Warlock Heavy Destroyer The Evolution of a Warship |
The EFNI historical office issued this short article in order
to present, in a synthetic form, the origins, the history and the
evolution of the actual edge of our spaceforces: the Warlock
class destroyers.
Is provided even a an introduction about the evolution of the
destroyer concept from the end of the Minbari war until now.
The lessons of the
Earth-Minbari War and the New Technologies. |
While still today there is a debate in the public opinion and among the politicians, if the Earth Alliance really lost the war against the Minbari (based upon the fact that, at the end of the battle of the Line, the Minbari ceased fire and surrendered), from the military point of view the war was a bloody defeat for the Earthforce.
In two and an half years of war we never really won a single
battle, except for the destruction of the Drala'fi and of its
support force in 2245: even the so called "tactical
victories" were obtained in defending local assets for a
limited time, in any case if we repelled the first attack waves
the further Minbari forces were always able, a day or a week
later, to obtain their goal, and our loss rate was never better
than 3 to 1, while the average loss rate du ring the war was
about 7 to 1 in terms of ships.
At the end of the war, our forces were around the 15% of their
consistence at the beginning of the conflict.
From the technical point of view, some basic points emerged
from the conflict:
1-The stealth system used by the Minbari was the key factor of their victory: the EA plasma weapons needed an accurate targeting to be effective, and the radar and microwave scanners universally used on our ships were unable to obtain a lock on, were possible only short range engagements and even in this case with scarce accuracy.
2-All the EA warships of the period were not survivable enough against the firepower of the Minbari warships: all the units except the Novas were unable to take the punishment of a single main gun hit without being out of combat or definitively destroyed. A Nova, on average, was capable to take two or maybe three hits of the main bow beam of a Sharlin before being destroyed, but frequently a single hit meant to be out of combat even for our best units of the period.
3-The Novas were the only warships capable to ensure an effective opposition, but there were too few of them.
The outcome of these assessments was at the roots of the
reshaping of the Earthforce in the 2250's, and gave birth to the
Omega class destroyer. The definition "destroyer" must
not induce a misunderstanding: historically the definition of
destroyer has been always applied to medium sized, polyvalent
units. To define destroyer an Omega, that from every point of
view is at least an heavy armoured cruiser, if not directly a
battleship, was essentially a politic choice of Earthforce, to
avoid the opposition of the Senate, that considered every new
military program as the omen of a will of power, presupposing
further wars and further disasters. In fact, what Earthforce
wanted was something capable to stop the Minbari.
The Omega was an heir of the effective and simple Nova
architecture and technology: frequently called as "the
ugliest ship in space", in fact it is the expression of the
seek for the efficiency and the cost/effectiveness.
In terms of overall layout, the presence of a rotating section,
yet experimented by the Rocketdyne in the 2244/45, allowed to a
ship long endurance and large troop carrying capability, strongly
needed because, at least for some years, a relatively small
number of ships had to protect the whole territory of the Earth
Alliance.
The square shapes of the Omega are related essentially to the
production technologies employed, that allowed an excellent
production rate ( about 40-50 units - year, with a potential of
about 70 U/Y), while the design, based on the Nova architecture,
used all the good assets of the old Dreadnought, eliminating the
weak spots.
The mechanical sturdiness of the hull structure and the
survivability of the design was retained, as were retained the
large hangar, capable to hold up to 36 ready to launch fighters,
and the energy/engine systems, about which could be done only
positive comments. The weapon system was totally reshaped, thanks
to the new technologies based upon the Narn beam weapons bought
during the War, and further developed by Earthforce, and deserves
a description and some considerations.
The Novas had two limits in their weapons: first of all, a plasma
weapon is intrinsically short ranged, even if with an high
effectiveness; mostly, the Novas lacked an effective antifighter
defence: the problem did not emerge in the Dilgar war: the
interceptor grid Mk1 was capable to handle, with its light plasma
projectors, the few fighters capable to get through the Starfury
and escort units screen, but in the earth Minbari war emerged
clearly that was needed something more effective.
