Welcome to the return of the JumpShip of the Month articles! Last time around, we visited the grandaddy of them all, the
Aquilla class primitive JumpShip. This time around, we're jumping forward in time to the next oldest historical ship, the Liberty class.
The Liberty class isn't the first JumpShip to carry a docking collar. That distinction belongs to the BNS
Olympus, an experimental JumpShip manufactured by Blue Nose Interstellar Technologies of Mars, which made its first jump, carrying the DCS
Nimbus III (who knew that the Combine were Harry Potter fans?) on the its first jump in 2458.
Listed with an introduction date of 2461, the Liberty class was the first prouction class of JumpShip to carry docking collars. That said, Blue Nose Interstellar must have wanted to make sure there were no bugs in the system, because they didn't debut the Liberty to the Terran Hegemony public until eleven years after the successful test of the
Olympus, in 2469.
The results were an instant hit: Blue Nose sold out ten years worth of production in a month, and sold parts for KF booms and docking collars to seven other JumpShip and eleven DropShip manufacturers. They'd use the money to expand, merge with six of their partner companies, and form Blue Nose Clipperships, which would go on to bring the Terran Hegemony and SLDF the Lola II, the Sovetskii Soyuz and the McKenna.
But what about the Liberty itself? Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag, not really surprising for a ship that, really, is the first of its type. At 203,000 tons, she's between the size of the later Invader and Tramp class ships but, unlike them, carried a full four docking collars. It's worth noting that no length has been given for the Liberty, and she reuses the art for the Invader class, which is...odd.
Now's probably a good time for me to go over what, in my opinion, makes for a good JumpShip. JumpShips are highly specialized units. Unlike most Battletech units, JumpShips rarely have a role on a battlefield. So, instead, we hae to lok at what they're designed to do: jump between star systems. By those standards, a standard-core JumpShip should have:
1. Decent carrying capacity for her size. The job of a JumpShip is to jump between star systems, carrying stuff from one star to another. While JumpShips have cargo bays, the main way they do this is through their docking collars.
2. Sufficient fuel bunkerage for emergencies. Fuel on a JumpShip gets used for three things. First, stationkeeping while sitting at a jump point and recharging. Second, in the event of the failure of a jump sail, lacking a replacement sail, a JumpShip would need to charge her drive via fusion. Third, if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, it's nice to have enough fuel to be able to make a planetside burn.
3. Sufficient cargo for consumables and supplies. JumpShips spend a bunch of time out in space, so having enough cargo to carry food for your crew and spare parts in the event you break something is seriously handy.
Now, with that in mind, how does the Liberty stack up?
With four docking collars, the Liberty can actually out-carry the smaller Invader and Merchant, and the larger Tramp. Along with that, she has the requisite two small craft bays, allowing the crew to have a long-range shuttle and, perhaps, an assault shuttle for escort, since the Liberty has not a single weapon. Four collars is near max for a ship the mass of the Liberty, so we'e got to give her good points for capacity. Those collars also have docking arms attached (per the quirk, and similar to how the fluff described the Star Lord and Monolith), giving them bonuses to DropShips and small craft docking operations. Definitely an A+ for carrying capacity: nothing else her size can match her.
With 300 tons of fuel, the Liberty has the capacity to burn for nearly 76 days at her typical 0.1 Gs of thrust. Amusingly, at that thrust, you'd need 28 days to get from Sol's standard jump points to Earth under thrust the whole time, which means that it's got plenty of fuel to cover that eventuality. An emergency jump, though, would require 395.2 tons to complete, though, so we're a bit short here: a Liberty class skipper would need to borrow fuel from her attached DropShips or, alternatively, use part of her cargo hold for extra fuel. Being just shy of being able to power a jump on her own from her fusion reactors gives the Liberty a B+ in my book for fuel capacity.
Cargo is also a B+. In addition to the two small craft mentioned earlier, the Liberty carries 566.5 tons of cargo in her hold. That gives her plenty of mass to carry a spare jump sail, which masses 57.5 tons, an extra 100-150 tons of fuel for emergencies, a modicum of other spare parts, and food/consumables for her crew, who go through 3-5 tons of food a day (3 tons for the 67 crew and passengers in standard quarters at 200 man-days/ton, and 2 tons for the 10 bay personnel at 20 man-days/ton, assuming that the shuttle crew doesn't come out of the standard crew/passengers). So, save some of the steerage quarters for your shuttle crews, carry 300 tons of food, 57.5 tons for a spare sail, and another 120 tons of fuel, and ou've still got around 87.5 tons of cargo left over - not too different from, say, the the LF-equipped version of the Hunter. Overall, not as good as some of the other JumpShips, but not far off.
So, there's a lot good about the Liberty class. That said, there's also some bad. One additional quirk on the Liberty indicate she was difficult to maintain. That was enough to, eventually, put her out of production in 2550, with the ship picking up the Obsolete quirk by 2570, despite what's described as many updates to the design. Crew accomodations also stunk on ice. Officers had 7-ton quarters equivalent to enlisted/second-class on other ships, while enlisted and passengers were stuck with steerage quarters. While this saved weight (97 tons for just the crew), it probably didn't make for a very happy crew, especially when competing designs like the Merchant and, presumably, Leviathan, had better accomodations. In the end, these factors probably helped contribute to the decision to stop producing the Liberty.
It's not immediately clear what replaced the Liberty. The Merchant class, which we'll be covering next time, came out halfway through its production run, but carried half the DropShips. The Star Lord, which finally eclipsed the Liberty, came out 41 years after the earlier ship ceased production. There's the Leviathan class JumpShip, but that's always been described as a rare beast
Perhaps, in the end, nothing directly replaced the Liberty. Her success was such that there were presumably vast numbers of ships plying the spacelanes well after the introduction of the Star Lord, the ship that, art aside, the Liberty most resembles. That means that, while obsolete, there could easily still be Liberty class ships out there in the 31st and 32nd Century, plying their trade and, of course, giving your own personal unit another potential ride. The reuse of the Invader art even gives you a handy miniature you can use.
So, what do you think of the Liberty?