Thirdspace Aliens "3Avatar" Class Warship

E.F.N.I. decided to disclose the informations and conclusions presented in this technical essay to allow to better understand how much powerful is the menace of the Thirdspace Aliens. The analysys of this page are based upon the informations gathered through the two first encounters with the TSA, essentially the incident of 2273, and upon data provided from other sources.

The Warship used by the Thirdspace Aliens (at least, the only one known by the Earth Alliance and by the EFNI sources) is the massive vessel that received the codename of 3Avatar.
This ship is an opponent at "First One" level, and shows masterpieces of technolgy that we are barely able to understand, and that send shivers through the spine of everyone that must consider the eventuality to oppose them.

The ship has an overall length of about 2400 meters, and can be divided in three main blocks: the main hull, that hosts the crew compartement, the main energy system, the shield/defense systems and the control and auxiliary system. This section holds even an auxiliary gravimetric drive, used both as a backup ssystem and as the main maneuvering system. There are not Newtonian propulsion systems, the ship is a pure gravitic craft.
This main hull has overall dimensions confrontables with a Shargoti Minbari warcruiser. The aft section is the propulsion system, and the Fwd section is the weapon system and some other systems of unknown functions.

The rear block is the main gravitic engine, and is a physycally separated system. As can be seen, the energy systems is based upon a multiple and redundant architecture, and the reactors are based upon force-field structures, instead of phisycal structures.
The rear energy "bubble", held bacward the main hull, is the gravimetric field generator, and operates both the main engines and the gravimetric shield, that is the centerpiece of the protection systems of the TSA crafts. It acts even as an Hyperspace Tap, as energy source, but, while his original effectiveness is retained in the hyperspace, it works poorly in the normal space, where the performances of the ship, in terms of mobility are weakened. This is almost surely due to the differences of the structure and of the zero-point energetic levels of Normal Space, Hyperspace and Thirdspace.
The other energy source of the ship is a Quantum singularity reactor placed forward, in the area between the upper main structures of the main hull.

The main propulsion system, whose field generator is the large rear "bubble" energy structure, has his projectors in the form of the "floating scales" held on the ideal surface of the energy field of the main field generator. These "scales" are passive gravity shifters, held in place by the structure of the field itself. Such a design, beyond the impressive show of mastery in the gravitic science (the only similar structure, with a main hull and ancillary systems held in place only by energy fields is the one of the Kirishiac Lordship class destroyers), has both strong and weak points.
Such a structure has intrinsecally an high redundance, the destruction of one scale can be compensated rearranging the others, and the scales have shown a remarkable damage tolerance. The phisycal separation implies that the damages of one subsystem does not propagates to the other parts of the ship. The only weakness is the sensitivity of the whole system to gravitic perturbations, that can eventually collapse the propulsion system. Once damaged, the system can't be restarted, and the ship has lost both the hyperspace jump capability and virtually his mobility, that can be obtained only thanks to the secondary gravimetric drive, that allows an acceleration of less than 0.7-0.8 g's.
The quantum singularity reactor seems to be overall more robust, but has the sames advantages and weaknesses of the propulsion system.

The weapon system is centered upon a single, extremely powerful bolt projector protruding forward from the main hull: the bolts are antimatter projectiles, released at high speed, and with an impressive range for a bolt weapon ( up to 20-25000 kilometers ).
The singular aspect of the weapon is that the bolt is formed and accelerated outside the barrel, and runs along the external surface of the long weapon. The bulge at the tip of the main projector is a gravimetric field generator that compresses the bolt an shapes the bolt self containement field.
It is an accurate and powerful weapon, with an hard terminal effect, but it is eventually the weak point of this ship, due both the relatively low rate of fire (20/30 discharges/minute) and the fact that is interceptable, and, being the bolt made of antimatter, the interaction between the interceptor bolt and the incoming enemy bolt is extremely strong, with consequently strong dissipative effect. The terminal effect of this weapon is devastating: a single unintercepted shot can destroy or cripple one of our classic units pre-Brightwarrior improvements): even if the overall resilience of our ships has greatly improvd respect to the levels of the early 2260's, a direct hit means heavy damages and the unit out of combat for at least two or three weeks, and eventually some losses in the crew. It is not necessary to remark what could be the effects of three or four direct hits. Anyway, while the damages produced by such a weapon are spreaded on a large area of the targeted hull, their piercing power is greatly lesser than the Vorlon and Shadow beams.

The root of the TSA weapons contains the antimatter feeding system, and is the most vulnerable point of these warships, their Achilles' heel: the small ring area around the root of the barrel, in direct contact with the main hull, is almost unarmored, and in that area the gravimetric defensive force field has soething like a window, that is almost surely needed to allow to the wepon to work. Even the barrels of the main and of the secondary weapons have a weaker gravitic defence. This allowed one of our warships, in the 2273 incident,(see also Damocles 1 report), to fire a plasma shot that disabled the main antimatter projector and damged the defensive system (shield).

The secondary weapons, placed in the area of the main hull dedicated to the weapon systems (The "bow"), are scaled-down copies of the main gun, with an higher rate of fire but with a reduced power and bolt speed. Overall these secondary weapons are in the performance range of the heavy plasma/pulse weapons/Ion cannons of the younger races.

The Thirdsapce Aliens warship has not a fighter support structure, so no catapults, no landing bays, no flight decks. The Thirdspace "3Alpha" fighters are, in fact, something closer to a gunship than to a fighter, given the dimensions and the power of this type of support/attack craft. The informations we have tells that the TSA operat with a support of pre-deployed fighters in a rate of 9 fighters for each ship.

The defence/armor systems relies heavily upon the gravimetric field shied ( see Damocles 1 report for an accurate statement of the power of the gravimetric shield); The armor is technologically less advanced than the Shadow and Vorlon Bioarmor, and overall less effective than the oriented crystal armor of the Kirishiacs.
This relatively low technology, in conjunction with the simple (single layer) scheme of the armor, places this subsystem in the area of a Minbari/Centauri polychristalline armor of the same scheme, and overall it is less effective than our multilayered/nanotech armors.
The problems are that the armor layer is thick, the internal compartimentation of the ship is very well done, so the ship is able to take hard punishment and survive it, in a certain degree, and, before the problem of piercing this armor, there is the problem of overcoming the powerful gravitic shield.

Actually the only weapons we have that ignore the gravitic shields are the Q-Lasers and, in great measure, the railguns, while the G.O.D. cannons, at least the MkV of the Warlocks, the Mk XIII of the Centurions and the MK X of the Tillmans BW, are surely able to pierce the gravimetric defence and inflict devastating damages to the craft, enabling a "one-shot kill" capability. The other standard weapons of the "Brigtwarrior Generation" are able to inflict damages, but they must be employed with saturation tactics. The ship, once collapsed the gravimetric shield, is much more vulnerable than the other known First Ones ships, and can be destroyed with conventional weapons. But until the gravitic shield works properly, it is an extremely dangerous enemy.