In its new design the Earthforce Navy asked a generational jump:
long range antiship firepower, based upon beam weapons; superior
armour and survivability, superior interceptor capability and an
antifighter defence capable to saturate the space with a barrage
fire virtually impossible to overcome. Was required even a plasma
pulse capability with a firepower close to the Nova.
Apparently, all these requirements seemed impossible to overcome,
but the weapon technology of the Earth Alliance was well known
for its capability of quick evolutions: the EA weapon industry
had a centuries old experience in the field of the particle
accelerators and the plasma weapons, and the Narn weapons teached
how to build a particle beam cannon that based its power upon a
relatively high mass flow at moderate speeds (0.75 C) instead of
the highly relativistic, low amperage particle cannons used by
the Earth Alliance: this allowed superior damage and vastly
superior power output with a simpler design and a shorter barrel.
The use of the Earther "heavy particles" technology
(use of heavy ions of alkaline metals or xenon instead of the
helium used by the Narns and the Centauri) allowed a further jump
in terms of specific power and terminal damage.
The new concept opened even a new field of development, the
hybrid weapon, so a weapon system capable to operate both as an
heavy particles beam cannon and as a powerful plasma pulse
weapon. The details about these weapon systems can be found in
the Beam-Pulse
weapons paragraph of the Weapons page, while overall the
Omega Destroyer (whose first series unit, the OCD-1 Achilles, was
rushed in service in record time, in the September 2248) showed
immediately to be a superior warship: slightly faster than a
Nova, it had a new, better protection, based upon the new Carbonat-IV Armour,
an interceptor grid, the Mk 2, that integrated not only all the
specific bolt projectors and all the bolt weapons available on
board, but even the Starfuries, giving an awesome point defence
capability, and a new model of E-Web that near doubled the beam
weapons resistance respect to the model used on the Nova, with
special features developed to effectively oppose the Minbari
anti-matter "slicer" beams: this evolution allowed this
ship to face the Minbari firepower long enough to fight
effectively, while the new, beam/pulse based weapon system in the
beam mode had range and power enough to hardly hit a Sharlin: the
Minbari weapons have a power output that is about three or four
times the power of an Omega, but the range is about the same, and
the Minbari cruiser is not enough protected to take punishment of
these levels and maintain an operational capability. Mostly, a
beam weapon is enormously easier to aim than a plasma pulse
weapon: essentially, what is required is simply a boresighted
line of aim, so a beam weapon, even in the case of a lack of
trackers lock-on, is quite accurate and easy to target even with
simple (manual or optical) systems.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS |
At the moment of its inception (and still today), the Omega was a
warship operationally superior and more powerful than every other
Younger races unit, except the Centauri Octurion Dreadnoughts
and, clearly, the Minbari Cruisers.
The Omega has been produced at the date in more than 1700 units,
and while about 370 have been lost in service, mostly during the
Civil War and the Drakh war, the others are still in service (see
upgrading at Brightwarrior
project - Omega Epsilon )
With the Mass produced Omega, the Earthforce Navy had what was
needed: a warship capable to defend the Earth alliance, to renew
the Earthforce military might, and mostly capable to fight
against the Minbari with acceptable odds of success.
What shapes a Warship. |
With the Omega, the Earthforce was capable to rebuild its force
and improve its capabilities, and had something really effective
against every known menace. But what the Admiralty was looking
for in the long term, in fact, was something different: what was
wanted was a ship so powerful to act as a spearhead of the Omega
taskforces against the Minbari lines of cruisers at all the
ranges, in all the situations. The Navy wanted a Sharlin Killer.
The first incarnation of the concept that later materialised in
the Warlock Heavy Destroyer was the "Battlemaster
project", whose origin is related to the availability of a
new weapon belonging to the family of the heavy particles
weapons: the "Aegis"
cannon, later known as the G.O.D. (Global Orbital Defence)
Cannon.
The first models of this weapons were long range heavy particle
beams of enormous power (25 times the peak power output of an
Omega cannon) used on the Earth (and colonies) Global Orbital
Defence satellite grid, the well known system designed to avoid
another Battle of the Line (for further details, see heavy
Particles cannons link ).
