The Nautica Class Heavy Cruiser series started in 2185, discontinued in 2187, with roughly about half a dozen ships constructed. The Nautica Class Heavy Cruiser was primarily a hospital ship, with just enough firepower and defense to defend itself from attack. This allowed, in theory, for the Nautica Class to fly into an area under attack or under emergency and give large amounts of medical aid.
However in practice, the Nautica Class was undergunned and underarmored for these purposes and often found itself in more trouble than the trouble it was set out to solve. It proved to be an effective medical ship, just not under extreme situations, which it was built for. Nautica Class production halted after two years, and six ships. With existing Nautica Class ships being refitted as standard medical ships, Alliance Command deemed the idea of the “Combat-Fit Hospital Vessel” a failure.
Ship Designation: ANS Spirit of Water
Ship Registry: NX-1313
Ship Class: Nautica-Class Retrofit, Heavy Cruiser
Ship Size: 880 Meters
Ship Crew: 600 Crew, 170 Naval 'Marines' // 1200 Full Capacity
Notable Systems:-Dual chamber Matter/Anti-Matter Reactor. A reactor typically housed in Battleships or Dreadnoughts. The Spirit of Water was given this reactor to power the Armor Emitters.
Notable Weapons and Offensive Systems: -16x “Cascade” Hidden Turrets firing smaller sized Torpedoes. An invention by the Chief Engineer and Chief Armory Officer aboard the Spirit of Water, these rapid fire turrets were an unsanctioned modification to the ship. The turrets are hidden underneath the hull, when activated, panels open up, and the turrets are elevated to their firing positions. The turrets are placed throughout the ship to allow all 16 to fire forwards. The ammo of these turrets are a smaller scale version of the standard torpedo.
-11x Particle Beam Arrays (Strips), placed throughout the ship. The Nautica-Class Heavy Cruiser originally had 8 Arrays. The previous captain added 3 more.
-14x Particle Beam Emitter Turrets placed throughout the ship. Because the guys that control how guns are distributed in the Fleet didn’t allow the previous captain to add more Arrays, he asked for the older Emitter Turrets. When asked why he wanted them, he said, “I want to put them on independent turret systems, so I can throw them out the Hanger and they would act as independent defense guns.” Although it was a good idea, it was a blatant lie. He just installed the emitters on his own ship, for a lot more firepower.
-2x Forward Torpedo Launchers. These are standard issue torpedo tubes.
-1x Rear Torpedo Launcher. This is a standard issue torpedo tube.
Notable Armor and Defensive Systems: -Dual Rotating Deflector Shield System. Originally designed to allow ships to get in close proximity to hazardous planetoids or even stars, this shield system has two layers of shields, each one rotating. Providing neither exceptional defense against energy or kinetic weapons, the saving grace of this shield system is its greater shield capacity to offset the average efficiency, and its ability to rotate so that damaged sections of the shields are moved away from enemy attacks.
-Experimental "Glacier" Ablative Armor Generator. Developed fairly recently as a quick way to uparmor underarmored ships to help prepare them for war, one Engineer had the idea of adapting it to give extra armor to already well armored ships, in the middle of a fight. The way this system applies extra armor is through industrial sized replicator emitters placed throughout the ship hull, like shield emitters. The replicators when activated, will replicate layers of ablative armor right on top of the ship hull. Different types of ablative armor are available, each type more effective against a specific weapon type. After the fight, the armor plates can detach from the hull of the ship. However due to the tremendous power drain the armor emitters cause, a typical way to supply power to the emitters is by diverting FTL Drive power, so that weapon and shield power levels are not reduced.
Other: The Spirit of Water contains an armory, enough to arm the ship marines with proper combat equipment, and enough to arm the crew with basic survival equipment.
Ship Appearance:
