The Rebel Faction

The Kris-class fighter is roughly seventeen meters long, and has a wingspan to match. It was designed at the behest of the Coalition government, meant to combat the increasing risk of war on a galactic scale.
The Coalition fighter corp is, presently, a disorganized mess of regional fighters, loose squads, and designs native to regions. This design was meant not only to surpass earlier designs, but to become the standard fightercraft, uniformly present across the Coalition, and a symbol of unity and the Coalition as a whole.

Galactic politics were taken into account during the Kris's design. The designers realized that the Coalition would never possess the raw numbers of the Empire, nore would it gain the technological finess of the Black Dragons, so they would have to stress the one angle left to them: skill. They would have to craft a ship which would possess enough strength and speed to allow a superior fighter to beat an inferior but better-equipped foe.

And so the design team settled on a base tennent for the entire series of vessels - speed. If the ship is never hit, it doesn't matter what its' armour is like. By giving maximum maneauverability to the pilot, and thus allowing him or her every option, control of the battle is given to the Coalition. If the pilots are good, they will be able to avoid the enemy fire and hammer away from the best positions. If they are bad, they will be unable to avoid their foes and be destroyed.

With this idea in mind, they began making massive changes to base principles of design, testing limits and risks. In the end, the fighter they came up with sported some unusual abilities and characteristics.

Firstly, are its' guns. Laser was quickly becoming obsolete, and many defence technologies were designed to protect against nothing else. So instead of lasers, the Kris is armed with a pair of Particle Projectors. The Particle Projectors (or PPs) use magnetic rollers to launch balls of superheated matter at incredible speed. The balls are small, so many may be stored in a single ship, and once they overcome the magnetic force holding them together by either the passage of time or a collision with an enemy ship, they tear themselves apart with incredible ferocity, likely shredding the delicate innards of a struck vessel.

The downside to these guns are their short range. Although they have incredible stopping power, and proved in tests to be quite capable of tearing through an enemy fighter, it is not long after firing that the force of the matter pushing away from each other overcomes the magnetic forces propelling them along. It is this principle that makes the shots so deadly even after they've smashed into an enemy ship, but also gives them a relatively short combat range. The range doesn't make any difference in a figher dogfight, but at a distance the shot breaks apart before it is a risk. The bright side is that there will be few friendly fire incidents, as a missed shot is almost certain to be useless. Should the projectors prove ineffective, a pair of Ion cannons are mounted on the tip of the frame.

Another odd characteristic are the Kris's shields. Although the Kris has shields, they are of an uncommon variety. The shields are fairly weak, and can take only about half as many hits as a regular shield, because space for the projectors was reduced to make way for a better recharging system. A second energy storage zone for recharging ensures that the Kris shields will remain intact unless hit several times in a row, or overpowered all at once (which is quite possible, as it can sustain fewer hits). Also, however, the Kris has "Pulse Shielding".

Pulse Shielding is a new, innovative technology. Instead of the conventional energy shield, it launches brief but rapid blasts of a pure, energy-rich magnetic force. The force is a nigh-perfect reflector of energy and redirects almost all solid masses that would be hurled at it (in the form of missiles, bullets, rocks, ape droppings, etc). However, to do this, pulse shielding requires massive amounts of power, and the batteries for it cannot keep going for more then three seconds at once, although there is enough energy in total to last about a minute if breaks are given inbetween uses. This allows the fighter to protect itself at the last minute from an otherwise fatal shot.

Lastly, and most importantly, there are the Second Wave thrusters. Built large and highly powered, with little restriction from armour, the thrusters allow for point-maneauvers as well as all-out charges. Little has changed from regular thruster technology, except that the designers expanded, overcharged, and streamlined the design to the maximum possible levels, ensuring the fighter of up to double what a ship of its' class would usually be seen as speed.

The cost for all this is fairly high. To make room for the technology, and to ensure maximum maneauverability, armour was drastically reduced. The only armour on the ship in fact is a light plating to protect from debries, small arms fire, and some minor hits. To try and squeeze more protection out of less armour, it is designed with two layers. The first layer is a weaker metal with a lower melting point, so that as it burns off the crispy remains form a protective coating on the stronger plating below.

With such a complicated an powerful craft, the biggest problem becomes distribution and construction. The Coalition forces are small, and this is reflected in the Kris, which is in truth an elite fighter - superior, but few. It will be some time before the entire Coalition is outfitted with them, and even so it is unlikely there will ever be truly enough to meet demands. But then, it only encourages the Coalition commanders to make better use of their skilled, innovative, and determined fighters.