Approved Starship Hirken-class Siege Destroyer

[Arsenio Tagge]

​

STANDARD FEATURES

• Length: 730 Meters
• Width: 140 Meters
• Height: 95 Meters
• Armaments:
  • Fire-linked Dual Heavy Plasma Lance Turrets
  • Dual Heavy Turbolaser Turrets
  • Dual Heavy Ion Cannon Turrets
  • Light Rapid-Fire Turbolaser Turrets
  • FlexTube Modular Missile Launchers
    • Proton Torpedoes
    • Brilliant Missiles
    • Carbonite Missiles
    • Disruptor Torpedoes
    • Mag-Pulse Warheads
    • Advanced Concussion Missiles
  • Orbital Strike Cannons
  • Ventral FlexTube Modular Missile Launchers
    • Capital-Grade Plasma Bomb Warheads (MIIRV Variant)
• Hangar Space: None
• Hangar Allocation: Not Applicable.
• Hyperdrive: Yes | Class 1
  

STANDARD FEATURES

• Standard Operating Crew: 1,120 - Including Officers, Enlisted Crew, and Integrated Droid Brains
• Minimal Crew: 290 - Including Officers, Enlisted Crew and Integrated Droid Brains
• Maximum Cargo Capacity: 32,000 Metric Tonnes (Includes Vehicles, Tanks, Equipment, Etc)
• Consumables and Supply Endurance: 9 months for full crew complement (Can be extended in Extraordinary Circumstances)
• Engine Type: 4x Aft Mounted Plasma Baffles with Directional Ion Thrust Vanes
• Primary Power Unit: Twin-Linked Volta High Efficiency Reactors
• Secondary Power Unit: General Hypermatter Reactor Equipped with Stellar Fuel Bottles

ADVANCED SYSTEMS

• Shield and Armor Systems
  
  • Honeycomb Structural Plating
  • Constant Ablative Energy Current
  • Anticoncussion Field Generator(s)
  • Multi-Layered Shielding System w/ Automated Backups
    
    • Deflector Shielding
    • Particle Shielding
    • Ray Shielding
    • Ion Shielding
    • Molecular Shielding
    • Xythan Force Shielding
• Internal Advanced Systems
  
  • Molecular Furnace
  • Solid Fuel Converter
  • Prototyper
    • Duplicators
    • Synthesizers
    • Garment-Fabricators
  • Internal Command Deck Equipped with State of the Art Holographic Interface System
  • Advanced Communications Suite
  • Advanced Sensor Suite
  • Internal Ray Shields
• Electronic Defense Suite
  
  • Advanced Adaptive Malware Systems
  • Animated Metal Sealant, with Automated Repair Drones
  • Anti-Tractor Beam Shroud
  • ABC Scrambler Probes
  • Anti-Ordnance EM Probe(s)
  • Missile Deactivators.
• Integrated Point Defense Network
  
  • Rapid-fire FlexTube Missile Launchers
  • PD-13 Iron Curtain Point Defense Turrets
  • Fire-linked Point Defense Ion Cannon Turrets

STRENGTHS

• UNLIMITED POWER: The true strength of the Hirken-class Destroyer lies in its ability to dominate a battlespace through sustained, long-range firepower. Its signature Plasma Lance Cannons grant it an edge in armor-piercing strikes and precision bombardment. Combined with a robust suite of turbolasers and missile banks, the Hirken is designed to hold a position or escort with brutal, immovable force. Its vertical command structure allows for efficient heat venting and better lateral fields of fire, ensuring its guns stay hot longer than most competitors. In fleet actions, it serves as the anvil, absorbing punishment while delivering it back in kind—relentless, methodical, and absolute.

WEAKNESSES

• Weak in the Knees: For all its strength, the Hirken's age and vertical chassis come with a critical flaw: poor rear coverage and limited maneuverability. The vessel's heavy power core and stacked superstructure make fast reorientation impossible without significant risk of system strain. Its rear shielding arc is weaker, and the thruster assembly was never built to accommodate evasive maneuvering under pressure. The result is a ship that must be carefully positioned at the outset of an engagement. If flanked or caught in a mobile ambush, the Hirken can struggle to respond swiftly, relying instead on escorts or fighters (which it does not carry) to cover its blind angles.

