Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: To provide an updated version of the Union-class Colony/Assault Carrier that is compliant with Starship 5.0
Image Source: Spartan Game's Integration Assault Carrier, background originally by MacRebisz found here
Canon Link: N/A
Restricted Missions: N/A
Primary Source: Union-class Colony/Assault Carrier
Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
Model: Union II-class Colony/Assault Carrier
Affiliation: Galactic Alliance, Silver Jedi, Closed Market
Production: Limited
Material: Chimera Composite Armor Plating with Condensed matter composite backing, Trimantium internal bracing, Tekonite reinforcement, mirrsteel-iridium-Condensed matter composite frame as per Ossis starship frame, various starship components
Classification: Planetary Assault Carrier
Length: 1500 meters
Width: 570 meters
Height: 290 meters
Armament: Average
8 Trident-class Autocannons
40 Iris-class Turbolaser Batteries
30 Rhongomyniad-class Mass Driver Cannon Batteries
2 Erebus-class Jamming Arrays
10 Harpoon-class General Purpose Warhead Launchers
20 Minelayers
10 Trudo-class Point Defense Turrets
10 Plumbata-class Defense Batteries
30 Sentinel-class Point Defense Emplacements
Defenses: High
Hangar: High: 8 Starfighter Squadrons, multiple support craft, drop pods
Maneuverability Rating: Very Low
Speed Rating: Low
Hyperdrive Class: Average: 2
- Catapult Pressors
- CS-Mark 10 Command Combat Simulators (2)
- Encryption Network
- Escape Pods
- Internal Security Systems (Embedded Mantraps, Automated Laser Traps, Internal Force Field Generators)
- Oracle-class Communications Package
- Standard Detention Cells
- Standard Life Support Systems
- Standard Navigational Systems
- Standard Sensor Array
- Space Operations Center (holo-room based on Inexpungable-class bridge: detailed below)
- Planetary Operations Center (ARENA-7580 HoloProjectors, CL-3 Command Links, Comscans, Holo-tanks)
- Tractor Beam Projectors (x15)
- Aegis-class Anti-Concussion Field Generator
- Aspis-class Shield Systems
- Assault tubes equipped with Plasma Cut Boarding Devices
- Cascade-class Proton Beam Cannons
- Chimera Composite Armor Plating
- Biolux Organoform Circuitry
- Calor series Bio-computers
- Erebus-class Jamming Arrays
- Gulfstream-class Maneuvering System
- Harpoon-class General Purpose Warhead Launchers
- Hyperwave Inertial Momentum Sustainer
- Infrared Orbital Drop Reinforcement Targeting Beacon Launchers
- Iris-class Turbolasers
- Meditation Chambers
- Ossis Starship Frame
- Plumbata-class Defense Batteries
- Rhongomyniad-class Mass Driver Cannons
- Sentinel-class Point Defense Emplacements
- Torrential Hyperdrive Booster
- Trident-class Autocannons
- Trudo-class Point Defense Turrets
Strengths:
Improved Defenses: While the Union II's shields are only about average for a warship of its size, its hull exceptionally durable from its use of Ossis starship frame construction covered in alternating layers of thick Chimera Composite plating and thin Condensed matter composite backing, and with additional tekonitereinforcement in the bow of the ship.
Assault Carrier: The Union II carries a large number of starfighters, support craft, and troops, along with the command and control systems needed to manage its vast host of units.
Low Speed and Maneuverability: The exceptionally thick and dense materials that make up the ship make it slower and noticeably less maneuverable than many ships that are larger than it.
Fixed fore weapons: A significant portion of the Union II's firepower is tied up in its proton beam cannons, which have an exceptionally narrow field of fire. Combined with its low maneuverability, Unions sometimes have issues bringing these weapons to bear on opponents.
Technical Descriptions
Barracks: As a dedicated transport, the Union II devotes a large amount of its internal space to multiple levels of passenger cabins and cavernous cargo holds. Like the original Union, these are mostly concentrated in the wedge-like bow of the ship. Unions can typically carry around 30,000 personnel and their equipment. Colonization efforts usually use this space to carry enough settlers for a small city or two, along with some of the necessary equipment to start them off. Most militaries use the same space to carry the equivalent of two old Imperial battlegroups, making it one of the relatively few modern starships capable of hosting and supporting exceptionally large scale ground operations. While these peoples and materials can be moved from the vessel through the ship's small craft and drop pods, the Union II can also land and deploy them through ramps. The ship has especially large ramps used to offload heavy vehicles and large formations of troops on the lowermost section of its bow and at its stern between the two engine nacelles.
Boarding Systems: After the L-49 incident, all Union IIs in use by militaries came equipped with dozens of assault tubes equipped with Plasma Cuting Boarding Devices. If a Union II can pull alongside a target or drag it to itself with its tractor beam projectors, these assault tubes can eventually batter or cut their way into a target to deploy troops. Because of the Union II's low speed, this typically is used to assault stationary targets such as space stations. Most civilian users of the Union II opt for their airlocks not to be equipped with this system to save on costs.
Command and Control: One of the Union II's key roles is to act as a command and control station for both military and civilian uses. As a civilian craft, the Union II typically serves as the flagship of a colonization fleet. While the ship's amphitheater-like bridge can handle many of the day to day demands, even a little growth in assets to control can rapidly overwhelm these limited abilities. This led the the design team to include specialized ground and space control facilities, known as the Planetary Operations Center(POC) and Space Operations Center(SOC) respectively.
The SOC, also known as the “wishing well”, is a tactical command post loosely based on the bridge of the old Inexpungnable-class. It is circular room with two levels, with the inner level being substantially lower than the outer ring. The outer ring holds typical computer consoles, comscans, and a handful of small scale holo-tanks. But the central portion is created with a transparisteel deck and walls through which embedded holo-projectors could recreate the space around them and the objects, both artificial and natural, on a large scale that is not only detailed and immersive, but also in real-time. Such a presentation affords the crew manning it perhaps the easiest method to observe and interpret on a large scale while avoiding being sucked into observing the battle through a handful of 'keyholes' viewpoints, such as the bridge viewport or an several electro-photoreceptors. Colony expeditions frequently use the SOC to explore avenues of approach through difficult terrains and to coordinate initial orbital traffic over a newly colonized world. Military forces often use it to help coordinate groups of ships, particularly starfighter squadrons.
The Planetary Operations Center is located a short distance away from both the main bridge and the SOC. This is a rectangular room whose walls are mostly covered in LCD screens which frequently display live feeds from cameras and other visual sensors found on personal armors, droids, vehicles, and other like devices. Most of the room is occupied with neat rows of computer consoles and holographic tactical battlefield displays needed to interpret the vast amount of data flows through the center and coordinate the units present on the ground. Many of these consoles are equipped with CL-3 headsets to help control and coordinate droids and other automated units. This room also contains an ARENA-7580 Holo-projector, used to plan large-scale movements, and a pair of CS-Mark 10 Command Combat Simulators, which are used to analyze terrain and simulate battle plans. Civilian colonization efforts typically use the POC to plan and coordinate the initial colony itself. It's also not uncommon for this facility to be used to plan and control the large-scale harvest of natural resources, whether it is foodstuffs of deep-core mining. Military forces typically use the POC as a mobile command post for a large variety of units and missions, from monitoring strike teams through helmet cams to directing armies thousands of individuals strong into battle.
Recognizing that its primary customers, the Galactic Alliance and Silver Jedi-aligned governments, frequently employed force-users to coordinate their forces in battle, Lucerne Labs added a pair of meditation chambers just outside of the bridge and near the POC and SOC.
Communications: The Union II replaced the Dolfin Communications Array with Lucerne Labs own recently developed Oracle-class Communications Package, which has led to little difference in day to day operations for the ship. However, as a command and control vessel, Lucerne Labs decided additional communication systems were vital to Union, whether as the lead colony vessel or as a mobile military command post. To that end, the Union has a host of short-ranged comlinks networked into a central communications computer that allows it to support hundreds of different simultaneous data streams. In colonization efforts, this allows the Union to act as the local communication's hub for a new colony until dedicated comm satellites and networks can be established. These same units can be used by military forces through the POC to coordinate movements of peoples, vehicles, droids, and other units as necessary for large-scale operations. Because Oracle can also be used to jam and disrupt communications, units working in sync with a Union will typically use channel-hopping algorithms to link their communication's efforts, which allows the Union to selectively jam frequencies to deny their use to the enemy while allowing their own communications to continue unhindered.
