Warship Write-Up - The 2582 Aegis Heavy Cruiser

[GreekFire]

From TRO:3057r

Note: I did not write this article; instead, this was written by an anonymous contributor with a love of Warships and naval combat.


OVERVIEW
The Aegis, despite its seemingly lacklustre stat line, is actually one of the hidden gems of the Star League-era WarShips. There are vessels that are more powerful, there are more flashy vessels, but nothing will punch above its expected weight like an Aegis, making them ideal for use against the unwary or when those options are not available but you still want a heavy hitter.


MOVEMENT PROFILE
One of the most important things to adapt to in the naval game is how little speed actually matters. In the ground game, it is imperative to get to good position, exploit terrain, and play range bands to your advantage. In space, there is very little in the way of places to hide and if anyone is in range with weapons that do significant damage, odds are good that you are too.  As long as you can pivot and keep your two best arcs on an opponent and roll over and present the other, hopefully less damaged, side of your ship to your enemy, you have enough MP.

It is easy to look at the Aegis’ thrust profile and mentally transpose it to something like an UrbanMech, which struggles to generate to-hit modifiers and will usually be at a disadvantage for range and firing arcs due to its relatively low speed.

In space, 2/3 thrust allows you to roll and turn as long as your velocity is low - and since travelling at a high velocity avails you little when a capital engagement starts, it is enough to get by. AeroSpace Fighters and DropShips get to move after WarShips, so it’s not as though you can prevent them from exploiting your arcs and range anyway. Long story short: 2/3 is tolerable for a WarShip from a board game perspective, and from an in-character perspective vessels generally try not to accelerate at more than 1g for extended periods to preserve the health and well-being of the crew.

Strategic Operations introduced the Emergency Combat Heading Operation (ECHO) manoeuvre rule, enabling WarShips the ability to partially counter the movement of lighter, nimbler vessels. Conducting an ECHO allows WarShips to change their facing by one hex side, potentially shifting enemies in the Aft arc to the Aft-Sides of the ship. Conducting an ECHO manoeuvre requires 2 unspent thrust in whatever mode the ship moved in prior to using the option. This is the only area where an Aegis actually suffers for not having a higher Thrust rating, since reserving the ECHO option requires the user to have spent no MP while using Safe Thrust or only one point when under Maximum Thrust.


ARMOUR AND POINT DEFENCE
One of the Star League WarShips that mounts no conventional-scale weapons of any kind, the Aegis has no innate point defence whatsoever. Any point-defence capability will have to come from its DropShip and ASF complement.

All of the Star League vessels have less armour than their Structural Integrity would permit. Until the Strategic Operations rules revision, this made them very much your prototypical egg with a sledgehammer, with most ships able to cripple or kill each other quickly since movement modifiers work so differently in space. Whilst the Aegis’ armour is still relatively low in absolute terms, in relative terms it has heavier armour than any other ship of the time below 770,000 tons.  Both the Congress and Sovetskii Soyuz have less armour despite massing more.

With 91-101 armour over each arc, an Aegis can take a fair amount of damage for its size. It will be Thresholded by anything that can do 10 or more damage in a single hit, so the good news is that capital missiles will not be scoring Threshold crits by themselves. The bad news, of course, is that virtually everything else will. In practical terms, you will need to hit an Aegis with approximately 400 damage to kill it through damage alone. It might die earlier due to critical hits or retire from battle to prevent its destruction, but the ship is a lot tougher than it might initially appear with its seemingly low armour values. Armour is biased to the Fore-Sides and Aft-Sides, as those will be more exposed when the Aegis is using her most powerful weapons to attack the enemy.

Under the best circumstances, most other capital vessels are going to need four or five turns of uninterrupted fire to deliver that much damage, but at the same time, the Aegis is going to be hitting back.


WEAPONS AND HOW TO USE THEM
In a vacuum, the ideal WarShip mounts as many 60-70-point bays as possible, with each having as many weapons in it as possible for bracketing while staying within acceptable fire control mass. To take best advantage of the High-Speed Engagement rules, the Nose, Fore-Side, and Broadside arcs should be biased towards ballistic weapons that can increase their damage via speed multipliers, while the Aft-Side and Aft arcs should primarily use energy-based weapons so their damage is not decreased after passing the target. Naval Lasers should be scattered across each arc to provide defence against fighters and DropShips. Naval AutoCannon provide the best mix of damage, mass, and range so those are preferred where available. Anti-Missile defences make Capital Missiles nearly pointless, so as few as possible of those should be mounted. Unfortunately, the Aegis was not optimised for the current rules set, nor could it have been since it pre-dates Strategic Operations by the better part of twenty years.

