Author Topic: Orion class Transport (Primitive Jumpship)  (Read 1516 times)

Liam's Ghost

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Orion class Transport (Primitive Jumpship)
« on: 08 November 2017, 00:56:27 »
Author's note: The battletech universe is currently extremely deficient in "destroyer sized transports"


Orion class Transport

Though developed over a hundred years before the creation of the modern Jumpship, the Orion is often (somewhat unfairly) regarded as the last generation of early jumpship design. It was one of the largest civilian ships ever to be widely operated in the Inner Sphere (being produced in multiple shipyards from Terra to the Hyades Cluster), and at the time of its launching was a state of the art design. In fact, the shear size and sophistication of the Orion, as well as its rapid proliferation, was seen as a direct challenge to the naval supremacy of the Terran Hegemony. Though it was, strictly speaking, a civilian vessel, many of the technologies that went into it were directly comparable to those used aboard Hegemony WarShips, and even if the Houses couldn't master such sophisticated technologies as the compact jump drive, the ability to build the Orion readily indicated that the houses could still potentially construct ships large enough and powerful enough to present a threat to the Hegemony. The Hegemony's worst fears were realized five years later when House Davion unveiled the Defender class Battlecruiser, the first non-Terran warship ever built and partly developed from lessons learned building ships like the Orion. Four years after that the largely ignored Taurian Concordat launched their own home built WarShip, and within two decades, every significant power in the Inner Sphere had begun to build their own WarShip fleets. 

[editor's note: Of interest is the name of the class. Though on the surface the name Orion seems to follow the constellation theme of earlier ships such as the Aquilla and Cassiopeia, a persistent legend among shipwrights maintains that the ship was named for the ancient Terran spacecraft program called "Project Orion". The metaphor is tortured to say the least]

Though a (possibly unintentional) harbinger of a new era of naval warfare, the Orion was fairly typical of its type, aside from the shear size of the vessel. It followed the template set by earlier hulls like the Cassiopeia, though on a larger scale with space for ten dropshuttles and nearly fifty thousand tons of bulk cargo. Aside from the size, the Orion also stands out as one of the first vessels to use the newly developed external docking collar, allowing it to more easily interface with local traffic, especially highly developed worlds with extensive spaceborn infrastructure. After the development of the KF boom a century later, this gave the Orion an edge over its older counterparts, as it could be retrofitted to be compatible with the new generation of boom equipped dropships fairly easily, while other vessels required extensive modification.

Despite the inherent advantages of the Orion, it was still subject to the same bugbears that have long dogged interstellar spacetravel. As one of the largest civilian vessels on the market, it was also the most costly to build and operate, a cost that didn't seem to scale linearly with the increase in carrying capacity. Then, of course, there were political and security concerns. Much like the Hegemony before them, the Great Houses recognized the inherent threat of such large vessels regularly being available to groups outside of their control. Though the Orion carried only minimal armor and defensive weaponry, it would be only a simple matter of some yard time to turn one into a dangerous naval auxillary able to threaten even capital WarShips, making any large concentration of such large merchantmen in hostile hands a virtual fleet in being. Because of these concerns, as well as the operating costs for the Orion, the ship was largely phased out of production across the Inner Sphere by the dawn of the 25th century. Only the Taurian Concordat stubbornly withstood the trend, continuing to build the Orion both for their own use and for export for another century before the falling cost of the modern Jumpship rendered continued construction a losing proposition. Even then, the Orion continued to hang on among the fringes of humanity, even after the last shipyards equipped to service them became victims of the Reunification War, the occasional Orion could be prowling the periphery as a free trader or something more sinister. True to the fears of many of its detractors, the last Orion class ships seen were used exactly as it was once feared they would be. Three Orions, refitted with an oddball assortment of capital weapons, were part of the pirate fleet that engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser Saint Joan in the mid 27th century, and a small number would further make an appearance as late as the Periphery Uprising, acting as armed Privateers on all three fronts, harassing SLDF supply lines.


Type: Primitive Jumpship (2355)
Mass: 550,000 tons
Transit Drive: 66,000 tons
Thrust Capacity: 2/3
Fuel: 2000 tons (5000 points, 39.52 tons per burn day)
Pumps: 40 tons
Structure: 11,000 tons
Structural Integrity: 20
Jump Drive (primitive, 20 light years): 357,500 tons
Drive Integrity: 17
Jump Sail: 58 tons
Sail Integrity: 4
Control System: 1375 tons
Crew: 27 officers, 133 crew, 1101 tons
Heatsinks: 301
Armor: 220 tons
*Primitive Armor: f/a:10, fl/fr/al/ar:11
*Standard Armor: f/a:16, fl/fr/al/ar:17

Equipment:
5 Dropshuttle Bays, 55,000 tons
2 Docking Collars (pre-boom), 2000 tons
20 Small Craft Bays, 4 doors, 4000 tons
20 Escape Pods, 140 tons
10 Lifeboats, 70 tons
49,404 tons of cargo, 8 doors

Weapons:
FL/FR
2 Autocannon 5s, 80 rounds ammunition, 40 tons
4 Machineguns, 200 rounds ammunition, 6 tons
AL/AR
2 Autocannon 5s, 80 rounds ammunition, 40 tons
4 Machineguns, 200 rounds ammunition, 6 tons


Variant Notes:

After the advent of the modern docking collar, existing Orion class ships were refitted with new collars able to accept dropships with KF booms.

After 2490, the last producers of the Orion (located in the Hyades cluster of the Taurian Concordat) modified the design, removing the dropshuttle bays in favor of additional docking collars and cargo space, raising total cargo capacity to 98,404 tons and dropship capacity to 8. This variant was produced until the Orion finally left production in 2500.
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marauder648

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Re: Orion class Transport (Primitive Jumpship)
« Reply #1 on: 08 November 2017, 03:52:58 »
This...I like this! A LOT!  Excellent details and I love the design, superb fleshing out of the ships of the period.
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Wrangler

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Re: Orion class Transport (Primitive Jumpship)
« Reply #2 on: 08 November 2017, 09:23:51 »
I wish CGL would adopt all these primitive Jumps ships your making, Liam's Ghost. It would help fill out the universe early parts.

Great Job,Liam!
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