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THE FLEET
The 43rd Fleet is diminished from what it once was, and now consists of a single Pilgrim-class colony ship, two Chicomecoatl-class agricultural vessels, four Juggernaut-class warships, a trio of Spartan-class cruisers, and a gifted Firaxian-class science and engineering vessel.
Pilgrim-Class ››
Teuberg
The Pilgrim-class Teuberg was, when it was made, a fine design. Shaped like a rectangular prism, designed to unfold once it landed, it is over sixty miles long and thirty miles wide and tall. Much of the volume of the ship is taken up by the city, also named Teuberg. However, several cubic miles of its innards also consists of engines, subspace drive, and environmental controls. There are also three nodes connected the top and sides, each twenty miles long and fifteen miles across, hosting a backup industrial area, a series of artificially-grown environments, and extra living space. These modules also act as backup engines and can separate in the case of an emergency.
Teuberg is a very aesthetically-designed city, designed for good feng shui, efficiency, and ease of travel. At any given point, the population is at least five hundred thousand people, not counting the thousands of military personnel who alternate between living on their warships and living on the Teuberg.
Teuberg is the only ship with actual weather control. A combination of holograms and image screens gives the illusion of a sky with random cloud patterns and thickness, as well as sunlight. Hidden vents throughout the city set up wind patterns and allow for 'random' temperatures, to avoid the monotony of every day being exactly the same. Even the sunrises and sunsets are programmed with thousands of possible variations. There are carefully scheduled rain days, to clean pollutants from the air and add yet more variation to the routine.
The city is set up carefully. There are districts for shopping, business, entertainment, education, and housing. While there is high class and low class housing districts, even the low-class housing is exceedingly comfortable and most who live there have few complaints.
The ship is protected against most forms of radiation, but lacks any serious defenses. It has armor and self-repair systems, as well as powerful shields, but enemy starfighters and mecha have entered the city more than once, needing to be repulsed by force. Weapons-wise, it has defensive beam weapons and outdated laser cannons designed to eliminate incoming missiles. The ship is not built for war.
Basic layout
Location of city
Juggernaut-Class ››
Gawain, Rasputin, Brockhurst and Juggernaut
The Juggernaut-class ships were an old design before the mission even started. They were still fearsome enough that seven were attached to the Crux Fleet, and after over a hundred years, four remain. Including the first ship of its type.
Juggernaut-class warships are massive beasts, bullet-shaped behemoths six miles in length. Their armor is several hundred feet thick, their shields are layered to an absurd degree, and they bristle with weapons. A single Juggernaut has over one hundred paired particle beam weapons, one hundred rail cannons, dozens of missile and torpedo tubes, and twenty attractor beams powerful enough to rip small starships apart. They carry four hundred and fifty starfighters and four hundred and fifty mobile armors, with landing vessels, drop ships, and cargo ships taking up space in their shuttlebays as well. The standard crew complement is 1,200 crewmembers, not counting Space Marines and pilots.
However, much of their bulk is due to their gravimetric field generators. These fields allow them to warp gravity enough to bend beam weaponry around their ships or crush missiles before they get into range. These take an enormous amount of energy, but their generators are more than capable of taking these loads. More can be read in the shields section.
The main drawback to the Juggernauts is the amount of maintenance they need to keep running. They were designed to get a complete overhaul to replace burned-out systems and the like every four years, and this hasn't been available. Their massive armor and powerful shields allow them to take an absurd amount of punishment, however, and it's only thanks to these vessels that the Crux Fleet still survives.
Spartan-Class ››
Invincible, Frescant and Moorehead
Spartan-class cruisers were brand new when the 43rd Crux Fleet left on its mission, and they were immediately hated by pretty much everyone. The design has been compared to a greyhound, its engines were constantly in need of repair, and the shields and weapons would have been at home on a civilian ship. Three ion cannons, three particle beams, and a single torpedo tube made the Spartan-class largely under-armed compared to the rest of the fleet. This, coupled with the poor design (truly a result of the lowest bidder), has made the ships very unpopular to serve on.
There are a few advantages to the Spartan-class. One of them is that the small size means that it can be crewed by relatively few crewmembers, with a standard crew complement of 150. It also holds up to 300 battle mechs, which has lead to comments about the 'dog shedding its fleas' whenever it sends them out to sortie. The Invincible has twenty remaining.
