Union-Metro Joint Endurance Class

Endurance Class Union of Worlds/Kingdom of Metropolis Joint Battleship:

Overview: The Endurance is a unique vessel and is the only one of its class. Destined to be that way due to the circumstances in the Ancerious galaxy the Endurance was a joint project started during the 1st Ancerious war between the Kingdom of Metropolis and the Union through close relations. Both nations wished to test out the various technology of the other and the Endurance was the test platform to ensure smooth integration of such for both empires, with both nations having similar aesthetic ship wise it was a relatively simple matter of making a joint design. The Endurance was completed towards the end of the war and underwent trials during the Uprising crisis, with both nations having poured their time and effort into the vessel the Endurance proved its worth in the battle of Mirach. Despite the isolation of the Kingdom during that period the vessel showed its capability, destroying 11 APP Capital ships before the battles end. However after the Fall of Metropolis the Endurance suffered heavily, most of the Kingdoms technology ceased to function and so the Union was forced to work alongside those Metropolis fleet personel and engineers that worked to keep the Endurance running to bring it back into the fold, unable to bring the critical Metropolis systems online they had to be replaced. The Metropolis technology however that did function retained its lethality and so the Union keeps the Endurance in its arsenal, as much to honour its close ally lost to the vaguries of the universe as it is to use its power on the frontline.

Armament: The Endurance is equipped with a wide range of Union and Metropolis weapon systems. Its primary armament consists of one spinal mounted Rift beam of Kingdom design along with flank mounted Gravitic beam projectors for anti capital ship duties. It is also armed with 6 Missile launchers capable of firing Union Phase missiles or Kingdom Anti-Matter generating warheads along with 14 Union Meson laser emplacements. The Endurance also mounts 624 Dual turreted Mass drivers as well.

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.

 
Spinal Rift Beam: The main weapon of the Endurance the Spinal Rift beam fires a powerful Graviton beam fed directly by the reactor through into a specialised Metropolis Rift FTL generator, allowing the weapon to successfully be transported across even a solar system to strike targets with pinpoint accuracy. While this weapon takes substantial charge to fire and is unable to use its rift capability in interdiction this weapon is very powerful and with the Endurance mostly hanging back out of interdiction it allows it to use this weapon on a whim.

Anti-matter Generating Missiles: Anti Matter generating missiles work by a specialized warhead which after impacts generates a substantial amount of antimatter, reacting instantly with the targets shields or hull the antimatter will then annihilate. This essentially uses the enemies own hull as a fuel and will instantly vaporize whatever it hits, with the subsequent blast damage crippling the enemy vessel.

Graviton Beams: Graviton Beams are powerful directed particle weapons, using Gravitons the beams create huge gravitational sheer where they aim. These beams can be used to rake enemy ships and cause them immense structural stresses from the sheer, tearing them apart or inflicting heavy structural damage on their frame. These weapons are highly precise however take a great deal of energy to fire.

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.

Dimensional Shunt Systems: A system used by Metropolis the Dimensional shunt active defence works by targeting incoming enemy munitions or energy weapons and then shunting them into another dimension by changing their phase state, leading to no damage caused on the vessel. Or in the case of phasic or defence bypassing weapons the shunt can bring them into realspace where conventional defences can deal with them. This defence is very energy intensive and can only be activated for short periods but is highly effective at its job.

Power plant: 15x 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.

16x 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: 12x 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: 20x 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 Endurance has the capacity to transport up to 800 men and their heavy equipment.

Crew: The Endurance class has a crew of 2500 personnel a rough split between Metro and Union, with the QAI helping them run most of the ship for redundancy.

Attack craft: The Endurance class has 2 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 240 Firestorms and 120 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.

2x 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.

Union belongs to me 

Metropolis belongs to (Thought it needed a proper immortalisation )

Endurance is a joint project by us both