The Rebel Faction

Griffin Class Heavy Cruiser

Griffin Class Heavy Cruiser



Name/Type: Name/Type: Griffin Class
Designer/Manufacturer: Stellar Enterprises
Designation: Heavy Cruiser
Crew: 650 + 146 Gunners
Length: 1200 Meters
Speed: 22 MGLT Max
Hyperdrive: x 1
Shield Rating: 7850 SBD + 5,550 SBD Backup
Hull Rating: 3128 RU
Weapons: 10 Heavy Extended Range Dual Turbolaser Turrets (surface), 80 Heavy Turbolaser (Rotating), 48 Heavy Ion Cannons (Rotating), 40 Repeater Heavy Laser Cannons, 15 Dual Warhead Launchers, 25 Disruptor Cannons

For Sale Weapons: 40 Heavy Turbolaser Batteries, 50 Turbolaser Batteries, 35 Dual Turbolaser Cannons, 25 Repeater Heavy Laser Cannons, 15 Dual Warhead Lauchers

Fighter Complement: 96 Droid Fighters
For Sale Fighter Complement: 96 Droid Fighters or 48 Manned Fighters
Troops: 450 Marines, 1,200 Defense Droids , 2,500 Repair Droids
Support Craft: Varies.
Special (only SE ships): Spectrographic Sensors, Laser Data-links

Description: This new class of heavy cruiser ships was designed to help deal with the growing number of large and powerful ships spreading throughout the galaxy. The Griffin Class features heavy reinforced armor with two heavy layers as well as large shield projectors and backup shield units. The designers and engineers also borrowed heavily from the reknowned Hapan Battle Dragons to incorporate a large array of heavy rotation weapons set on a two distinct tracks.

The design features two separate hull structures linked together with a large, almost 800 meter long, center section. This section of the ship is mostly reserved for engines, weapons, and massive power generation units. This power generators fill over half this space and are necessary to power all the different weapons systems on board the Griffin. Another feature of this center section is that the top is used to house the 96 fighters and bombered carried by the large ship. These are situated in verticle lauch bays which let the craft launch up as single group. Each fighter and bomber has its own launch bay and each of these bays is completely automated in order to reduce man power and speed up launch and relaunch sequences.

The forward portion of this central area is used 10 of the 15 dual warhead launchers and is completely seperated from the rest of the ship. It is heavily armored to prevent against being hit and triggering an explosion from the attached weapons magezine. Upon a chance the section is struck, it can be completely and automatically jettisoned from the Griffin, allowing it to explode harmlessly in space.

Rotating Weapons: Much like the Hapan's these are tracks on which weapons are mounted and moved along the circumferance of the ship. The Griffin contains two of these tracks, one on each of the two hulls and the weapons on these tracks are seperated into 8 groups. Each group contains 5 heavy turbolasers and 3 heavy ion cannons and is constantly replaced with a new group as soon as the other discharges. Since these new weapons moved into the same positions as the previous ones they can fired into almost the xact same spot as did the others. This continuous fire upon single shield points would quickly wear down even heavy shields or punch hole in them to allow weapons fire to hit the hull.

While a forward barrage would consist of only 10 heavy turbolaser shot and 3 heavy ion cannons blasts, a broadside would deliver a volley from 30 heavy turbolaser batteries and 18 Heavy ion Cannons. These batteries are created specifically for this ship and feature a dual capacitor system in while the moving turbolasers and ion cannons contain their own capacitors which are always charged prior to an engagement. When the assembly moves these weapons into their firing positions another set of capacitors on the ship side, which are also charged, becomes connected to the weapon. As the weapon fires, it uses the energy stored within its own capacitor, which is quickly almost all recharged as energy is tranfered to it from the shipboard one. This process makes the weapons ready to fire almost as soon as they settle into their firing positioning.

This whole system allows for almost a continous stream of weapons fired towards its target. To an outside observer it would seem this weapons track never stopped because as soon as it came into position the weapons fired off and the track quickly moved on the next firing point. The only delay between firings was a few seconds before the other group of weapons replaced the other.

Unlike the older Hapan systems, however, each group of weapons has their own dedicated autonimous targeting system which is continuously feed and updated through the Griffin's central computer system. These weapons also have servos that allow them movement along all axises for more precise targeting of enemy ships.

Extended Range Heavy Turbolaser Cannons: These newly developed systems are a mixture of rail cannons and turbolasers rolled into a single deadly package. Like turbolasers they discharge tightly packed beams or particles, however, like rail cannons they also fire small dense magnetically enriched metal projectiles. These projectiles are nothing more than small dense metallic spheres which are designed to hold a large magnetic charge. This charge generates a small, yet intense magnetic field around itself for a short time.

Since turbolasers already use magnetic coils to condense the particles they fire out, these coils were strengthened and their number increased to proved the necessary forces need to dicharge the metallic sphere as well as to make the turbolaser beam. This turbolaser beam was created as it was before, but only this time around the sphere which was now situated in the middle of this beam and bombarded with the surrounding magnets to impart on it a heavy charge. This magnetic charge prevents the heat of the beam from vaporizing the sphere and also wraps the beam in its own magnetic field.

Once both the beam and sphere are fired as one, the field projected by the sphere helps to sustain the beams integrity over long distances. Where without the field this beam would have dispersed and caused no damage, the sphere now allowed it to travel longer distances. The range can now be increased to twice the normal range of a heavy turbolaser before the sphere sheds its field completely and becomes demagnetized. When this happens, the heat from the turbolaser beam completely vaporizes it and disperses into space.

