Author: An Author In Charge

Author, occasional commentary on the world, and often busier than I thought was possible.

Alaska-class Fast Battleship

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The Alaska-class fast battleship class was built for deep-penetration reconnaissance and counter-logistics missions for the Battle Fleet. A combination of factors gave the class a reputation for being “built to go into danger.” Deployed just before the Time Of The Five Emperors and revised during the Hegemony era, the Alaska-class would remain in service for years, only being replaced by the Guernsey-class fast battleship late in the Hegemony era.

Design History

The role of the “fast battleship” class always seemed to require compromises, and the Alaska-class initially seemed to have the fewest compromises. Until it was discovered that it had made no compromises.

At 65,000 tons fully loaded, the 500m-long hull of the Alaska-class was built around six triple turrets mounting 9cm positron beam cannons. This weapons loadout would give the class both incredible range and massive “shock” damage against most targets. Backing this up is sixteen 700mm missile tubes, firing the Mk-28-ModB (and later ModC and ModD) missiles with large magazines and a 410m spinal metaspace cannon with a 45cm aperture, allowing it to do more damage per hit than the Resolute-class battleship.

The class mounts heavy active point defense, reflecting the need to deal with Alpha Rho-class escort battleships with their heavy missile loads. Backing up the heavy point defense is fourteen Rodeo-class missile decoys and an extensive jamming array based around the AN/SG(N)-51 jammer system with six “spike” jammers. Passive defenses are evenly balanced, with the class being the first hull during the Imperial era to use battle chrome armor, with the Hegemony refitting the class with molecularly-collapsed battle chrome armor when the technology came into existence. Shields were considered fairly “light” by battleship standards, but against most threats the class was heavily shielded.

Along with a full ECM suite, the ship mounts enhanced stealth systems with a high-grade military hypersink for IR damping and hull modifications to make it harder for active sensors to track the ship. Like the Renown-class, the Alaska-class mounts a triple extension VLBI array that gives the class an effective 850/1600/2450 meter aperture size, allowing extremely long detection ranges against even stealthed ships. The ship has high acceleration, with 350G acceleration prior to Hegmony-era refits that would give the ship 365G acceleration. With four drive rings, the Alaska-class can do 6 LY/day in slipspace, with a Hegemony refit giving it a 6.5LY/day speed.

Like all capital ships, the Alaska-class carries a “light” marine battalion, with a company-sized powered armor “morgue” in the Imperial era (a full battalion “morgue” would be installed in the Hegemony era). For support in long-duration missions, the ship is fully capable of atmospheric fuel scooping and material printing (with quantum fabricators and harvesting drones installed in the Hegemony era).

The Alaska-class also carries full fleet command facilities, including quarters and a fleet bridge for senior staff. The class had three major revisions, the first being the replacement of the earlier AN/SG(N)-49 with the AN/SG(N)-51 ECM array. The second was the conversion of earlier versions of the ship to the new Hegemony standard with antimatter reactors and quantum fabricators. The third and final revision, prior to the deployment of the Guernsey-class was revisions to the armor systems on the ship.

Service History

Like the Renown-class, the Alaska-class was built near the end of the Alpha Wars and saw most of its combat deployment during the Time of the Five Emperors. The class would earn a reputation as a “pocket dreadnought” because of the heavy weapons load and significant defenses against long-range attacks. 

This class would remain in service through the Hegemony era, even as the Guernsey-class would replace it. It would remain in second-line service even then, only being fully retired and reclaimed as the Azores-class began to replace the Guernsey-class. 

The only major variation on the hull was the Essex-class fast escort tender, which would remove most of the positron beam cannons and all of the missile launcher to replace them with semi-external racks for sixteen Viper-class ACVs. A small number of hulls would be modified for the Ghost Fleet mission during the Hegemony era, namely the removal of the antimatter reactors and replacement with fusion reactors, and secondary modifications to improve long-duration mission operations with the class. 

General Characteristics

Dimensions: 500 m x 45 m x 40 m

Mass: 65,000 tons (consistent across all flights)

Power Systems:

2x Yoyodine Type 48 Gravity Fusion Reactors (Imperium Era, Flight I-V)

2x Yoyodine Type 47 Antimatter Reactors (Hegemony Era, Flight V-VI)

2x Yoyodine Type 47-A Antimatter Reactors (Hegemony Era, Flight VII-VIII)

Propulsion Systems:

8x Q-Coils (350 G acceleration Flights I-V, 360 G acceleration Flights VI-VIII)

4x Slipspace rings (6 LY/day, Flights I-V, 6.5 LY/day Flights VI-VIII)

Endurance:

180 days on stored supplies, fuel scoops (Imperium Era)

180 days of antihydrogen at 90% power, theoretically unlimited material endurance (Hegemony Era)

Crew:

One Class VII AI, three Class VI AIs, 30 Officers, 50 NCO, 350 Able Spacers, 300 Marines, backup bioshells and cybershells (Imperial Era)

One Class VII AI, three Class VI AIs, three Class V AIs, mixture of uploads and biological crew equaling 500 crew members, 300 Marines, backup bioshells and cybershells (Hegemony Era)

Armament:

1xMetaspace Cannon, 410m accelerator tunnel with a 45cm discharge aperture.

18×9 cm positron beam cannons in triple turrets (two dorsal, two ventral, one port, one starboard.

16x700mm missile tubes with gravity launchers, four arrays of four port and starboard.

Defenses:

Stealth Systems: Radar sheath, IR dampener w/high-grade military specification hypersink, hull form.

ECM: AN/SL(G)-82 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer options.

AN/SG(N)-44 Electronic Warfare Array with two port and two starboard “spike” arrays.

14x Rodeo-class missile decoys, 14xMirrorball-class sensor decoys (dispensers ventral and dorsal).

Point Defense: 22 40mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

28 20mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

10x150mm counter-missile launchers, mounted in pairs in the bow, port, starboard, dorsal, and ventral.

Shields: Standard Hegemony Navigational Shields

Combat Shield Generators-175% capacity bow, 150% capacity dorsal, ventral, port and starboard, 100% capacity stern. (All Flights)

Armor: Battle Chrome, 9 cm maximum (Imperium Era)

Collapsed Battle Chrome, 9 cm maximum (Hegemony Era)

Secondary Craft:

2xPinnance, 4xCutter, 18xType 2 Recon Drones, 8xType 3 Recon Drones (Imperium Era)

2xPinnance, 4xCutters, 8xHarvesters, 20xType 2 Recon Drones, 10xType 3 Recon Drones (Hegemony Era)

Designer Notes

Here’s where one of the interesting dicatomies of the Imperial Navy comes up, and the Alaska-class is now where ships are built exclusively for Battle Fleet and its mission of being the “heavy fist” of the Empire..

