Tréville-class Cruiser
Introduction:“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” ~Charles Darwin
Change.
The face of the galaxy has changed.
No longer do fleets of the Black Dragon Empire and the Galactic Coalition clash in mass battle. No longer does Simon Kaine lead the nearly unstoppable Imperial war machine. No longer is the Empire at rest, with Rebellions cropping up across its space. No longer is the Confederation an infant subfaction of the Coalition gearing up for war with BDE. But rather, it is a reasonably sized independent government barely singed by galactic war. It has become a fortified haven of peace and freedom.
With the Confederation’s transformation into a more peaceful state, so does that of the nature of the Confederate Military. Funds are increasingly being allocated for potent and cheaper ground defences rather than the expensive, high-tech warships which KDI designed to liberate the Tion Sector. Compounding the problem, there is a wide diversification of warship designs among local defence fleets. Making maintenance and supply a nightmare for large fleet expeditions, as well as making it difficult to train, rotate and promote service personnel across a multitude of ship types. Thus, while a diverse fleet of high-tech warships may look exceptionally effective on paper, it is prohibitively costly for most governments to pursue in addition to its logistical problems. Inspired by the New Republic’s successful response to a similar situation with its New Class modernization program, the Confederation has started its Unity Project.
As ships from the Unity Project are introduced, older vessels will be gradually replaced and their crews put onto their newer, cheaper, and less maintenance-intensive ships (though many service people are retiring as the chance of conflict lessens). Local governments do have the option of overriding this project, but they then must individually pay for extra planetary defences which are becoming standard across Confederation space. Thus far, only Kashan and New Oceanus have rejected the bill, mostly because of their defence resting in concealment as well partially because of the local influence of KDI.
General Ship Overview:
“These ships may well be economic and logistical triumphs, but I would much prefer to face our enemies in the newest wave of KDI’s technological terrors.”
~ Rear Admiral Corise Lucerne, SCO, Confederate Armed Forces
Unity Project ships in general have below average costs, good mobility, a peacetime dual purpose, and excellent armor coverage but lack heavy firepower. Various laborsaving devices and automation reduce crew sizes to cut costs in paying crewmembers and consumables. In addition, Unity ships are designed to accommodate a wide variety of parts to make logistics, upgrading, and repair easier at the cost of battle efficiency. Unity Project ships are built utilizing heavily standardized components for improved logistics, ease of training, and cheaper costs; thus, default components like powercells, engines, weapons, etc are often identical on a smaller ship and a significantly larger ship, though they do vary by amount. Most designs are intentionally simple and designed for mass-production, meaning that if the Confederation was attacked, large numbers of them could be quickly produced and green crews could easily adapt to them for mass fielding. Nearly all Unity ships are based on existing designs and technologies. One technology found on all ships is the Multi-Core Power System and an Anti-concussion Field Generator.
Name/Type: Tréville-class Cruiser
Designer/Manufacturer: Confederation Defence Industries
Designation: Medium Cruiser
Crew: 1,472 + 140 Gunners + 200 LE Repair Droids
Length: 600 Meters
Speed: 30 MGLT, 950 Kph
Hyperdrive: x0.8
Shield Rating: 2100 SBD + 2100 SBD Backup
Hull Rating: 1520 RU
Weapons: 20 CCA XX-9 Medium Turbolaser Batteries, 20 KDI IV-9 Medium Quad Ion Cannons, 12 CCA I-7 Defence Clusters, 6 Phylon Q7 Tractor Beam Projectors, 12 Starflare-class Missile Launchers.
Fighter Complement: 36 Medium Fighters or other equivalent.
Troops: 1640 Infantry, 16 Medium Armored Vehicles or other equivalent.
Support Craft: 6 Medium Transports or other equivalent.
Special: Erebus Array
General description: The Tréville-class Cruiser is an exceptionally fast warship designed by a team composed of engineers from Reaper’s World and Audacia, but utilizing the same Abhean hull used by the Suffren-class. Neither of the design teams actually had experience in designing warships, but they did have experience with high speed merchant vessels and ground vehicles respectively. This led them to making the space equivalent of a cruiser tank; a ship that is adept at exploiting gaps within enemy formations with its high speed and maneuverability. Complementing this strategy is the Erebus array, a device similar to that of the Sinew-class, which simultenously jams enemy communications and coordinates friendly communications. Despite these abilities, the Tréville is being viewed with some skepticism within the navy about its effectiveness, primarily because the ship has a lower attack strength and shielding than most ships of its size. In times of peace, the ship utilizes its Erebus Array to act as a broadcasting vessel, becoming long-range civilian comlink carriers.