The developments in the early 2250's promised a new evolution of
this weapon, an elongated, enormous discharge cannon, with peak
energy outputs in the range of the megatons per shot, that was
conceived to be embarked on a manned warship. Around the
hypothesis that later became the "Aegis" Mk 5
"Warlock" cannon was designed a new hull, that kept
some basic elements of the structure from the Omega family (with
a different armour), but overall it was something totally new.
The engineering section was a cluster of six engine/reactor
blocks of the same type used on the Omega ( and the acceleration
was poor, because the "Battlemaster project" had twice
the mass of the standard destroyers). The first design, after an
attempt to introduce the same rotating section of the Omegas, was
conceived without simulated gravity: the Battlemaster was not a
patrol ship, it was an attack weapon.
Some choices were radical: the turret mounted weapons were
powerful plasma pulse twin cannons, with a secondary beam
capability, the M111,
with an arrangement that, while allowing a good concentration of
firepower in the frontal arc, was conceived essentially to give
all around fast reaction firepower. The interceptor grid
was the new Mk 3, a further 30% of improvement in the
performances respect to the Mk2, and the point defence, based
upon an impressive number of pulse and pulse/beam weapons, was
capable to saturate the surroundings of the ship.
Two other fields in which were made large improvements were the
sensor and analysis equipment, and the Armour: both of them were
designed from the origin with a large growth potential and an
high degree of modularity, both of them, during the development
of the Warlock, that went on for nine years, evolved through the
inception of a new, or, in effect, an Ancient technology.
In any case, the Battlemaster offered what the Navy wanted: a
ship capable to defend itself from all the directions, with an
armour and an E-Web capable to survive for a certain time the
Minbari weapons, the long range firepower needed to destroy a
Sharlin with a single discharge of G.O.D. cannon, and a rate of
fire high enough to kill more than one of them in a task force
engagement.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Class: Battlemaster 6*Westinghouse "Vulcan-VII" Fusion Reactors. |
Birth of a Predator |
The Battlemaster design was literally reshaped, inside and
outside, by a series of conceptual and technical choices, and by
the better protected secrets of the 2250's Earthforce.
The technical choices we are talking of, and that transformed the
battlemaster in the Warlock were the decision to reintroduce in
service ordnance based weapons, (Missiles and railguns), the
request for a larger line of fighters, and, later, the
development of the first piece of gravitic technology ever made
by the humans: the gravitic enhanced fusion engines.
The First step (see
Missiles) was requested by the Earthforce because, from the
analyses made in the aftermath of the Minbari War, came out that
in about the 35% of the fightings, a ripple of missiles with
nuclear warheads would have been decisive in resolving the
confrontation in favour of the EA ships: clearly, a lock on
against the stealth system of the Minbari was not ensured, but a
simple telecommand guide through datalink would have given a
great effectiveness: clearly it was a "single shot"
(well, in fact a twin shot) weapon, because was required a salvo
of 10-12 missiles to ensure a kill against a Minbari cruiser, but
in any case the thing was potentially too much effective to not
be used, even because the installation was simple.
The second step was related to the development of a new
generation of
railguns , signed by one of the oldest names in the field of
the "real" artillery.
As happened to the missiles, the railguns were out of the favour
of the Earth Alliance political commissions: the missiles had
three "versus" argumentations: the logistic and
economic strain- a missile is expensive, very expensive, and a
missile equipped with an effective seeker and capable to bring a
large offensive load at the speeds and with the manoeuvrability
needed to be effective in a ship to ship engagement was expensive
at least as a Starfury. More, to replenish the magazines, a cargo
had to travel light years to issue the new ammunitions. This was
a problem during the Dilgar war.
There was even the fact that a missile needs a lock on against a
target to be effective, and this seemed out of question against
the Minbari.
The third, most relevant problem was not a technical, but a
political one: the Government, or, at least, some part of the
politics, did not like to issue to the military missiles holding
warheads with a power in the magnitude order of the tenth or
hundreds megatons.