The major advantage, and the only reason it was integrated into the Confederation Spacy, is its fold-space shield. By generating a subspace lens, curving it, and extending it in front of the ship, a single Spartan cruiser can cover a single full side of a Pilgrim or Chicomecoatl-class vessel with it, granting them near complete protection from that direction, at the price of a complete loss of mobility. Numbers are the strongest weapon this class has.
Unlike the Juggernauts, the Invincible can easily enter the atmosphere and even land. For this reason, despite its origins as a warship, it has also been outfitted with advanced sensors so that it can act as a forward scout and makeshift science vessel. The other ships of this class lack these enhancements.
Firaxian-Class ››
Glorious Dream of the Uncontested Starfall
The Uncontested Starfall was a gift from a grateful civilization, as thanks for repelling an invasion force, trading technologies, and helping set up more permanent defenses. It's been a member of the Fleet for seven years now, and the crew still doesn't have a grasp on everything it does. It doesn't help that the computer's primitive intelligence refuses to learn Confed Standard, requiring outside translation services or the crew to learn a new language entirely. However, after the loss of their last science vessel, it was welcomed nonetheless.
It possesses decent defensive capabilities, but its offensive abilities are substandard. However, the science stations that fill the ship are numerous and match (or even exceed) the scientific and medical understanding of the Fleet. Crewed by a small crew of twenty, the ship can host five times more. It always has an escort of fighters and mobile armors, switching out every few hours with the pilots switching out after two weeks.
The artificial intelligence makes many crewmembers nervous, and it seems programmed to despise war, so it's common to blame it when something goes wrong for one of the pilots. However, the semi-permanent members of the crew have earned its loyalty.
The ship can assist in small construction projects and repairs to the larger ships in the fleet, but requires an abundance of raw materials. Captured asteroids and meteors are almost always a cause for the Fleet to take a break.
Chicomecoatl-Class ››
Zandarian Star and Hiroshi's Love
The Chicomecoatl-class, aimed for a primitive South American agricultural deity, exists solely to raise crops and create food for the Fleet. Each ship is roughly fifteen miles long and fifteen miles wide and resemble six large die connected by a long strip of staples. The tetracontagons are as massive as the rest of the fleet and make up the bulk of the ship. Each of them is cleverly arranged to maximize growth space and airflow. Sunlight, artificial and real (stored cleverly), shines into each level to allow the crops to grow regularly. Water, recycled from the other ships and mined from comets, give the crops and livestock hydration.
The Chicomecoatl-class raises animals for meat, milk, dairy, and other biological products (for the non-human crew). It raises crops of nearly every type to feed the animals and the crew, as well as for trade. The crew is large, an average of about four hundred people who can spend days touring each agricultural 'orb' to make sure everything is in order. Life on these ships is rather luxurious to account for that, however, and there are always a hundred pilots and fifty troops stationed on each ship in case of an attack. Each orb has its own protective shield, but the ship lacks any weapons of its own rather than tractor beams and a few mining lasers.
Combat Units ››
Model T Mobile Armor
The Model T mobile armor, jokingly nicknamed the Tin Lizzie by people with too much free time, is the standard mobile armor for close engagements in the Fleet. Previous models either proved to be too difficult to maintain and repaired easily or the controls were too unworkable.
The Model T runs off of a series of Teslated Microgenerators. It cannot run indefinitely, like the ships with their hypermatter reactors, but they can manage for 36 hours of low-energy activity. Combat burns energy more swiftly, but the microgenerators are efficient enough to withstand a few hours still.
The armors themselves are twelve meters tall and built to resemble stocky humanoids. The default colors are white and blue, but many of the mobile armors have customized colors to display unit identification or denote ace units.
There are four points of propulsion. Two in each foot, and two rockets on the back. A variety of vernier thrusters allow for greater control in space. Control setup is complicated, relying on a mix of motion macros, buttons, four pedals, and two joysticks with quick-set macro buttons placed only a few inches from each stick, so that they can be pressed without letting go. All in all, there are 120 instuments and controls in each suit. In combat, a typical involvement will involve less than thirty.
The 'head' unit contains the main cameras, speakers, and a welding laser turret with a 360 degree range. The cockpit is contained in the chest. The forearms three concussion torpedoes each, the hands and fingers can convert to 60mm gatling cannons, and the legs double as mortars for ground engagements. Either arm can generate a small protective electromagnetic shield. Close-range weapons include a 'chain machete', a short (for the size. Roughly 3 meters long) blade where the edges are coated with chainsaw links containing plasma cutters.