This weapons system uses slightly more power than conventional heavy turbolasers and also takes more time between firings, but this is a fair trade off for the increase in range. The other downside is that there is only a limited amount of metallic sphere. Once these sphere stores are used up, the weapon can no longer acheive the long distance fires it could before, however it could still function as a regular heavy turbolaser emplacement.

Disruptor Cannons: These are high powered cannons capable of disintigrating almost any armor type and have enuogh power to destroy a fighter in a single hit. They are, however, highly inaccurate against fighters and take some time to recharge. Their range is less than that of turbolasers and this respect they are held back as a nasty surprise for any ship and happened to come into close range combat.

SAS-91 NCAS: The Naval Crew Assistance System was developed in order to solve the companies problem of man power shortages. With pirating attacks on the rise and defense of Stellar Enterprises interests and convoys becoming a top priority the building of a naval defense force was troubled by the lack of men and women to crew the ships that needed to be built. To alleivate this problem it was decided to develop and equipe all new vessals with automated systems in order to greatly reduce the crew numbers needed to man the ships. It was also more cost efficient to have a single automated system do the work of hundreds or sometimes thousands of men then to hire these people, train them, feed them, and pay them salaries.

After much work and development and testing the design and engineering staff came up with the Ship Automated System Type 91 Naval Crew Assistance System. This system was given the ability to link up with automated targeting computers, analyze all sensor arrays, manage and maintain all internal ship operations, and be able to solve a multitude of problems on its own. For problem solving operations an Artificial Intelligence was built into the system and linked to the bridge for direct control by living crews. This AI, however, was given some freedoms, albeit monitored freedoms, such as monitoring internal systems, adjusting engines and power units to operate at maximum efficiency, or shutting down systems that aren't in use to save power consumption.

The NCAS consists of a massive computer bank usually in the middle of a ship made up of the fastest and most advanced computer terminals available. This bank is heavy guarded and isolated from the rest of the ship, any tempering with the protective casing around it without proper codes results in a wiping of the whole system and a self destruct. These codes are always changed between missions and only given to the most senior of the staff. The system is also isolated from the outside world to prevent hacking attempts and it built to withstand extreme conditions such as ion and EMP strikes with hardened and heavily insulated circuitry. For further protection the whole computer bank sits on rubber struts and a nonmetalic deck so as to prevent electrical transfer from the ship's frame.

Through a shipboard highspeed data network, this main NCAS bank is linked with every system on board the ship and is capable of monitoring all the happening inside and out of the ship. It capable of quickly diagnosing a problem requesting that it be allowed to solve it or fix it through the use of on board repair droid teams. If the bridge crew gives the system permission it will activate teams of droids stationed throughout the ship and send them on repair missions.

During combat operations the NCAS is able to link up with all defensive and offensive systems and allow the ship to fight as if it had a highly trained crew on board. The AI is capable of learning from training operations and actual combat to perfect its use of the ships weapons in order the maximize their effect. Since it can "read the minds of all the computers" it knows were guns would be and can team them up to draw enemy formations within killing range of other gun systems before the enemy knows what happened. This is usually the case when the system is allowed to act by itself against fighters. Being a constantly learning system, it can analyze fight maneuvers quickly and calculate a pilots evasive plan in order to intercept it more effectively. This computer targeting also allows the weapons to be more accurate since the computers can conduct the calculation needed for enemy intercept much faster than living beings can.

Tactics can also be learned or downloaded into the ship and used during combat. As the NCAS monitors a battle it is capable of giving the captain and crew suggestions on the enemy formations and informing the captain of ship movements throughout the battlefield by monitoring the ship's own sensors as well as recieving data updates via secure laser datalinks from other Stellar Enterprises ships involved. This allows for greater situational awareness and the development of better and more effective tactics by the captain or fleet commander.

To defend the ship more effectively and without the need for micromanagement of all defensive systems, another addition to the NCAS was developed. Termed the Ship Self-Defense System (SSDS), it could be turned on from the bridge and allowed to engage targets on its own without input from the bridge. The bridge could set certain parameters, such as "Missile Defense", and the automated system would use more of its computing power to closely monitor all warheads launched towards the ship and respond accordingly to them. This response would consist of commandeering the neccessary weapons to be used against the given threat and transfering their priorities from whatever they were doing to attacking the new targets as they became available. The systems can also be given the ability to control the ships movement and engines in order to better position the ship so that more guns could be brought to bare on the targets and maximize their interceptor or minimize the damage that could be inflicted on the ship.

All known weapons and ships are uploaded to the system and during a battle these files are used in order for the computers to develop more proper defenses against them. The system can use the weapons or ships/fighters, weakness against them in order to ensure their destruction.

Should this main system shut down, each computer bank it is linked with can be controlled from the bridge and be set to bypass the NCAS completely. This, however, provides the crew with a tremendous burdon as they now have to monitor all the systems themselves and issue all the commands needed. With a limited crew, this could become a problem quickly and might overwhelm them to the point that some jobs do not get done or payed attention to. There are highly trained crews onboard each vessal that could try and fix the system, but if that is not possible the only thing a crew could do is pray that nothing goes wrong before they can get to base.

Repair droids: These are used on many other Stellar Enterprises ships. There are two different models, one for heavy repair work and another model for more delicate things like electrical repair or getting into tight places. These droids greatly enhance the performance and survivablity of a fighting ship since they can do more work faster and better than living crews. They can carry heavier loads and also have extensive programming on how to fix a multitude of problems that happen to arise. These droids can also move into areas hazardous to living crews and conduct repair work even on the out side of the ship during battle.