To overcome this problem, the Navy proposed to acquire missiles
with a large conventional warhead - In fact, loaded with isotopic
destabilisation explosives (IDX), about 150 times more powerful
than the conventional chemical explosives - less
"politically incorrect" - that allowed to begin again
the official use of large antiship missiles on our ships - The
unwanted outcome of this choice, by the way, is that the EA
missiles are enormous, and so they are capable to hold a vast
panoplia of warheads - The Drakh war, and the fall of the
political coalition that, among alternate fortunes, drove the
Earth Alliance from the mid 2230's to the mid 2260's, changed the
picture, and placed on our missiles the strongly needed nuclear
and thermonuclear warheads, included the infamous W205
"Armageddon", rated at 4 Gigatons.
In any case, the Ship that was the "Battlemaster" had
its missile launchers, whose emplacement, frequently criticised
but in fact effective, simple and extremely rational, will be
illustrated in the following paragraph.
The railguns were victims of the "fashion" - The Earth
Alliance was the only known navy to use them - Even if they
proved themselves extremely effective during the Dilgar war (Our
small Artemis frigates were "shipkillers" capable to
cut in ribbons even a Cruiser or a Battlecruiser), the
Procurement commissions considered these weapons as a relic of
past times.
Even in this case, the Navy was able to support its reasons, and
in the early 2250's the maximum specialists of
"conventional" artillery of the Earth Alliance, the
Oto-Melara, in a joint venture with the gigantic Westinghous
Corporation, presented a new generation of railguns, the small
calibre, high rate of fire "Rapido" (quickfire)
and the large calibre "Vulcano".
These weapons were developed with new concepts (see Railguns) and
in accordance with the need to affordably pierce the main hull
armour of a Minbari warcruiser, regardless the impact angle and
impact point. Even these weapons were placed on the developing
Warlock design.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Class: Warlock 2*Westinghouse "Event Horizon" Gravitic
Enhanced Fusion Reactors. *Note
-In some sub-batches, 3*O.T.O.Melara 127/748
Rapido Railgun turrets. |
In fact, the first configuration was totally unlucky in terms of
installation, (The railguns of the Warlocks seemed to lumber
around like late thoughts, ) but the new generation railgun was
devastating (see Strelas'tha
incident), and the problem was fixed with a new configuration
since the second production batch. Even the plasma artillery had
limits in the superposition of the firearcs, and the Close-in
defence was not really optimised, and even these problems were
fixed.
The twin missile racks placed on the two sides of the hull,
instead, have shown to be an excellent design feature: even if
exposed, they are heavily armoured, and the design has shown to
be capable to direction every secondary explosion to blow away
from the hull: until now, while many Warlocks have had their
racks damaged or ripped away, none of them have been lost for a
catastrophic explosion of the missiles.
Each rack holds six heavy silos, that can launch both the Supermatador and the Blue Phoenix missiles, and eight smaller launching tubes, with a two-shot automatic reloading system. The Heavy silos can be reloaded with the missiles stored in the two cargo holdings on the sides of the hull, thanks to a derrick crane, that usually is folded parallele to the hull.
The problem of the weapons emplacements was in a certain measure put to the limelight by the ergonomical and tactical studies brought on by the EFNI technical departement with the design of the Styx , that at least proposed a series of solutions, some of which were later introduced in the new production series. In fact the Styx is designed to unleash all its firepower in the frontal hemisphere, while maintaining good all around firearcs - Notice that the Warlocks of the second batch and later follow these guidelines, while retaining the same all around covering of the older configuration.
Even the Armour evolved, in terms of materials, from the
original Carbonat IV used on the Omegas, and, with a near double
thickness, on the Battlemaster.