Trade Is Life is an unofficial motto for the Imperium, and keeping the life-blood of the Empire flowing is important. The reverse is true-even with printer (and later fabricator) technology, a core portion of Imperial doctrine was the denial of logistic assets to an opponent. In Imperial naval doctrine, this mission was what the fast battleship class was built for-able to destroy most light escorts and transports, while evade heavier escorting ships. This would force enemies- especially the Alphas-to either risk massive logistic losses or commit capital ships to defending convoys.

The Alaska-class was built for that mission-having battlecruiser acceleration, but battleship weapons and defenses. Debates about if the Alaska-class was a better ship than the Resolute-class battleship continued for years. The one biggest issue of this class was the sheer cost of the ships-you could build 2.75 Resolute-class battleships for one Alaska-class fast battleship. With the end of the Alpha threat just prior to the Time Of The Five Emperors, numbers of the Alaska-class hulls were being reduced and placed into reserve.

The chaos of what happened after the Time of the Five Emperors brought the Alaska-class back to the forefront. Many remnants of the rebel navies had battlecruisers and a few older battleships. The speed, firepower, and point defense of the Alaska-class made them critical for engaging remnant forces and destroying them. After most of the rebel forces were destroyed, numbers would be reduced again but as much as previously.

Like all Imperial capital ships, the Alaska-class carries full fleet facilities, with capabilities up to a task group or small fleet. The enlarged Marine complement also serves to provide planetary security and boarding parties as needed (a “light” marine battalion). The class almost never is sent in alone but is often a part of a task force of two to four Alaska-class ships, four to eight heavy cruisers, six to twelve light cruisers, and smaller ships and support ships based upon needs.

Only rarely is this ship-along with the Resolute-class battleship-deployed in the Ghost Fleet caches, and only the largest of the caches. The class would be replaced in Imperial service by the Guernsey-class fast battleship, entering into second-line service. The class would remain in operation until the deployment of the Azores-class fast battleship.

Quick Survival Post

~ An Author In Charge ~ 1 Comment

I haven’t been posting a lot lately. Why?

Short version-

  • I Am Alive! The new job has been eating a lot of my energy, especially with the commute (and if you think a commute can’t be tiring when you’re just sitting there, it can).
  • Writing Has Been Slow! I’ve missed the cut-off dates for at least one writing anthology short story contest because I’ve been busy due to learning how to do my new job. “Writing” for The Winter Solist has been mostly organizing what I’ve gotten done previously into a single Word file and getting it “organized” for publishing. And other stories have been mostly note taking, little writing snippets, and figuring out exactly what sort of chaos I can create if I decided to write up a post-singularity space opera idea.
    (Any game idea would require me to find a RPG game engine that doesn’t insult my intelligence and is reasonably licensable. I don’t have the time to roll my own and I want to play with all the usual post-singularity tropes out there.)
  • Life Has Been Confusing! If there is anything that the Crow Flu has ruined me for, it’s dealing with crowds and large groups of people in any form. Five years ago, a Sunday afternoon in the Big City (TM) would be reasonably fun. But now, between the feral homeless and crowds and people just being terrible to be around…
    It’s not fun anymore to do a lot of the things that I like.
    Worse, I don’t know what I really like to do anymore, other than sit on my porch and yell at rude kids to get off my lawn.
    I don’t think I’m that old…
  • I’m Tired Of Where I Am-But Where Do I Go? Look, I love the West Coast for the most part.

    I like the climate. Rarely too hot, rarely too cold. It’s wet, but we don’t usually get snow (but, if this is a repeat of the 1970s, ice age might be coming and we could get snow. We had record rainfall here, and they’re saying we’ll probably have more rain going into April).
    I like the places that don’t have the feral homeless and the trustees of modern chemistry roaming around at random and still have interesting places to shop and explore.
    I like many of the people, as long as you don’t talk politics. (People are brain dead around here, and pointing out how brain-fried they are gets you in trouble. Absolutely no training in formal logic these days, I tell you.)

    But…

    We’re having security issues. Even in relatively semi-urban areas. Bad enough that we’ve just had a neighborhood watch organized (and we call the Sherrif’s department around here. Local PD is…not impressive to say the least). There has been one catalytic converter theft in about a half-mile radius. And there’s been regular RV towing and trash-hauling of the debris of the homeless.
    The politics here are not good. In general, the politics are not good anywhere on the West Coast. I can’t trust anything outside of a city government with more power than crayons, construction paper, and scissors with the rounded ends.
    The people are getting frustrating and ugly, in both general and specific means.

    But…where do I go?

    Just about any state that I could live with in terms of politics and security have employment issues. Especially if I’m going there without a good, easy in and references (and a rabbi, can’t forget about that). I’m not at an age where I find living four to a two-bedroom apartment enjoyable (with exceptions…but I don’t think I would survive most harem anime hijinks).
    Or weather issues (I’ve had people suggest Texas. Too Goddamned hot…when it isn’t too wet or your next-door neighbor is having a delivery of lumber to build an ark…)
    And my family would be convinced that I’ve just jumped off the edge and I”m about to join a militia when I find a place to live. (I wouldn’t-bad ankles. Can’t run very far with a full kit.)
    I also need to be near the ocean. I have times where nothing else recharges me like the ocean and I need the ocean.
    So if I can find this magical land…I will nail the door shut behind me once I get all my books inside because I don’t want to have any Karens following me.

Hopefully more interesting news in a little while…

Imperial Renown-class Battlecruiser

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The Renown-class would be a controversial replacement for the Hood-class of battle cruisers in the Imperial Navy. Designed and built just before the end of the Alpha threat, the Renown would later serve in both the Imperium and Hegemony-eras of the Empire as a task group command ship, counter-piracy warship, and often the largest hull in operation for Patrol Fleet operations. 

Design History

Initially designed as a revision of the Hood-class battlecruiser, the Renown-class would instead see several major innovations in both design and construction. The first was the replacement of the double 9cm turrets with triple 6.5 cm turrets, sacrificing long-range firepower for faster and heavier firepower at optimal engagement ranges. The class would also be slightly lighter for missiles, mounting only ten missile tubes over twelve. Fortunately, by the time the Renown-class began deployment, the Mk-28 missile (specifically the Mk-28-ModB version) was entering service.

Point defense is built around eight counter-missile launchers, point defense x-ray lasers in 40mm and 20mm apertures, and ten Rodeo-class missile decoys. The ship also carries a AN/SG(N)-44 jammer array with up to four “spike” jammers for anti-missile engagements. Passive defenses were actually lighter than the Hood-class, with only “cruiser-weight” armor and shields. During the Hegemony era, the ship would have heavier armor installed, but the class would be considered “fragile” against battleship-grade and above opponents.