The Model T is durable and strong, but not fast enough to counter enemy starfighters effectively. Experiments with different weapons modules are underway, but it's looking like it might be replaced before it's actually upgraded.
Crescent Fighters
Shaped like a crescent moon, these old model fighters are still looked at fondly by pilots. Nine meters long, from tip to tip, three meters thick, and four meters wide at the widest point, the fighter has weak shields but is fast and agile, with the entire back 'arc' being one long ion engine, with multiple verniers on the top and bottom capable of spinning it in nearly any direction. The small size makes them fragile, but they're nimble and hard to hit.
With four anti-ship missiles and four concussion torpedoes on each side, these fighters could double as bombers in a pinch, but their maser weapons set into the tips (four emitters per tip) of the crescents let them steadily eat away at enemy shields and hull integrity. A three-meter wide arc projector set into the front allows it to do impressive damage once the shields were down.
These fighters require a lot of maintenance, however, and can only be piloted for a few hours at a time. They're slowly being phased out, but the pilots who are fans of the old girls are being stubborn.
Tetra Interceptors
Designed to be a more durable, deadlier replacement for Crescent Fighters, the Tetra Interceptors are divisive amongst pilots. Larger, faster, and with more protective armor and shielding, a Tetra Interceptor strongly resembles a Y when viewed from the front. The center of the ship is a cone, with the primary ion pulse engine in the very rear, in the point, which folds out into three flaps while it's in flight. The middle of the cone houses the cockpit, and the flat, the center of the Y, houses a particle beam projector that acts as the main weapon.
The wings of the Y sweep back, forming legs for the Interceptor to rest on when not in flight. When in flight, these wings can spin while the primary cone remains stationary, in an attempt to present a more difficult target. Many pilots dislike this, and keep the wings locked in place. This improves accuracy and wastes less energy.
The Tetra Interceptors have larger generators than the Crescent Fighters, allowing for more power to every power station. The primary weapon is the front-mounted particle beam cannon, but each wing stores four plasma torpedoes and the two larger wings contain disruptive ion pulse weaponry.
When the wings are locked, a weak tractor beam may be used. This miniaturized version is an experimental function for fighters, but the technology has been used on larger civilian ships for years.
Pilgrim-Class ››
Teuberg
The Pilgrim-class Teuberg was, when it was made, a fine design. Shaped like a rectangular prism, designed to unfold once it landed, it is over sixty miles long and thirty miles wide and tall. Much of the volume of the ship is taken up by the city, also named Teuberg. However, several cubic miles of its innards also consists of engines, subspace drive, and environmental controls. There are also three nodes connected the top and sides, each twenty miles long and fifteen miles across, hosting a backup industrial area, a series of artificially-grown environments, and extra living space. These modules also act as backup engines and can separate in the case of an emergency.
Teuberg is a very aesthetically-designed city, designed for good feng shui, efficiency, and ease of travel. At any given point, the population is at least five hundred thousand people, not counting the thousands of military personnel who alternate between living on their warships and living on the Teuberg.
Teuberg is the only ship with actual weather control. A combination of holograms and image screens gives the illusion of a sky with random cloud patterns and thickness, as well as sunlight. Hidden vents throughout the city set up wind patterns and allow for 'random' temperatures, to avoid the monotony of every day being exactly the same. Even the sunrises and sunsets are programmed with thousands of possible variations. There are carefully scheduled rain days, to clean pollutants from the air and add yet more variation to the routine.
The city is set up carefully. There are districts for shopping, business, entertainment, education, and housing. While there is high class and low class housing districts, even the low-class housing is exceedingly comfortable and most who live there have few complaints.
The ship is protected against most forms of radiation, but lacks any serious defenses. It has armor and self-repair systems, as well as powerful shields, but enemy starfighters and mecha have entered the city more than once, needing to be repulsed by force. Weapons-wise, it has defensive beam weapons and outdated laser cannons designed to eliminate incoming missiles. The ship is not built for war.
Basic layout
Location of city
Juggernaut-Class ››
Gawain, Rasputin, Brockhurst and Juggernaut
The Juggernaut-class ships were an old design before the mission even started. They were still fearsome enough that seven were attached to the Crux Fleet, and after over a hundred years, four remain. Including the first ship of its type.
