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Destroyers tend to fill the role of fleet fillers along side cruisers, normally providing the lighter weapons armament compared to the cruisers primarily anti-warship weaponry. Destroyers are faster and more maneuverable than cruisers, but have a lighter armament. Destroyers are easily the most common type of warship in space. Most races operate a variety of destroyers for multiple purposes.

The Iota class destroyer is one of the main fleet warships of the Terran Alliance stellar navy. The main battery of 4 high energy plasma stream cannons is more than capable of dealing with equal enemies, and is more than likely to be able to take on a larger vessel of cruiser sizes. The 9 light laser cannons provide ample, if not high anti fighter firepower, making the Iota a dangerous combatant in the face of fighters and bombers, a trait that is common to destroyers. The high firepower of this class does have its sacrifice, in that it is slower than most destroyers, only capable of 3700 km/s compared to an average of 4500 km/s. She is also far less maneuverable than most, due to her comparative lack of power to maneuvering thrusters. This Destroyer is more common in major fleet actions or bombardment duties as she is not as capable as a patrol destroyer, mainly due to the lack of speed.

Iota's are a strange design in that it is long and thin. Most alliance ships have a larger section under-hanging the top cylindrical hull. She is widely respected as one of the most sleek vessels under the Alliance's command, and is most definitely a menacing vessel to look upon.

Very nice.

One change I would suggest is to give sublight mobility in terms of acceleration rather than absolute speed, as the latter is of course meaningless in space.

Also, I assume that the ship's capable of FTL. What's its mobility like in this department?

Faster than light technology is dependent on Slipstream nodes. Sorta like space tele-porters in a way. You hit one node configured to fire at another, and it catapults you to the location. The only reason there is a slipstream node there is to eliminate the vessels mass so the ship can travel almost indefinitely, as long journeys weren't possible without it.

Pretty cool.

Reliant121 wrote:Faster than light technology is dependent on Slipstream nodes. Sorta like space tele-porters in a way. You hit one node configured to fire at another, and it catapults you to the location. The only reason there is a slipstream node there is to eliminate the vessels mass so the ship can travel almost indefinitely, as long journeys weren't possible without it.

Ah, right ho.

Slipstream nodes are timelessly ancient, left behind millennia ago by a long dead civilization. The Caalma discovered it, and the Bastion. Then rebuilt the bastion, and discovered other species lending to the Slipstream nodes.

Reliant121 wrote:Slipstream nodes are timelessly ancient, left behind millennia ago by a long dead civilization. The Caalma discovered it, and the Bastion. Then rebuilt the bastion, and discovered other species lending to the Slipstream nodes.

Did this long-dead civilisation happen to own a large floating city, and have an alliance with three other powerful races, by any chance?

I'm sure I recognise that reference from somewhere...but i cant remember where.

No they died. Ravaged by a disease.

I'd still recommend changing the units of sublight mobility - absolute speeds simply don't make sense, and detract from the otherwise high-quality realism.

How would you structure it then? What would you state as an equivalent speed?

Say how fast they can accelerate.

As an acceleration - either km/s^2, or g (acceleration due to gravity on Earth, equivalent to 9.8 m/s^2).

Excuse me from being vague, what does s^2 stand for?

km/s^2 means "kilometre per second squared". S^2 just means "second squared".

why do i have to know so little about stellar mechanics. I've never even heard of this.

So would it be basically the same, only with a different suffix attached to it?