Caster Class Heavy Cruiser
Name/Type: Name/Type: Caster Class Heavy CruiserDesigner/Manufacturer: Stellar Enterprises
Designation: Heavy Cruiser
Crew: 550 + 86 Gunners
Length: 800 Meters
Speed: 23 MGLT / 800 kph
Hyperdrive: x1
Shield Rating: 4800 SBD + 2,900 SBD Backup
Hull Rating: 2220 RU
Weapons: 1 Static Field Generator, 20 Repeater Turbolaser Turrets, 36 Heavy Turbolaser Batteries, 8 Heavy Ion Cannons, 30 Repeater Heavy Laser Cannons, 40 Dual Warhead Lauchers (400 warheads), 6 Tractor Beam Projectors.
Fighter Complement: 72 Droid Fighters
Troops: 250 Marines+750 Defense Droids
Support Craft: 2 Shuttles.
Special: Targeting Jammers, Static Field Generator, Suppressor System, Link-22 LDL, Carbon Matrix Armor
Description: The Caster class is noted for all its slanted and sloped sides. These angles and forms increase surface area for weapons and sensor placements. Sloping the forward and rear and sides allowed for more weapons to be brought to bear on targets since they could sit behind each other and still fire without hitting the forward weapons.
The engines and hanger and hidden within the ship itself. The engines at the read, surrounded by slanted armor sides, preventing damage from almost all directions. It is also in the rear that the large hanger is located. A massive blastdoor covers the entire hanger and protects the space inside from damage. It sits flush with the outer hull and looks just like the rest of the ship. This rear facing hanger allows fighters and bombers to exit without getting shot down when under assault.
Power generators take up the rest of the rear space. They are massive units with backups spread throughout the ship. Their size is necessary for the Caster's main weapon system, the Static Field Generator.
Static Field Generator: This is a new weapon created by Stellar Enterprises. The Static Field Generator is located at the top of the vessel and requires massive amounts of power to operate. The weapon changes an intense mass or ball of static electricity and ions, condensing them to point of explosion. It takes 25 seconds to full charge and after this the static field can no longer be contained. It explodes out in all directions up to 15 kilometers and washes over everything in that range. It has the power to short out all electronics, like a massive ion cannon strike, but on a large scale. Ships over 1600 meter are less effected, but still have many systems that shut down or overload, while smaller vessels and starfighters had greater disabilities. Anything less than 300 meters has full power failure and completely shuts down, while anything larger might have shields overload or targeting computers shut down.
During the weapons charging process, only the Caster's shields are active to protect the vessel. All weapons systems accept for the Suppressor Antimissile system are offline. The weapon can also be used only once as the generators take in so much power that they overload after the first firing. The ship can only fire again after being refit with new generators in dry dock.
Suppressor System: This is an anti missile system created from using a network of LAM-2 Protector batteries placed all over the ship. These are similar to those fitted on the HammerHead fighter and have just enough power to destroyer a missile or torpedo, but not enough to damage a fighter..
Link-22 LDL: Link-22 is a new continuous laser data link system. This system is not effect by any sort of jamming and allows pilots to quickly communicate with each other even under the heaviest of jamming conditions. Link-22 is a new generation of laser data links that is capable of sending massive amounts of data through laser light. This system sends and updates information continuously from all friendly ships equipped with a Link-22. This data becomes quickly updated within the fighter's systems. It allows the fighter to gather data from all over the battlefield through the use of other fighters and ships.
The problem with this system is that it requires line of sight to work. Anything solid that get into the fighter's path will prevent the information from being sent. Computers, however, could reroute the data through other sources around the battle like other ships or fighters in order to deliver it to proper place. The laser beam is also very hard to intercept and contains heavy encryption to prevent most from breaking it.
Comments
#20 6:06am 02/05/07
I've done designs where, instead of say 50,000 SBD particle shields, you'd have 25,000 SBD partice shields and 10,000 SBD ray shields. I think that'd be an appropriate trade off.
