Notable Ships (Caledish Empire):
Unit Type: Typhoon Class Heavy Assault Platform
Number of Cores: 8
Description: Bristling with guns, the Typhoon class skycruiser is designed to have more available firepower than a Gun Drone swarm of equal surface area. Capable of sortieing a sizable army of Drones on its own, it takes point in assaults almost every time one is available. A large enough wing of them can destroy almost anything, and they pack enough fuel, supplies, and ammunition for extended sea campaigns. An individual ship produces a volume of fire frequently compared to rainfall, possibly the source of its designation, and while the guns are primarily designed for air to air combat and rely heavily on volume of fire, they can be aimed with reasonable accuracy at almost anything else.
It’s armor is only heavy enough to ignore its own lighter weaponry, however, and hence closing the distance with a small but heavily armored Commander is less suicidal than one might think.
Name: The Light of Winter
Designation: Typhoon Class Heavy Assault Platform 00-27(C) Light of Winter
Maximum Drone Support: 6400
Crew: 200-650
Maximum Speed: 300Kph
Maximum Combat Speed: 80Kph
Description: The Light of Winter was a fairly successful unit, well crewed and rarely sent too far from resupply, and as such it lasted most of the way through the war, with many hands surviving it’s destruction. It’s loss was a moderate blow to morale, although it did not mark much of a change in momentum for either side.
Name: Star of Battle
Designation: Typhoon Class Heavy Assault Platform 00-35(D) Star of Battle
Description: The first Type D Typhoon, a slightly updated model from the Type C, but mostly just given more streamlined maintenance and mild performance upgrades. More dangerous than the Light of Winter, but not by much, although several of the crew did transfer to the Star of Battle upon the former’s destruction. It was destroyed slightly faster, mainly due to it choosing a fight out of it’s depth.
Unit Type: Blizzard Class Rapid Transport and Deployment Vehicle
Number of Cores: 6
Description: The Blizzard class PCV is the second most dangerous thing in the skies, as it carries smaller command units. It has twenty four hangars, two to an end and ten on each side, and looks boxy, but nonetheless somewhat sleek. Designed around the massive ion engine that takes up the central column of the craft, it can reach greater speeds than anything else on the field, Javelins and Assassin Jets excepted.
The engine has an experimental function that reverses the sequence of its coils, allowing it to launch magnetic objects, such as grouped Drones, or their Commanders. This has frequently been useful for rapid Drone deployments, but due to the nonuniform acceleration, actual piloted units have had more mixed results.
Name: Brace of Angels
Designation: Blizzard Class Transport And Deployment Vehicle 00-8β(experimental) Brace of Angels
Description: The Brace of Angels was well crewed, unexpectedly reliable given its nature, and has been through more than it’s share of battles. It has been refitted twice, and is now widely serviceable due to the approval of a larger scale production model. It survived the war, but was heavily damaged in one of the later battles and ended up incapable of participating for the last month and a half.
Name: Painted Blue
Designation: Captured Blizzard Class Rapid Transport And Deployment Vehicle 00-3β (experimental) Painted Blue
Description: The Blizzard Class RTD Painted Blue is the stuff of legends, having contributed to the highest number of sorties, enemy ships destroyed, and solo victories in the fleet, and it is famous on both sides, not least for its background; it was stolen, still incomplete, about halfway through the war, which was a major coup for the United Front, and likely the reason it was hyped so heavily. Its following success was probably responsible for rushing the Blizzard series to mass production, and the Javelin series was directly based on it.
Unit Type: Thunderhead Class Heavy Skycarrier
Number of Cores: 24
Description: The Thunderhead class is a flying aircraft carrier, designed for precise long range fire support as well as enormous fuel and ammunition reserves. To this end, it carries a number of relatively small Cores, spread over a wide frame to ensure maximum stability. Combined with the need for large midair support bays and an enormous number of drone control stations, it ends up looking quite bulky. Like many large Push Core vessels, it cannot safely land without a large body of water, but unlike most it requires less than four meters, as opposed to twenty.
Name: Rixington Daybreak
Designation: Thunderhead Class Heavy Fortification Unit 00-03(B) Rixington Daybreak
The Rixington Daybreak was stationed as the primary guard at Dallinsberg, with only minimal AA and ground controlled drone compliment for support, leaving the entire city vulnerable when it was shot down.
Unit Type: Hurricane Class Mobile Supply Depot
Number of Cores: 30
Description: The Hurricane class Skyfortress is a huge, semimobile battlestation, with nearly twice the mass of its precursor, the Thunderhead. It is capable of crushing almost any aboveground structure with its Pushfield, and actually requires more power than it can safely generate to reach altitudes safe for the ground below. They are equipped with many, many Dropsuits for descending to ground level and harvesting supplies, and the onboard food supply and power generation arrays are quite extensive, comparable to an actual fortress.
