Approved Starship Xiphos-Class Super Star Dreadnought

[Darth Ophidia]

​

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• 
  Intent: To submit TSE's SSD for April and to make a truly unique ship.
  
• 
  Image Source: Durandal by Kailyze on DeviantArt.com (Edit by me)
  
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  Canon Link: N/A
  
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  Restricted Missions:
  
  ​Third TSE Dominion in April 2018L: Parades and Paranoia.
  

[*]
Primary Source:

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  The Behemothhttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/124548-behemoth-class-super-star-dreadnought/ (First TSE SSD)
  
• 
  The Song of Truthhttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/125893-the-song-of-truth/? (Second TSE SSD)
  

PRODUCTION INFORMATION

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  Manufacturer: The Sith Empire
  
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  Affiliation: The Sith Empire.
  
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  Model: Xiphos-Class Super Star Dreadnought.
  
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  Production: Unique
  
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  Material: Phrik, Trimantium and Quadanium; Glasteel viewports; Turadium plated interior and blast doors; Durasteel supports; Agrinium radiation shielding; Stygium.
  

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

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  Classification: Super Star Dreadnought
  
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  Length: 10 000 meters.
  
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  Width: 1000 meters.
  
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  Height: 600 meters.
  
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  Armament: None
  
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  Defenses: Extreme
  
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  Hangar: None: 0
  
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  Maneuverability Rating: High
  
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  Speed Rating: Very High
  
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  Hyperdrive Class: Average: 1
  

STANDARD FEATURES

• All standard features for a ship its' size, including:
• SI-Suzerain Sensor Suitehttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/129888-si-suzerain-sensor-suite/
• SI-Vestige Communications Suitehttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/129889-si-vestige-communications-suite/
• SI-Hunter Tracking/Targeting Suitehttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/129890-si-hunter-trackingtargeting-suite/

ADVANCED SYSTEMS

• Layered Shields: Blackgate Multicore Shield Systemhttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/125468-blackgate-multicore-shield-system/
• Armour: Reinforced, phrik-plated hull. damage reduction armour componenthttp://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/AR-0B_damage_reduction_armor_component.
• Defensive support systems: Diatium Capacitance Arrayhttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/126087-diatium-capacitance-array/, Missile deactivation transmitter, Cap drains.
• Hyperspace Trackerhttp://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace_tracker
• HIMShttp://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperwave_inertial_momentum_sustainer
• Stealth Systems: Stygium Cloaking Device, Baffler, Nightshadow Coating, Photonic Emitter, Spectral diffuser, Signature Modulator.

Strengths:

• 
  Dagger: This ship is optimised for one particular effort: To ram other ships with maximum efficiency. Its’ high speed and maneuverability, and its strong, tapered hull gives it the potential of slicing, piercing, and breaching the hulls and shields of other ships.
  
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  Cloak: Equipped with a stygium cloak and a number of supporting stealth systems, the ship can avoid most means of detection, as well as the naked eye. Even when the stygium cloak is inactive, the ship would be difficult to spot on sensors, granted it is standing still or moving slowly.
  
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  Speed: This ship accelerates deceptively fast, and it is able to make very agile turns for a structure of its size.
  
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  Defense: The shielding and hull of this ship is layered thick and meticulously constructed for strength. It features layered shields, a reinforced, phrik-plated hull and several damage-reducing systems to make its ramming attack feasible and effective.
  

Weaknesses:

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  Hulk: Despite its considerable speed and manoeuvrability, smaller vessels such as frigates can easily avoid the ramming attack. It is more effective against battlecruisers and larger vessels than smaller, lighter crafts.
  
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  Close Quarters: This ship possesses no ranged weaponry and is entirely dependent on its optimised ramming capacity. This leaves it vulnerable to long range weaponry.
  
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  Solitary: This ship does not come with any integral fighter support and is therefore not able to do much on its own about small enemy crafts swarming through the air.
  
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  Friendly Fire: As the ship charges an enemy vessel, it may become subject to friendly fire. Furthermore, it runs the risk of ramming allied ships in a clustered engagement.
  
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  Emissions: Due to the massive size of the ship, its engine emissions are not fully disguised. This is a potentially traceable flaw in its stealth systems.
  
  

Description:
The Xiphos-Class Super Star Dreadnought was first conceived of during The One Sith’s reign of terror in the Core, originally meant as something more akin to a Sith Assassin version of the Jedi Praxeum, with deadly stealth capabilities and a prow optimised for ramming the opponent. However, the project never went further than the proverbial drawing board. During the fall of The One Sith, the prints were taken by the Pale Assassin for future use in the Sith. It was only as The Sith Empire dawned that the plans were once again unearthed and given a revamped design as part of the Sith Empire’s Super Star Dreadnought programme.

It was once again designed with the Sith Assassins in mind, bringing the shadow-organisation’s unique talents in the ship’s expression. In line with this, the construction of the Xiphos-Class and the features it would contain was also a closely guarded secret. Several dummy blueprints were made to throw off any espionage.

With the surge of supersized ships and space-stations produced throughout the galaxy, and the steadily increased size of enemy vessels, the Xiphos-Class took a revolutionary approach to its design. The design entirely forsakes the traditionally ranged weaponry and integral fighter support and instead turned its’ hull into a weapon: Its long, tapered form comes to a reinforced point, and the extremely thick hull in itself itself is designed to taper into a trio of ridges much like a thrust-centric blade that retains a modicum of slashing capability. The hull is reinforced with highly resistant materials, plated with thick slabs of phrik to give it the strength and rigidity it requires to efficiently and with great effect ram other ships as its main strategy.