The class also mounts a full stealth and ECM suite, with a high-grade military hypersink for quick IR dampening. The class also mounts a triple extension VLBI array, giving the ship an effective 600/760/1520 meter array width. This is considered vital for the commerce protection role, as the class can detect potential threats at significant distances under stealth. The class also has a 350G acceleration (360G with Hegemony-era refits) and can operate at 6 LY/day in slipspace with four drive rings.

The Renown-class also carries a “light” marine battalion, with a company-sized powered armor “morgue” in the Imperial era (a full battalion “morgue” would be installed in later versions). The ship also carries standard material printers (later to be replaced with quantum fabricators in the Hegemony era) and is configured for atmospheric “scooping” for refueling.

This class also has full fleet facilities, including quarters and a separate fleet bridget for senior staff.  Most of the hull revisions were for minor technical issues, including the replacement of the fusion reactors with antimatter reactors in the Hegemony period. The only major changes to the class was thicker battle steel armor and slight improvements in the Q-coils for higher acceleration.

Service History

Built just before the end of the Alpha Wars, the Renown-class would remain in service through the end of the Wars, the Time of the Five Emperors, and finally into Hegemony service. Almost exclusively used by Patrol Fleet during its history, it was well regarded for most of the internal security and anti-piracy missions it performed. Crews regarded the class as nimble but fragile-capital ship weapons were capable of doing significant damage if attacks got past the shields and armor. 

Both of these defensive issues would be resolved in the later Indefatigable-class battlecruiser, which would take the “battleship writ small” design concept in terms of armor and weapons.

A number of hulls would be modified for the Ghost Fleet mission during the Hegemony era, namely the removal of the antimatter reactors and replacement with fusion reactors, and secondary modifications to improve long-duration mission operations with the class. Proposals for a full battalion Marine transport on this hull were continually proposed, but were never deployed.

General Characteristics

Dimensions: 350 m x 35 m x 30 m

Mass: 45,000 tons (consistent across all flights)

Power Systems:

2x Yoyodine Type 48 Gravity Fusion Reactors (Imperium Era, Flight I-V)

2x Yoyodine Type 47 Antimatter Reactors (Hegemony Era, Flight V-VI)

2x Yoyodine Type 47-A Antimatter Reactors (Hegemony Era, Flight VII-VIII)

Propulsion Systems:

8x Q-Coils (350 G acceleration Flights I-V, 360 G acceleration Flights V-VIII)

4x Slipspace rings (6 LY/day, all flights)

Endurance:

180 days on stored supplies, fuel scoops (Imperium Era)

180 days of antihydrogen at 90% power, theoretically unlimited material endurance (Hegemony Era)

Crew:

One Class VII AI, three Class VI AIs, 30 Officers, 50 NCO, 350 Able Spacers, 300 Marines, backup bioshells and cybershells (Imperial Era)

One Class VII AI, three Class VI AIs, three Class V AIs, mixture of uploads and biological crew equaling 500 crew members, 300 Marines, backup bioshells and cybershells (Hegemony Era)

Armament:

1xMetaspace Cannon, 310m accelerator tunnel with a 40cm discharge aperture.

21×6.5cm positron beam cannons in triple turrets (two dorsal, two ventral, one port, one starboard.

10x700mm missile tubes with gravity launchers, two arrays of five port and starboard.

Defenses:

Stealth Systems: Radar sheath, IR dampener w/high-grade military specification hypersink, hull form.

ECM: AN/SL(G)-82 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer options.

AN/SG(N)-44 Electronic Warfare Array with two port and two starboard “spike” arrays.

10x Rodeo-class missile decoys, 10xMirrorball-class sensor decoys (dispensers ventral and dorsal).

Point Defense: 16 40mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

20 20mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

8x150mm counter-missile launchers, mounted in a pair in the bow, triple tubes port and starboard.

Shields: Standard Hegemony Navigational Shields

Combat Shield Generators-175% capacity bow, 150% capacity dorsal, ventral, port and starboard, 100% capacity stern. (All Flights)

Armor: Fibersteel, 8.5 cm maximum (Imperium Era)

Battle Steel, 9 cm maximum (Hegemony Era)

Secondary Craft:

2xPinnance, 4xCutter, 14xType 2 Recon Drones, 6xType 3 Recon Drones (Imperium Era)

2xPinnance, 4xCutters, 8xHarvesters, 16xType 2 Recon Drones, 8xType 3 Recon Drones (Hegemony Era)

Designer Notes

Here’s where one of the interesting dicatomies of the Imperial Navy comes up, and the Renown-class marks the dividing line between Patrol Fleet and Battle Fleet.

Trade Is Life being an unofficial motto for the Imperium, and keeping the lifeblood of the Empire flowing is important. The Renown-class is built to defend Imperial commerce as a part of Patrol Fleet, while the Alaska-class fast battleship is designed to attack hostile commerce and shipping as a part of Battle Fleet and both designs reflect that mission. The enlarged Marine complement also serves to provide planetary security as needed (a “light” marine battalion) and full fleet facilities for a squadron or task group. It’s not quite the generalist that the Hotspur-class is, and it is rarely deployed without an escort of at least two to four light cruisers and supporting elements, but it is considered a workhorse hull of the Empire and has always reflected this role.

With few exceptions, this is the largest Imperial ship by type in a Ghost Fleet cache, with only the largest of caches having a Alaska-class fast battleship or a Resolute-class battleship. Debates about if this was a good idea or not always foundered on the simple fact that nobody wanted to risk leaving something like a Bismarck-class dreadnought, a Yamato-class super-dreadnought or a Iowa-class monitor outside of proper military supervision.

It’s Going to Be Crazy for a While

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Well, on the employment news…

I have a new job. It pays more per hour than I’ve earned at any other job I’ve had before. It has full benefits. And I start the first week in March.

The commute is going to be painful, because it’s either an hour/ninety-minute drive with gas at almost $5 a gallon or a 90–120-minute public transit ride to the new office. The biggest issue is that there are no easy ways to get to the office with public transport, so I’m stuck having half-hour or so stops between one location to another.

(Seriously…if we’ve got a “commuter train” running here, we really need to have it running at a twenty-minute schedule from 6AM-9AM and 4PM-6PM, not thirty minutes. I could probably do better if the trains weren’t so far apart. And, using old train tracks is nice and cheap, but…

(Did I also forget to mention that the trains don’t have WiFi? Complaints have already been made.)

