While writing the last chapter on Marduk, I got the inspiration for this ship. I meant to stay away form the war, because I did not want to turn my characters into military powers, but I realized than Genesis will be a mayor company in the Belt, so staying safe in Luna was not an option. And then I realized than with the new plot of Belter refugees in Marduk, I had all the crews I could need. The design is (hopefully) a good compromise between creating a battle fleet with no visible resources and doing nothing while your neighbour families are dieing.
I would specially like comments in ship size, tonnage and crew, because I chose the numbers more or less at random. I did not want it to be too big, so it is 30 m, about the same size of the Adler class transport, but twice the weight (700 tons) due to the massive armor. the crew is ten people (pilots, gunners, damage control, and medical) and the marines are the part were I have more trouble. I have settled in a platoon of 50, but I have no idea it it will be too many or too few.
Ariete class APC ship.
Originally meant to be a weaponized version of Genesis C&D construction ships, the end design mutated to the Ariete ("Battering Ram") class of armoured personnel carriers.
The Ariete ships take advantage of Genesis' expertise in building very though ships, and breaking big rocks. Their function is simple, as shown in the class designation: They ram enemy ships, and then unload a Marine boarding party inside .
The ships design is simple. It is about 30 m, long, and the front armour narrows until it ends in a sharpened ram, designed to open once it has broken the enemy hull to allow the marines to board. It weights 700 tons, and so it is the slower ship of its size.
Most of its weight consists in thick, and super dense, armour plating: The ship is designed for one purpose: To brush off massive amounts of damage, and protect its crew until they have taken the enemy ship. While it has artificial gravity, it has to be turned off in combat; then all the gravity generators and kinetic shields are used to maintain structural integrity and keep the interior (with the crew and engines) safe from the kinetic energy caused by the crash.
It has a crew of 10, plus a detachment of 50 marines. The interior is sparse, but it has a tiny emergency surgery.
While it would outright destroy any small ship, the lack of speed and manoeuvrability compared with small craft means they seldom get the chance; it is meant to attack space vessels, stations and habitats. The ship will usually need refitting after a successful boarding.
Weapons:
Weapons are a problem with this design, as they will either hang outside the hull, and be destroyed when the ship rams an enemy, or need weapon ports, which will weaken the armour.
The Aries only have three weapon ports, all in the back; in the top they have the kinetic cannon, and on both flanks they have one weapon port, which can be used for several weapons.
The Marduk shipyards do not have hard tech weapon production capacity: They will only install the Kinetic cannon, a purely 'waved “weapon” Originally a Federation design, it is yet another attempt to create a tractor bean. The cannon will stop any vehicle on its tracks (with a spectacular show of light, so the theory is than it changes kinetic energy into electromagnetic radiation) for several seconds, but neither it nor its crew will be damaged; after a short time it will move again (it varies, with the quality of the ship drive. Moving objects with no drives, like small asteroids or cannonballs, will not start moving again until more force is applied; but it never has been longer than 20 seconds so far). It is not very useful in combat, but it will grant a few seconds of advantage for the ramming.
The flank weapon ports leave the shipyards empty; Great Justice will install weapons there after the ship is on their hands. The eventual standard weapon will be a point defence system once the computer tracking tech gets good enough for it; but for the moment the usual weapon is a heavy machine gun (a missile launcher can be fitted, but hold space for ammo inside the ship is too small for a long engagement).
History:
By 2012, Genesis main market was the Belt. With the Boskonian War raging there, a good percentage of its production capacities in Luna stood idle.
He offered Great Justice the use of Marduk shipyards as a repair facility, and began to design a combat vessel.
An initial lack of manpower soon disappeared once he opened Plinius crater to Belter refugees; he found himself with literal thousand of workers -enthusiastic, pro-war workers.
While he began the design of a few fancy (and, with his military experience, probably useless on the real world) capital ships, he decided to focus in his strengths, resistant materials and very, very tough ships.
The Aries launched in January 2013, with a crew of Belter marines. Over the course of the war, a total of twelve Ariete ships were built, all of then crewed by Belter refugees in Luna. They were very useful in breaching Boskonian fortified positions, and all twelve were part of the Fall of Boskone Prime
After the end of the war, Oscar Vykos gave ten of the ships to Great Justice; the other two returned to Marduk and were “decommissioned” (the message he sent back the GJ did have the quotes), but he also returned the last two ships' hardtech weapons, so GJ did not protest). As far as anyone knows, no new Arietes have been built, either for Genesis or for Great Justice.
The Besieger:
This design was a huge super-carrier craft. Several hundred meters long, it holds launch bays for a dozen Arietes, thirty fighter craft, weapons depots, a small repair drydock, medical station, and living quarters for the crew and marines.
It is the only of the initial “fancy designs” than Oscar finished; but at the end of the War, only the structure was finished. Instead of recycling the materials (which GJ had paid for, anyway) he sent the whole unfinished thing to Great Justice, whom carted it to float somewhere in the Belt, ready to pick up the construction back sometime should it even be necessary (there are rumours than not only the structure, but the engines, were finished by the end of the war. Vykos will only answer with “no comment”, while GJ speakers will say then information about battleship construction rates is classified.
