UCS Kororra

[Graham Kennedy]

Fielded during the Tain war, the Kororra class was designed to be the ultimate battleship. By this point in the war supplies of
neutronium were ample, and extensive use was made of this and other exotic materials in the design. As a result the Kororras were
fast - 45 kc top cruise speed - and massively armed and armoured.

The design was largely evolutionary compared to the Wolfsbanes. The Kororra is significantly larger, with heavier armour and
a more powerful reactor/ZPEX/engine combination. The number of turrets was increased from five to seven, mounting three
Mark 21 AMP cannon each. Secondary armament consists of 60 Mark 6 cannon in twin turrets while tertiary armament consists
of 114 twin Mark 2 turrets.

One of the major changes was in the arrangement of the fighter landing bays. Previous designs had one or more landing
runways angled diagonally across the vessel's centreline. This made landing at FTL speeds a rather complex and hazardous
business, as well as a rather slow one when large numbers of fighters had to be landed.

In the Kororra, there were a series of landing "traps" which ran the entire length of the ship from stern to bow. A fighter would
land in each trap, decelerating along its length, then divert off to one of a group of side bays where an elevator was waiting to
take it to the hangar deck. The much longer landing traps allowed higher landing velocities; with this combined with a much
larger number of traps, the Kororras could land fighters at a far higher rate than any previous battleship.

The Kororras were first fielded in the latter stages of the Tain war. Many of them were fitted to carry the massive planetbuster
cannon, and many of them used these weapons in the latter stages of the war. After the war production was halted, as it was
for virtually all navy ships. The Kororras escaped the mass decommissioning which gutted the navy after the war,
but many of them were practically mothballed for lack of funds to keep them running, a not uncommon state of affairs in the
post-war fleet. With the election of the Mercer administration in 2998 the navy situation began to improve, and the Kororras
were put back into full service. The shipyards also began to crank out a new, somewhat improved variant - the Vanguard
subclass. The current plan is for the Coalition's battleship fleet to be an all-Kororra fleet by 3008.

[Teaos]

That is absolutly massive.

I love the way you made the fighter arrangement although it would take up a lot of space. But then again this thing has space to spare.

Is the planet buster weapon just the 7 turrets or something else?

...a almost 400 meter long gun... lol.

[Graham Kennedy]

This is as big as they get

And no, the planetbuster is something else. It's a sort of add on attachment you bolt to the bottom of the ship.

[D. Sergez]

I have to say your finest so far... i dont normally comment but wow thats huge

[Deepcrush]

Do you have a write up on the universe of yours? I would like to read what you have on it so far.

[Graham Kennedy]

Not as such. I have a lot of individual bits and pieces, much of it in various stages of completion and revision. The only really complete write-up is inside my head.

[D. Sergez]

Do you have a write up on the universe of yours? I would like to read what you have on it so far.

You know i would love that... it would be quite Interisting Read..

[Jim]

I love the submarine/battleship feel to your ships. Oldskool!!

[Mikey]

Do you have a write up on the universe of yours? I would like to read what you have on it so far.

This will be like the third or fourth time of mentioned this th GK - I'm still waiting for the novel!

[Graham Kennedy]

You have a long wait to come then!

[D. Sergez]

okay i guess i can wait... all good things in life take patience...

[Graham Kennedy]

Like all modern Battleships, the Kororra class is designed to be capable of carrying a DEPADS - Directed Energy Planetary Assault Device,
Strategic - known throughout the fleet as simply "the device", and to the public by the more prosaic name, "Planet Buster Cannon".

The ability to destroy a planet has been within the Coalition's technical capability for some decades. The combination of total conversion
reactors and zero point energy multiplication allowed the generation of sufficient power, whilst Zyrix energy cells allow sufficient energy
to be stockpiled and then released. However, DEPADS systems were long regarded as somewhat pointless. In virtually every case, life is
confined to the planetary atmosphere, hydrosphere, and within a few feet to a few miles of the surface. Heavy AMP cannon were already
more than powerful enough to devastate a planetary biosphere with even a single discharge; a single broadside from a Battleship would
render an Earth-sized planet all but incapable of supporting life. Actual physical destruction accomplished little that destroying the
biosphere did not do just as well.

The Tain war changed all that. The tain favoured planets with solid, inactive cores; the precise extent of their subterranean
excavations remains unknown, but they certainly burrowed down beyond a thousand miles; possibly throughout the planet. During the Tain
war it became clear that planetary bombardment, even on a
large scale, did relatively little damage. So for the first time it became necessary to physically destroy an entire world. The Coalition
developed their first DEPADS cannon during the later stage of the war.

In function the DEPADS is a relatively simple weapon. It consists of a large body of energy storage cells with an emitter array at the front.
The device connects to the lower end of the main power system of a heavy warship. The warship diverts part of all of its main power output
to the device, and when it is fully charged the energy pulse is released at the target. In essence, the DEPADS is simply a large energy weapon.

It differs from tactical devices only in scale. The current standard Coalition DEPADS is the Mark 4. It measures 2,179 metres long, 470.5 metres
wide, and 234.5 metres high. The total mass is a little under 26 million metric tons.

It is unusual for a ship to actually carry this weapon. DEPADS weapons were used to render the Tain species extinct at the end of the war; the
debate concerning both the necessity and morality of this act rages to this day. Whilst the Coalition public is, on the whole, supportive of the
methods used to end the Tain war, a good deal of distaste for DEPADS weapons has developed over the years.

As a result the employment of these weapons is heavily controlled and limited. The Coalition Navy maintains stockpiles of DEPADS cannon
at several classified locations deep within Coalition space. At any given time a small fraction of those battleships on patrol will mount one
of them. Such ships are not employed in normal patrol operations; rather they actively seek to lose themselves in space for the duration of
their patrol. The weapons themselves cannot legally be used without direct orders from the highest level of government.

[Captain Seafort]

Commence primary ignition.

That's a very impressive piece of kit and, moreover, a very interesting way of making a planetbuster a practical weapon of war rather than simply a weapon of terror. I like the allusion to nuclear weapons with regards to the end of the Tain war. Genocide though? Were these jokers that stubborn, or did they piss humanity off that badly?

[stitch626]

Wow. Nice gun.

[Graham Kennedy]

The Tain are a little undefined as yet. I had them as insectoids, but... well, it's been done like a million times already. Whatever I settle on, they
are very, very different. They think differently, act differently - in ways that don't always seem logical to outsiders. There was never any
real possibility of negotiation with them, and they showed no sign of asking for surrender when the war was going well for them, or of offering
it when the war turned. Although it's perfectly possible that they did both, and the Coalition simply never recognised the offer because it was
couched in terms that they couldn't understand.

In the end, it was a case of fighting to the finish.