It also means that I’ll be doing my five-days-a-week at the gym is either going to be late before I get home and have dinner or on the weekends. And I have discovered that I might not like the gym, but I like wearing 42 pants and I’m ambitious enough to try and get down to 40 pants.

This means that my writing schedule has just gotten really, really sloppy.

Again.

Blog posts are going to be catch-as-catch can, but I am definitely going to talk about some of the ideas that I’ve had…

  • How to sell illustrated stories (i.e. comic books) to people and maybe, just maybe save the Western comic book industry by stealing from Japanese manga. Mercilessly.
    (Hint-get it out of the comic bookstores. Get comics in as many places as possible, as easy as possible to buy, tell good stories, and sell the high-end stuff to collectors.)
  • More Imperial starships! I’m probably going to talk about the Chapar Khaneh-class message packet/commando transport, the Alaska-class battlecruiser, the Francis Drake-class fast battleship, and the Tarawa-class marine transport next.
    A navy just isn’t warships, despite rumors to the contrary. It’s the message ships that can also haul small cargos as needed. It’s the transports, it’s the Scout Service ships, it’s the whole infrastructure that helps to ensure that those Imperial warships are where they need to be.
  • I might also be talking about some of the Imperial organizations, like the Imperial Marine Corps or the Scout Service. Or the insanity that the Imperial Throne and the Archons. Maybe even the Imperial Legions (who guard the Imperial family and also serve as “you’ve just made the wrong person angry” force of the Emperor).
  • More “behind the scenes” things on writing.

On writing? I’m writing a short story for the Fantastic Schools series, and it’s going to be a story about Sister Justina just after the end of The Winter Solist and somewhat inside of A Solist in Rome.

An Ethical Succubus has been delayed, but hopefully not for long.

Other projects are delayed, but hopefully not for too long.

There will be more good news, fingers and toes crossed.

Imperial Hotspur-class Heavy Crusier

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The Imperial Hotspur-class Heavy Cruiser was built in the middle-Imperium period and represented the platonic ideal of the heavy cruiser mission and role. Even with the end of the Alphas and the Time of Five Emperors, the Hotspur-class of heavy cruisers would remain in service-with major revisions-during the Hegemony era. It wouldn’t be until the middle/late Hegemony period that a new heavy cruiser class, the Hachiman-class, would start replacing the Hotspur-class.

Design History

Built as a replacement to the Hafgan-class of heavy cruisers, the Hotspur-class would make the most of several improvements in Imperial technology against the Alphas and a change in battle doctrine where more beam cannons backed up by heavier missile point defense would be vital.

Like all Imperial capital ships, the Hotspur-class would mount a spinal Metaspace Cannon, namely one with a 240m accelerator tunnel and a 35mm discharge aperture. This would give the class nearly 25% greater range than the Alpha’s equivalent cruiser class and better power handling systems. Backing this up is six dual-mount turrets with 6.5 cm positron beam cannons. Arguments about the weapons loadout have continued through its deployment, but the Imperial design opinion was that more cannons with a higher rate of fire was more important than bigger cannons with longer range.

For missile engagements, the Hotspur-class mounts eight 500mm missile tubes with gravity drivers port and starboard. The Hotspur-class could use earlier Mk-22, Mk-24, and Mk-26 missiles, but the class was built to use the Mk-28 missile. This class of missile would become legendary, as it had both better range and better acceleration than its Alpha-equivalent missile, and in the -C, -D, and -E versions a more powerful warhead.The Mk-28 would remain in service far into the Hegemony era, with the -U and -W versions only being replaced by the Mk-32 missile.

Point-defense consists of six 150mm counter-missile launchers with 20mm and 40mm x-ray laser cannons in casement mounts. The reach of the counter-missile launchers would make it difficult for peer-level hulls to engage the Hotspur-class with missiles at long ranges. Passive defenses include shields and armor, with a heavy emphasis on “bow-on” engagements.

As a part of the ship’s systems, the hull also carries full stealth systems, IR dampening with a military-grade hypersink system, ECM systems (spike, strobe and anti-missile jammers), and sixteen decoys in ventral and dorsal dispensers. In addition, the ship also carries a full load of reconnaissance drones to extend the ship’s sensor range and a 450 m/875 m deployable passive VLBI array. The Hotspur-class has an Imperial standard 6LY/day in slipspace and can accelerate up to 350 G at maximum power.

The class also mounts full flag-facilities for command of squadrons and task forces on every hull. This not only includes space for a flag officer and his staff, but specialized computing and communications systems for command and control of fleets across several light hours.

The hull would see several major revisions, in the form of battle steel armor, antimatter power systems, and enhanced computing systems during the Hegemony era. This would extend the ship’s lifespan and keep the class in secondary service with the deployment of the Hachiman-class heavy cruiser.

Service History

The Hotspur-class would be built in eight flights with nearly thirty-thousand hulls being manufactured. Most of these hulls would be retrofitted from earlier flights with fusion reactors to later antimatter reactors and improvements in computer technology. While the Hachiman-class would be this ship’s replacement, the Hotspur would remain in production for over a decade for Patrol Fleet and Ghost Fleet missions.

The basic hull would be used for a number of missions, not the least of which was the Tarawa-class Marine Transport and the Serendipity-class survey cruiser. 

A number of hulls would be modified for the Ghost Fleet mission during the Hegemony era, namely the removal of the antimatter reactors and replacement with fusion reactors, and secondary modifications to improve long-duration mission operations with the class.

General Characteristics

Dimensions: 230 m x 25 m x 20 m

Mass: 35,000 tons (consistent across all flights)

Power Systems:

2x Yoyodine Type 47 Gravity Fusion Reactors (Imperium Era, Flight I-IV)

2x Yoyodine Type 45 Antimatter Reactors (Hegemony Era, Flight IV-V)

2x Yoyodine Type 45-A Antimatter Reactors (Hegemony Era, Flight VI-VIII)

Propulsion Systems:

8x Q-Coils (350 G acceleration, all flights)

3x Slipspace rings (6 LY/day, all flights)

Endurance:

180 days on stored supplies, fuel scoops (Imperium Era)

180 days of antihydrogen at 90% power, theoretically unlimited material endurance (Hegemony Era)

Crew:

One Class VI AI, 25 Officers, 40 NCO, 250 Able Spacers, 150 Marines, backup bioshells and cybershells (Imperial Era)

One Class VII AI, three Class VI AIs, three Class V AIs, mixture of uploads and biological crew equaling 400 crew members, 150 Marines, backup bioshells and cybershells (Hegemony Era)

Armament:

1xMetaspace Cannon, 210m accelerator tunnel with a 35cm discharge aperture.