Computer systems: The Union II-class makes extensive use of Lucerne Labs proprietary Calor series Bio-computers and Biolux Organoform Circuitry to form large, adaptable networks that service individual departments, such as Medical, and core ship systems, such as Propulsion, of the ship. Typically, these local networks are not linked together, using compartmentalization in order to promote cyber security. The systems of the bridges are an exception, however, most of those consoles only have read-only access, and cannot input commands into those networks. Colony vessels, or ships in areas that have attained space superiority, frequently divert weapons computers to other processing tasks, such as boosting signal processing.
Ground Support Role: The Union II expands on its predecessor's ability to support ground operations. Much of the ship's weaponry can be used in support of ground operations. While the ship can use its capital-scale weaponry like other warships to conduct orbital bombardments, the Union is somewhat unique in that it designed to particularly use its defensive weaponry to provide coordinated and precise tactical fire to support ground combat operations. The ship's Sentinel-class point defense emplacements are typically used to suppress enemy infantry and other small targets while the ship's Plumbata-class Defensive Batteries can be employed against select enemy vehicles and positions. These are most often used to fire warheads at enemy vehicles, but they can also be used to shower areas with clouds of grenades or to launch EM probes into volleys of incoming ordinance. Additionally, Union IIs often launch Infrared Orbital Drop Reinforcement Targeting Beacons from orbit, providing troops with detailed information about their landing or strike zones.
Hangar: As a carrier, the Union II has extensive hangar facilities compared to many warships, though its flight support systems do pale in comparison to some dedicated fleet carriers. The Union II has roughly three hangar areas, which are all linked internally through a system of automated supply shuttle carts and a quartet of starship elevators that lead to the inner deep maintenance facilities. The largest hangar facility on the Union II is on its lowest deck, where a group of three squadron-sized hangars lay connected on either side of a central commons area, which is buffered by a briefing room for each squadron hangar. The ship's second starfighter hangar deck is located just above the first, though it is substantially narrower and opens up to the front, rather than the sides, of the vessel. This hangar holds two squadrons and is equipped with a dozen catapult pressors which allows of the ship's starfighter squadrons to rapidly launch.
The Union II maintains the original's vertical shaft hangar, which is exclusively used to hold non-combat support craft. Two dozen individual craft hangars, each large enough to house a typical light freighter or shuttle, ring this vertical shaft, which allows craft to pull out into the central shaft before hovering up and out of the ship just in front of the vessel's cylindrical bridge tower. This construction, while excellent at providing protection for the support craft, also makes launching and recovering such ships a lengthy process. Lastly, the Union II has about two dozen drop pod dispensers. These are essentially conveyor belts that simply drop a pod through a small, ventral blast door. All hangar entries and exits to the outside world can be secured with thick, duranium blast doors.
Hull: The Union II uses a Ossis series starship frame as the structural framework for this design. Like other member ships of the Vanguard Project, the Union II's bow has an redundant structural framing in the bow of the vessel to better protect it against physical impacts. While this feature was originally designed to make the Union II more resilient in crossing through various navigational hazards like asteroid belts, it also provides additional resistance to kinetic attacks in that section of the ship as well. In order to speed up production, the ship's power systems and internal pathways of main corridors and turbolifts were then mol-welded to this frame. Taking a cue from the Strike Cruiser, the rest of the ship's internal architecture is modular, and is actually manufactured separately in modules that are then attached to the framework and/or other modules. This modular nature gives individual Union II-class carriers some flexibility in arrangement for custom orders of the craft. Key modules are also mol-welded, but the expense and time consumption of that technique means that many modules are attached using more typical welding and attachment methods. The interior of this ship is then covered in a moderately thin skin of trimantium, whose tensile strength helps to further strengthen the connection of the modules to the frame itself. The forward quarter of the vessel is then covered in slats of tekonite to better absorb physical impacts. The entirely of the ship is then covered in alternating layers of Chimera Composite separated by thin layers of condensed matter composite, much like the armor of the Tercel-class heavy cruiser.
