Length – 775 meters
Displacement – 770,000 tons
Crew Complement - 393
Bagration Class Transport Cruiser
As the Great Debate between the Crusader and Warden Clans picked up within the Homeworlds, Clan Jade Falcon’s Khan, Ackerly Hazen was determined that when, not if, they returned to the Inner Sphere, that the Falcons would be leading the way towards Terra. Although the Falcon’s were one of the most powerful Clans, and a leading light of the Crusader movement, they still did not know what they would be facing when they returned to the Inner Sphere.
There was every chance that the Inner Sphere had collapsed into chaos as much as the Bandit Lords of the ‘Great Houses’ managing to hold things together and continue to exist. Either way, they would not surrender their power willingly and would need to be fought.
To do this, large quantities of Warriors and their Mechs as well as Elementals and OmniFighters would need to be transported to the Inner Sphere in the march on Terra, and here the Falcons had a problem. Whilst they had large numbers of JumpShips, if the Inner Sphere’s powers had survived, then it was likely that the Clans would face hostile WarShips. If this was the case, then the Falcon’s extensive fleet of Cruisers would be needed to engage hostile ships, not carry troops. Experience from Operation Klondike and historical evidence from the Amaris War and the Reunification War showed that JumpShips were vulnerable to hostile fighters and terrifyingly exposed when faced with hostile WarShips. Unwilling to risk losing troops in space Khan Hazen ordered her Scientists and Technicians to design a WarShip that could perform the role of transport and troop carrier without resorting to building something on the scale of the titanic Potemkin class assault ships.
In 3001 the design was completed and presented to the Khans for approval. At 770,000 tons the design was slightly larger than the Aegis class vessels common to the Falcon Naval Reserve and they could fit into the same slips as the cruisers for repairs. Although the design featured only one Grav-Deck it was a very long one, filling out a large portion of the ships interior, much like the layout of the Potemkin class. This allowed the maximum space to be used for any troops carried aboard the 10 DropShips that could be carried aboard the new transport cruiser.
The ships armament was mostly centred around a battery of energy weapons with a focus on engaging and destroying hostile Assault DropShips or engaging Destroyer or Corvette class vessels that might be trying to stop the ship from delivering her troops. Sixteen light naval PPCs and eight NAC-10’s form her main anti-shipping punch whilst thirty-six 35cm lasers in quadruple and one octuple mount can engage fighters or DropShips. Somewhat controversially, the design featured a pair of heavy naval gauss rifles in the bow. Although ostensibly installed as anti-ship weapons, the paired rifles could be devastating in an orbital bombardment role. Close in defence is handled by a mix of ER Large lasers and gauss rifles at long range whilst turreted ultra-20 pattern weapons provide a lethal punch at short range against any fighter coming in to strike at the ship.
Finally the ship is dotted with anti-missile batteries giving 360-degree protection against inbound capital and fighter scale missile strikes.
This made the new design considerably better than the larger Volga class as well as not suffering the brutal cooling issues that plagued the Volga class when they were forced to use their weapons. The trade-off was that that the new vessel could carry less cargo than the Volga class with ‘only’ 100,000 tons allocated to supplies and spare parts. But she could also carry up to 15,000 tons of liquid cargo, allowing the ship to serve as a tanker for other WarShips and friendly DropShips or JumpShips.
The vessel was also not just a mere troopship, unlike the Volga the new design’s sensors and electronics could be linked into ground forces allowing the battle to be coordinated and observed from orbit. Two Stars of OmniFighters (20) are carried for self-defence whilst also being capable of supporting any battle on the ground or in orbit and six small craft allow the design to support most ground and fleet operations.
Impressed by the design Khan Hazen christened the class as the Bagration class, keeping with the Russian naming theme of previous classes that served similar roles. Initially six were ordered, then another two added once space was available at the yards. This was part of a planned re-organisation of the Falcons Naval reserve to have two dedicated Transport Stars, with the Falcons sole Volga and Carrack making out the final members of the Stars. But this building program was curtailed when the first intelligence reports from the Dragoons reached the Grand Council of the Khans. Without the risk of facing Spheroid WarShips there wasn’t the huge need for so large a number of armed transports. This lead to hull’s seven and eight that had already been laid down to be offered in trade. Clan Snow Raven would trade their Aegis class cruiser, bringing the Falcons up to 10 of that class in Falcon colours. The last hull would be taken by Clan Smoke Jaguar in a violent and bloody Trial of Possession fought on the Trial fields of Strana Mechty to prevent the Trial from escalating beyond the Cluster sized engagement it already was.
Many years later Clan Diamond Shark obtained the schematics for the class off the Falcons in turn for several runs of Mechs built to Falcon specs and this then saw the slow spread of the Bagration class amongst the Clans, with a further eight entering service with various Clans.
Despite the lack of hostile WarShips as a threat, all six ships would journey to the Inner Sphere carrying not only Warriors but all the supplies they would need. They would support the fleet of JumpShips and other WarShips that made up the Falcons part of Operation REVIVAL and provided vital grav-deck time for crew and passengers onboard the JumpShips as well as acting as mobile bases, shuttling over food and fuel to other ships in the Invasion force.
During REVIVAL only one ship the CJF Golden Merlin came under fire during the assault on Trell I, the Golden Merlin was entering low orbit when she was attacked by a Leopard class DropShip and sixteen FedCom aerospace fighters. With her own fighters busy attacking Davion forces on the world below the WarShip moved to engage the approaching hostiles whilst fighters were recalled from the surface. Turning to engage with her broadside batteries the Golden Merlin’s gunners quickly crippled the Leopard class DropShip which would later be captured and claimed as Isorla. The fighters, a mixture of Stuka’s and Lucifer’s could not stand up to the fire being directed at them and with nine fighters lost before they could engage, the survivors withdrew after only causing minimal damage to the Golden Merlin with LRM strikes that were greatly thinned out by the ships anti-missile batteries.