The Warlocks used the Carbonat VI-A, that can be easily rcognized
thanks to the rhomboidal design of the Armour modules: this shape
was chosen because allows better performances in terms of impact
resistance. The effectiveness of this Armour was proven for the
first time in the Strelas'tha
incident of 2263, when the Warlock Armour proved to be
impervious to the fire of the Minbari weapons. Further details
about the Warlock's Armour can be found in the Armour page and in the next
chapter of this arrticle.
|
The Other Technologies |
Gravimetric Technology |
The introduction of the gravimetric technology in the Warlock destroyers went on in three steps: the first one was the outcome of fifteen years of research based upon what was left of the Dilgar technology, the second step dates to the early 2260's, and is related to the cooperation programs brought on in the ISA, while the third step was the improvement of the brightwarrior project.
The military related research, as all the military spendings, was heavily hampered after the victory in the Dilgar war: the Earthforce grew self complacent of the excellent performances shown in that conflict (neglecting the fact that the power of the Earthforce at the end of the 2220's was the outcome of about ten years of investments and efforts aimed at the scope of defeating the Dilgars). Literally thousands of ships were mothballed, shipyards, arsenals and training facilities were closed, and the research in the field of the Gravitic technologies weant on slowly.
After the Minbari war, the whole activity was resuscitated from near ten years of coma, and brought as a first product the first gravitic enhanced fusion reactors: in the same dimensions of an Omega reactor (westinghouse Vulcan) was possible to build a system capable to crank out near three times the power: while this allowed to the heavy Warlocks to attain performances at the same level of the Omegas in terms of speed and acceleration, the most relevant fact was that the Warlocks had the same power availability for the weapon feeding of a Minbari warcruiser. This new capability allowed to exploit the whole potential of the G.O.D. cannons , with a recharge time of a few seconds, and of the whole weapon system, allowing an impressive firepower. It was a giant step in terms of operational capability.
Mostly, these early studies allowed to design the Warlock with the growth potential to allow the use of more advanced and complete gravimetric systems, such as an artificial gravity environment for the crew and true gravitig drive in the future.
The Warlocks were close to the combat readyness in the 2260, and their inception in operational service during the Civil War was halted only thanks to the sabotages operated by the EFNI Naval commandos (see chronology, year 2261 ) .
The end of the Civil war, and the establishment of the ISA, gave to our scientists and technicians some access to key gravitic techmologies, thanks to the cooperation with the Minbari, and allowed to obtain the break even point for both the artificial garvity environment (gravitic cage) and, as a collateral effect, accelerated the development of a more advanced family of gravitic projector, and allowed us to design and produce a more effective gravimetric propulsion.
The most recent step in the field was the development of more powerful and advanced gravimetric drives, the "Waverider" engines, used on many EA warships, included the Warlock after teh Brightwarrior improvements.
The gravimetric drive is a non-Newtonian propulsion system, whose main advantage is the fact that it generates thrust without the use of propellant: while the maximum acceleratiion is always limitated by the power output of the reactors, and so a gravimetric drive does not means necessarily that the ship that uses it is faster or more manoeuverable than a Newtonian ship, the use of the gravimetric drive means extremely low propellant* consumption, and, consequently, enormous endurances and high speed.
*Note - This does not means that is not used fuel, deuterium, for the fusion reactors, but the consumption of deuterium needed to generate the power for a gravimetric drive is a small fraction of the total mass flow (propellant+fuel for the reactors) needed to generate an equal thrust with a reaction engine like the fusion plasma engines that are the standard propulsion mean of our ships.
Shadow Technology |
The Warlocks have always used Shadow derivated technologies. Until now, the only EA ships that use, or used real Shadow technology are the "Dark Rage" Shadow Destroyers, and the eight Omega-X Shadow Destroyers, these last used and lost during the Civil war.
The first contact the Earth Alliance had with the Shadows (at least, the first contact that has some documentation) dates back to the finding and excavation of a Shadow battlecrab in Syria Planum, on Mars ( see Syria Planum Finding of 2253 ), while further findings and recoveries of pieces of this powerful technology, billions years old, dates back to the late 2250's ( see chronology, years 2259, operation "Bright Eagle" and 2260, "The Ganymede Dig" ).
