Flowers Patrol Boat (3080)
Mass: 300 tons
Movement Type: Naval
Power Plant: Fusion
Cruising Speed: 75.6 kph
Maximum Speed: 118.8 kph
Armor: BAR 10 (Reactive)
Armament:
2 Large Pulse Laser
2 LRT 20
1 Arrow IV
1 Laser AMS
Communication System: Unknown
Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown
Introduction Year: 3080
Tech Rating/Availability: F/X-X-F-E
Cost: 5,247,978C-bills
Type: Flowers Patrol Boat
Chassis Type: Naval (Medium)
Technology Base: Mixed (Advanced)
Mass: 300 tons
Battle Value: 3,947
Equipment Mass (tons)
Chassis/Controls 127.5
Engine/Trans. Fusion 71.5
Cruise MP: 7
Flank MP: 11
Heat Sinks: 25 25
Fuel: 0
Turret: 3
Armor Factor (Reactive): 103 6.5
Internal
Structure Armor
Value
Front 30 27
R/L Side 30/30 20/20
Rear 30 16
Turret 30 20
Weapons
and Ammo Location Critical Mass (tons)
2 LRT 20 Sponson 8 10
2 Large Pulse Laser Turret 4 12
Laser AMS Turret 1 1
Arrow IV Turret 6 12
LRT 20 Ammo (18) Body 3 3
Arrow IV Ammo (50) Body 10 10
Cargo
Bay 5: Cargo (3.5 tons) 1 Door
Notes: Features Armored Chassis Chassis and Controls Modification, Active Probe(1 ton), CASE, Lifeboat(3; 1 ton each), Advanced Fire Control(3.5 tons),
ECM Suite(1 ton), Vehicular Sponson Turret(2; 0.5 tons each), Modular Armor(5; 1 ton each), HarJel (4; 1 ton each)
The Flowers-class Patrol Boat, named after Crossroadian RAF captain Burton "Butch" Flowers, is a small and combat-capable short-ranged blue water patrol boat. Designed to combat sometimes unusually well-armed insurgents in the post-Gumerian Diktat era (3020+), the Flowers-class has become a ubiquitous internal security ship in the Vela Corridor.
Capabilities & Design
The Flowers-class patrol boat is a surface effect ship: The composite catamaran hull is supplemented by a fan-blown skirted compartment in between the two hulls, enabling the fusion-powered patrol boat to hit speeds up to 64 knots in ideal conditions. The sheer speed of the Flowers aids in intercepting of maritime speedboats and acts as a first line of defense against hostile warships, though in truth the likelihood of encountering other hostile warships is fairly unlikely.
The class is well armed for a vessel of its size. The first line of defense consists of an Arrow IV system towards the rear of the ship in a VLS installation; the flexible artillery piece can be used to shoot down conventional fighters, sink surface ships, or even perform coastal bombardment. A turret with twin Large Pulse Lasers acts as a point-defense weapon against fighters, helicopters, or torpedo boats that get dangerously close. Streamlined LRT launchers are mounted below the waterline in sponson turrets, providing further protection from encroachment by either submarines or surface craft - though armed submarines are rarely possessed by pirates. Finally, the Flowers-class allocates enough space for three battle-armored marines. The BA complement of two Flowers-class patrol boats provide plenty of firepower to liberate transport freighters taken hostage by pirates.
The 3080 model of the Flowers-class has significantly better protection than the original 3030 model. The modern model, in addition to other upgrades, upgrades the 6 and a half tons of standard armor to reactive while further reinforcing the vessel with 5 tons of applique armor, significantly increasing their survivability to bombs, rockets, and torpedos. A laser-based AMS is also added to its own self-contained turret as a final line of defense when the Arrow and dual pulse laser turrets fail to deal with hostiles. The most important change, however, is the addition of a HarJel liner around the ship: The jelly-like substance acts as an effective fast-acting hull sealant, reducing the probability of catastrophic hull breaches to near-zero.
Accommodations for the 15-man crew are in-between that of river monitors and proper blue-water warships: The two officers aboard receive crew quarters roughly equivalent to the second-class seating that enlisteds usually have on "black-water" Warships or blue-water cruisers, while the rest of the crew have to put up with steerage-grade quarters (though even this is more roomy than often-nonexistent accommodations on riverine vessels). 3.5 tons of storage is sufficient to keep the crew's personal items and a few rations but prevents the Flowers-class from making truly long-range patrols.
Deployment
Most Flowers-class Patrol Boats are deployed into the Gumerian Powder Keg to augment Crossroadian-Mechani counterinsurgency efforts. Their main missions are escorting cargo freighters and passenger liners, patrolling primary sea lanes, escorting BA marine-equipped fast hydrofoil vessels to liberate vessels captured by pirates, and occasionally perform coastal fire support. The vessel's well-armed nature helps to dissuade insurgents from attacking older Gumerian conventional fighters, VTOLs, or even civillian craft converted into technicals.
Crossroadian and Mechani planets with large bodies of water, important economic infrastructure located on seas or oceans, or simply with enough money to casually afford them, often purchase significant amounts of modified Flowers-class Patrol Boats for use in their planetary militias.
About two dozen Flowers-class Patrol Boats, among other blue and brown naval hardware, were brought with the Velan Expeditionary force during the Jihad. They were deployed on water-rich worlds to deny sea lanes to Word of Blake militia, forcing them to use valuable dropship assets to resupply areas near coasts. This mostly worked until Terra, where the Word of Blake had sea superiority over the first phase of its liberation, and afterwards dominated local areas with its Wyrm SDS Submersible Fortresses which hopelessly outgunned the tiny patrol boats. The naval boats were essentially reduced to presenting themselves in an area vaguely thought to have a Wyrm present and bait them to surface, and then run away while the Wyrm would hopefully be neutralized by allied orbital bombardment, aerospace fighter strikes, or marine boarding actions, a tactic which the Coalition forces described as "Honeypotting". 4 of the 8 lost Flowers-class boats were lost while baiting Wyrms.
The Flowers-class boats, as well as most of the naval hardware the Velan Expeditionary Force had brought, were left on Terra; the CO's determined that their utility would be limited past that point compared to filling the cargo holds with more supplies, salvage and various souvenirs from Terra. At the end of the Jihad, Terra had 16 Flowers-class Patrol Boats (though only 11 were fully operational) as well as several dozens of smaller naval boats from the Velan detachment.
Variants
(3030): Original. Same weaponry, but lacks the reactive armor and modular armor modules, as well as the HarJel lining. Less technologically sophisticated structure and powerplant resulted in these Flowers-class PT boats only being able to reach about 52 kts, but also made them significantly cheaper and made them able to be manufactured from a larger number of suppliers. Lacking the HarJel lining found on later variants allowed space for a 4th Battle Armor steerage compartment towards the front of the vessel.
(3075 Field Mod): Modification of the 3030 variants in preparation for the Vela Coalition's intervention in the Jihad, the 3075 field mod installs reactive armor and modular armor to provide protection from bombs, and Harjel below the waterline to protect against torpedo breaches. As the original 3030 version was not designed around all these changes, the great bulk of these modifications reduced the vessel's speed to about 46 kts and took up room in the passenger compartment, leaving the Battle Armor marines complement at merely two. The experience gained lead to the development of the (3080) variant.