Even so, how does the Aegis do on those counts? Surprisingly well, actually.

The bulk of the Aegis’ damage comes from paired bays of NAC/35s. While limited to Medium (Capital) range, that’s still 24 hexes. Since those are mounted in pairs, they can apply a -1 to-hit modifier through Bracketing and still be hitting for 53 damage. With enough firepower to reliably kill anything of a lower mass within three or four turns from those alone, few WarShips will want to close with an Aegis. If you can hit a DropShip or ASF squadron with one of the NAC/35 bays, it’s unlikely to trouble you after that either.

For Long (Capital) range, the Aegis’ fire is somewhat more limited, with just 6 bays of 3 NAC/20s. This still provides enough firepower to kill an Essex or Lola in three or four turns even if they’re being Bracketed, so again the news is still relatively good even if its firepower is limited in an objective sense.

Anti-fighter defences are acceptable. The Broadsides and Aft-sides each have a bay with three NL-55s, hitting for 17 points of capital damage.  The Aft arc is slightly better protected, with four NL-45s delivering 18 Capital damage.  As a practical consideration, the relatively low damage of these weapons means they are better used against enemy Fighter squadrons or DropShips rather than other capital targets. 17 points isn’t much against anything heavier than a Corvette, but it will Fatal Threshold mid-weight enemy Squadrons, and no DropShip to date can avoid a Threshold crit even if their armour can hold out the 170+ points of damage the bays inflict.

Finally, the ship carries a few Barracuda and White Shark launchers, which allow it to target smaller threats. In  theory, the ship can also fire Alamo or Santa Ana-class nukes that can one-shot kill enemy ships either via a lucky nuclear contact roll or through sheer damage. In practice, missiles are likely to run afoul of simple to-hit numbers and, after 3057, AMS. As a result, Capital Missiles are rarely worth using unless the target is already crippled, you have enough ammunition not to care how many get shot down (and with just 10 shots per launcher, that’s not the case for the Aegis), or you’ve attained orbital superiority and want to start nuking something from orbit.

In practical terms, an Aegis can expect to kill anything lighter than it in 4-5 turns through damage alone if they stay outside of 24 hexes, or as few as 3 if they make the incomprehensibly poor choice of entering and staying inside its kill zone for that long. For heavier ships, it depends on the period; vessels from the Clans and Star League up to about 3060 all have relatively light armour, and even a McKenna can probably be taken down in 6-10 turns depending on how lucky the Aegis is and whether the NAC/35 bays have range or not. Ships like the Congress or Sovetskii Soyuz will be doing well to last more than four or five turns at best at Long (Capital) range and what will happen to them inside Medium (Capital) range doesn’t even bear thinking about.

If you have Strategic Operations handy, check the Arc diagram on p. 95. Enemies that are caught in the area where her Fore-Side, Broadside, and Aft-Sides overlap are faced with three bays of two NAC/35s, 4 bays of three NAC/20s, and two bays of NLs that can each hit for 17 damage, along with three White Shark launchers and a pair of Barracudas. With a potential 495 damage if all the weapons are in range and hit, an Aegis has the ability to kill anything smaller than a Nightlord in a single turn and inflict significant damage on any heavier vessel.


HIGH-SPEED ENGAGEMENTS
The all-aspects approach of the Aegis brings it advantages under the abstract High-Speed Engagement Rules most of the time. Not all, because there are advanced rules for Stern Chase engagements that can prevent NACs from being able to hit at all- a punishing blow to a vessel designed around as many NACs as it could cram on. The Aegis does have its NL batteries, but they are small and weak, unable to turn the tide on their own.

In a Head-On or Crossing engagement, especially with the damage multiplier rules for Naval Autocannon in play, the Aegis is if anything more dangerous than it is in a normal battle. Her 70-point NAC/35 bays will deliver 105 to 280 damage each, enough to Threshold even a Leviathan II. The 60-point bays will fall just short with 90 damage at relatively low engagement speeds, but will still Threshold any canon vessel at maximum speed, with each hitting for 240 damage.

Few ships can tangle with an Aegis in a High-Speed Engagement and survive, but in return the Aegis becomes significantly more vulnerable as well.