Hyperdrive: The hyperdrive system is one of the biggest changes from the pre-production Ocean Tide. It does not have the exotic madilon-based hyperdrive, and instead uses a bulky if reliable x2 hyperdrive. This change was one of the main reasons for the resulting increase in length of the ship. However, it also exceptionally cheaper and easier to maintain than the original. In order to partially offset the loss of speed from this change, the Union II incorporates a Torrential Hyperdrive Booster. This device is rarely used in planned combat situations though, as it is not compatible with the ship's HIMS device. This device, which features a trio of hyperspace coils, give it some limited ability to penetrate through interdiction fields.
Security: Like the Ocean Tide, the Union II makes extensive use of code cylinders to control sensitive access to the ship and its systems. Tripping or attempting to force one's way into the system can not only trigger silent alarms that inform the ship's security team, but also trigger any number of automated traps. Forced access to most restricted rooms triggers man traps concealed underneath the deck's plate in an attempt to immobilize the intruder. Key rooms, corridors, and junction points are further guarded by Class VI automated laser projectors and force-field generators. In terms of electronic protection, the ship utilizes a basis encryption, relying more on the isolation of networks to protect it from dedicated slicing attacks.
Shields: The Union II differs notably from the Ocean Tide in that it uses a near identical networks of Aspis-class Shield Systems. This makes the ship's shielding significantly more durable than that of its predecessor, though it no longer has any ability to project shielding outwards to protect other vessels. This shielding is mostly commonly deployed twin layers of individually "low" strength shielding, that when considered together, provide a high resistance to damage. These shield systems are then supplemented by the use of Lucerne Labs's Aegis-class Anti-Concussion Field Generator. While exceptionally powerful, it is also very taxing on the ship's power supply. Most ship captains end up rerouting all from the ship's sublight drives or weapon's systems to keep the field up, allowing the Union II to be exceptionally resilient in trying conditions such as dense asteroid fields or projectile artillery barrages.
Sublight Drives: The Union II uses a pair of massive ion engine banks optimized for fuel efficiency rather than high performance. From the outside, each engine bank appears to be massive, fluted cylinder sheathed in a bronzium-hadrium alloy. Internally however, each engine bank appears to be a bewildering mass of narrow maintenance access corridors combined with miscellaneous readout screens, power conduits, and Biolux Organoform circuitry. All of the ion engines are actually identical for ease of maintenance and repair. While the engine rooms are staffed by organic personnel who can run the engines, on most days, the organic crew simply supervises a droid work crew that includes Hatchlings, LE Repair droids, and astromech droids. Since the droids are not affected by radiation from the ion engines, they typically handle most of the repair and daily operations, with the organic crews donning radiation suits to deal with only the most complicated repairs or for routine inspections. Each engine bank also includes emergency steering rooms that connected with the ship's gyrocomputer, which allows Union II-class carriers to maneuver in the event of the ship's bridges being rendered inoperable. These engines are supplemented by a Gulfstream maneuvering system, which can allow the ship to become somewhat more maneuverable at the cost of handicapping its already low speed.
Weapons: The Union II remains a fairly well-armed carrier, continuing to sport the original's twin Cascade-class proton beam cannons in spinal mounts. Like the Ocean Tide, the Union II uses these beamed weapons to break through heavy defenses, typically as a prelude to an assault. But the rest of the ship's weaponry has noticeably changed. The octuple heavy turbolasers on the ventral half of the ship have been replaced by autocannon turrets, four on each side. These weapons act the vessel's secondary battery, providing much of flexibility and tracking abilities that the proton beam cannons lack. These heavy weapons are backed by an array of turbolaser and mass driver cannon batteries spaced around equidisantly across the ship's hull. These weapons are typically used to attack smaller targets or provide high volumes of fire. These guns are backed by auxiliary warhead and mine launchers, whose specific ordinance is dictated by the mission. Lastly, the ship is protected with point-defenses set up in two-tiered envelopes, with Plumbata-class Defense Batteries providing long to middle range defense, and Sentinel-class batteries providing middle to short-range defense. Erebu-class Jamming Arrays and Trudo-class Defense Turrets move in between these two zones as needed.
