Oh!

Almost forgot!

The long operational lifespans of standard starship designs in canon would logically mean that the overall demand for them among *Vilani* would remain relatively steady but also low. This is a race which fanatically sticks with "tried and true" and also tends toward a low population growth rate (at least as I read canon . . . all those millenia-old, low-pop colony worlds). So the Vilani would seldom explore/create new trade routes (those which would need new fleets of standard ships to support/guard them).

Still, 7+ millennia is rather a long time to be building starships, particularly when these are essentially the *same* ships, built to an unchanging array of standard blueprints. And starships - even Vilani ships - do eventually wear out, particularly when crewed by non-Vilani. Ownership/operation of such overage vessels would thus tend to move toward into possession of less-cautious races and toward the (poor) fringes of current settlement.

The above scenario gives a reasonable (to me) rationale for the existence of collections of junked low-jump starships - broken down for myriad reasons, all of which boil down to "she's just too damn old" - floating in orbit above certain mainworlds along the frontier, particularly those located at the junctions of Jump-1 branch routes.

So . . . one could easily start an ECM or mercenary campaign in such a junction system. The PCs finagle (legally or otherwise) access to the junkers, then take certain bits from this one and other bits from that one and yet other bits from the one over there, combining these within the junker which possesses the most intact hull. Of course, none of these various bits are technically compatible with one another - or with the hulk in which they are being installed - without the investment of a lot of sweat and duct tape and prayer. If they were, this particular trick would have already been performed by somebody else.

And then the PCs get to take their labor of love into jump space on it's break . . . er . . . shakedown cruise. :)