'Pretia libertatis est lex'
Name of Ship: The DNS Roanoke
Type: Carrier
Class: Orion-Class Battlecarrier
Developed by Boeing Aerospace Industries, the Orion-Class battlecarrier is one of the largest series of ships to ever be developed. The Orion-Class was developed when the Imperial Naval Procurement department called for a 'Bastion of defense, a defensible, and heavily armed ship with sufficient firepower to intimidate pirates and ward off another major power.' With exceptionally high development and production costs, the Orion-Class is a powerful ship with limited production numbers, often serving as flagships for fleets. Due to its high cost and production value, production of the Orion-Class battlecarrier has largely been superseded by the Callisto-class, which while smaller and less armed and armored overall, is considerably cheaper to produce. Due to its cost and the prevalence of Callisto carriers, only 127 Orion-Class ships have ever been built, with another 23 currently in production at the Mars Shipyards.
Layout:
Large and spacious, the Orion-Class is considered a luxurious and 'cushy' assignment, with transfer requests often reaching into the hundreds of thousands. Its hallways are functional and wide, and it has the space to offer small, but individual bedrooms for officers on board the ship- such as its pilots. The ship itself also features three recreation rooms- a gym, an officer's bar, and an observation room. It should be noted that, due to its size and to conserve power, the Orion-class, like most Dominion vessels, has no gravity in most locations, save the recreation rooms and optional gravity fields for officer quarters.
The heart of the Orion-Class is its Phobos Fusion Reactor. With deuterium tankage for eight months, tied to an efficient mag-grav sweep system, the Phobos can sustain The Orion-class for up to fifteen months of minimal activity before fuel reserves will run low. At that point, it can refuel from any planet with a hydrogen/helium rich atmosphere using the 'drag scoop' maneuver to skim the atmosphere for fuel. Aft of the reactor section and the tankage is the ships battery of Impellor drives, rated for 2.2G of continuous acceleration, though fleet trials have pushed this to 2.5G with a low payload mass. The drive section can also deploy solar panels to provide additional power when in range of a star.
Nestled between the Impellor drive and the Reactor is the ship's Kearnsky-Fuchida Warp drive. By bridging two points in space the drive can rapidly move the Orion-class up to 50 light years, cutting the travel time to a few hours. This requires significant charging, with a jump delay of 48 hours, much slower than the fleet norm, which is currently 42 for most cruisers and battleships.
Astride the drive and engineering spaces is the Docking Collar. A pair of mounts equipped to handle up to 2 destroyer sized ships each, the Docking collar allows the Orion to bring 'Tag along' ships which lack jump drives of their own.
At the front and rear are the entrance of the ship's massive flight deck. Cavernous hangars, equipped to handle several dozen small craft at a time, the Flight deck also houses the Marine Barracks, the engineering crew quarters, and holding bays for approximately 100 strike craft. The hangar is connected by a series of tramways, and it's superstructure is built to be extremely durable to make up for the natural weakness of having a giant gap through the center of the ship.
Sitting at the midship is the bridge and CIC, a tall structure, reinforced with armor and support struts. The CIC itself is multilevel, and has metal blast shields lowered over the glass during combat. Sitting on top of the bridge is the observation deck.
Weapons:
In order to fulfill its requisition order, the Orion-Class, while designed to work as a support unit for fleet actions, is armed to the teeth and sports enough weaponry to smash through any smaller ship it comes across. Though its onboard weapon systems are impressive, the most important aspect of the Orion-class is its ability to project power in the form of strike craft to incredible ranges.
Mounted underneath the ship and powered by its own reactor and capacitor system, the Orion-class mounts a twin-barreled 850mm Positron Beam Cannon turret. Called the 'Red Button' by the crew, this is a powerful anti-capital ship weapon. These powerful beam cannons are even more powerful than their standard plasma-based cousins, launching an arcing bolt of destructive energy that while relatively ineffective against shields, is devastating against hull and armor. It should also be noted that these beams release an intense amount of highly lethal gamma radiation, and for these reasons The Neo-Geneva Conventions have restricted their use to space only, as the radiation is capable of disrupting the local atmosphere. Though powerful, the draw on power resources is often too prohibitively high for use on non-capital targets.
Instead, the primary armament for the Orion-class is a set of 14 twin-barreled 400mm Plasma Beam Cannons mounted on the dorsal line above and below the ship. These heavy beam cannons make short work of most smaller vessels, overload shields, and ward off close range attackers, but can also be a threat to larger capital ships. Unlike traditional Mass-driver cannons, the Orion's beam cannons are considerably more accurate, able to track better than projectile based weapons, with just as much, if not more power- though cannot fire as quickly as Mass Drivers.