12×6.5cm positron beam cannons in double turrets (two dorsal, two ventral, one port, one starboard.

8x700mm missile tubes with gravity launchers, two arrays of four port and starboard.

Defenses:

Stealth Systems: Radar sheath, IR dampener w/military specification hypersink,
hull form.

ECM: AN/SL(G)-88 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer options.

AN/SG(N)-41 Electronic Warfare Array with one port and one starboard “spike” arrays.

8x Rodeo-class missile decoys, 8xMirrorball-class sensor decoys (dispensers ventral and dorsal).

Point Defense: 12 40mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

18 20mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

6x150mm counter-missile launchers, mounted in pairs bow, port and starboard.

Shields: Standard Hegemony Navigational Shields

Combat Shield Generators-175% capacity bow, 150% capacity dorsal, ventral, port and starboard, 100% capacity stern. (All Flights)

Armor: Fibersteel, 8 cm maximum (Imperium Era)

Battle Steel, 8 cm maximum (Hegemony Era)

Secondary Craft:

2xPinnance, 2xCutter, 12xType 2 Recon Drones, 4xType 3 Recon Drones (Imperium Era)

2xPinnance, 2xCutter, 6xHarvesting Drones, 14xType 2 Recon Drones, 6xType 3 Recon Drones (Hegemony Era)

Designer Notes

“Space, the final frontier…these are the voyages of…”

If there is an Imperial ship that has the same heritage as the Federation Constitution-class, the Hotspur-class is it. It’s the Imperium’s general workhorse cruiser, capable of handling just about every cruiser mission out there. While there are more specialized hulls that can handle very specific missions, the general purpose hull for most Imperial missions that don’t require a squadron or fleet is a few Hotspur and some light cruisers and destroyers, with a small support fleet train (fleet tenders, maybe a Marine transport and a hospital ship).

(Since this is Real Life and not a TV show where extra ships means extra SFX costs, even the Enterprise would be going with at least two to four destroyers and a fast fleet tender or two.)

Why Manga Is Eating Comic Books’ Lunch

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One of the things that comic book fans have been complaining about for the last ten years has been how comic books-specifically the “top two” comic book companies (DC and Marvel) have not been selling like they did in the 1990’s. Or even how Disney and Warner Brothers claim they’ve been selling. 

The issue has been that it’s very difficult to see direct sales numbers for comic books, because of how they’re sold. There are some very tricky reasons why, but the biggest one is that comic books are sold in a way similar to cars. They aren’t sold to the consumer, through a dealership or comic bookstore. They’re-for all intents and purposes-leased and the comic bookstore or dealership handles the sale…but the comic book company or the car company counts that lease as a sale. 

However…there’s been a lot of anecdotal reports from comic bookstores about bad sales numbers. Especially when you have to sell to the collectors, who want the rare variant covers and the #1 edition copies (which have the highest resale and collector’s values). This means that Marvel and DC have been able to persuade comic bookstores to buy large quantities of comic books that they normally wouldn’t buy, to get the variant covers and books that they wanted to sell.

(Seriously, if you’re wondering how Captain Marvel—who even at the best of times until her movie had been announced was a C-tier superhero—suddenly became a “best-selling Marvel character,” there were rumors. The one I believe the most was “if you want the current popular books and variants that your collectors will buy, you need to buy a certain number of Captain Marvel and Ms Marvel books on spec.”)

And this doesn’t even include things like ideological capture of the entertainment industry, writing staff with…dubious qualifications to write anything, artists who’s “art” should have been caught by the editorial staff…and the list goes on from here of the various issues that the comic book industry has been having.

But, if you’re willing to look and look hard, you can find some relatively accurate sales numbers…and it’s bad for Western comic book makers. When we see the number of the top ten comic book and graphic novel books out there, Marvel and DC combined barely make into the top five. And the top four companies on the list are Japanese manga companies.

Over the last few years, manga has been doing exceptionally well. Long-running series like One Piece, Naruto, My Hero Academia, and such have been selling very well. Many popular titles are on back-order in the US, because they can’t print them fast enough to sell. One particular tankobon of One Piece outsold the entire American comic book industry in one year. Even smaller series (when there aren’t “translation issues”) are doing relatively well-and much better than most Western comic books and graphic novels.

(The exception, according to the people that know-librarians and people who actually work in bookstores-are the “fun” YA stories like Dog Man, Baby Sitters Club, and such. The “woke” YA graphic novels just sit on the shelves, while manga has back-orders and is checked out the moment it’s put on the shelves after being returned.)

So, why is manga doing so well? There’s a lot of reasons, but the five big ones that I can see as a writer and fan of graphical art are obvious to me. They’re so obvious that you wonder why other people can’t see them. These five reasons are-

There’s Something For Everyone

Almost everyone when you say “American Comic Books” instantly thinks of one genre-superheroes. This wasn’t always the case-in the 1950’s and 1960’s there were several major lines of comics that covered everything from westerns to science fiction to horror. However, as time went on…superhero comics pushed out most of the other comic genres in the United States and other places.

Manga, on the other hand, has a lot of variety. You have everything from superhero comics to action/adventure stories to romantic comedies to horror stories. If there is a genre, there is a manga out there…somewhere. Even somewhat esoteric concepts and ideas have at least one or two series for fans to find. While this means you will get some series that should never be made…but somehow do manage some success. A little.

And, for a creator, isn’t that what we want? Some success of some kind?

It Doesn’t Pander

It might be more accurate to say that manga doesn’t pander to many of the things that people hate about most Western comic books. Many of the heroic characters are actually heroic. Most of the villains are terrible people. The action is often good, with few compromises. And-with few exceptions-the plot makes sense and even sudden twists at the end are made clear through what there was in the rest of the story.

Most manga makes you feel like the money you spent was worth it for a final product that you can enjoy.

It’s Actually Fun To Read

For the most part, that’s what is missing in most Western comic books these days. They’re like the books you had to read in school, because they were Great Works of Literature and the concept of reading something that was actually fun was forbidden. 

Wrong. 

Evil.

Most manga is fun. It’s enjoyable to read and the stories might not be Great Works of Literature…but they’re fun to read. You don’t feel like you have to put on hip-waders to try and slog your way through knee-high adjectives. That’s what a lot of people want when they read for fun-something that is fun to read.

It Doesn’t Outstay Its Welcome

One of the biggest problems with Western comic books and especially superhero comic books is where do you start if you’re interested in the stories. Just about every major comic book character has a history that has lasted nearly fifty or more years. Keeping track of the continuity of even one character like Batman or Captain America is a full-time job. Even more modern characters tend to have long histories in one form or another.

