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.
They would be initially fed or 'powered' through Biological Fission Reactors or later, the similar fusion counterpart.
The bioship practice began when the harkas learned how to use their genome editing gland to influence the behavior larger creatures such as predators. The very first bioships ever made invovled the harkas entering the bodies of these large predators. The harkas can influence the immune systems of these large creatures, allowing them entry. However, this was quite morale draining for anyone entering the body of a predator, and efforts were underway to make the interior of these predators cleaner and safer (see: Bioship Growth Process). Many nations spent a lot of resources to make warfare bioships more effective, and eventually the largest creatures were also turned into bioships. At this point, the bioships still had digestive and reproductive systems. The latter would allow them to modify young bioships before they would enter service, so this period saw a time of rapid improvement. They started growing orfices designed explicitly for harkas entry and exit. Sicknesses and diseases were found more easily as the symptoms can be more obvious inside a bioship than from outside. However, the crew could also inherit diseases from the bioship very easily. This led to a number of deaths. The harkas eventually also developed a kind of purposed organism that would cover one's body and keep them cool while inside the hot and humid conditions of a bioship, but this would not come until much later.  
These kinds of bioships eventually became heavily tamed platforms that the harkas could use to grow much more advanced bioships from - ones that lack digestive and reproductive systems. Essentially purposed to reproduce and grow, so the harkas made them efficient and specialise in this. In a pinch, they could also be used as bioships to far less effectiveness than more advanced bioships. This led to a massive bioship revolution.
Some nations began to grow larger bioships, particularly innerworldian nations. The crew and energy requirements grew ever greater, but due to overpopulation issues these bioships were viable in war. Many conscripted soldiers would crew these kinds of organisms in war, most of which would die. Midworldians had the next largest bioships as they still had a lot of radiation land on their belt but they could more easily get a larger number of bioships as their belt was much larger in asteroid count and orbit length. The outerworldians would have few large bioships but they tend to favor more defensive doctrines due to the massive, expansive land which they are more suited to than the other worlds.
During the revolution, many experimental designs were also grown. Many bioships tried to hide their visual, radar or thermal signatures, as that is what most bioships rely on for perception. These kinds of stealth ships did not see a massive amount of sucess, but this concept was used on some specific kinds of ships with specific roles, such as reconnaissance ships. They became harder to find and thus more sucessful as more intel could be recovered. Another notorious design was a bioship that was essentially a single, massive cannon. These had an incredible range and were designed to target asteroid habitats but this line of bioships was soon discontinued as they had a tendency to perform war crimes extremely easily.