[RFC] Ariete APC ship

[HRogge]

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.

Sounds like a reasonable plan to develop a ship during the Boskone war...

"We need something armed and armored!" "We have this ship, lets just add some armor and weapons..." Which turns into a happy "redesign chase...

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.

Catgirl Industries would like to acquire the Handwavium strain for this system... *G*

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

Building 9 more ships within one year is quite a lot... how much of Marduk city is used as a shipyard?

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.

Hmm...