While the vast majority of this technology is still unexplored, two areas of it were exploited at a good degree: the first one is the developement of the adptive neural grid signal processors, a type of CPU based on nanotechnologies, that has an enormous speed, and an adaptive architecture, both in terms of hardware and software. The Neural processors, as all the Shadow and Shadow-derivated technology, are easy to merge with preexisting systems, and the "shadow processors" strongly enhanced the performances of our tactical and tracking systems.
One of the most discussed pieces of technology used by the Earth alliance is a Shadow-derivated armour. ( see even Armour - The Shadow technologies) - The first operational use of Shadow armour (in fact, an EFRAD development of the specimens collected on Mars and Ganymede) was during the Earth Civil war, with the Shadow Omegas advanced destroyers.
the recovery of relics of shadow vessels made by the EFNI with
the "Bright Eagle" (2259) missions, pushed strongly the
development of new, effective variants of the Shadow
nanotechnological protection, that are actually used on the vast
majority of the EA warships: the first New units using a shadow
derivated armour layer were the Warlock destroyers.
The Armour of the Battlemaster was the same Carbonat IV armour of
the Omegas, an evolution of the system employed on the Nova, with
a thicker external Boron ceramic ablative layer, and mostly, with
near 1.5 to 2 times the thickness of the Omega destroyers: during
the Minbari war, the Novas were relatively survivable to the fire
of the Sharlins (as said above, were needed two or three direct
hits to put them out of combat), so the "brute"
approach of the Battlemasters was to increase the thickness of
the armor up to a level capable to ensure the survival to the
fire of a Minbari Warcruiser for the typical endurance of a
fighting. The work done in the second half of the 2250's was so
much promising that the Warlock was designed to be equipped with
Shadow materials in the room space between some layers of their
improved Carbonat armour.
The improvement allowed is awesome: the multilayered armour of
the EA ships, supported by the E-Web has yet performances
strongly above the average of the Younger races, and the
addiction of a Shadowtech layer near triplicates the original
resistance against beam and pulse weapons: must be considered
that the real Shadow armour (the one of the Shadow battlecrabs),
while more effective than its EA Clone, used alone is
ineffective against the kinetic weapons, and has shown some
weakness against the plasma pulse weapons. The addiction of a
Shadowtech layer to the EA armors has shown to be
the best of both worlds, making of the Warlocks, and
of a whole new generation of EA ships, maybe among the thoughest
designs known. A Warlock of the First batch, the EAS Sorceress,
in 2262, was attacked and repetedly hit by a Minbari
"pirate" Sharlin cruiser, surviving with relative ease
the fire of the opponent, and replying with deadly effectiveness
(For further details, see "strelas'Tha Incident.)
In the Days of the Plague following the Drakh attack,
the Earth was dying, the only ancient technology we
were able to manage thanks to about ten years of research and
experience, was the Shadow technology and its derivates, and it
has proven to work very effectively. At the end, we needed an
edge, and we used what we had.
The great advantage of the Nanotechnologycal armour, beyond its impressive effectiveness, is the ease of manufacturing, and the simple way in which it can be applied to preexistent ships. After the Brightwarrior program, all our ships have one or more Nanotechnologycal armour layers, but the Warlock was the very first ship to use this exceptionally advanced technology, well concealed under the external layer of evolved "normal" armour.and Earthforce was well ready to accept a certain delay in the issue of the first units of this class, and a slow initial production rate, in exchange for the use of this technology that, combined with a new type of E-Web, more effective interceptors and with the last developments of the classic Carbonat armours, gave to the new "Heavy Destroyers" an enormous edge in terms of survivability, and consequently in terms of combat effectiveness.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Class: Warlock Beta Brigtwarrior Defense: 16 to 22 meter armored hull CARBONAT -VI
(Multi-layer plasteel/Polycristalline composite armour),
anti-neutron ablative armour. Additional layers of nanotechnologychal
armor. |
Tactical use and
evolutions |
The Warlocks is the first of a new generation of ships: following the polyvalent concept of the Omegas, it is able to perform at optimal level almost all the roles required to a first line miltary unit: anti ship warfare, fleet carrier (the standard line of 48 thunderbolts can grow up to 88 fighters, in case of need), flagship, plabnteary defence and planetary assault, orbital bombardement, these are only examples of the missions covered by them. Furtherly, being a new design, the Warlock has still left a large growth potential: it has power, room and structural strengtw well in excesss to allow improvemts and developments well beyond the yet excellent actual "Brightwarrior" standard.*
The overall design and
development of the Warlock has shown to be exceptionally well
done - It has no real flaws, the few shortcomings in the weapons
emplacements were corrected since the second year of production,
and the layout accepts easily even significant modifications
without problems, as shown in the ease of the evolution from the
original Battlemaster to the actual Warlock Brightwarrior. Maybe
the best asset of the EA destroyers, from the Omega to the latter
Warlock, is the polyvalence of the configuration: they are really
equilibrated designs, competitive as battleships, well defended
against specialised and generic menaces, with a powerful line of
flight that reduced the need for specialised fighter carriers.