SUPPORT UNITS, CARGO, AND ENDURANCE
The Aegis has four DropShip docking collars and just over 83 kilotons of cargo in its SLN refit version, slightly less in the Clan refit with HarJel and additional Fighters. This is somewhat lower than what TR 3057R indicates, but there appear to be multiple inaccuracies in that document.
Much-needed errata notwithstanding, this still represents a significant amount of cargo space. A typical arrangement for a year-long cruise would likely feature something along the lines of 1,000 tons of consumables, 15,000 tons of spare parts for the ship, 8,000 tons of additional fuel, and 20,000 tons worth of parts and fuel for the ASF and Small Craft the ship carries. Totalling 44,000 tons, this leaves almost 40 kilotons with which to support its four attached DropShips. This would enable the ship to supply even a full complement of Vengeance-Class carriers for a year, and have no trouble with anything less.

In the Star League era or for the Clans prior to the Jihad, an Aegis’ most likely DropShip complement would be some mix of Achilles, Titan, or Vengeance-Class ships. After the Jihad the Jade Falcons, Republic of the Sphere, and Snow Ravens would be wise to operate Nagasawa-Class ships from their Aegis', negating the inherent weakness of the vessel to capital missile fire.

The 1,000 kiloton native fuel reserve of the ship is ludicrously low, barely enough to eke out a month at 1g. Any Aegis expecting to so much as leave dock will need significantly more and must devote cargo tonnage to fuel.

Finally, the SLN Aegis houses 18 fighters, a full Wing. The Clans increase the count to 20, enabling most Clans to operate a Binary from the ship. The Steel Vipers regarded a single AeroSpace Fighter as a Point on its own, and though they still only had 20 fighters operating from the Steel Python counted that as two Binaries instead. Whether Clan or Sphere, each Aegis also carries 10 Small Craft, though with no innate infantry capacity these would either have been cargo haulers or light gunboats used to assist with point defence.


HOW TO USE IT SOLO
The basic tactic for the Aegis is similar to most other heavily-armed WarShips in a one-on-one fight; boost for the middle of the map, turn broad-side on, and tear the enemy apart. The Aegis is not a complicated vessel to use, and as such I regard it as an ideal tool for teaching new players the finer points of the naval game. Its speed will prove sufficient despite expectations carried over from the ground-based rule set, its armour is reasonable, and no matter the Arc(s) they have brought to bear on other vessels, they will be able to inflict decent damage on the enemy. Even for more experienced players the Aegis is an excellent asset.

The all-aspects approach to weapons placement is a boon on the ship, since its light armour means it will face Thresholding crits quite frequently. With the weapons spread out across each arc, bays will be knocked out relatively slowly during a fight. If possible try to catch the enemy in the three-arc overlap area (depicted in green on p. 95 of Strategic Operations), but if not having a Broadside and Aft-Side or Fore-Side arc on the enemy will still suffice.

Heat can be something of a concern and the 2,046 (4,092) Double Heat Sinks of the ship can be overtaxed in heavy combat. It is still capable of firing at least five of its eight arcs per turn, but if the Aegis has been surrounded some care must be taken in choosing which arcs to make use of.

The hex rows directly ahead of the ship’s Nose and directly behind its Aft represent the Aegis’ only real weakness. If possible screen them with the ship’s DropShip and ASF complement to prevent the enemy from sitting in those exposed areas where retaliation is difficult.
 

HOW TO USE IT IN A FLEET ENGAGEMENT
The Aegis’ name is a strong hint as to its purpose- it is an outstanding protector for other ships. Lacking any real Extreme-range weapons arrays, an Aegis is best used as coverage for a ship that does. For the Clans, Star League, and Word of Blake this means vessels like the McKenna, Texas, Potemkin, or Farragut. Place the Aegis 10-15 hexes ahead of the larger, longer-ranged ship, and you’ve created a region of space where both ships run out of range at a similar point, but anything that attempts to close on the larger ship by necessity exposes itself to the Aegis’ NAC/35s.

With such a stratagem in place, the longer-ranged ship can rain NL, NPPC, or Naval Gauss fire on the enemy using Bracketing, with the Aegis following up with lightly Bracketed NAC/20s. Dealing with the fleet puts the enemy between a rock and a hard place; attempting to close on either the Aegis or the ship it’s protecting in order to kill it exposes the enemy to heavy fire.

Since the Aegis lacks AMS arrays, you will need to retain its ASF and DropShips to provide point defence against Capital Missiles. Should you be carrying Titans or Vengeances, Fighters excess to that need can be employed offensively or to assist in the defence of friendly ships.