Juggernaut-class warships are massive beasts, bullet-shaped behemoths six miles in length. Their armor is several hundred feet thick, their shields are layered to an absurd degree, and they bristle with weapons. A single Juggernaut has over one hundred paired particle beam weapons, one hundred rail cannons, dozens of missile and torpedo tubes, and twenty attractor beams powerful enough to rip small starships apart. They carry four hundred and fifty starfighters and four hundred and fifty mobile armors, with landing vessels, drop ships, and cargo ships taking up space in their shuttlebays as well. The standard crew complement is 1,200 crewmembers, not counting Space Marines and pilots.
However, much of their bulk is due to their gravimetric field generators. These fields allow them to warp gravity enough to bend beam weaponry around their ships or crush missiles before they get into range. These take an enormous amount of energy, but their generators are more than capable of taking these loads. More can be read in the shields section.
The main drawback to the Juggernauts is the amount of maintenance they need to keep running. They were designed to get a complete overhaul to replace burned-out systems and the like every four years, and this hasn't been available. Their massive armor and powerful shields allow them to take an absurd amount of punishment, however, and it's only thanks to these vessels that the Crux Fleet still survives.
Spartan-Class ››
Invincible, Frescant and Moorehead
Spartan-class cruisers were brand new when the 43rd Crux Fleet left on its mission, and they were immediately hated by pretty much everyone. The design has been compared to a greyhound, its engines were constantly in need of repair, and the shields and weapons would have been at home on a civilian ship. Three ion cannons, three particle beams, and a single torpedo tube made the Spartan-class largely under-armed compared to the rest of the fleet. This, coupled with the poor design (truly a result of the lowest bidder), has made the ships very unpopular to serve on.
There are a few advantages to the Spartan-class. One of them is that the small size means that it can be crewed by relatively few crewmembers, with a standard crew complement of 150. It also holds up to 300 battle mechs, which has lead to comments about the 'dog shedding its fleas' whenever it sends them out to sortie. The Invincible has twenty remaining.
The major advantage, and the only reason it was integrated into the Confederation Spacy, is its fold-space shield. By generating a subspace lens, curving it, and extending it in front of the ship, a single Spartan cruiser can cover a single full side of a Pilgrim or Chicomecoatl-class vessel with it, granting them near complete protection from that direction, at the price of a complete loss of mobility. Numbers are the strongest weapon this class has.
Unlike the Juggernauts, the Invincible can easily enter the atmosphere and even land. For this reason, despite its origins as a warship, it has also been outfitted with advanced sensors so that it can act as a forward scout and makeshift science vessel. The other ships of this class lack these enhancements.
Firaxian-Class ››
Glorious Dream of the Uncontested Starfall
The Uncontested Starfall was a gift from a grateful civilization, as thanks for repelling an invasion force, trading technologies, and helping set up more permanent defenses. It's been a member of the Fleet for seven years now, and the crew still doesn't have a grasp on everything it does. It doesn't help that the computer's primitive intelligence refuses to learn Confed Standard, requiring outside translation services or the crew to learn a new language entirely. However, after the loss of their last science vessel, it was welcomed nonetheless.
It possesses decent defensive capabilities, but its offensive abilities are substandard. However, the science stations that fill the ship are numerous and match (or even exceed) the scientific and medical understanding of the Fleet. Crewed by a small crew of twenty, the ship can host five times more. It always has an escort of fighters and mobile armors, switching out every few hours with the pilots switching out after two weeks.
The artificial intelligence makes many crewmembers nervous, and it seems programmed to despise war, so it's common to blame it when something goes wrong for one of the pilots. However, the semi-permanent members of the crew have earned its loyalty.
The ship can assist in small construction projects and repairs to the larger ships in the fleet, but requires an abundance of raw materials. Captured asteroids and meteors are almost always a cause for the Fleet to take a break.
Chicomecoatl-Class ››
Zandarian Star and Hiroshi's Love
The Chicomecoatl-class, aimed for a primitive South American agricultural deity, exists solely to raise crops and create food for the Fleet. Each ship is roughly fifteen miles long and fifteen miles wide and resemble six large die connected by a long strip of staples. The tetracontagons are as massive as the rest of the fleet and make up the bulk of the ship. Each of them is cleverly arranged to maximize growth space and airflow. Sunlight, artificial and real (stored cleverly), shines into each level to allow the crops to grow regularly. Water, recycled from the other ships and mined from comets, give the crops and livestock hydration.
