Union Lancer Class Dreadnought

Lancer Class Union of Worlds Dreadnought:

Overview: One of the rarest ships in the Union the Lancer was the brainchild of an ambitous idea by Union high command. This idea worked around the concept of a one ship fleet, a carrier, battleship, intelligence and transport all in one. The outcome was changed however as the project took its twists and turns and eventually the program was shut down, with only 10 ships ever produced the Lancer eventually ended up as a heavy line breaker/fleet anchor. Able to pump out enough firepower to single handedly destroy a planet or an entire enemy fleet the Lancer program suddenly found renewed purpose in the Draken war. With the Draken moving in on all fronts the program was restarted and is continued to this day. Though Lancers are still very rare their nature means they are only deployed with the largest fleets or against swarm races. Here the sheer amount of firepower can quickly render numbers obsolete, and thanks to substantial shielding and CIWS any return fire or attacks are also repulsed.

Armament: The Ferrum class is armed with 3904 Mass drivers mounted in 976 dual turret mounts, 840 Mass drivers mounted in 140 Triple turret mounts and 928 Mass drivers mounted in 116 Quad turret mounts for 5672 Mass drivers in total. The Lancer also mounts 12 Heavy Meson laser projectors, 48 Plasma cannons, 8 Heavy Union Missile Launcher Arrays, 28 Spearhead drone launchers, 40 QAC cannons and one Heavy Hyperfrequency Laser.

Mass Drivers: The Unions primary weapon system found from single turret arrangements on escorts all the way up to quad turret arrangements on super dreadnoughts. Using magnetic fields to propel a shell down a set of rails the Mass driver is essentially an upgraded Railgun. Capable of firing rounds at 0.8c velocities and with a rate of fire of around 60 rounds per minute a round a second for such a large armament is very powerful. This can be increased however at the expense of burning out the rails. Mass Drivers can fire a number of different ammo types, the first is normal ship to ship rounds which are quantum lattice plate darts designed to penetrate and smash through the opposing ships. The second is High Explosive saturation shell, designed for planetary bombardment over a large area with conventional explosives. The final type is defensive flak rounds, each shell is filled with cluster munitions which in turn have more cluster munitions, with explosion radii in a few hundred kilometers these shells can put up defensive flak screens to tear apart incoming missiles or fightercraft or even incoming kinetic projectiles, which along with the SENTINEL system means the ship becomes insanely hard to engage with kinetic weapons. These guns have Void coolers to help them keep up a high rate of fire and Nano-Assemblers which can give a near endless supply of the conventional ship to ship rounds, the other types however are in limited supply.

Union Missile Launchers: The Unions missile launchers are either mounted in the hull or external arrays located along the flanks of the ships. These launchers contain many missiles ready to be fired in rapid succession at enemy warships in a number of attack patterns out to very long range. The Union uses a variety of missiles, phase missiles being the most common to engage enemy starships, using a phase generator to phase the missile out of realspace, allowing it to bypass shields, armour and point defence to materialise inside the enemy ship to detonate, hamstringing critical systems within the ship and destroying it from the inside out. Second warhead option is the basic plasma warhead which can use dial a yield between 5MT and 750MT worth of destructive force. The final warhead is a bomb pumped laser to engage hordes of enemy strike craft or missiles that are incoming.

Meson Lasers: Union Meson lasers provide ships with very long range precise and powerful firepower. Somewhat misleading my name Union meson lasers do not fire actual mesons, rather the mesons are used for duel, generated in power hungry particle accelerators the meson decay is controlled and used, as each meson decays into a huge number of photons as well as assorted radiation this is then fed to the focusing lenses and fired at the enemy. Meson lasers are incredibly accurate and far more powerful than regular photonic lasers, while they lack AOE they more than make up for it in stopping power.

Plasma Cannons: Union Plasma Cannons are somewhat simple weapons, using linear accelerators to project roiling bolts of plasma at the enemy vessels down magnetic containment corridors to cut down bloom and aid with aiming they provide the Union with close range punching power. Generating the plasma in specialised miniature reactors and then feeding it to the gun barrel void cooling units are used to keep it cool, however the cannons can be overcharged, giving them up to medium range capabilities at the expense of weapon life being drastically reduced.

Union Spearhead Drones: Based on the Nakai spearhead drones which are semi sentient kamikaze drones designed to intercept and destroy enemy attack craft and ships these Union constructed versions are a shadow of the Nakai versions. However they are still very effective. Powered up inside launchers the drones have a 30 minute engagement time, rather than being the miniature stars used by the Nakai Union Spearhead Drones use disruptive energy fields to damage their targets, ramming them and then if the drone survives continues to ram the target until it is destroyed then it will find another target, if it is still intact. Drones however can self-detonate similar to a missile however are used to target critical systems within an enemy ship. When the energy fields are activated they glow a bright yellow.

