Argo Astronautics

Argo Astronautics was designing manned spacecraft since before the corporate wars were even a twinkle in a plutocrat's eye. While other astronautics firms designed unmanned probes, Argo Astronautics prepared with dozens of of theoretical ship designs. The discovery of the alien cache and FTL travel allowed them to quickly reverse engineer the equipment, slap it onto their designs, and rule the starts before anyone could do a thing. During the corporate wars Argo Astronautics supplied every side with their spaceships, raking in the cash with every new conflict.   Times have changed since then, and Argo Astronautics found itself in a bit of a rut. While they once supplied 100% of the NEB's ships, they sunk down to 80%. General Manufacturing picked up their torch with very popular, cheap, and modular ships for the low-income miners, and the Typhoon Initiative famously built their own flagship. There were mutterings that Argo Astronautics would be absorbed by Rowlken Construction and Terraforming in a hostile takeover, but Argo Astronautics spread the rumor that their ships were all specifically keyed with special failsafes to protect their corporation. Nobody was willing to chance it... until the Rebels called their bluff, and the Exodus Fleet mysteriously and stubbornly failed to explode.   Argo Astronautics once had a culture of absolute creativity and pride of manufacture, but their declining stock and misfortunes have led to unfortunate business mistakes. Their sudden push for 'new, better, now' led to mass defections to other corporations or to the Exodus fleet. 100% of GLA/Hybrid defections were to the rebels, making Argo Astronautics administration believe that gene-tolerance was a mistake. Argo Astronautics floundered, lashing out wildly at its employees.   After a brutal corporate war, Shipwright Donald Tremaine was deposed by his daughter, Carmina.  Carmina knew they couldn't compete with GM, so instead they pivoted in directions pioneered by the Ares-Nova Guild.  Their shipwrights started creating bespoke ships for the powerful elite, openly selling them across both NEB and Neo-Human space.  Their ships are opulent, designed down to the smallest millimeter to please their patron.  Amongst the movers and shakers of space, this has led to something of an arms race:  each ship slightly better, slightly larger, slightly better than their rival's, so of course a new one had to be built that was even better!  And Argo Astronautics laughed all the way, filling their coffers like never before.