C.B.S. Concordia

Launched in A.Y. 425, the C.B.S. Concordia was the first and last entry in a planned line of "hyper-heavy" dreadnaughts. Stated design goals were for a capitol ship able to engage multiple enemy vessels while protecting itself well enough to travel without escorts. One of many attempts at an "battle group in a ship" concept made over the course of the war.

Design Goals

The requirements for the for the prototype that would later become Concordia called for heavy armor and tough weapons. The main cannon on Concordia was to be at the low-end of the Mercury range, while the armor and shields should be able to no-sell attacks from the toughest Kamian capitol ships. Other, less realistic goals, held that it should cost less and consume fewer resources than a typical battle group.

Design

Weapons

Concordia was a 27-gun 40PSL+ warship equipped with the largest sub-Mercury fixed forward-facing gun. Rather than housing its other weapons in traditional turrets, they were set in 20 sponsons with ten on either side and a very limited field of traverse. Four more cannons were mounted in double turrets on the top and bottom of the ship (intended for defense, though they proved to be the most effective main guns). Two more large-caliber cannons were mounted in line with the hull, giving Concordia a total of three fixed, forward-facing guns.

Carrier

In addition to the main cannons, Concordia had 1800 dumb-fire missile tubes and 126 torpedo tubes. A hangar on the aft quarter could launch and retrieve a sortie of twenty-eight fighters, with space in the hold for twelve more dismantled. Launch and retrieve through the same bay quickly proved impractical, and the launch catapults were replaced with more bay space.

Engines

Main propulsion came from a Gravitational Mass Displacement Drive, boosted by a Deuterium Drive (necessary to reach the minimum 40PSL required to be operationally viable).

Defenses

Concordia was intended to operate in stand-off engagements, targeting and destroying enemy capitol ships outside of third-radius before their fighters could engage. Point-defenses were still very strong, with 600 PDLs. Concordia also fielded a double halo of point-defense satellites, much like a Mercury Ship. Various other defenses included a five hundred foot thick armor belt covering 80% of the hull and the single most powerful shield grid ever fitted to a ship. The armor belt was tough enough to no-sell a direct hit from any then-existing Kamian torpedo.

Failings

The most egregious point of failure with C.B.S. Concordia was in the weapons systems. The sponson-mounted guns were designed to aim at a convergence-point allowing the ship to destroy a single target with multiple simultaneous hits. In practice, the entire hull had to rotate to cover horizontal aiming(a task it's attitude-control thrusters were not nearly sensitive enough to achieve), and the limited field of traverse meant that typically no more than six guns could focus on a single target at a time. Due to the lack of horizontal traverse, this meant Concordia could never shoot at more than one target. Further limiting Concordia's effectiveness, enemy ships had only to maneuver into close range to avoid the bulk of her weapons.

The two full three-sixty turrets proved to be the ships most effective actual weapons and scored most of Concordia's kills that weren't achieved via torpedoes or missiles.

Firing the main gun required so much energy that it could only be done with the shields down and augmenting main power with the Deuterium Drive. Coupled with the extreme challenges of aiming such a weapon on such an enormous ship, and during her first engagements the main gun was not used at all.

The armor, while highly effective, only covered eighty percent of the hull; and as it turned out a direct hit to one of those other twenty-percent could cause massive damage. While Concordia was simply too large to really destroy, in one notable engagement a single well-placed torpedo crippled the entire gun array. The shields did prove very effective, but with such useless main guns Concordia was derisively nicknamed "The Durtle Turtle".

A further issue proved to be the Deuterium Drive, which was for lack of a better term, very thirsty. Though refined deuterium wasn't difficult to come by, Concordia needed a lot of it, and needed it very often in order to be at all combat-effective. Her tanks were nowhere near big enough to accommodate the needful. This meant the ship had to be nearly constantly accompanied by ships delivering fuel. While Concordia could sort of travel un-escorted(if you squint), her fuelers could not, and ultimately necessitated operating in a battle group for all but very short patrols.

Successes

While failing at nearly every one of her stated design goals, Concordia did prove to be a very tough ship. Once the Crimson Blade gave up attempting to operate her alone and some modifications were made, she