HOW TO FIGHT IT SOLO
In a one-on-one fight, the Aegis has a few flaws to exploit. Most notably, it’s a 2/3 ship where 3/5 is the norm. If you do not want to enter its Medium (Capital) range, there is likely no way for the Aegis to force the issue. Just drift backwards as it tries to close; anything with 3/5 thrust or greater can stay at Long (Capital) range or, even better, Extreme (Capital) range indefinitely while it wears the Aegis down.

Good candidates for fighting an Aegis, aside from the obvious choices like the Leviathan II/III or McKenna, are the Conqueror or Black Lion classes. Both are close enough to the Aegis in mass for it to be a reasonable encounter, but feature heavier Long (Capital)-range NAC arrays than the Aegis in addition to their superior speed and armour. The Aegis can always get lucky and inflict some sort of decisive Threshold critical with its NAC/20 bays, but probability vastly favours the Conqueror and Black Lion in such a battle. Destroyers and Frigates generally lack the required firepower, and while they may get lucky they are far less reliable in a one-on-one fight.


HOW TO FIGHT IT IN A FLEET ENGAGEMENT
The key to beating an enemy fleet with Aegis support it is to take out the weak link in the chain - i.e., the Aegis - as quickly as possible. With its relatively thin armour, massing fire on an Aegis for a few turns should do the trick - but it is vital to not be sidetracked doing anything else. Once the Aegis is gone your approach on whatever it was defending becomes much easier. Massed Destroyers or single ships like the Black Lion should do the trick, though some may have to be sacrificed for the greater good in the process.

The Aegis’ armour and firepower represent significant obstacles for Pocket WarShips. The PWS designs with the most powerful Sub-Capital weapons will be obliged to enter the Aegis’ NAC/35 arcs to do damage, and all of the Aegis’ arcs have NAC/35s. 700 damage will Threshold anything, and destroy a number of PWSes outright. An Aegis can be reasonably expected to kill a squadron per turn, so the key is overwhelming the ship with numbers and then exploiting the lane of hexes that run through a WarShip's Nose and Aft hex facings where only the weapons in that arc can be brought to bear. Thanks to the Aegis’ limited thrust, it will not likely be executing ECHO manoeuvres, so once burrowed in you can stay there. 12-18 Taihous should be able to get the job done if they move quickly enough.

The Aegis is also somewhat vulnerable to ASF squadrons due to the limited coverage its Naval Laser bays provide. 50 or so AeroSpace Fighters can usually survive long enough and do enough damage to bring an Aegis down, as long as they stick to the safe lane as much as possible. Just try to bring 3067+ brick fighters as often as possible to reduce the risk of Fatal Thresholds from the NL batteries, and pray the NACs miss a lot.


THE SECRET TO BEATING AN AEGIS
The easiest way to kill an Aegis is to bring nuclear missiles. With no innate AMS, it has no way of directly defending itself from Alamo, Santa Ana, or Peacemaker warheads, any Point Defence capability will come from the Aegis’ Fighters or DropShips, so if necessary simply kill those before you start spending missiles. 4 Santa Anas from a White Shark Launcher or a single Peacemaker from a Killer Whale will kill an Aegis on damage alone.
 

OVERALL
The quirks of the space game and the Strategic Operations rules revision are very kind to the Aegis. Against opposition from its own time, it can kill more classes one-on-one than those that can kill it, though thanks to the wonders of the SLN’s size, there are probably five or six hundred of those compared to the 70 Aegises.

Still, when you take into account the additional mass and time before you get to some of those ships, that’s not a bad effort. I would rate the Aegis at 7/10 for a canon vessel. It could have been better, but it is surprisingly solid.

~ ~ ~

Master Unit List: http://masterunitlist.info/Unit/Details/3671/aegis-heavy-cruiser-2582
CamoSpecs (2750): https://camospecs.com/Miniature/Details/6796
CamoSpecs (3057): http://www.camospecs.com/IWM/Details/480?Area=/aegis-heavy-cruiser
Iron Wind Metals (2750): http://ironwindmetals.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4109
Iron Wind Metals (3057): http://ironwindmetals.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=2085

[Weirdo]

Very nice article!  O0 For more info, here's the previous Aegis article.

[HobbesHurlbut]

Very nice article!  O0 For more info, here's the previous Aegis article.

Ah right the original article is lost in the previous forums crashes. As seeing, I was that original article's author ;p.

[marauder648]

An excellent article!  So much better on the technical details than my crude scribbles for sure! Also I like the Aegis class ship, they are one of the few TRO3057 ships that looks decent, they look like a very aggressive brick and that suits their role really. These things are blunt instruments and very thuggish.