DESCRIPTION

The Hirken-class Siege Destroyer was not born from ambition, but from necessity—and a peculiar kind of stubborn pride that House Tagge had always reserved for moments when the galaxy seemed bent on forgetting it.

Commissioned in 853 ABY, in the quiet, uncertain years of New Republic and Core Imperial Confederation dominion, the Hirken-class was never meant to win wars. It was meant to comply—to satisfy the layered and often contradictory arms limitations imposed upon Tepasi by the myriad of governments who sought dominion over it. These governments saw House Tagge not as a partner but as a potential rival. With their shipyards restricted, their armaments monitored, and their trade convoys harassed under the pretense of anti-piracy patrols, the family did what it always had: adapt.

The Hirken-class was their answer. It fell just within displacement quotas. Its hull composition complied with defensive-only classifications. Its reactors were throttled, modular, and easily limited to "civilian auxiliary" output profiles when required. But the designers—many of them former warship engineers dismissed from Kuat or Anaxes—knew the game well. The Hirken was not a warship in name.

It was one in soul.

Its namesake, Admiral Hirken, was a forgotten figure from the early millennia of galactic expansion, a Tepasi-born officer who commanded a battle group during the Fifth Alsakan Conflict, when House Tagge aligned itself with Alsakan in defiance of Coruscanti hegemony. In 12,980 BBY, Hirken defended a string of remote colonies in the Northern Dependencies, delaying the Core's forces long enough for Alsakan reinforcements to turn the tide. The action earned little glory and less remembrance, but within the halls of Tagge's estate on Tepasi, his name never faded. When the time came to name their most ambitious naval asset in centuries, there was no debate.

Tall, vertical, and bristling with hard angles and redundant armor bands, the Hirken-class is a brutalist holdover from a more paranoid age. It presents a narrow target silhouette but broadens as it rises, the dorsal tower spiraling upward with antenna spires and sensor clusters—a fortress more than a bridge. Its central weapon system consists of forward plasma lances, arranged in a tandem mount, capable of drilling through mid-tier shielding systems with focused bursts of radiant, particle-choked energy. When fully charged, they deliver what crews call a "lungbreaker"—a high-pressure, overclocked plasma burst that generates a concussive shockwave in local space and infamously floods the ship's ventilation system with ionized gas residue, triggering the infamous Hirken Cough.

The cough itself is not lethal, but it is unmistakable: a deep, metallic wheeze that settles into the lungs of crewmen posted near the lance conduits. No filtration system has ever fully resolved it. Engineers have blamed exhaust baffle backflow; commanders blame engineering. But it persists, and among Hirken crews, it has become a badge of honor. You serve long enough, you get the cough.

It was not the most advanced ship of its time. It lacked fighter bays and sophisticated drone integration. Its targeting systems were refitted, retrofitted, and occasionally manually adjusted with spanners. But it was durable. More than that—it was reliable. The Hirken could fight its way through a blockade, limp back at half-speed, and still stand guard while its systems bled steam. It became the workhorse of the Tagge Privateers, a small, overstretched security force that once commanded 5,000 ships and a million men.

By the time the Grayson Imperium unseated the Confederation in 858 ABY, the Hirkens were already showing signs of age. But they endured. Under the Core Alliance, then the rising Galactic Alliance, they found a second life as convoy escorts along the Bassadro-Tepasi Run, hammering back raiders and insular syndicates emboldened by shifting frontiers. No longer just compliance ships, they became declarations: House Tagge was still here, and it still had teeth.

Today, only a handful remain in active service. Some serve in long-haul escort detachments. Others have been gutted for parts or integrated into orbital defense platforms. A few still serve under Tepasi flag, serving the Tagge Privateer Fleet with honor.

They are not sleek. They are not elegant. But they were built to outlast empires. And so far—they have.

 

[MANIAC]

Arsenio Tagge

Nicely made.

Approved.