The price paid for this multi role capability are the sheer
dimensions of our ships: both the Nova and the Omega are, in
fact, enormous units, larger and much more massive than the
classic cruiser designs of the Narns and Centauri: an Omega is
longer and more massive even than a Centauri Octurion
Dreadnought, and the Warlock is more massive than a Minbari
Shargoti warcruiser.**
The dimensions of the EA warships, anyway, are not matched by a
proportionally high cost: the simple, straight lines of the human
designs are not related to conceptual limits in the engineering,
but to the strong aim kept by our technicians in the ease of
production.
The Rocketdyne, with the Nova, introduced a new production
technology for the hulls, based upon advanced composites of
carbon nanotubes in a polymeric matrix, molded in form of large,
straight structural elements: the hull plates and bulkheads are
sandwiches made of composite external plates with an inner foam
core, while the longitudinal beams, are solid fiber composite
elements: all these structural elements are joined together with
a molecular bonding technology that produces a frame that from
every point of view is a monolithic monocoque structure; the
straight shape of the structural elements allows higly
authomatised production processes, the assembling of the hulls is
extremely quick and easy, the structure is lightweight and
enormously sturdy; on the basic hull frame are then placed the
armour modules and the various systems, even these produced as
complete modules. The frame itself is easy to repair in case of
damages. It can be surprising, but the sturdiest ships of the
Younger races are literally put together with the glue.
An Omega or a Warlock are much quicker to produce than a Minbari
or a Centauri design, and the cost is proportionally reduced. An
Omega has more than twice the mass of a Primus, or six times the
mass of a Vorchan, but its cost is lesser than a Primus, or near
twice a Vorchan, and can be produced in less than a half of the
time needed for its Centauri counterpart.
The large dimensions, and the production technologies used,
allows even some relevant advantages: as an example, a large ship
can survive more damages while retaining combat effectiveness,
can be equipped with thicker armour, and the large dimensions
implies large engines and large reactors, with proportionally
large power production that can feed extremely powerful armament.
Furtherly, the human designs from the Nova until now carry from
twice to three times the fighters carried by their alien
counterparts, and this gives a further relevant advantage in
operational terms***
Even if newer specialised designs (Centurion, Nike,
Gladium) have specific areas of superiority respect to the
Warlocks, none of them has shown a so impressive operational
flexibility, being more specialised design, and so, even if the
"New Ships" are the very edge of the EA power, the
Warlock is, and will be for decades, the true power of the
Earthforce military might.
Operationally, The Warlocks have performed very well: in a
combat situation the only real disdvantages respect to a Sharlin
are the lack of a Stealth system and the fuel consumption that
hampers the endurance of the Human destroyer, but the offensive
power is impressive thanks to the extremely effective weapons,
the superior accuracy of the targeting systems, and the strong
defence.
