Created Tuesday 28 January 2014
Yeah, named to be a patent copyright infringement, these are the aircraft carriers of the plebs.
Range
Usually two jumps--there and back again. They're usually sent there with a jump platform and use a stored jump for the return. They can recharge their battery after this stored jump to attempt additional jumps but these are more dangerous for two reasons. One, the deathstar is huge and barely fits through a worm hole, so their accident rate is high. Two, they're likely getting their energy for the additional jumps from stars, so it's less refined and thus less constant or predictable in its settings, also making for an unpredictable (i.e., dangerous) jump.
Design
Huge spheres (whence their names), pleb combat ships are designed in part so that a battalion of them all fits together in a deathstar like a big 3D puzzle. When the deathstar enters, it cracks open and the ships inside unpack into an attack fleet.
Yeah, easier said than done, but not un-though-out. The deathstar opens into a flat shield facing the enemy (um, assuming the deathstar doesn't land in the middle of an enemy around it) giving the fleet time to unpack.
In addition, the space between the ships packed into the deathstar is filled with a cushioning gell (entires aren't always smooth) that sublimates when exposed to the vacuum of space. This creates not only a smoke screen, but a bloom that dissipates any energy beams and even still serves as a reasonable cushion against most projectiles, giving the fleet more time to deploy.
And, yes, entries aren't always easy. Just barely fitting through a worm hole makes deathstars deadly to those inside, too. They're designed to withstand part of them being destroyed by the edge of the wormhole while the rest is buffered from the concussion (e.g., by the gell and the segmented structure of the shell). Of course, nearly any significant damage to the deathstar precludes further jumps.