Earlier Bioships

Before the Hyperion Federation made contact with the Harkas species, some very different kinds of bioships were in mainstray use. Due to the lack of Teleporter technology, there had to be a different way into the internal control stations. This typically would come in the form of a new body enterance that would only open at the signal from a friendly harkas hivemind signal. The muscle blocking this was usually very thick, leading it to be very strong so it did not form a weak spot. The enterance led to an often straight tunnel which would eventually end and open up into this control room which was usually still located at the approximate center for protection. Several of these tunnels would often be run for redundancy reasons, as they would become the crews only escape.
Furthermore, they would be subject to the lightspeed barrier. As these forms of bioships had no form of FTL travel or communication, messages were sent primarily by hivemind (the hivemind transmits signals via photons) which were amplified by engineered organisms to allow the recieving starship to recieve the message from such large distances.
Earlier bioships would also vary much more than current ones, mainly due to the different environments of Harkas they were engineered by. They varied significantly more by role than modern ones depending on which nation or planet constructed them. Some of those in more exotic conditions would often have some very esoteric genetics or physiology in order to survive in such conditions. For example, some Outerworldian bioships required very efficient digestive tracts so some species used some form of 'looped intestine' where a food bolas would pass through the same intestine multiple times.