The Nightingale is an E-9 Explorer made to order by the Republic Scouting Service for its first wave explorers-it includes all the traditional upgrades made to the design, plus some interesting tweaks from its designers. A large part of its charm is its versatility and toughness-it's relatively cheap to mod the vessel (as long as you stay within modular design parameters) and some less useful equipment has been stripped out, leaving more space for what have you. It features several completely unique traits-the first is an improved damage control system that mitigates blowback and chain reaction explosions when the ship takes heavy damage-this eases the repairs to critical parts of the vessel in a crunch. The second is a comprehensive ground-sensor/drone package that maps out the immediate topographical features of any area and provides early warning to explorers or simply allows them to search the landing area more extensively. The vessels armor has been reinforced from the top down. On the downside, all this fancy stuff has made the Hull itself had to be reinforced-it became something of a jigsaw puzzle of ceramic, energy dispersing plates which are interspersed through the vessel in pre-set blast reducing patterns that allow no easy modification or replacement. These plates are by no means easy to repair or replace outside of a dedicated space dock.