Directorate Officer
Image Source: Modified image of Pegasus Project's Sol-class
Affiliation: Lucerne Labs, Directorate and its affiliated companies, contract customers
Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
Model: Hephaestus-class Manufacturing Ship
Modularity: Yes (manufacturing capabilities; warheads; hangar)
Production: Limited
Material: Ferrocarbon frame, alternating layers of Condense-matter composite and duranium hull plating, standard starship components
Classification: Factory Ship
Length: 950 meters
Height: 200 meters
Width: 300 meters
Armament: Rating 4
12 Rhongomyniad-class Mass Driver Cannons
12 LLT-18 Harpoon-class General Purpose Warhead Launchers
60 LLT-15 Sentinel-class Point Defense Emplacements
Defenses: 20
Hangar: 3 squadrons
Typical Corporate Configuration
-1 Squadron of Typhoon-class Modular Starfighters (stock escort fighters)
-1 Squadron of AEA-500 Prospecting Craft (mine additional resources more efficiently)
-1 Squadron of Freighters/Transports (to move finished goods to destination or bring in more resources for refinement)
Typical Military Support Configuration
-2 Squadrons of Starfighters/Interceptors/Bombers (replacement strikecraft)
-1 Squadron of Transports (move additional products to military forces as needed)
Special Features:
-Advanced Mining Sensor Package: (7000 geoscanner, mineral spotter, ore sensor, etc)
-CD-9 Subspace Radio
-Duplicators (12)
-garment-fabricators
-Hansen FeatherTouch Tractor Beam Projectors (18)
-Industrial grade Food Synthesizers (4)
-LLT-4 Aegis-class Anti-Concussion Field Generator
-MC1011 Delphus.2-class Shield System
-Molecular Furnaces
-Reconfigurable Manufacturing bays (6)
-Robotic Lathes and Mills
-Plasma Forges
-prototyper (4)
-Self-Regulating Droidmaker (2)
-Solid Fuel Converters
-TS-Titan beamdrill arrays (4)
-Can enter atmosphere and land
Manoeuvrability Rating: 12
Speed Rating: 18
Hyperdrive Class: x1 (x9 emergency back-up hyperdrive)
Strengths:
Durable: The Hephaestus is covered in heavy armor plating which is augmented by anti-concussion field generators and mon calamari shield generators to provide extremely heavy passive defenses against attacks and to allow it to enter hostile environments for resources gathering.
Adaptive Manufacturing: The Hephaestus is almost entirely filled with advanced manufacturing equipment. Much like the World Devastator, it is capable of modifying its own internal structure with different equipment and alternate layouts, which allows the vessel to adapt to different manufacturing roles. For example, a ship dedicated to pumping out droids can retool itself into a mobile shipyard given enough time and materials.
Maneuverable: The Hephaestus has an unusual engine arrangement in which a good portion of its ion engines are located in blocks alongside the starship's bridge. From this angle, combined with advanced etheric rudders, the ship's sublight drives can make relatively sharp turns: a necessity when navigating through dangerous asteroid fields and other densely populated areas.
Weaknesses:
Lumbering: The Hephaestus's unusual engine arrangement makes it exceptionally slow for its size. Almost every ship its size can usually outrun it.
Lightly armed: Like most other civilian starships, the Hephaestus is not intended for front-line combat use. It is usually outgunned by anything larger than a corvette.
Description: The ability to manufacture objects on a starship has appealed to everyone from savvy corporate executives to the marauding Ssi-Ruuvi because the inherent mobility of a ship provides unusual flexibility and options in manufacturing operations. A factory ship can simply move to a new area when resources run out, if it comes under attack, or if a world changes ownership. On a more proactive level, a factory ship can also move to produce directly to next to its current client base, whether its the vanguard of an invasion force or the children of a wealthy core world. While other factory ships were in existence to meet these needs, Lucerne Labs set out to create a state of the art factory ship to meet their own production needs and those of their customers. The Hephaestus-class Factory Ship is the end result of extensive research and trial-and-error. It is an exceedingly efficient factory that is capable of reinventing itself to make a variety of goods irregardless of its location. While Hephaestus-class Factory Ships can customize themselves to a degree, Lucerne Labs will extensively modify some ships to the customer's specifications for the right price.
