The Rebel Faction

Pulsar Class Heavy Cruiser

Name/Type: Pulsar Class Cruiser
Designer/Manufacturer: Stellar Enterprises
Combat Role: Heavy Cruiser
Personnel: 550 + RAI (Restricted Artificial Intelligence)
Size:
Length: 1700m
Height:250m
Width: 450m

Speed: Slow Acceleration/medium speed after fully accelerated
The Pulsar Heavy Cruiser is built was faster speeds than most ships its size, however the mass of the ship slows down its acceleration greatly. So while it can reach high speeds, it takes time to do so.

Along with reduced acceleration, the maneuverability of the ship is also slow, but large maneuvering thrusters along the sides of the vessel help to turn it within a reasonable period of time.

Hyperdrive: x1.5

Shield Rating: Heavy

The Pulsar was built for mainly survivability and commanding battle groups. As such, the vessel has heavy overlapping shielding that can resist tremendous amounts of punishment before failing. The shield projectors are also contained within carbon matrix blisters along the hull in order to minimize damage to said projectors.

Hull: Heavy

A second generation Carbon Matrix makes up the Pulsar Cruiser's internal structure and external hull plating. Externally the ship is covering in a triple layer of Matrix armor with a heat resistant and shock absorbent gel between each layer. The gel prevents damage from one layer passing through to the second by the dissipation of excess heat and kinetic energy. It also helps limit damage to that specific area and prevent nearby armor from weakening through micro or macrofractures, as can happen with solid durasteel hull plating.

As with the first generation armor, the Carbon Matrix is made of bonded carbon atoms into a matrix like structure which has similar properties of diamond. This makes it both strong, greatly resistant to pressures, and also great at thermal conductivity. Having diamond like properties the layers are capable of dissipating tremendous amounts of heats, while still staying cool. This makes it a great armor against lasers and turbolasers, allowing it to reflect, refract, or just plain scatter turbolaser shots. It also makes the ship's hull more resilient again ion cannon blasts by being almost completely non-conductive, unlike metallic based hull designs.

With the second generation of this armor, the design and manufacturing process has been further perfected. The bonded structure has been redesigned to be stronger and more resistant to damage. While from a distant the hull looks smooth, when up close it can be seen that the armor is in fact a geometric mix of shapes with various angles in all directions. This design helps reflect of the laser energy being directed at it.

The matrix design has also been infused with special capsules filled with sealants. If part of the hull becomes damaged or broken, these capsules burst and release a resin that hardens as soon as it comes into contact with the cold of space. This resin is not as tough as the carbon armor, but will allow small breaches to quickly seal up.

As a side note, the carbon armor is much lighter per meter than durasteel or other metallic armor types, allowing the ship it be larger, but still have lower relative mass.

Weapons: Heavy

The Cruiser was created to take on larger ships or a multiple number of smaller ships. While other factions and group has almost unlimited resources, Stellar Enterprises does not and therefore can not built countless numbers of vessels. For this reason each vessel has to be better armed and shielded in order to survive outnumbered encounters.

1 Heavy Shockwave Projector

The Shockwave cannon is a new creation by SE scientific minds. The weapon is a heavy gravity wave projector. The system creates fields of tremendously high gravities and using intensive magnetic fields encapsulates these fields. When released, the gravity wave surges forward towards a target at tremendous speeds. Upon impact the magnetic fields untangle and release the gravity field inside, whether against shields or hull plating. The effect is many times greater than that of a gravity bomb and almost the same as a small singularity (black hole) would have on a nearby ship.

While shields on larger ships can withstand multiple hits, some smaller ships such a fighters or small frigates/corvettes/pickets, can be destroyed or disabled outright. The effects of the weapon do not stop completely at the shields, however, the gravity fields still have an effect on the hull through shields. Sensitive equipment on the surface of ships, such as weapons barrels, targeting equipment, shield projectors, and other electronics can be distorted or damaged because of their low tolerance for such shock. Everything in the nearby area would be pulled towards the immense gravity singularity created at the epicenter of the impact.

Against the hull, the effect would be of hull plating cracking and crumbling/disintegrating or nearby emplacements being pulled off their mountings and everything in between.

Because of the massive energy requirements for creating the gravatic and magnetic fields, the weapon can only fire once every (2 posts?)

The weapon is also forward facing and fixed along the ship's center line, allowing it only to fire at targets directly in front.

35 Heavy Particle Beam Projectors

These are large particle cannons that send out solid beams of compressed particles that have both thermal and kinetic properties (mostly kinetic). While being more powerful than turbolasers, these weapons take longer to recharge and therefor cannot fire as often. Their impact at almost the speed of light creates a massive force against any ships shields. Smaller vessels are not equipped with proper shielding to withstand a short sustained assault. Larger vessels can hold out longer, but the shock from each impact could cause other system problems onboard the vessels.