The Chicomecoatl-class raises animals for meat, milk, dairy, and other biological products (for the non-human crew). It raises crops of nearly every type to feed the animals and the crew, as well as for trade. The crew is large, an average of about four hundred people who can spend days touring each agricultural 'orb' to make sure everything is in order. Life on these ships is rather luxurious to account for that, however, and there are always a hundred pilots and fifty troops stationed on each ship in case of an attack. Each orb has its own protective shield, but the ship lacks any weapons of its own rather than tractor beams and a few mining lasers.
Combat Units ››
Model T Mobile Armor
The Model T mobile armor, jokingly nicknamed the Tin Lizzie by people with too much free time, is the standard mobile armor for close engagements in the Fleet. Previous models either proved to be too difficult to maintain and repaired easily or the controls were too unworkable.
The Model T runs off of a series of Teslated Microgenerators. It cannot run indefinitely, like the ships with their hypermatter reactors, but they can manage for 36 hours of low-energy activity. Combat burns energy more swiftly, but the microgenerators are efficient enough to withstand a few hours still.
The armors themselves are twelve meters tall and built to resemble stocky humanoids. The default colors are white and blue, but many of the mobile armors have customized colors to display unit identification or denote ace units.
There are four points of propulsion. Two in each foot, and two rockets on the back. A variety of vernier thrusters allow for greater control in space. Control setup is complicated, relying on a mix of motion macros, buttons, four pedals, and two joysticks with quick-set macro buttons placed only a few inches from each stick, so that they can be pressed without letting go. All in all, there are 120 instuments and controls in each suit. In combat, a typical involvement will involve less than thirty.
The 'head' unit contains the main cameras, speakers, and a welding laser turret with a 360 degree range. The cockpit is contained in the chest. The forearms three concussion torpedoes each, the hands and fingers can convert to 60mm gatling cannons, and the legs double as mortars for ground engagements. Either arm can generate a small protective electromagnetic shield. Close-range weapons include a 'chain machete', a short (for the size. Roughly 3 meters long) blade where the edges are coated with chainsaw links containing plasma cutters.
The Model T is durable and strong, but not fast enough to counter enemy starfighters effectively. Experiments with different weapons modules are underway, but it's looking like it might be replaced before it's actually upgraded.
Crescent Fighters
Shaped like a crescent moon, these old model fighters are still looked at fondly by pilots. Nine meters long, from tip to tip, three meters thick, and four meters wide at the widest point, the fighter has weak shields but is fast and agile, with the entire back 'arc' being one long ion engine, with multiple verniers on the top and bottom capable of spinning it in nearly any direction. The small size makes them fragile, but they're nimble and hard to hit.
With four anti-ship missiles and four concussion torpedoes on each side, these fighters could double as bombers in a pinch, but their maser weapons set into the tips (four emitters per tip) of the crescents let them steadily eat away at enemy shields and hull integrity. A three-meter wide arc projector set into the front allows it to do impressive damage once the shields were down.
These fighters require a lot of maintenance, however, and can only be piloted for a few hours at a time. They're slowly being phased out, but the pilots who are fans of the old girls are being stubborn.
Tetra Interceptors
Designed to be a more durable, deadlier replacement for Crescent Fighters, the Tetra Interceptors are divisive amongst pilots. Larger, faster, and with more protective armor and shielding, a Tetra Interceptor strongly resembles a Y when viewed from the front. The center of the ship is a cone, with the primary ion pulse engine in the very rear, in the point, which folds out into three flaps while it's in flight. The middle of the cone houses the cockpit, and the flat, the center of the Y, houses a particle beam projector that acts as the main weapon.
The wings of the Y sweep back, forming legs for the Interceptor to rest on when not in flight. When in flight, these wings can spin while the primary cone remains stationary, in an attempt to present a more difficult target. Many pilots dislike this, and keep the wings locked in place. This improves accuracy and wastes less energy.
The Tetra Interceptors have larger generators than the Crescent Fighters, allowing for more power to every power station. The primary weapon is the front-mounted particle beam cannon, but each wing stores four plasma torpedoes and the two larger wings contain disruptive ion pulse weaponry.
When the wings are locked, a weak tractor beam may be used. This miniaturized version is an experimental function for fighters, but the technology has been used on larger civilian ships for years.