Perfect for their most prolific users nowdays who paint them a lovely Jade Falcon green.

[GreekFire]

Very nice article!  O0 For more info, here's the previous Aegis article.

Ah, my bad, Weirdo. I checked the aerospace directory but didn't check the master one...would have linked yours otherwise.

[Rage]

Nice article, though, unless I missed something, the Aegis mounts triple NAC/20s, not twin NAC/30s on her broad and after sides. Also, no mention of her original form from the 24th Century?

[VhenRa]

Yeah. It has triple-bay NAC/20s.

[GreekFire]

Nice article, though, unless I missed something, the Aegis mounts triple NAC/20s, not twin NAC/30s on her broad and after sides. Also, no mention of her original form from the 24th Century?

I dunno, I'll have to bring both questions up with the original author. I'll post the reply here once I've got one.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Um, what about the original 2372 version of the ship? ???

[GreekFire]

Um, what about the original 2372 version of the ship? ???

Once again, I dunno. I'll ask and get back to the thread.

[Molossian Dog IIC]

This article is a treasure trove. Reading it actually helps to understand other Warship of the Week articles better. The lenghts it goes to to explain -why- this is or that feature of the ship is good/bad and/or important in a naval engagement is extremely helpful for us groundpounders.

My thanks to the author.

[DoctorMonkey]

This article is a treasure trove. Reading it actually helps to understand other Warship of the Week articles better. The lenghts it goes to to explain -why- this is or that feature of the ship is good/bad and/or important in a naval engagement is extremely helpful for us groundpounders.

My thanks to the author.

I agree - a wonderfully balanced article talking about the design in game terms across different generations of rules as well as wider use and also putting it into in-universe context


Thank you!

[GreekFire]

Coming back to this, the original author's replies:

RE: NAC/30s

The start of the article mentions triple-20 bays in the Broadside and Aft-Side arcs, which is correct. The later mentions of double-30s are from previous versions that I thought I'd corrected.

For anyone else reading through this thread, I'm gonna fix this right now so this doesn't come up again.

RE: older Aegis

It wasn't written as an of the Week article, just as an in-depth look at the 2582/Clan Aegis.

So that's my bad, I'll edit this title so that it makes a bit more sense.

[Colt Ward]

Did we ever get stats on the original Aegis?  I know we had a bit of a debate over what it looked like when mothballed before they were turned over to the other Houses.

[Weirdo]

Yes. The 2372 stats are in 3057r. The other WSotW article covers it.

[Wrangler]

Great article, Greekfire!  Nice see some love going to the WarShips. 
Thank you for writing all aspects of how to use it and how fight with it!

Aegis is favorite of mine among the older 2750 ships.  I still prefer the original image of the ship, even if it only revealing the back of the ship.  I still reminded me of the 2001: Space Odyssey USS Discovery ship in some sense, with forward superstructure.

[sillybrit]

Something also worth noting is that the Aegis refit not only changed the armament and upgraded the heat sinks, it also added an LF battery. At the time, the LF battery was limited to the Avatar, which had originally replaced the Aegis and had introduced the LF battery into service, and the handful of Kimagures which entered service at the same time as the Aegis-class was reactivated and refit. A few Monsoons received a battery after the Reunification War, but until the McKenna the SLDF really relied on these cruisers for their quick reaction force.

On the face of it, the addition of the LF battery seems a little odd. It massively increases the cost of a vessel and I'm sure that the SLDF had lots of other stuff in desperate need of extra financing. The Taurian front was the main driver for naval operations in the Reunification War and by 2583 the Taurian WarShip threat had mostly been dealt with due to the climactic battle at Robsart, which also accounted for almost half of the SLDF WarShip losses up to that point and helped inspire the Aegis reactivation. With the Taurian fleet pretty much destroyed and the battered remnants scattered, the need for rapid WarShip response would be much less than the early days of the war. We obviously don't have a great deal of detail about the day to day fleet operations, and perhaps there was enough of a need to be able to rapidly respond to threats and opportunities with a WarShip to justify the expense of refitting the Aegis with LF batteries. It's also possible that it was just an early sign of the SLDF's often bloated procurement and bureaucratic inertia, with the LF battery fitted simply because the decision was made a couple of years prior when it was actually of greater use.

[marauder648]

Do we have any information about the actual battle of Robsart? The forces involved and what happened etc?  I know it was basically the last fleet action of the war where the Taurian fleet stood its ground against the SLDF and died in battle but I don't know more than that.