They were intended to act as a forward base from which to field other skycarriers, and to carry and harvest enough fuel and ammunition to support them, but due to the cost of construction only three were ever made. Of those produced one was captured before it was complete, and the second was a victim of repeated sabotage.
Name: Conquest Tower
Designation: Hurricane Class Mobile Supply Depot 00-02(A)
Description: The Conquest Tower was actually destroyed in a huge operation, as part of the last major push by the United Front, along with a large portion of the attached fleet. While it proved remarkably resilient, once a large enough swarm of Drones was able to breach the hull it fell, despite surviving until almost forty percent of the structure was compromised.Notable Ships (United Front):
Unit Type: Stratosphere Class Ultraheavy Skycarrier
Number of Cores: 21
Description: The Stratosphere class is the United Front’s answer to the Thunderheads, and to a lesser extent the Typhoons, as the UF have no direct counterpart to them.
As their combat doctrine emphasizes more ablative Drone cover over heavily armored command units, firepower over endurance, and more small Commanders over larger Command Ships, their capital ships tend to primarily serve support roles, sacrificing most of the control capacity of their counterparts for deeper ammunition and fuel reserves, better guns, and more Commander hangers. The Stratosphere class is not an exception. Only moderately armored for its size, but with more than four times the firepower of a Typhoon, and with better range, it is something of an anomaly in that all of its hangars are on the underside, with the rims being dedicated to armor and structural support. From the top or bottom, it appears vaguely hexagonal, but the curve is large and smooth enough to be difficult to notice from the side, appearing more circular.
Name: Waldenberg
Designation: Stratosphere Class Heavy Skycarrier 0012B Waldenberg
Description: The Waldenberg was one of the more successful units, although mostly only known in the military, and served as support for the Painted Blue five times in the course of its commission, making it the unit most frequently paired with said legendary captured Blizzard.
Unit Type: Meteor Class Strategic Assault Unit
Number of Cores: 15(all massive, and no more than eight active at a time)
Description: The answer to the Hurricane units, the Meteor class was designed to be the heaviest vehicle ever created, and capable of pulsing its Cores to achieve speeds equal to the fastest smaller units. It’s primary defense was intended to be it’s Cores, as it was heavy enough to flatten anything beneath it, would repel air forcefully enough to be a weapon in it’s own right, and be able to personally support a drone fleet equal to twenty standard Commanders. It failed, on every count, but it was an impressively close first try, and one was actually completed before the end of the war, despite starting construction half a year later than the Hurricanes.
Name: The Wind of Changing Fortune
Designation: Meteor Class Strategic Assault Unit 01(A) Wind of Changing Fortune
The first Meteor ever built, it provides the final boss fight for the Caledish Empire campaign, after wrecking multiple cities.
Unit Type: Quarrel Class Rapid Transport Unit
Number of Cores: 4
Description: Quarrel class units aren’t quite the backbone of the United Front aerial forces, which role goes to the actual Commanders, but they might be the knees. Quarrels are fast attack transports, each carrying up to four standard Arbiters or transport crates. Large rockets provide most of its thrust, at the cost of massive fuel tanks. Due to this arrangement, it doesn’t have much room for crew or weaponry, and is primarily designed to provide rapid deployment and extraction for Commanders in combat. It is surpassed in both roles by the newer Blizzard derived Javelins, but as it requires half the time and a third of the resources to produce, as well as significantly less training, they still have wide use.
Name: Archer’s Thimble
Designation: Quarrel Class Rapid Transport Unit Archer’s Thimble
The Archer’s Thimble was mostly notable for being Dylan ‘Raven’ Lucas Jones’ personal transport, although its crew did have something of a professional rivalry with the Merry Havoc.
Name: Merry Havoc
Designation: Quarrel Class Rapid Transport Unit Merry Havoc
Description: Primary transport of Lavie Eisenhardt. Slightly modified, as it was rarely used to deploy more than two Commanders at a time, so the rear Commander hookups were replaced with extra fuel and ammunition, on a more permanent basis than the standard containers that use the same clamps.
Unit Type: Grapeshot Class Prototype Rapid Combat Transport
Number of Cores: 6 (four primary, two backup)
Description: The Grapeshot class was a prototype for an uparmored, upgunned, six hangar successor to the Quarrels, but was edged out by the Javelins just before production. Nevertheless, it performed admirably in all trials, and there is some support for beginning its production as a smaller troop transport.
Name: Captain Jensen
Designation: Grapeshot Class Prototype Rapid Combat Transport Captain Jensen
Description: The Captain Jensen was one of the field prototypes of the Grapeshot class, and its Captain Jensen’s most memorable moment was probably when it actually charged a Typhoon to provide suppressing fire, and got away only partially due to the sheer surprise of the maneuver.
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