Mothership

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The Gudersnipe Mothership-class of warship is a rarely-deployed, fully-mobile base. They are described as the size of a large Mercury Ship, but lack the characteristic thick armor and single, powerful weapon.

Instead, the mothership is filled with hangers large enough to acomodate dozens of capital ships, hundreds of support ships, and thousands of fighters. Each mothership has decks of machine shops, countless holds full of supplies and raw materials, and all the equipment necessary to preform any kind of repair. In addition to bases, each mothership is a mobile shipyard, with all the supplies onboard needed to produce an entire battlegroup.

Appearance and Use

No civilian has ever seen a mothership. Any time one is brought near a populous region, roughly one light year around it is declared as a "No-Go" zone, and heavily patrolled. Motherships are never brought into solar systems (though this may have as much to do with their gravitational mass-displacement drives throwing planets out of alignment than with an actual need to protect the ship).

All motherships are believed to be of the same design, and are shaped roughly like a starship. Accounts indicate that the end of each point is likely a massive docking port, leading many to speculate as to just what they may have been designed to dock with. The central hull of the ship is roughly square-shaped, tapering to a point at the top. Capitol ship hangars are located along the arms, while fighter/bomber/support bays are located in the middle. The bottom of the ship includes facilities for asteroid mining or potentially landing gear. It has also been speculated that wach ship is armed with a massive, planet-destroying laser just like a Mercury Ship.

Secrecy

Despite their emence size, motherships are relatively lightly armed, and provide a very inviting target for attack. For that reason, they are kept highly secret.

Motherships are rarely deployed to a specific location, but kept in reserve at strategic points around the verse. Whenever possible, conventional bases and shops are used.

There are known to be as many as ten motherships in existence, however they are not presently on the official registry. This suggests one of two options: either the Foundation is in violation of the space commission's regulations, or the motherships pre-date the modern registry, making them a part of the original fleet used by the Gudersnipe Army. If the latter is true, it would mean the Gudersnipe Army was much larger than typically estimated.