree with all the above.

No bays of any sort. No hyper, no attack nor evade, nor tractor nor cloak.
Scan range 100. D/T/M = 10,000 / 4,000 / 1,000
Yeah, more or less what I thought

<GREG>....- <DP?>
An interesting idea. I'm not sure how the grapple thing is meant to work, or how it would be in-game. The interdiction is particularly nasty =)