Technical Explanations: The Basic Ship
Crew & Automation: The vessel crew of the Hephaestus runs slightly over a two hundred persons, mostly due to the use of extensive slave circuitry originally derived from the Adz-class Patrol Destroyer. Roughly a quarter of this organic crew are security personnel, who frequently work with security droids built by the Hephaestus's factories. The actual factory portion of the Hephaestus is heavily automated, drawing upon programming developments taken both from a world devastator, an advanced and manumitted I-C2 construction droid, and Self-Regulating Droidmaker. Much of the work is done by robotic lathes and mills working on automated assembly lines, but hard-wired I2F-5s along with a handful of basic labor droids are also keep the assembly line moving. The exact number and type of droids varies depending on what is being produced.
Engine Systems:
The Hephaestus-class uses three ion engine banks which are typically used on space-going tugs. They provide ample power to propel the craft's mass through space with an exceptionally fine touch of maneuverability and precision, but at incredibly slow speeds. Two of these engine blocks are located at almost the middle of the ship on either side of the ship's bridge. These two units are augmented by powerful etheric rudders, which allow the vessel to make tight turns in heavily confined areas, such as dense asteroid belts. The ship's hyperdrive is a fairly average class 1 unit with a class 9 back-up.
Shielding Systems:
Lucerne Labs used its close relationship with Mon Calamari Shipyards to acquire their MC1011 Delphus.2-class Shield System, which provides the Hephaestus with durable shielding. This system is supplemented by Lucerne Lab's own LLT-4 Aegis-class Anti-Concussion Field Generator, which is typically employed while the ship is in dense asteroid belts to further its protection against collisions.
Hull armor:
The ship's frame is made out of Ferrocarbon that makes extensive use of triangles to reinforce it against physical stress. Unlike some starhips, the most of this frame is distal to the center of the ship, which allows for a great deal of internal modularity and remodeling flexibility. This frame is then covered in alternating layers of Condense-matter composite and duranium which is mol-welded to the other hull layers and the frame of the starship itself. The condensed-matter composite is designed to reduce vibrations from collisions, such as from asteroids, to a minimum whereas the duranium provides the ship with protection from exceptionally hot environments such as certain gas giants or areas close to various stars. While this armor is primarily designed for environmental protection, it is quite capable of protecting the ship in most combat scenarios.
Weapon Systems:
While not designed as a combat vessel, the Hephaestus does sport some defensive weaponry, much of which is dual purpose. The mass driver cannons are arrayed in turrets near the ship's bow: these are often used to strike and break up asteroids for easier processing by the ship. The Harpoon General Purpose Launchers are more spread out, with three each pointing out of the bow, stern, port, and starboard sides. While they can launch missiles and other offensive ordinance, they are more commonly used by the Hephaestus to launch satellites, space mines, probes, and small drop pods. Lastly, a series of point defense emplacements are equidistantly spaced across the hull to protect the ship against warheads, starfighters, space debris, and other smaller threats.
Carrying Capacity:
The stock Hephaestus-class does not carry large amounts of troops or fighting droids of any sort, though it does have a noticeable hangar that opens up on the topside of the vessel's stern. Most corporate customers split the hangar space equally between escort fighters, mining craft, and transports. In military service, this space is often used to house replacement strikecraft made by the Hephaestus, with some space being set aside for dropships to deploy battle droids or to ferry down supplies to support ground operations.
Security:
Like most factories, the Hephaestus does have some basic security measures put in place. Access throughout the ship is regulated by the use of code cylinders specific to each person and their position. Sensitive areas are usually protected by man trapsconcealed underneath the deck plating as well as by obvious automated laser projectors and blast doors. Technology wise, the ship's internal network sports basic encryption, while outgoing transmissions can be encrypted by the ship's CD-9 Subspace Radio with the proper key.
