progress as yet. My starting point was to have something on a par with a Kororra class in size, at about 5,000 metres long. I wanted something that was oriented more vertically than horizontally.
The main threat force are a species called the Areldeni. They are somewhat poor relations to the Coalition, and use more primitive technology - hence this uses the twin hull philosophy that the Coalition moved past some time ago. It might seem that this would make them
easy to beat, and in truth the Coalition does enjoy an advantage in that respect. But the Areldeni have really stretched the more primitive tech, scaling it up and pushing it to make it more competitive. The best analogy I can think of is the Russian Bear bomber. It was a
propeller plane in an age of jet engines, and yes it was outclassed by the B-52, but by pushing the propeller technology to the absolute limit it is still a competitive bomber even today.
I've armed it with Mark 15 AMP cannon. You may remember that the Mark is analogous to caliber, with 1 Mark = 1 inch; round energy scales in proportion to the cube of the Mark. So these are 15 inch guns as compared to the 21 inch on the Kororra. However, where the
Kororra mounts 21 AMP cannon this thing mounts no less than 51 Mark 15s. The Mark 15s also have a higher rate of fire, so their main guns are about comparable in overall firepower.
However, this beast also has a surprise in the form of three forward firing Mark 30s. They are essentially fixed axis weapons which can only fire a degree or two off the forward axis. As such it's pretty hard to hit another ship with them; but if you do get a hit in, taking a salvo from these would be like taking nine Mark 21 hits simultaneously. A captain has to be very careful to stay out of the way of these things, but in truth they are more designed for bombardment of heavily shielded targets like stations or planets.
They carry a smaller fighter complement than the Kororras, but mount a heavier anti fighter defence. There are 210 turrets each mounting quad Mark 1.5 AMP cannon - 840 cannon in all, which is a hell of a lot. Attacking these things in a fighter would not be fun.