Union QAC Cannons:  A far cry from the nearly godlike power of the Nakai QAC cannons which work by using kugelblitz beams to totally eradicate their target the Unions QAC cannons are rather different. Using modulating energy fields based on miniature slipspace drives but without actually tearing holes in the fabric of reality the cannons actually create beams which function as Electroweak suppressors. These fields turn enemy armour and ships they hit into clouds of cold plasma, and causing huge energy feedbacks in the target. The AOE of these weapons is small, and the immense power requirements for them means their rate of fire is very low. These guns while long range are only found on large Union vessels which are able to power them.

Hyperfrequency Laser: Located usually on Larger Union vessels the Hyperfrequency laser is usually found as a spinal mount and is located at the front of the ship. Using a free electron laser and dumping reactor power directly to the weapon allows it to control the frequency at which the beamweapon operates the weapon operates nearly always in the Hyperfrequency zone, trans-gamma, able to inflict heavy damage on enemy ships the weapons recharge and cooldown time is immense and so the weapon is usually used at the beginning of the battle to inflict as much damage as it can at very long ranges.

Defences: Quantum Lattice Plate: The Unions principle armour, named 'Quantum' as a nickname this armour is a layered defence consisting of multiple layers of different armours, quantum altered to be molded together perfectly. With hyper dense materials mated alongside heat dissipating ceramics, super plastics for impact absorption, Nano-lathe Armour for self repair and Void coolers to rapidly cool the Armour when under assault from energy weapons the lattice work can have up to 100 layers of such armours mated together. Such armour can take tremendous impacts however it shines against energy weapons, able to take direct hits from most energy weapons and shrug off damage, especially weapons that focus on hull melting which seriously struggle to damage Quantum lattice armour. Any damage that is sustained will slowly be repaired by the nanite layers and the energy absorbed by the void cooling systems are usually fed to weapons such as meson lasers to help increase Rate of Fire.

Mk.VIII Crenelated Shielding: The Unions latest in shielding designs. Utilizing a multiple layered defense system alongside a very powerful AI the Mk. VIII Crenelated Shield is made up of several distinct layers. The outermost layer is a charged energy shield designed to intercept incoming kinetic rounds by vaporising them with immense static charge spread across the barrier, working similar to the Unions ground based flashfry system, and is very good against such, having an exceptional standup time to kinetic bombardment before needing to recharge. The second shield is a particulate shield, able to help intercept or dampen energy weapon fire, considering that the hull itself can deal with energy weapons very well the Mk.VIII shield mainly focuses on kinetic however energy weapons will be stopped too. The third shield is a phasic barrier, linked to a phase engine in the generator this barrier cycles through millions of phase states a minute, this gives defense against shield skipping weapons such as the Unions own phase missiles, FTL weapons fire or dimensional manipulation weapons up to around 79% effectiveness/interception ratio, the Union has not been able to make it higher. The Mk.VIII shield is also compatible with the new MTP (Meson, Tachyon Particle) shield being developed. The shield system itself is controlled by a sub AI of the ships AI which modulates the shield patterns to maximize defense as well as allow the Unions own weapon fire to leave the shield unhindered, the AI scans every incoming and outgoing object and energy form, able to keep pace with trillions of objects at once.

SENTINEL PD: The SENTINEL Point Defence is a very intensive interception system made up of small meson lasers, missile launchers and gatling railguns spread out across the ships length, able to rapidly track and engage incoming kinetic and missile weaponry, the missile launchers engage very long range targets while meson lasers engage incoming at medium range or the most critical targets at long range, while the gatling railguns engage multiple targets at close range, spitting out thousands of rounds every few seconds to destroy incoming kinetic shells or missiles. SENTINEL has a very high interception rate, however is no use on energy weapons, but is very effective vs attack craft. SENTINEL is often bolstered by the ability of Union Mass Drivers to use flak round ammunition.

Power plant: 20x Mk-72X Zero Point Reactor: Union ZPRs create micro dimensions and draw vacuum energy from that dimension before it grows stail and collapses, to which they will restart the process again. It is a very efficient energy generation method and the ZPRs can run for around a year before needing to be refueled with heavy elements critical to the generation of microverses (these microverses are tiny and cannot generate life or celestial objects, however when the reactor section itself is damaged these verses can explode spectacularly and with great power). The fuel and generation elements themselves of the ZPRs are only around the size of a person, and are usually plug and play attachments which can fit between ships allowing easy change over and refueling.