And anyone that can explain the main X-Men continuity without at least two infographics and a half-hour PowerPoint presentation is someone that you shouldn’t lend cash to.

Most manga series tend to have a certain brevity (the exceptions tend to be exceptions and tend to drag on for a while…). They have a defined start and ending point, so you know where the story begins and ends. And series that aren’t very popular tend to be wound up rather quickly or canceled, so you don’t have to worry that you’ve missed out on something. There’s no Fear Of Missing Out that you get from most Western comics.

There’s A Clear Pipeline For Further Products and Materials

Let’s explain something-it often isn’t the original product that makes the money, but the secondary materials that come from the original production. For example, George Lucas made his nut not just because of how well Star Wars (Episode IV) did, but because he was willing to make less money all around…except for the merchandising rights. And those merchandising rights made at least a hundred times as much-and consistently for the most part-money than the movies did.

The Japanese manga market has a clear vertical marketing system that has a lot of experience in turning semi-popular manga series into popular anime, live-action movies, visual novels, light novels, video games, toys and figurines, adult dōjinshi, cosplay to be worn at Comiket…

You can argue about how this eats into the “purity” of productions if you’re having to think about how to make your series toyetic (i.e. able to sell toys when making Saturday morning cartoons), and you might be right. But if the toy line is paying your salaries and gives you money to try some more “artistic” creations…isn’t that a good thing?

And, for the fans of manga, it’s like having your good taste and good values rewarded. If the series you love now has a full cour, with the second season coming out, and maybe even a live action movie…it means you were right about something. And feeling right is a wonderful thing, especially when so little does feel right.

Conclusion

Manga has succeeded because when it works, it keeps the audience interested. If the audience is interested, they buy manga compilations, tankobons, toys, the eventual anime series coming out in a few months, resin figurines…and that money eventually gets reinvested in making more manga.

Comic books, especially American ones from the Big Five publishers, don’t kindle that same kind of desire. They don’t have the institutions that can quickly turn a popular new comic book into a whole lot of other media products and things to entertain people. And there’s this continual feeling of hedonic adaptation, that there is nothing really new under the sun. One can argue that we’ve seen the same kind of stories from manga on a regular basis…but it’s like coffee. We know what we’re getting (for the most part) when we get coffee, but it’s the variations on the theme that keep us interested.

So, now that we know what the problems are with Western comic books and how Japanese manga gets around them, what do we do to solve this problem?

That’s what we’ll talk about next week, so…same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel…

Imperial Corridos-class Message Packet

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Built by the Imperial Courier Service to serve as both a fast courier ship and provide regular shipping services to Tier I to III colony worlds, the Corridos-class message packet offered a variety of capabilities, including rough-field landing ability, small cargo carrying capacity, and several forms of emergency services for colony worlds that might see larger support from the Imperial Courier Service or the Imperial Navy on a three-to-six month basis.

The design would be licensed not only for the Imperial Courier Service, but for private sale. The Imperial Navy would consider the Corridos-class for a packet courier, but would eventually go with the Chapar Khaneh-class message packet/commando transport.

Design History

The Corridos-class was built due to a need for the Imperial Courier Service to provide statute-required services to Imperial colony worlds at the Class I to III level. Since the statute of the Imperial Moot required at least two Courier Service ships a month arriving at colony worlds (a minimum of one outbound and one inbound towards the Core)-the design would have to be able to carry a small amount of cargo, be capable of rough-field takeoff and land, and have a minimal emergency medical capability. The end result would be the Corridos-class, built in the mid-Imperium period.

Designed with a rough lifting-body shape, the Corridos-class is built around a single large internal cargo bay that is capable of carrying sixteen TEU modules in a 4x2x2 bay configuration. A half-height hatch is mounted in the front and a full-height hatch is mounted in the aft of the ship, allowing for large cargoes to be loaded and unloaded. Ship systems are built around the cargo bay, with engineering access for the dorsal and flanks of the ship and crew compartments in the ventral portions of the ship, with elevators and access tubes to the various levels.

The ship carries not only a full crew, but sufficient spare staterooms for up to ten passengers in single-bunking capacity, a ten-unit stasis bay, and a three-bay medical facility with automed systems and resleeving for bioshells and cybershells. When possible, at least 45% of ships on a route would have a qualified general doctor for medical needs and a qualified Imperial Marshal’s Service officer for law-enforcement needs. The ship also contains three redundant data servers and a high-powered laser communicator to serve as an electronic mail message node.

The ship is rough-field rated with full-length landing skids and carrying a full AG-lift system that can bring the ship up to orbit in a 6-G grav field with a full load. While not armed, the ship does carry point defense against debris and missiles in the form of eight 20mm xaser cannons scattered around the hull. The ship also carries four Rodeo-class anti-missile decoys for self-defense and a full sensor system (minus the deployable VLBI array) equivalent to an Imperial destroyer. 

The ship carries two anti-gravity skip-loaders for moving around cargo containers and acting as prime movers for cargo needs. A single cutter is carried in a ventral bay for when a separate small craft is needed. The Hegemony version of the ship would mount a quantum fabricator to build small parts for colony worlds that needed emergency equipment of some kind and small spare parts for itself, fed by two harvesting drones in bays on the ship’s port and starboard sides.

Service History

The Corridos-class would be built in incredible numbers, with over 15,000 being built in the Flight I-IV construction alone. The ship would remain in service during the mid-Hegemony period, with steady upgrades and improvements even as the Yubin-class message packet entered service.

Older versions of the hull would see significant sales as a short-haul transport for colony worlds on the frontier, fast packet transports for commercial cargo services, and adapted into a number of roles for civilian and quasi-civilian services. One popular version was the Aurora-class luxury yacht, which converts the cargo bay into a luxury crew area for up to twenty people, a separate vehicle bay, and high-grade bioprinters for creating high-end food items.

General Characteristics

Dimensions: 80m x 12m x 14m

Mass: 2000 tons (fully loaded, Flight I-V un-retrofitted), 2200 tons (Flight VI-XII, Flight I-V retrofitted)

Power Systems:

2x Yoyodine Type 11 Gravity Fusion Reactors (Mid Imperial Era)

2x Yoyodine Type 11-B Gravity Fusion Reactors (Late Imperial Era)

2x Yoyodine Type 14-A Gravity Fusion Reactors (Hegemony Era)

Propulsion Systems:

4x Q-Coils (380 G acceleration Mid/Late Imperial Era, 400 G acceleration Hegemony era, all flights)

2x Slipspace rings (8 LY/day Mid/Late Imperial Era, 10LY/day Hegemony era, all flights)

4xAG Lifters (6 G VTOL rated)

Endurance:

180 days on stored supplies, hydrogen scoops, hydrogen production system (All Eras)

Crew:

One Class II AI, 5 Officers, 15 Able Spacers, backup bioshells and cybershells (Mid/Late Imperial Era)
One Class II AI, three Class I AIs, mixture of uploads and biological crew equaling 20 crew members, backup bioshells and cybershells (Hegemony Era)

Armament:

None mounted.

