Solomani Confederation (Military)

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Slow Dreadnought

1. There are only five classes of starwarships of the line designed for the Confederation Navy, to date.

2. The first was the Victory class battle cruiser, a compromise allowing cruiser performance, with line of battle armament.

3. The second was the Zeus class battlecruiser, that emphasized armament and mobility, over hull armour.

4. The third was the Prometheus class fast dreadnought, considered by many to be the pinnacle of technological level fourteen starwarship design.

5. By itself, if could outfight any technological level fourteen Imperium Navy battleship of it's era.

6. In actuality, it was designed to match anticipated technological level fifteen battleships, by being twenty five percent larger.

7. While Imperium Naval Intelligence considered it to be too expensive for it to be widely deployed, Confederation Naval Staff expected economies of scale to kick in, which would lower operating costs, since it would be the only class of it's category being manufactured.

8. Unfortunately for the Confederation, they went to war before they had the planned large numbers of Promethii.

9. And to cover their lack of starwarships of the line, the slow dreadnought type was introduced.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Slow Dreadnought

A. The slow dreadnought type was conceived to utilize modular construction, that allowed separate hull modules to be welded together, in a dispersed structure configuration.

B. Since the principal needs were speed and cost, a lot of shortcuts would be employed.

C. The two primary hulls would be a hundred kilotonne weapons primitive hull, and an engineering default hull(s).

D. Having a primitive hull as any part of the hull configuration, limits maximum acceleration to factor/three.

E. The engineering hull is welded to the rear of the weapons hull.

F. Five fuel hulls are welded to the circumference of the engineering hull.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Slow Dreadnought

G. The disadvantages of a primitive hull, outside of halved hull points, and maximum acceleration factor/three, is no gravity tiles, no manoeuvre drive, and no jump drive.

H. However, you can still pack in any number of weapon systems.

I. Including, spinal mounts.

J. Basically, like the fifteen inch monitor class, we want to use the excess spinal mounts manufactured for the Prometheus class, and install them on a cheaper weapon platform.

K. One difference between this and a battlerider, would be that the jump drive and fuel tanks are welded on.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Slow Dreadnought

L. While the Confederation Navy, itself, prefers meson spinal mounts, that it manufactures through it's commercial subsidiaries, it can and does acquire other spinal mounts.

M. These could be from member planet military industrial complexes, client states, and, far more likely, salvaged from captured enemy starwarships.

N. Since the manufacture of meson weapon systems is usually a monopoly of the Confederation Navy, it allows the arms control of that by the Confederation, with rather strict end user certification.

O. With a couple of exceptions, every other spinal mount model, meson based or not, is non standard, but considered useful.

P. So they drilled a hole through a planetoid pole, and carried on a battle tender.