An ordinary ship even as powerful as the Drakh cruisers has
literally no way to beat a Warlock at the short distance: the
volume of fire developed by the high rate of fire pulse cannons
and the unstoppable piercing power of the heavy railguns are
absolutely devastating, and a point blank discharge of the G.O.D.
cannons is easily a definitive reply against every opponent,
while at longer distances the exceptional power of the G.O.D.
artillery is well supported by the potent missile battery and by
a large fighter line based upon the excellent Thunderbolt
Starfury.
The same levels of excellence are proven in the defence systems:
as said, the combination of interceptors integrated by the
effective antifighter point defence systems ensure high
protection against plasma weapons, missiles and fighters or light
attack crafts, while the advanced E-Web in combination with the
superior armour has shown to be extremely impervious to all the
attacks, included the most powerful beam weapons used by the
younger races: during the Drakh war, the well concealed Shadow
Armour proved itself impervious to the Drakhs bosers****: the
Warlocks, the Tillmans and, later, the Nikes, rushed in service
in increasing numbers, literally whipped away the Drakh ships.
* A further development that will possibly be introduced in the future (10-20 years from now) is a new, more advanced gravimetric drive, and eventually a quantum singularity reactor.
**The actual new generation
Dreadnoughts issued to the EA Navy, so the four Tillmans and the
Centurions, are warships that, while not available in large
quantities, lay in an area well beyond the standards of the
actual fighting units of the younger races: the Tillmans, while
being of proven effectiveness and with a long service ahead of
them, are essentially experimental units, but the Centurion was
conceived after the Shadow war and in full Drakh war, and, as the
Novas were designed to destroy ships of more advanced races
through superior firepower, the Centurion were designed to kill
First Ones level ships through an extremely powerful weapon, in
this case their Aegis Mk XIII Heavy particle cannons, that
literally dictated dimensions and shape of these hughe
battleships.
***For more than 300 years (1930-2235),
the "carrier Ship" has shown to be an essential unit
for a fleet, and one of the concepts applied in its designs is
that "everything that takes away space for the fighting
crafts is useless on a carrier"; this rule worked well in
the fightings on the surface of the sea, and worked well even in
the space fightings, but at the end the space is a different
environment, with its proper rules: there is not an horizon line,
the Hyperspace jump technology allows to close the distances with
ease, and so a "classic" carrier can easily find
herself infolved in an artillery fighting for which the
"carrier only" designs are ill-equipped: this means
that each carrier needs an escort of medium and heavy warships ,
and at the end the concept that was developed was to merge the
fighter carrier capabilities in the hull of a fighting ship,
being more cost effective. The Nova, the Omega and the Warlock
have pushed forward this concept: instead of an half squadron
(10-16 fighters) carried on a light or medium cruiser, we have
placed a true carrier (three or four squadrons) inside an heavy
dreadnought, even if now we call them "destroyers".
The thing works properly, because many facilities needed to
maintain and operate a line of flight need about the same room
and people, both for a small and a large fighter complement. At
the end, with the same crew and the same total mass (tons of
ships employed) and with a much lower economical expense, the EA
"heavy design" keeps the first place for number of
fighters and the second (but this is disquisible for the
Warlocks) in terms of firepower among the Younger races.
**** The "Bosers" are the
typical shadow technology weapon, a particle beam made of
unstable antibosons, that beyond the kinetic effect at the impact
and the matter/antimatter reactions induced on the target, have
even an interference effect on the atomic ties. While impressive
in their effects and outcome of a refined technology, the Shadow
beams are from many points a blind street: they are really deadly
when fired by emitters of the power of the ones found on the
Shadow battlecrabs, but when fed by more "normal" power
level (like the Drakh reactors) and with a simplified systems,
different from the shadow organic emitters array, lose a lot of
their potential: the Bosers of the Drakh ships were more
powerful, but always in the same order of terminal damage of an
Omega main particle cannon, and less competititive than the main
beams of a Minbari warcruiser.
Among the weapons used by the Ancients (at least, the ones we
know) the Shadow Bosers of a Standard dimensions Battlecrab are
slightly more ranged, but significantly less powerful than the
Quantum Discharge Ccannons used by the Vorlon Cruisers, or the
Graviton Heavy Blaster used by the Kirishiacs.