Defenses:

ECM: AN/SL(E)-11 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer
options (Mid/Late Imperial Era)

AL/SN(M)-18 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer options (Hegemony Era)

4x Rodeo-class missile decoys (dispensers ventral and dorsal).

Point Defense: 8 20mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

Shields: Standard Mid/Late Imperial/Hegemony Navigational Shields

Combat Shield Generators-50% capacity bow, 25% capacity, starboard, port, ventral, dorsal and stern (Mid/Late Imperial Era).

50% capacity bow, port, starboard, ventral and dorsal, 25% capacity stern (Hegemony Era)

Armor: Milspec Titanium with Fibersteel Inserts, 1 cm maximum (Mid/Late Imperial Era)

Fibersteel, 1 cm maximum (Hegemony Era)

Secondary Craft:

2xSkip-Loaders, 1xCutter (Mid/Late Imperial Era)

2xSkip-Loaders, 1xCutter, 2xHarvesting Drones (Hegemony Era)

Cargo Capacity:

16 TEU in a 4x2x2 configuration.

Designer Notes

Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand…

If you want to see the Imperial version of the Firefly-class, the Fives Full, or the Kalantha-class free trader-this is where you start. It’s built to be “a little bit of everything,” because it often is a little bit of everything when it gets out to the frontier.

Cargo hauler? Got that.

Sending someone an email? The Imperial Courier Service doesn’t have or need a separate X-Boat type of ship, so…

Visiting family members on a colony world somewhere? You can pay a bit for a single stateroom or share a bunk with someone for a bit less.

Need medical care but an Imperial Navy Patrol Fleet task group is at least a month out? They’ll at least stabilize someone long enough for that task group to get there-or haul them in stasis to somewhere that has a real hospital.

Need a lawman, for values of “lawman”? We might have one of those, too. Might.

It’s all in a hull that can take off and land pretty much “straight up” and “straight down” on AG lift. You can fly this ship in an atmosphere from place to place, but be very, very careful and either have a very hot-shot pilot or have all of your backups off the ship. And, yes, it is fast-the only spaceships with greater acceleration than a Corridos is a navy message packet or a missile in normal space. There’s a few things faster in slipspace than this ship, but not that many…
This isn’t the Millennium Falcon, mind you. If you want one of those, you should look at some of the “stock frontier freighter” hulls and get the permits needed to officially mount light cannons on it.

Writing Notes for February 7th

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My writing issues have been just…well, issues for a while. Between job hunting and being an at-home caregiver and getting back into good shape again (I’ve lost 15 pounds over the last two months, so that’s something)…the writing is not quite at the bottom of the queue. But, you can see the end of the queue from there.

And, I’m having to thank (honorary) Great Aunt Sarah for reminding me that for independent writers (like I think most of us are), we’re all that we’ve got and we should try to help each other out as much as we can. 

So, for any of my fellow indie writers that need someone to give their work a look-over…it won’t be formal editing, it’ll be high-level assessment at best. But if you want me to take a look, I’ll give it a good look.

Personal life?

What personal life?

Valentine’s Day has always been one of the worst holidays for me, because every year…outside of family, it feels like there isn’t anyone out there that cares for me as me. I’ve been told that this is a common writer’s dilemma-stuck inside our heads far too often, so very hard to get out-but you look at other people being happy and it’s hard for you to see the things that are good and proper in your life.

It doesn’t help that the last couple of times I’ve reached out with some of the thoughts in my head, you could hear “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” screeching in alarm from people…

On the subject of writing…

  • The Winter Solstice-This has been coming along rather well. The last big fight scene is almost done, then there’s the end results of that scene, what happens to some of the characters, then a small fight and the “connective tissue” scene for A Roman Solist.

    I’m confident enough about the results so far that I’m doing what I call “step two” for getting the book on Kindle-moving the files from Google Docs to a single Word file and running through that grammar and spelling checker. When I write, I tend to write the separate chapters as individual files for clarity’s sake (and so I’m not intimidated by a wall of black text that I have to try and go through) and then combine them at the end into a single novel-length product.

    This actually does help, because I’ve caught a few small bugs and managed to tighten up some scenes. I have a nasty tendency to over-describe, and this helps me to find where I am over-describing things.

    Cover creation, final editing, one scene that I have to write before I get to Kindle production and hopefully the book will come out soon. Maybe not Valentine’s Day but maybe the end of the month.

    This leads to…
  • A Roman Solist/A Solist In Rome-I’m at the “outline and research” phase right now, because I want people to get a really good sense of Rome, Vatican City, and a whole lot of other places that Adelaide and company will be going to.

    The biggest thing about this novel is that it’s the first of the “summer vacation” novels, and weird things happen when Adelaide is out on vacation. It’s actually quite amusing.

    Oh, and there’s also a lot of bonding time between Adelaide and one of her newest Companions, a chance to get out and explore things, the resolution of one plot line from Solist At Large, and a chance for Adelaide to get dressed up again.
  • An Ethical Succubus-Still at the first-tier outline, but I’m getting a much better sense of both the flow of the plot and the characterizations. The biggest thing is how the MC responds to the world, because they now have senses that most people don’t have. Or at least not as a native installation.

    Oh, and making the MC likable. They’re a little hard to like, even before they started having to eat people. The trick has been keeping it clear that the MC isn’t a bad person, per se, just…having to become more likable. And considering that there are people who love absolutely horrible characters and want to bang them like a screen door in a hurricane…I don’t think my job is that hard.

    Doing a LOT of research into San Francisco, and even though I’m a native…I’m finding things that I’m going “I didn’t know that!” when I’m writing. It helps that my MC isn’t a native, so their discovery is organic and genuine.
  • Other Writing Projects-The “swords and sorcery and giant robots” isekei story idea is on a burner, but it’s going to be a while before I can get to it. Mostly due to personal life issues, but I want to get to it because there’s a definite lack of good giant robot stories out there.

    Someone I had contracted with to write the filler text for his miniatures game idea dropped dead recently (no, this was a good thing, as I learned he was an absolute jerk-ass to everyone around him), and I managed to get back from his ex-wife a copy of all the content I’d written for him. Notes, backgrounds, that kind of thing. Might use it at some point for something (it’s for a tabletop science-fiction miniatures game, think Infinity or Deadzone), but not sure what I’ll use it for yet. Doing it as a miniatures game would be an option if I didn’t think the market has issues.