Technical Descriptions:
Relative Cost: Below Average
Cost: The ship has a below average price tag for its size. Using commercial civilian-grade systems and a standard hull lowers the cost of the vessel significantly, and unlike with some Unity ships, it has no high tech components to drive the cost back up to average.
Speed: High
Speed: The prime advantage of the Tréville-class is its high speed, which is derived from the oversized ion engines usually used in priority bulk freighters. Like the Suffren, the Tréville has no less than four etheric rudders, visible as flat panels on either side of the bridge superstructure with two more directly below it. Combined with the ship’s ample thrust, the Tréville is one of the most maneuverable cruisers around. As with other Unity ships, the Tréville has dedicated maintenance and repair crews composed of LE Repair Droids supervised by human mechanics to repair damages and tune the engines for optimal speed.
Shield Rating: Moderately Low
Shields: Engineers did not put shielding on the priority list when they designed the Tréville, as it was believed that its high speed would provide protection through getting out of the range of most weapons. Thus, the shields of the Tréville are lower than those of similiarly sized ships, including the ancient Rendili dreadnaughts. The ship does, however, follow Confederation tradition of maintaining redundant, identical back-up shields in case of catastrophic shield failure.
Armor: Average
Armor: The ship sports average armor for its size. Like the other Unity ships and many Confederation ships before it, the Tréville comes equipped with Electric Reactive armor nearly identical to that of the Juaire Mk II; made up of a cheap and common metals. This allows the ship to soak more physical damage than a ship for its size is normally capable of taking.
Weapons: Moderately Low
Weapons: Because of the engineering team’s lack of experience in warship design, the engineers based the basic weapon layout on the moderately successful Seraph-class, but replaced the long-range turbolasers with the increasingly common and cheaper CCA XX-9 Medium Turbolaser. The result is a ship with moderately weak but versatile set of armaments.
Complements: Average
Complement: Also derived from the Seraph, with the main hangar bay being literally lifted off the design of the Seraph and slightly modified to fit in the frame of the Tréville. It carries a reasonable amount of troops and vehicles as well, which make it suited for a variety of missions.
Erebus Array: This is the Tréville’s pride and joy, and potent threat with which to disrupt the enemy fleet. Confederate engineers were inspired by the successful Sinew-class when they designed the Erebus Array, but there are more than few differences between the devices involved. Like the Sinew, the Tréville coordinates channel hopping throughout the fleet using predetermined patches while jamming all other channels. Confederation channels change every two seconds with a second in delay time because of the channel hopping. In order to prevent enemy ships from overhearing Confederation transmissions, the signals are encrypted by complex set of algorithms which change every quarter of a minute in a fashion dictated by the fleet’s communication’s patch. In order to handle this influx of information, the ship uses a single Series 50 mainframe. With that kind ofcomputiner power, the ship can handle hundreds of encrypted communications at a time. Unlike the Sinew, the Tréville uses its hull as the antennae, which make the signals more powerful for the communication’s gear size, and makes the transmitter more durable. Unfortunately, because the communication’s gear is much smaller than that of a ship that is larger and completely dedicated to communications, an individual Erebus array is less powerful. However, the ships are designed to work in groups, and thus amplify their signal strength as the number of Trévilles increases. Consequently, in large fleet battles, it takes significantly more effort to disrupt Confederation communications and jamming.
Comlink provider: In times of peace, the Tréville acts as a communication’s provider for private civilians, corporations, and the government by usings its Erebus Array. While common subspace radios can and do provide instanteous communication, they are both expensive and bulky for most people. What the Tréville does is provide the same service at a cheaper price to the planet that it is orbiting, but acts as a medium to allow personal comlinks to contact each other from different planets and areas. Thus, the Tréville’s act as commercial long-range comlink carriers in times of peace, and thus pay for themselves over time and then some.
RP Thread: Unity Project: Among the Stars
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