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METEOR Artillery Destroyer

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Description

METEOR Class Artillery Destroyer - Front

Historical Notes:
After the historical battle at Solaris Rim, The United Solar Earth Council began a massive campaign to retrofit and upgrade its warships. With more powerful and concentrated energy based weaponry available, the USEC needed entirely new designs of starships that could both supply and handle the increased power outputs. Serious deliberation was made on how to proceed with the refitting of the now severely outdated Earthquake class Close Range Support Destroyer. With other, larger classes now able to hold their own in a firefight, some believed that close support warships the size of the Earthquake were no longer necessary, and the entire class of destroyer was put on the verge of extinction.

It was then that a little-known space fleet officer by the name of Markus Komir suggested that the Destroyer's purpose be shifted to long-range fire support. With most of the fleet being redesigned for tighter engagements, there was a notable lack of a true ranged stand-off weapons platform. The Earthquake's size and movement capabilities proved choice for this role, providing a small, fast frame that could fire and reposition quickly from the outer edges of a battlezone, remaining relatively out of danger. Early prototypes, however, were found to have poor overall accuracy, and large caliber cannons tended to overload the inertial dampeners when fired in rapid succession, resulting in a particularly nasty kick that often shook both the ship and the shot wildly off course.

With the concept solid, but the delivery flawed, the designers of the new destroyer completely overhauled the chassis of the Earthquake, their work compiling into the deadly new class christened Meteor, as it was tagged to be an unstoppable force of destruction.

Technical Notes:
The Meteor class improves on the Earthquake in nearly every way imaginable. Maneuverability, firepower, defensive systems and power management were all upgraded from the decades-old Earthquake, without sacrificing the ship's small size and ease of maintenance.

Developers decided to remove the Earthquake's fighter bay, since it was deemed improbable that a long range artillery ship would engage in fighter combat. The fighter point defense lasers were still included to provide some protection from the possibility of enemy fighter raids. The space gained from the removal of the fighter bay was used to install high-capacity energy cells for the weapon batteries, freeing up the primary fusion plant to supply power to the other systems on the ship.

The complex and often inefficient removable primary drive engines were replaced with higher output versions built directly into the hull. To counter the primary engines' high sensor profile, a smaller pair of stealth engines modeled after the pylons on the Raider Cruiser were mounted on the dorsal aft section, giving the Meteor the ability to move into it's firing positions undetected, launch an attack, and maneuver away without being noticed.

The sensor fin, no longer needed for fleet information control, was replaced with a pair of long range data scanners. These scanners are fine tuned to collect information on friendly and enemy ships alike in very short intervals, providing incredibly accurate data to compute firing shots.

The main cannons themselves were switched from the aging first generation beam cannons to the newly developed triple barreled "Eclipse" deuterium based railguns. The deuterium ammunition was built on the old earth concept of the air burst grenade, where the highly ionized hydrogen particles in the round could be set to remain tightly packed, punching through shield walls and armor plating, set to explode and fragment at a set distance, or set to release the hydrogen atoms in sequence, creating a shockwave throughout localized space capable of disrupting the trajectory of moving ships.

Due to the immense muzzle pressure of the deuterium round leaving the railgun barrel, heavy duty inertial dampeners were installed in the turret pivot, but even these are not enough to stop the recoil kick from a full salvo. In order to counteract this, a pair of powerful lateral thrusters were installed in the flanks of the Meteor. These thrusters are usually reserved for only counterbalancing the Eclipse cannons, but they also provide the added bonus of allowing the ship to quickly dodge incoming fire, increasing the survivability rate.

Earning exceptional marks in field tests, the Meteor class Destroyer is set to be a common sight in USEC battlegroups for years to come.

Armament:
-"Eclipse" Deuterium Railgun (6)
-Point Defense Laser (Many)

Alternate Views:
-Back
-Profile
-Bottom
-Eclipse Deuterium Cannon
-Lateral Thruster
-Attack Stance
-Comparison to Earthquake Destroyer

Notable Ships of the Line:
-LRFS AD01 Meteor
Image size
1152x863px 95.31 KB
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Comments9
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Typhyr's avatar
don't the guns and the counterbalancing engine's compress the ship when those guns fire, I mean the kick from it would just destroy the structure of the ship wouldn't it?

ow, and one of the ships should be named painbringer, don't you think?