    But, it did give me the justification for Space Elves in three different flavors (biotech, nanotech, and “whatever works”)…

More news as it comes out, and if you feel an urge to comment, I’ll reply and talk about…well, just about anything.

Imperial Wayfarer-class TUFT Light Freighter

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The Wayfarer-class light freighter was built as a multi-mission freighter hull for the Imperial Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Designed in the Second Imperium period, built at the start of the Time of the Five Emperors, the Wayfarer was built to be a part of the Imperial Taken Up From Trade (TUFT) program. Lightly armed for self-defense, the Wayfarer class would remain in operation during both the Imperium and Hegemony eras, steadily upgraded as technology improved.

Design History

The Wayfarer-class was built when the Second Imperium discovered that the consolidation of cargo hulls meant that massive, 10,000+ TEU starships were pushing out anything smaller on major transport routes. In addition, when the Imperial Navy had to take up hulls for additional logistics support, the relative slow accelerations and low slipspace speeds meant that supplies were often sent in massive “chunks” that were vulnerable to Alpha raiders and similar threats.

An additional concern of the Imperial Moot was that such massive hulls were highly efficient in large-scale civilian logistics, but smaller colony worlds would have one of these large ships in orbit twice a year-at best-and this was incredibly risky. While smaller freighters did exist and the Imperial Courier Service maintained fast mail packets to ensure a minimum of twice-a-month contact between Tier I to III colony worlds, the expense of any large-scale shipping increased the difficulty of colonies to establish themselves.

The Wayfarer-class would be built to handle these issues, based around several engineering factors such as an easily adaptable hull, minimum 160G acceleration and 3LY/day slipspace speeds, point-defense and light missiles for defense against raiders and pirates, and the ability to rapidly unload 2,000 TEU cargo loads on rough landing areas. The hull would be licensed to a number of shipyards and the Imperial Navy and Courier Service would establish a Taken Up From Trade program where easy-to-acquire loans and grants would be provided to small shipowners that were willing to work semi-regular routes and demonstrate that they could ensure that the ships were kept up to minimum standards.

At 30,000 tons, the Wayfarer-class would be built to carry 2,000 TEUs in two large primary cargo bays, wrapped around the core hull of the ship. The class has 180Gs of acceleration fully loaded, with a 3LY/day slipspace speed. Defensive weapons consisted of six 350mm missile tubes, basic electronic warfare systems and detection systems, and point-defense rated for handling Alpha Rani-class raider destroyers with eight 20mm xaser mounts and six 40mm xaser mounts. The ship’s armor is mostly against debris, consisting of mil-spec titanium with fibersteel overlays for “high value” components (Hegemony-era hulls would be built entirely of fibersteel), with shields to match. Later versions of the hull-starting with retrofits of the class in the Flight V and beyond-would be capable of 200Gs of acceleration and 4LY/day in slipspace.

The design was built so that in less than eight hours (barring orbital mechanics), the ship could unload the full supply of containers with the six attached heavy cargo shuttles and leave for reloading at a full-fledged port. Field reloading of the ship would take longer (within 24 hours in theory, usually 48-72 hours), with the ship having internal tractor-presser arrays in the cargo bays for loading and unloading. To provide support in unloading and loading, two Workbees are also provided and carried semi-externally on the ventral and dorsal sections of the ship’s hull.

Service History

The Wayfarer-class would see service for over five hundred years, being built in nine separate flights. The simplicity of the design meant that a large number of modifications in the base hull configuration were made. This included-

  • Large-scale liquid transport
  • Colonization logistics
  • Imperial Scout Service tender
  • Q-ship configurations
  • Fast fleet tender
  • Bulk cargo transport
  • Bombardment ship (for Mk 25 and Mk 30 missiles)
  • Orbital mining processing and transport hub
  • Personnel transport

-and a number of additional configurations based upon customer and mission needs.

It is estimated that there are over 100,000 Wayfarer-class hulls currently in service and the hulls are still being built to this day. However, the Imperial Navy and Imperial Courier Service have begun to phase out the TUFT contracts for older Wayfarers, replacing them with the newer Wanderer-class TUFT Light Freighter.

General Characteristics

Dimensions: 215 m x 20 m x 20 m

Mass: 30,000 tons (fully loaded, Flight I-IV un-retrofitted), 31,100 tons (Flight V-IX, Flight I-IV retrofitted)

Power Systems:

2x Yoyodine Type 33 Gravity Fusion Reactors (Mid Imperial Era)

2x Yoyodine Type 33-A Gravity Fusion Reactors (Late Imperial Era)

2x Yoyodine Type 34-A Gravity Fusion Reactors (Hegemony Era)

Propulsion Systems:

8x Q-Coils (180 G acceleration Mid/Late Imperial Era, 200 G acceleration Hegemony era, all flights)

6x Slipspace rings (3 LY/day Mid/Late Imperial Era, 4LY/day Hegemony era, all flights)

Endurance:

180 days on stored supplies, hydrogen scoops (All Eras)

Crew:

One Class III AI, 10 Officers, 64 Able Spacers, backup bioshells and cybershells (Mid/Late Imperial Era)
One Class III AI, three Class II AIs, mixture of uploads and biological crew equaling 70 crew members, backup bioshells and cybershells (Hegemony Era)

Armament:

6x350mm missile tubes with gravity launchers, two arrays of three port and starboard.

Defenses:

ECM: AN/SL(Q)-52 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer options (Mid/Late Imperial Era)

AL/SN(Q)-58 Electronic Warfare Array, with “spike” and “strobe” jammer options (Hegemony Era)

8x Rodeo-class missile decoys (dispensers ventral and dorsal).

Point Defense: 6 40mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

8 20mm xaser cannons with double-bounce gravity mirrors in independent casemate mounts.

Shields: Standard Mid/Late Imperial/Hegemony Navigational Shields

Combat Shield Generators-50% capacity bow, port and starboard, 25% capacity ventral, dorsal and stern (Mid/Late Imperial Era).

50% capacity bow, port, starboard, ventral and dorsal, 25% capacity stern (Hegemony Era)

Armor: Milspec Titanium with Fibersteel Inserts, 2cm maximum (Mid/Late Imperial Era)

Fibersteel, 2 cm maximum (Hegemony Era)

Secondary Craft:

2xWorkbee, 2xCutter, 6xHeavy Lift Shuttles (Mid/Late Imperial Era)

2xWorkbee, 2xCutter, 6xHeavy Lift Shuttles, 4xHarvesting Drones (Hegemony Era)