Technical Explanations: Manufacturing
Materials Acquisition:
The Hephaestus can gather materials through several different routes. Most commonly, Asteroids, scrap, and other materials are found and precisely chosen based on scans from the ship's 7000 geoscanner and mineral spotter. It then uses its turreted Hansen FeatherTouch Tractor Beam Projectors to bring in asteroids, scrap, and other materials to the forward processing bay. If the piece is too large to process there, it is broken apart through careful use of tractor beams and mass driver cannons. Once it lands on the processing bay, it is further broken apart by beamdrills and smaller tractor beam projectors usefully guided by the ore sensor. Sometimes these materials do not need much refinement, and are simply passed on automated conveyor belts straight to a plasma forge, storage tank, or other area for immediate conversion into refined goods. Just as often, however, the material is passed to the molecular furnaces painstakingly copied from the World Devastator found on Dac by Admiral Reshmar. The furnace magnetically separates the material into its constituent elements, which it then modifies through the careful application of force fields and micro beam technologies to turn into the desired material. Particularly unvaluable materials or those deemed inefficient to convert compared to the resources currently available are often sent straight to the Solid Fuel Converters, which turn them into fuel to be used either by the Hephaestus, its carried craft, or by one of the Hephaestus's products. Additional materials can be brought in by transports or by mining craft, such as the AEA-500 Prospecting Craft that appears on the stock version.
Work Bays & their types:
The highly modular structure of the internal ship leads it to several different configurations for its manufacturing space. But most commonly, as in the stock version, it is divided into 6 separate workbays each with a complete production process. Four of them are smaller, taking up three levels of a deck and running around 300 meters long and 50 meters wide. These usually make smaller products such as clothing, armor, personal weapons, droids, small ground vehicles, and the like. The ship's bottom two bays take up 8 deck levels, run 425 meters long and 200 meters wide. One of these bays often acts as a holding area for small capital ship(<400 meters long), subcapital ship, prefabricated buildings, or large vehicle construction, while the other bay actually constructs the pieces for these products. A common variant sees the bottom two workbays turned into a gigantic single bay capable of holding much larger capital ships and stations for construction, with the upper workbays being used to manufacture its components. The Hephaestus can manufacture ships larger than its holds by building them in sections, dumping that section into space, and then using droid workcrews and its tractor beams to join those pieces into a complete vessel. If the product is too large to leave through the massive hatch or deployment ramp, the Hephaestus will deconstruct areas of its hull to allow the product to depart before remaking it. Each workbay may use a variety of equipment specific to the product being manufactured, but the most common ones are listed under the special features section.
The Core Workshop:
Every product require its own separate manufacturing technology and techniques, and the Hephaestus is no different. At its core, just beneath the bridge tower, the Hephaestus maintains a core workshop that it will never modify. It holds a Plasma Forges, robotic lathes and mills, 4 prototypers, a pair of small Self-Regulating Droidmaker, 2 hard-wired I2F-5 industrial droids, and a half dozen Duplicators. These are the core tools which the Hephaestus uses to build, maintain, and modify its own workbays. When the workbays are considered mature, this workshop often acts as a supplementary production center to improve the production speed of those workbays. This workshop is also often used by engineers and creators to tinker with and design new products. To this end, it hosts computers with CAD and other design/production software.
Adaptive Manufacturing:
Because the market is never stable (or the battlefield), the ability to adapt is key for success. The ship's automated factories are guided by advanced programming derived from World Devastators and a prototype I-C2 construction droid to continually optimize themselves based on production demands. If demand for a certain product peaks, it an retool and/or reconfigure itself to make a different product. The exact length of time this takes is dependent on how big the change is. A minor switch, such as changing production from a bipedal battle droid to a suit of power armor, may take a few hours, whereas a major shift, such as changing over from dress production to making Corellian corvettes, may take weeks. In either case, the process is far quicker than normal for a traditional factory. If the ship is processing things deep in space, many crews keep the ship's subspace radio continually connected to the local net in order to ensure that they in touch with the demands of both their higher-ups and the market's.
Development Threads:
Devastator Risen: Discovery and recovery of portions of a World Devastator, notably Umak Leth's molecular furnaces and self-construction programming, from Dac's ocean floor. (25 posts)
Miserable Miracle: Discovery and recovery of an advanced I-C2 droid's programming which is incorporated into the Hephaestus design. (25 posts)
And lost without deserving : Gir tracks down Titus Cassio, a molecular engineering specialist, on Atrisia to recruit for the Hephaestus Project. (25 posts: ongoing)
Stars, hide your fire: do not against us conspire: Field testing and refinement of the Hephaestus's systems on a testing platform. (15 posts)
Can you hear me now: Gir contracts with Corellian Digital to acquire some state of the art subspace radios for the Hephaestus-class. (14 posts)
Intent: Provide the Directorate & its customers with a Factory ship
Who Can Use This: Directorate members & companies, contract customers
Primary Source: N/A