Supplementing the main guns, the Orion also mounts 18 120mm Mass Driver turrets scattered around the ship for close in defense against smaller ships, though the sheer number of shells can also pose a threat to larger cruiser type ships as well. Designed to provide accurate, rapid fire with a decent punch, though heavier warships are capable of forcing their way through this fire, it is well suited to overwhelming enemy shield systems.
Four Trebuchet missile bays carry 50 anti capital missiles each, supplementing the main guns. With a secondary magazine located in the hold holding another 200, the ship has enough missiles for 5 minutes of sustained fire. These missiles are remote piloted by operators in the CiC, but can revert to on-board guiding if they are jammed. Configurable for a variety of targets, these missiles are also the primary means of attacking a surface target the Orion-class has. The Orion also features 12 smaller Stiletto missile launchers- these missile launchers are 12-racked launcher systems that can deploy a variety of smaller missiles, such as the popular Harpoon or Spitfire missiles, for anti-fighter/bomber purposes.
Finally, the Orion-class mounts a staggering 160 heavy rail cannons in 40 four gun 'ball' turrets, which retract and are covered by blast shields when not in use. Designed for AA work and interception, these cannons provide a murderous hail of tungsten slugs designed to fill local space around the ship with an expanding 'cone of death', that should shred any missile or drive off any fighter that gets too close to the ship. In addition to Tungsten slugs, the rail cannons can be outfitted to fire proximity detonating flak shells for short-ranged saturation fire.
Defenses:
Along with the aforementioned rail cannons, the ship mounts almost a meter of Durralex Nano-plasteel armour plate, reinforced with Cobblestone Reaction ceramic ablative plate. Able to withstand direct hits from nuclear weapons, the Cobblestone is a more recent addition as part of the last round of upgrades, and detrimentally affected the ship's handling. To quote one Commander: 'She handled like an iron bathtub full of water before. Now she handles like an iron bathtub full of concrete, covered in grease'. ECW defence includes several dedicated ECM defence nodes, located on top of the bridge and observation deck. Finally, a powerful reflex shield generators allows the ship to deflect conventional and plasma attacks.
In addition to its armor, the Orion-class also features 14 VelCan Point Defense Turrets. These point-defense variants feature 6 barrels instead of the standard 3, and are programmed to target incoming missiles, only firing at enemy fighters when there is a lack of missile targets. The Orion also mounts 8 Buckler Missile launchers. The buckler missiles launchers are fast targeting missile systems that can rapidly target incoming torpedos and large missiles and launch a small but fast missile that seeks out and destroys the oncoming missile.
Like all capital ships of her size and construction, the greatest threats come from bigger, meaner capital ships, concentrated attack by destroyers or close range 'skin dancing' attacks by Strike craft. An Orion separated from its support fleet is a commander's worst nightmare, and the best defense for a carrier is often its own strike-craft compliment.
Flight Deck:
A marvel of engineering, the flight deck and associated hanger bays have stowage for about 125 small craft of various types. The typical Orion-class- such as the DNS Roanoke carries of 24 F-87 Aegis II Aerospace fighters, 16 B34 Redeemer Aerospace bombers, 48 T-22 Dirk Interceptors, 12 Albatross heavy assault ships, and 5 marine assault gunships. Fighters are deployed via magnetic catapult on the flight deck and can be recovered using the same equipment. The ship also carries 4 shuttles for general shipping duties, 1 bulk lifter and 6 SRR(Search-Rescue-Repair) craft. 9 T-88 Seer class scout ships round out the ships compliment.
Crew Compliment:
The ships company runs to 4600 over all ranks and specializations, including a dedicated security detachment. Attached to the Roanoke is the 144th 'Direwolves' Aerospace Squadron, and the 132nd 'Longbows' Aerospace Squadron. The combined airwing has a compliment of about 800 crew, including pilots, and the Marine Battalion aboard numbers 400.
Other Capabilities:
The ships computer systems are managed by Eva, a gestalt LV 3 Virtual intelligence. Not true AI, she instead is an exceptionable personable interface program designed to ease crew interactions with the ships systems, function as a organizer and statistician, and provide ready advice and information for the command crew. Capable of independent management of many of the ships defensive systems and day-to-day management of the ships immediate Battlespace, she is designed to both take, interpret and redistribute orders.
Statistics:
Length: 1150m
Mass: 500,000 metric tons
Crew Compliment: 6000~
Jump Range: 50 light years
Jump delay: 48 hours
Endurance: 8 months
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