Spaceship blog 10
The Corvette
The smallest and easiest to build, maintain, and deploy capital ships – corvettes are also the most numerous.
Most starship of this class are between three hundred and five hundred long, their width varying between one hundred and fifty and two hundred meters. Since these vessels can be outfitted to perform virtually any task in the fleet, one might consistently face hundreds of different variants on a given battlefield.
The standard, multi-purpose variant of this warship has a small hangar and more often than not, carries a battalion strong infantry unit. Its hangar bay can hold and service up to a squadron size strike craft unit and most corvettes usually carry fighters since their role is to create another layer of defense for their fleet.
If they are not a part of some bigger fleet group, a single corvette is the lead capital ship, with a strike group of smaller vessels formed around it.
Armament wise, corvettes have strong point defense batteries, missiles, torpedoes and also small caliber anti-ship cannons. Those are often particle beam guns fitted in armored turrets, and in case the Corvette is Terran – railguns. The number of turrets that are fitted on corvettes vary, from barely a dozen to more than twenty, with some vessels sporting dual and even triple cannon mounts per turret.
No matter the star state that owns and fields these warships, they are a force to be reckoned with. Corvettes do not go down easy since they are protected with thick armor. Often their hulls are heavily reinforced and equipped with more than one shield generator.
The sizable troop force that they carry makes them a hard target for boarding, many also have internal security systems. Anti-material turrets, deployable armor-plates that block certain corridors, energy fields, and even mines are employed in the protection of this ship. With such a defensive system, assaulting any Corvette is a living nightmare, except if the attacker employs Power Armors or another type of heavy infantry.
Nevertheless, any boarding attempt is met with overwhelming force and many of the attackers die even before their mag-boots could touch the hull.
The commanders of the Terran Minarchy have their own specific, and vastly different than any other star state way of building and employing corvettes in battle.
The Colonial Navy Strike Teams are formed around one heavily modified Corvette, which acts as a flagship for a highly mobile unit. The Terran corvette is, in essence, a fast-moving light carrier that still has its main defensive weapons, but lacks half of the armored turrets present on most standard alien designs.
Instead of one meager squadron, the Terrans can usually deploy three. One is always a bomber and the other two, reinforced fighter squadrons. Forming around the Corvette are a squadrons of Raid ships and Escorts who, together with their flagship’s significantly larger than normal strike craft complement, represent the offensive punch of the Strike Team.
To compensate for the lack of cannons, Terran corvettes are equipped with torpedo emplacements – bow, port, starboard, and aft. Some of the newest starships of this class even sport dorsal and ventral torpedo launchers. The size of the ordinance is exactly the same which their bombers launch, and in case the strike craft are damaged or destroyed, the corvette can make use of all leftover ammunition.
The Strike Corvette, as Terrans call this design, is almost never sent in the first attack wave. After their enemy has been sufficiently damaged, their formations shattered and specific starships isolated, then and only then the Strike Corvette slips out of hyperspace.
This formidable warship reinforces its strike craft squadrons by launching devastating torpedo, missile, and railgun volleys. Ops officers who serve on these starships are the elite of the elite. These veterans are so proficient in the use of EWS systems, that they quickly overload their enemy’s sensors with all sorts of fake signals. They have gained such fame, that other Fringe space navies oft call Terran Strike Corvettes “Hell Tricksters.”
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