I would specially like comments in ship size, tonnage and crew, because I chose the numbers more or less at random. I did not want it to be too big, so it is 30 m, about the same size of the Adler class transport, but twice the weight (700 tons) due to the massive armor. the crew is ten people (pilots, gunners, damage control, and medical) and the marines are the part were I have more trouble. I have settled in a platoon of 50, but I have no idea it it will be too many or too few.
Ariete class APC ship.
Originally meant to be a weaponized version of Genesis C&D construction ships, the end design mutated to the Ariete ("Battering Ram") class of armoured personnel carriers.
The Ariete ships take advantage of Genesis' expertise in building very though ships, and breaking big rocks. Their function is simple, as shown in the class designation: They ram enemy ships, and then unload a Marine boarding party inside .
The ships design is simple. It is about 30 m, long, and the front armour narrows until it ends in a sharpened ram, designed to open once it has broken the enemy hull to allow the marines to board. It weights 700 tons, and so it is the slower ship of its size.
Most of its weight consists in thick, and super dense, armour plating: The ship is designed for one purpose: To brush off massive amounts of damage, and protect its crew until they have taken the enemy ship. While it has artificial gravity, it has to be turned off in combat; then all the gravity generators and kinetic shields are used to maintain structural integrity and keep the interior (with the crew and engines) safe from the kinetic energy caused by the crash.
It has a crew of 10, plus a detachment of 50 marines. The interior is sparse, but it has a tiny emergency surgery.
While it would outright destroy any small ship, the lack of speed and manoeuvrability compared with small craft means they seldom get the chance; it is meant to attack space vessels, stations and habitats. The ship will usually need refitting after a successful boarding.
Weapons:
Weapons are a problem with this design, as they will either hang outside the hull, and be destroyed when the ship rams an enemy, or need weapon ports, which will weaken the armour.
The Aries only have three weapon ports, all in the back; in the top they have the kinetic cannon, and on both flanks they have one weapon port, which can be used for several weapons.
The Marduk shipyards do not have hard tech weapon production capacity: They will only install the Kinetic cannon, a purely 'waved “weapon” Originally a Federation design, it is yet another attempt to create a tractor bean. The cannon will stop any vehicle on its tracks (with a spectacular show of light, so the theory is than it changes kinetic energy into electromagnetic radiation) for several seconds, but neither it nor its crew will be damaged; after a short time it will move again (it varies, with the quality of the ship drive. Moving objects with no drives, like small asteroids or cannonballs, will not start moving again until more force is applied; but it never has been longer than 20 seconds so far). It is not very useful in combat, but it will grant a few seconds of advantage for the ramming.
The flank weapon ports leave the shipyards empty; Great Justice will install weapons there after the ship is on their hands. The eventual standard weapon will be a point defence system once the computer tracking tech gets good enough for it; but for the moment the usual weapon is a heavy machine gun (a missile launcher can be fitted, but hold space for ammo inside the ship is too small for a long engagement).
History:
By 2012, Genesis main market was the Belt. With the Boskonian War raging there, a good percentage of its production capacities in Luna stood idle.
He offered Great Justice the use of Marduk shipyards as a repair facility, and began to design a combat vessel.
An initial lack of manpower soon disappeared once he opened Plinius crater to Belter refugees; he found himself with literal thousand of workers -enthusiastic, pro-war workers.
While he began the design of a few fancy (and, with his military experience, probably useless on the real world) capital ships, he decided to focus in his strengths, resistant materials and very, very tough ships.
The Aries launched in January 2013, with a crew of Belter marines. Over the course of the war, a total of twelve Ariete ships were built, all of then crewed by Belter refugees in Luna. They were very useful in breaching Boskonian fortified positions, and all twelve were part of the Fall of Boskone Prime
After the end of the war, Oscar Vykos gave ten of the ships to Great Justice; the other two returned to Marduk and were “decommissioned” (the message he sent back the GJ did have the quotes), but he also returned the last two ships' hardtech weapons, so GJ did not protest). As far as anyone knows, no new Arietes have been built, either for Genesis or for Great Justice.
The Besieger:
This design was a huge super-carrier craft. Several hundred meters long, it holds launch bays for a dozen Arietes, thirty fighter craft, weapons depots, a small repair drydock, medical station, and living quarters for the crew and marines.
It is the only of the initial “fancy designs” than Oscar finished; but at the end of the War, only the structure was finished. Instead of recycling the materials (which GJ had paid for, anyway) he sent the whole unfinished thing to Great Justice, whom carted it to float somewhere in the Belt, ready to pick up the construction back sometime should it even be necessary (there are rumours than not only the structure, but the engines, were finished by the end of the war. Vykos will only answer with “no comment”, while GJ speakers will say then information about battleship construction rates is classified.