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| The "Thinking Horndog" talked to me about the Sa'arm Cycle which captured my imagination. We discussed the subject and he was not displeased with allowing me to write within his framework. |
After several years the human forces supporting the Confederacy effort had scaled up manufacturing capacity to a degree that would have boggled the rest of the races within the Confederacy.
Humans took the limited technology that they were allowed through the Darjee and enhanced it for their own needs.
Between replicators and mining/refining nanotechnology, the ability to manufacture large-- if not huge-- ships became commonplace. A single large ship could land on a planetoid or moon and start digesting it immediately, albeit in small bits. A lot of the factories were based on the idea of von Neuman machines (for more detail, I refer you to the prologue of James P. Hogan's "Code of the Life-Maker", which is in both the book of the same title and appears as a chapter within "Minds, Machines and Evolution") which could scale up automatically under control of AIs.
With this enhanced manufacturing capacity, larger ships and more weapons-- missiles, for instance-- could be produced on a scale that could swamp the Sa'arm... in space.
In space, man was king.
On the ground? Well... the Sa'arm might not be king, but you might have to write off the whole planet if they got to the surface.
The first of these ships came out around 2 years before the Battle Of Earthat began...
These are the heaviest vessels at 50 kilometres in diameter with a design that was influenced by people who had seen Star Wars one time too many.
The class-names, however, came from people who'd read Iain M. Banks's "Culture" stories a bit too religiously. This "sub-culture", for want of a better word, had a hand in giving the ships names.
With a basically spherical configuration to minimize the defensive perimeter, these ships had the full range of hyper capability, a wide cruising radius, acting as a carrier for multiple gun-boat and fighter wings and with huge magazines for missiles of multiple types.
Sometimes these ships are referred to as "dreadnoughts" or "heavy carriers" given that the require their gunboat and fighter wings if forced into a defensive posture.
Gunboat Wings: 8
Fighter Wings: 64
Landing Craft: 128 Bengal or 256 Panther
Naming Theme: These tend to have the most bizarre names.
Examples:
So Much for Subtlety
These are often referred to as "cruisers" or, when mixed with older fleet elements, "heavy cruisers", being over 5 kilometres in diameter. Again, the Death Star "dimple" is present.
These are at least as fast as the GOUs in both normal space and in hyper and are mostly magazine space, carrying both.
Gunboat Wings: 1
Fighter Wings: 2
Landing Craft: 4 Bengal or 8 Panther
Naming Themes: These vessels are usually, depending upon the ship-yard, named after Warriors or General Officers, both real and fictional.
Examples:
No More Mr Nice Guy
Attitude Adjuster
Hand Me That Gun And Ask Me Again
Agamemnon
Miles Vorkosigan
Someone should lock up the Star Wars enthusiasts. These ships are of the "arrowhead" shape which trades off the defensive perimeter for the ability to mount both beam and missile launchers. These ships run to 3 kilometres in length and are the fastest ships in both hyper and normal space.
Fighter Wings: 2
Landing Craft: 8 Panther
Naming Theme: Decorated soldiers from Earth history
Finally we turn to a ship designed by Babylon-5 fans. This ship vaguely resembles the "Excalibur" seen in "A Call to Arms" and the series "Crusade" except they are no where near as sleek or "pretty" as the fictional version. These ships are fairly common and are often referred to as "tin cans" given their role as escorts. Ship length is 300 metres.
Fighter Wings: 1/2 (32 fighters)
Landing Craft: 4 Panther
Naming Theme: (TBD)
The "gun ship" operates in a wing of sixteen and is shaped like an arrow-head, again mimicking the SSDs except in size. These light vessels compromise defensive perimeter for weapons mountings and carry no more than four capital missiles apiece.
Naming Theme: Small cities and Towns.
Another spherical vessel, these are 5 kilometres in diameter and do not look like the Death Star. These ships are the carriers for the landing forces and carry magazines of weapons that DO NOT include HSIT/SPAM shells. Most warheads are matter/antimatter to make a loud bang yet minimize fall out.
These ships are designed for the express purpose to deliver and support a large quantity of gropos from orbit with an ability to interdict Sa'arm launches.
Fighter Wings: 2 (atmospheric optimized)
Landing Craft: 32 Panthers or 16 Bengals
Naming Themes: Usually something incredibly arrogant.
Examples:
Meddle Not in the Affairs of Humans
Kiss Your Butt Buh-Bye
We Don't Need No Steenking Dickheads
Also known as the "SPAM" shell, these are pronounce as "shit" shells. These are optimized for hyperspace tracking and destruction and may be used in normal space. These do not usually carry a war-head because the inter-penetration does the damage.
Note: These weapons can crack open a planet.
An enhancement of the HSIT, this allows normal space missiles to be delivered to an enemy's neighborhood without being detected before it arrives. The missile pod will dump out a set of capital ship missiles whilst the pod will shift to being a "mine" with a proximity fuse.
Despite the Sa'arm having excellent anti-meteoric capability which can be used as a counter-battery weapon, the HVKW is a "missile" that arrives too quickly for the Sa'arm to react. All ships carry these weapons but they are seldom used other than in ground support.
The second generation of energy weapon, these are far more destructive than the laser rifle while cutting down on the ability to use a reflective surface as shielding. The BFGs deliver a packet of high-velocity plasma to the target and will cook a Sa'arm (much less a human) instantly.
These do limited damage to physical structures but will impose an electro-magnetic pulse on any electronics the pulse strikes.
Useful in both vacuum and atmosphere.
Named for Keith Laumer's autonomous "tanks", these are used in a limited fashion against the Sa'arm as a means to lead them to a killing field. The Sa'arm soon learn to avoid a Bolo and do their best to destroy them at a distance. Bolos are armed with large plasma cannons and railguns and have a battle screen to make them expensive for the Sa'arm to kill.
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Author: Jack C Lipton Title: ZZ - Sa'arm - Ship and Space-borne Weapons Information Part: Universe: Sa'arm Summary: Keywords: Revision: $Revision: 1.2 $ Archive: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/CupaSoup/www/ Mailing List: FAQ: RCS: $Id: swarmed99.x,v 1.2 2007/12/22 08:50:35 jcl Exp $