Nebulae

The Confederacy designed it for contested gas clouds where lighter harvesters get chased off — heavy hull plating and a default armor package that makes it the hardest industrial ship to kill in its class. The armor drops speed to a crawl, which the engineering committee accepted after calculating the fuel savings: slower ships burn less fuel per jump, stretching the tank far beyond what faster harvesters can manage. Dual gas collection arrays handle throughput while the hull absorbs whatever the neighborhood throws at it. Pilots who want speed can strip the plate, but the Nebulae was built to outlast problems, not outrun them.