Starsword SS-1
A unique fighter craft, the Starsword is possibly one of the rarest fighters to ever see service, with half a wing operated exclusively by the short lived Kapteyn's Regiment in the years leading up to the Fourth Succession War.
Itself an experiment in cooperation by the three signatory states of the Concords of Kapteyn, Kapteyn's regiment drew personnel and equipment from all three states, though with only varying degrees of practical interest. The Capellans in particular were prone to use the regiment for a dumping ground of materials they had no use for, considering the whole experiment worth nothing more than some propaganda value. One of these shipments took the form of sixty LTV class 400 fusion engines, leftover from the conversion program that created the 1A5 Charger. Not used by any units in the regiment, they threatened to do little more than take up a tremendous amount of space in the regiment's warehouse until the regiment's chief technician (something of a mad scientist famous for his frankenmechs) hit on the idea of building an aerofighter around them.
And somehow, he succeeded, assembling the first Starsword from off the shelf parts in his garage. It was ugly, sluggish, and clearly looked like it couldn't possibly fly, but it did, with test pilots even commenting on the surprisingly smooth ride (though these pilots were drawn from Sholagar squadrons, making their frame of reference questionable).
On paper, the Starsword's similarity to the Slayer are obvious, and visually, you can even see the resemblance, though the graceful curves of the Slayer are replaced with sharp angles and straight plates of metal, like one would expect from the limited facilities of a basic machineshop. Even with the craft's large size, the huge engine forces concessions in fuel capacity, giving the Starsword shorter legs than most of its competitors. Armor is reasonably heavy though somewhat thin on the tail (fabricating plates to better protect the tail was apparently difficult). Weaponry was dictated by available spares. The paired autocannons were drawn from stores for the many Hermes IIs and Scorpion Tanks operated by the regiment, while the medium lasers are simply ubiquitous. Overall firepower isn't really all that less than the Slayers it arguably competes against, and the extra mass makes the Starsword an excellent bomb truck.
Deployment:
Twenty four Starswords were assembled by the regiment's technical staff, with eighteen serving at the core of the fighter wing, supported by a mixture of Sholagars and Thrushes. In the few engagements fought by Kapteyn's Regiment, the fighters performed reasonably well, actually above expectations considering their origin and parent unit. The regiment's dissolution during the Fourth Succession War saw most of the surviving examples ending up in Combine storehouses. Though briefly evaluated for additional production in the late 3040s (alongside the Combine's program to refit its own Chargers), the Starsword has been all but forgotten by the Combine in the following decades, and may actually still be sitting in a forgotten warehouse waiting to be found.
Outside of Combine service, a pair of Starswords followed regiment members into the mercenary trade. The mercenary company Kapteyn's Disappointed Children operated the fighters for several years before a lack of engine parts forced them to decommission the craft.
Design Quirks: Easy to Maintain, Bad Reputation, Poor Workmanship, Poor Performance, Prototype (effectively)
IS Introductory Box Set
100 tons
BV: 1,250
Cost: 6,410,200 C-bills
Movement: 6/9
Engine: 400
Heat Sinks: 13
Structural Integrity: 10
Armor: 232
Armor
-----------------------------
Nose 77
Left Wing 58
Right Wing 58
Aft 39
Weapon Loc Heat
----------------------------------------
AC/5 NOS 1
AC/5 NOS 1
Medium Laser RWG 3
Medium Laser RWG 3
Medium Laser LWG 3
Medium Laser LWG 3
Medium Laser AFT 3
Ammo Loc Shots
----------------------------------------
AC/5 Ammo NOS 20
AC/5 Ammo NOS 20