However, simply having a strong hull is not enough to make a ramming-centric ship feasible, especially one of this size. For that reason, the Xiphos-Class was equipped with highly effective engines able to rapidly accelerate the ship to ramming speed, as well as powerful manoeuvrability thrusters allowing it to turn and pivot more quickly and dexterously than one would anticipate. During ramming actions, these thrusters are typically retracted into the reinforced hull for protection, but swivel out to bring the ship about.

To further strengthen the Xiphos-Class’ combat abilities, it was equipped with powerful, layered shields. While the Blackgate Multicore Shield System did present weak-points in the hull, the surrounding structure is especially reinforced to compensate so that they do not significantly compromise the ship’s integrity in the attack. In return, the Blackgate provides the Xiphos-Class with a top-tier shielding. The Xiphos-Class is further reinforced by the Diatium Capacitance Array, Damage Reduction Armour Components, Missile Deactivation Transmitters, Cap Drains and more standard defensive measures.

To make the Xiphos-Class as effective a ship-hunter as it could be, and to ensure that it could make the most out of its manoeuvrability, it was installed with HIMS to counteract Interdiction Fields. It was also equipped with the latest in Hyperspace Tracking capabilities so that it could keep hunting down its targets across vast distances.

The Xiphos-Class was always meant to have rudimentary stealth devices on board, such as Nightshadow coating, Spectral Diffusers and Thrust Trace Dampeners. It was originally thought improbable that the vessel would be able to support a full Stygium-based Cloaking Device, but tenacity paid off and an opportunity presented itself in the shape of a large confiscation of illegal stygium from Aeten II. It seemed the Force would have it so. The Stygium Cloaking is what makes the Xiphos-Class a remarkable and unique piece of construction, and a deadly addition to the Sith-Imperial Armada.

 

[Gir Quee]

Under Review.

 

[Gir Quee]

[member="Darth Ophidia"], I do apologize the delay. This is an innovative and creative design, and because of that, I wanted to consult and pick the brains of several others before I fully formulated my thoughts.

Overall, while this is exactly balanced on the spreadsheet tool, this is actually at least two ratings too high because of some other features. The hyperdrive being exceptionally fast, notably faster than x1, is the first and probably the easiest to fix. We can either lower a rating, add a significant weakness, or simply make the hyperdrive about average (x1 or x2) for this issue.

The second is the inclusion of both phrik and stygium. From the Factory Standardized rules section on Restricted Materials:

Starships which include a restricted material may require the reduction of a rating elsewhere based on the balance of the submission

If this was a more conventional warship, I'd maybe request a drop of a single rating for this. However, because of the nature of this ship as a ramship, this becomes more complex because the offense is the defense.

This is exceptionally stealthy, which means that not only will the vast majority of opponents be able to attack it, but they will not be able to see the attacks coming. This is exceptionally durable, which again means that it's not going to have any trouble shrugging off attacks in the offchance that it is detected. This is exceptionally fast for its size, meaning that few ships its size would even stand a chance of outmaneuvering.

As a collective whole then, we're essentially talking about a ship that has an unstoppable attack that few ships if any ships near its size have a feasible chance to escape. This becomes a balance concern then, because essentially this ship not only has extremely good defense and speed, but if I were to count that ramming ability towards its offensive power (or armament rating) for practical purposes, it's also going to be exceptionally high based on a simple kinetic energy equation.

I think we have a couple of broad options going forward, but I'm open to ideas.

1) Reduce stealth - allow more of a chance for ships to detect the attack, and thus possibly be able to avoid the ramming attack based on their own flight characteristics. This could be something like detecting excess drive emissions as this ship goes to ramming speed. It could also take the form of removing certain stealthy systems (like the GAM).
2) Reduce defense/ramming ability - This could be a disclaimer about the amount of damage that the ramming attack can do. Another form that this could also take would be a disclaimer that it can only perform a very limited number of ramming attacks per engagement.
3) Reduce Speed/Flight performance - This makes the ram potentially less damaging, and might make it harder to line up ramming attacks on moving targets
4) Some combination of the above - This is pretty self-explanatory, but this is probably also going to be the one that's hardest to execute.

Let me know what your thoughts are, and we'll go on from there.

 

[Darth Ophidia]

[member="Gir Quee"]

Thank you for the feedback. With the unconventional design, I expected there to be a certain need for adjustment.

I can certainly lower the Hyperdrive to normal (x1).

I can remove the GAM and the Thrust Trace Dampeners, that would allow certain systems to detect its bulk and emission, and analyse its flight patterns to anticipate the attack.

How does that sound to you?

 

[Gir Quee]

[member="Darth Ophidia"], with the lowering of one rating as well, I think that will work nicely.

As a forewarning, I'm currently doing some research on ramming. Based on what I find, I may ask for a few minor edits about the ramming process.

 

[Darth Ophidia]

[member="Gir Quee"]

Alright, I have done the previously mentioned edits and lowered Manoeuvrability rating from Very High to High.

I patiently await your further judgement.

 

[Gir Quee]

[member="Darth Ophidia"], if you'll note explicitly that the engine emissions aren't fully disguised (since this also has bafflers on it, which could shield the engine emissions), we should be all set.

 

[Darth Ophidia]

[member="Gir Quee"]

Apologies for the late reply, I was stuck on the road for a few days. Following weakness has been put in to comply with the request:

Emissions: Due to the massive size of the ship, its engine emissions are not fully disguised. This is a potentially traceable flaw in its stealth systems.

 

[Gir Quee]

Approved.