40x Mk-105CF Cold Fusion Reactors: While Union ZPRs provide the primary power systems of their warships secondary cold fusion reactors can be brought online if the main reactor goes down, or if extra power requirements are needed (for instance when the ZPR refueling is underway) these cold fusion reactors use muons as a catalyst at room temperature fusion reactions, non-volatile and unable to explode when damaged these reactors provide very safe methods of power generation for their cost, however have to be refueled quite often compared to the ZPR around once every 3 weeks.

Electronic capabilities: 25x Mk-75 QAI: The Mk-75 Quantum Artificial Intelligence is the Unions newest and most powerful artificial intelligence to date. Running on the latest in quantum computing designs the AI oversees the entire ship and its capabilities, allowing the Union ships to be very redundant in abilities and also very automated compared to other ships their size. Integrating the latest firewalls and Anti-Viral systems including a phase state scanner to help identify and purge unwanted intruders (The ship scans the entire ships code regularly, any deviation of that code not authorized by the crew is immediately destroyed) it is the most resistant to hacking QAI to date. Connected to the Union Grid and able to host multiple smaller QAIs for shields, weapons and other systems multiple Mk-75s can be run on larger ships each taking sections of the ship and increasing its computing and cyberwarfare resistance massively as well as helping to increase redundancy and capability in case of incapaciation or crew death.

Stealth Capabilities: 1x Mk.VI Sensor Stealth Field: All Union ships come equipped with the Mk.VI Sensor Stealth Field as standard. It isn’t a full spectrum stealth field nor is it active hacking and cyberwarfare. The Sensor Stealth Field gives off false signals and sensor readings as well as helping to conceal the ships own signature to basic sensor systems, while it has no effect on gravimetric sensors or more exotic means it does mean any system using conventional sensors such as LIDAR, RADAR, Tachyometric, Mesonic will have a harder time attaining a lock on or a definitive location of the ship, giving it a slightly increased survival chance.

Utility Capabilities: 40x Mk.V Tractor Beam: Using the vessels own slip space drive which by extension can bend the space around the ship using gravity fields the tractor beam nodes which can be all over the ship the slip space drive can produce heavily precise gravity fields capable of manipulating objects, either towing crippled ships or rescuing escape pods.

Union Interdiction Projectors: Union Interdiction units were introduced fairly recently into the Union navy however have already proved to be absolutely crucial, they are now found on many classes of warship and provide Union ships the ability to deny the enemy an escape route, or prevent ambush attacks right on top of their own fleet, while retaining their own FTL capabilities. Union Interdiction units are keyed in to specific drive types able to interdict and prevent FTL from that drive type over a huge area of multiple AU, while they can be only keyed in to one type of drive they can still allow the Union their own slipspace use however the inner workings and functions of the enemy drive system have to be known for the system to work.

Troop Complement: The Lancer has the capacity to transport up to 5000 men and their heavy equipment and can be equipped with drop pod launchers if necessary.

Crew: The Lancer class has a crew of 5200 personnel, with the QAI helping them run most of the ship for redundancy.

Attack craft: The Lancer class has 14 large hangar bays which run the width of the ship from side to side, these contain the facilities to maintain, run and replace Firestorm Mk.VI Fighters and Eagle Eye Mk.VI bombers altogether it can deploy 1250 Firestorms and 580 Eagle Eyes.

Firestorm MK.VI Union Fighter-Bomber
Eagle Eye Mk.VI Union Bomber

Speed and Engines: 1x Mk.V Slipspace Engine: The Unions principal FTL engine, the Type V is even more reliable than the Mk.IV, allowing faster slipspace travel, quicker plotting times and virtually 100% error correction while in flight. The Type V can either plot its own FTL course or can be slaved to another ship to save the same information, sharing jump calculations across a whole fleet. The Slipspace drive uses immense gravitational fields to envelop the ship and distort space-time enough to tear a small window in the fabric of reality, allowing the ship to then enter slipspace, the tear and fields collapsing to leave real space untouched in the previous area.

4x Mk-40 Cannae Drives: The Mk-40 Cannae Drive is the Unions principle sublight engine, using the Quantum vacuum energy from the ZPR unit the particulates generated inside the microverse can be used for propulsion. Even in such a tiny reality huge amounts of exotic and everyday particles are created from the roiling heat of the miniature universe and so are collected and expelled for use of propellant. While not entirely reactionless per say it is as close as the Union can get.

Lancer and the Union belong to me