25 HRT-12 Turbolaser Batteries

These are second generation Heavy Rotation Turbolasers. They are somewhat smaller and more efficient than previous models, but still consume massive amounts of energy. Unlike turbolaser emplacements, however, the batteries are larger and contain an increased number of barrels as well as larger generators, allowing the weapons to fire for longer periods of time before taking cooldown periods.

30 DP-13 Dual Heavy Turbolaser/Ion cannon Turrets

The Dual Purpose Turbolaser/ion cannons were developed in order to make use of limited weapons spaces on ships and the difficulties of having ships prepared for multiple uses. Using a dual internal rotating mechanism, the weapon can switch between firing turbolaser bolts and ion cannon shots. The weapons control stations can switch as many weapons as they want to ion cannon configuration while keeping others at turbolaser settings. This allows the ship to transition from enemy destroyer to capture missions quickly and effectively.

8 -30 Cell VL-36 VLS

This is just an upgraded version of the older SE Vertical Launch System. The system allows ships to carry a diverse arsenal of missiles, torpedoes, and rocket assisted bombs. Each cell can hold up to two anti fighter missiles or a single larger antiship missile. Capital Ship torpedoes take up 4 cells as do Rocket Assisted Bombs.

Defensively the VLS is armored and isolated from significant ship systems. If a direct hit is attached against one of these systems, the entire unit can be detached from the vessel and ejected into space through a surrounding magnetic launcher.

Fighter Complement:
4 Droid Fighter Squadrons (48)

Do to a relative low fighter complement for a ship that might typically travel alone, it was proposed to fit the Cruiser with a new cognitive interface system. The system allows trained pilots/crew members to take command of the droid fighters mentally. The pilots sit in simulator-like stations within the ship and use their minds to pilot the droid fighters or simply issue orders quickly. At any given time the system allows a pilot to control up to two different fighters, giving them the ability to pilot one completely while issuing commands to the other.

For example if the pilot is using one to attack an enemy craft and senses another fighter on his/her tail, they can order the second craft to attack that enemy.

The interface allows the pilots to visualize all that the fighter sees inside their mind, allowing them to feel as they were flying the craft. This is a modified system that is used on the Hammerhead fighter and can use either wireless encrypted transmissions or laser datalink if available. If for some reason all of these methods are cut off, the droid fighters will continue to function on their own and carry out any missions assigned to them, since they are pretty much the same fighters using on board other ships, just modified to accept remote Cognitive instructions.

The system also makes sure that the limited pool of trained pilots within the SE do not parish as they can not be replaced as quickly as the ships their fly. The pilots also get better and better over time because they are capable of learning from their mistakes instead of dieing because of them.

10 Assault Shuttles

Troops:
1 Droid Brigade (2800 Combat Droids)

The ship carries a whole droid combat brigade for antiship operations or planetary security missions. The brigade includes armor units as well as troopers.

Special:

MIS-242 Sensor Array: This is a combined advanced sensor array with sophisticated sensors integrated with a gravity field detector as well as the spectrographic sensors pioneered by Stellar Enterprises.

HoloSheath: This is a holographic projection system that can cover the ship in a lifelike hologram of any known ship of similar size. This can be used to disguise the ship in the event that is needed.

Compartmentalized Damage Control: The Damage control system is designed to isolate specific areas of the ship from damage through the use of airtight barriers and shields. Each compartment within the ship was designed to be its own lifepod with air scrubbers and food ration storages, as well as small refresher station and water recycling units just in case it took time for rescue crews to reach it.

The system revolves around each ship compartment being attached to the ship's internal structure separately, but being able to detach with the use of explosive bolts in times of emergency. The outer compartments would fire away first before more interior ones, peeling away layer by layer. The top most compartments would take the external hull plating with them, opening the way for the next ones.

RAI: Restricted Artificial Intelligence was designed as a smaller version of the DATA system created by SE years ago to assist ships and installations with anything they need. From keeping track of supplies to coordinating ships in combat, the Artificial Intelligence can do it all, as well as learn new methods and adjust to the way it interacts with various crew and command structures.

The restricted part is because the system is kept from becoming too human and self-aware. It will always follow commands unless they conflict with laws of life or issued by people not on the registered command list.

Suppressor System: This is a system made up of small fast firing lasers designed to intercept missiles and other incoming ordinance. They are not powerful enough to destroy fighters, but can annoy them by chipping away at their shields.

Link-24 TLDL: This is just an updated laser data link system.

J-15 EW Array: Electronic warfare is a necessity of battle. The system incorporates target/missile jammers as well as communication jammers to deny the enemy coordination and use of certain weapons systems. This makes the ship harder to hit and therefor kill. Giving it a slight edge in battle.

Carbon Matrix Armor: Described before

RandD Post: http://therebelfaction.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14160