#19 9:48pm 01/05/07
Video games aren't considered to be the best sources when there are other sources. I remember Emperor Hyfe going on a rant about that for some time. Probably because it deals with game mechanics. In which case, we could apply XvT rules and have an average squadron of X-wings take out an ISD with losing at most half the squadron.
From EGWT, pg. 84: "Since ion blasts are unimpaired by energy shields, ships have no defense against them short of reconfiguring their shields--and this would make the shields useless for abosrbing standard laser blasts."
As designing multiple shielding systems; I know it's been done, but there's got to be a tradeoff for that. Shields take a lot of energy to keep up. Also from EGWT, pg. 82:
"Ray shields will absorb blasts from laser cannons, turbolasers, and other energy weapons. Since these shields consume a tremendous amount of energy, they are only raised when battle is imminent."
#18 9:16pm 01/05/07
Good question. I can't answer that one. But everything I've ever seen says ray shields stop ion cannons. Rogue Squadron, the X-wing series, X-wing Alliance, etc. And don't ask for the page numbers in the X-wing series, I no longer have the books.
#17 8:54pm 01/05/07
If standard shields stopped Ion energy, why would the Coalition need Ion Shielding?
#16 8:35pm 01/05/07
I specifically remember when playing the Rogue Squadron game for N64 that Ray shields stop Ion cannons. (Remember the Kessel mission?). That was one of the earliest sources for Star Wars info.
And I can see a ship having two sources of shielding going on at one time (I've even designed a few ships to this effect), but the two shields are layered on on top of another instead of trying to put them in the same area.
#15 8:03pm 01/05/07
Though thick hull plating can stop the effects of ion cannons on inside electronics. Most capships designed here at TRF (at least in the past) have their generators behind hull plating for that reason.
Just remembered that Paladin IIs use Ionic shielding...
#14 7:52pm 01/05/07
If that's the case, I'll remember that when I'm RPing. *Goes off to practice shooting ion cannons at shield generators, frying the electronics and eliminating that difficulty*
#13 7:40pm 01/05/07
The traditional view at TRF has been shields (Ion Shields exempted) do not stop Ion Cannons. TNO has the Swift, which uses Ion technology to pass through shields, and I am sure there are numerous examples of Ion Cannons passing through them in the RPing section.
#12 8:15pm 26/04/07
Alright, well the books say the shields are bypassed with ion cannons, so I'm going with that. I don't really care what some made up site thinks or says. The weapons books state clearly that Ion Cannons are not effected by shields.
#11 8:09pm 26/04/07
Not necessarily Demos. Repulsorlift vehicles are not capable of moving any sort of shielding, whether it be ray or particle. Starships use repulsorlifts in the atmosphere to float. That's why the shields were temporary lowered.
#10 8:01pm 26/04/07
Actually, if I remember correctly, the SD was overconfident, got too close to the planet, and didn't raise its shields. The commander was later severely punished.
I agree with Park and Demos here. Ion cannons are stopped by shields; however, they are configured to create gaps in the shields by overloading them.
#9 7:54pm 26/04/07
Planetary shields are different from ship based shields. The Destroyer that was hit shields up and the ion cannons passed right through them and shut down the ship. That was the only ship in range of the ion cannon and it was disabled allowing the transports to escape. They only had one cannon and it doesn't cover a whole planet.
#8 7:49pm 26/04/07
Corise has been reading too much Essential Guide. Check out [url]http://www.stardestroyer.net/tlc/Ion/index.html[/url] for some analysis of the film... which seems to show ion cannons being stopped by shields.
Or just consider the fact that the Rebels had to drop their planetary shield to fire their ion canon - otherwise they would have simply disabled the entire Imperial fleet along their escape vector.
#7 7:37pm 26/04/07
lol no they don't, rays are for energy weapons yes, but not for ion cannons, why do you think ions are fit on ships, because they can bring down shields through overloading them and shut down electronic systems even while shields are up.
#6 7:32pm 26/04/07
Ray shields can be configured to stop ion attacks, but then they're useless against turbolasers and laser cannons. And given the amount of energy that shields use, it's unlikely that a ship could have two sets of ray shielding going on at the same time without some major loss/tradeoff.
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