[Wrangler]

Do we have any information about the actual battle of Robsart? The forces involved and what happened etc?  I know it was basically the last fleet action of the war where the Taurian fleet stood its ground against the SLDF and died in battle but I don't know more than that.

Historical: Reunification War has most info we have on the battle.

[BrokenMnemonic]

It's also possible that it was just an early sign of the SLDF's often bloated procurement and bureaucratic inertia, with the LF battery fitted simply because the decision was made a couple of years prior when it was actually of greater use.

My guess is that given that refits on this scale would be complex and time consuming, the lead time to the launch of the first refitted vessel was probably substantial. Even before the months and months of actual spanner turning, you'd have the design time and the procurement time for the components; you'd also have the time taken to negotiate a commercial contract to conduct the work with whichever of the civilian companies was going to do the work, and possibly an open competition before that where several companies would put together bid proposals and bid. The lead time to the launch of the first time was probably several years from the requirement first being endorsed by the SLDF - and presumably backed up by funding being programmed into be available.

Added to which, once you reach the point where the contract for work has been signed, you'll often find it's almost cheaper to let the work be done than it is to cancel the contract, if it turns out the work is no longer needed because the threat's changed. Given that at the end, you're getting an improved ship out of it, and given that the Reunification War was also a big test of just how willing the various member states were to cooperate with the new, shiny, Hegemony-centric Star League, it's entirely likely that the senior officers responsible for the funding decided it was a good idea to let the contract run, even if the immediate need on the battlefield had faded.

[Weirdo]

Given the sheer number of really good decisions made about the Aegis, I'm going to attribute a rare showing of foresight to this. The Star League's top planners knew that after the Reunification War, they were going to be responsible for a truly vast volume of space, and knowing Terran attitudes, they probably still didn't completely trust the forces contributed by the member states. Converting and upgrading the Aegis class provides a (relatively) easy way to add a large number of strategically mobile heavy units to your TO&E, greatly expanding your ability to respond to far-flung crises. There's also the fact that an L-F ship with a decent map of a system's pirate points and a skilled tech at the charging station is an utter beast to face over the course of a system-control campaign. Able to evade superior forces and strategically ambush inferior ones, even a badly outnumbered L-F WarShip can easily wage a short of guerrilla war against invaders Cochran-style until help can arrive.

[marauder648]

Another idea of 'why the Aegis' for its LF battery refit instead of the then newer and on paper more capable Avatar. 

It was a test group.  The Aegis by this point is a very well known weapon system, its tried, tested, reliable and seemingly easy to maintain (considering the class is still in service today that must mean they can be repaired and updated easily).

The SLDF saw the advantages of the LF system but it needed testing first, they needed to know that it worked, that it was reliable, and they needed to develop a doctrine for it.  So instead of spending god knows how much giving the new Avatar class this untested system and development, they went for a smaller test group with the Aegis.  This way they don't spend too much if the LF system is found to not work outside of tightly controlled testing.

This is even helped by the fact that the Avatar was plagued with electrical gremlins throughtout its life that saw it retired before the Aegis class and they were never fixed until the Clans converted them into their Liberator class.

[Weirdo]

The Avatar does have an L-F Battery. I think the only heavy cruiser ever built without one is the Sovetskii Soyuz, and that was a budget ship meant to be mass produced.

[marauder648]

It does? How the hell did I miss that.

Oh blimey! It does!

*feels dumb*

[Rage]

The Avatar does have an L-F Battery. I think the only heavy cruiser ever built without one is the Sovetskii Soyuz, and that was a budget ship meant to be mass produced.

Not to mention used as a flotilla/squadron leader for heavy destroyers like the Essex II and Lola III, both of which lacked LF Batteries.

[Jellico]

The consensus around here is that the Sov Soys are frigate replacements.

You need to remember that by 2700 the Hegemony haf won. There was no other peer navy. Instead you are looking at police actions and insurgencies. So raw fighting power is less important than the ability to support a squadron of small craft that do the intercepts and patrols.

[I am Belch II]

Nice write up.

[croaker]

Nice writeup.

You left out the picture, though.

Here's a good one.

[Colt Ward]

Dear GOD!  Someone dumped some blood into shark infested waters!  Oh the HUMANITY!

[Stormlion1]

Always liked the Aegis, but I have only used one once and that was in a Blood Spirit/Star Adder game and it was destroyed relatively quickly by massed fire. Dezgra Star Adders.