Voidcruisers
A voidcruiser is a mobile ordnance deployment platform, named after the weapons the earliest militarized voidcruisers were used to deploy - long-cruise duration missiles. The earliest voidcruisers and the Empire's latest-generation designs all share similar strategic characteristics - long combat endurance, the ability to travel long distances quickly via superluminal transit, and the ability to act as an independent, self-contained combat unit. However, unlike the earliest designs, the hallmark of an Empire voidcruiser is its transit drive system - a dedicated faster-than-light travel methodology which permits sustained, high-speed transit over large interstellar distances, far faster over long distances than the warp drives that pre-Empire polities used for faster-than-light travel.
Although transit drive systems permit sustained, efficient faster than light travel, all known transit drive solutions have extensive spin-up and spin-down times and immense accuracy errors, making them difficult to use in combat situations except as a last-ditch escape method. All voidcruisers therefore possess a tactical warp drive, which provides them with the capacity to engage in superluminal and subluminal combat maneuvers. Warp drives propel a vehicle by means of an altered-spacetime bubble, which permits inertialess maneuvering in subluminal flight and the ability to achieve superluminal velocities. This bubble provides complete protection against high-energy celestial events and invariant weaponry, jams/distorts enemy sensors, and provides some measure of defense against many exotic munitions. However, the warp bubble creates an extensive interference/disruption zone much larger than the voidcruiser or drone itself, which can be immensely destructive to nearby objects, and its existence is difficult to hide at close ranges (although stealth systems are capable of reducing or even eliminating warp signatures at longer, superluminal ranges). Voidcruisers therefore also possess tertiary drive systems for close-maneuvering, although for most voidcruisers these drive systems are incapable of significant combat-relevant acceleration.
Voidcruisers were universally armed with at least defensive weaponry and extensive countermeasures - anyone with the wealth and influence necessary to afford a voidcruiser would inevitably have enemies and rivals with the resources to attempt a deep-black assassination. But most voidcruisers were fully militarized platforms, as the ubiquity of farcasters and the relative convenience of antimatter reaction drives for intrasystem travel (as most Empire citizens are heavily acceleration-hardened, sustained 10g accelerations were a mild inconvenience) meant that most interstellar craft were designed for military purposes, regardless of operator. The default assumption when the term "voidcruiser" is used is a weapon of warfare - a civilian voidcruiser is the rare exception.
Voidcruisers range from less than 200 meters long (like the Zanj Arms Concern Scimitar or the Hyperion Theotechnologies Kassadari) to massive platforms the size of celestial bodies (such as the FORCE/Combined Sol-class Anchor), but the typical voidcruiser ranges from 600 to 2500 meters long, which FORCE/Combined has found to be the optimal size range to balance various variables (including but not limited to ease of construction, resource and infrastructure requirements, individual combat capability, battlefront monitoring capacity, formation-networking capability, loss redundancy, and warp drive interference).
Only two types of voidcruiser regularly exceeded these sizes. The first type is the Hunter/Killer, a massive space superiority platform that was built larger than typical voidcruisers to carry additional information warfare equipment and superluminal ordnance without sacrificing subluminal combat capability. Even the smallest H/K designs are several kilometers long, and were often used as centerpieces of large offensive task forces. The second is the Anchor, a militarized megastructure intended to support entire expeditions into distant regions, possibly for centuries or more. Anchors possess the hardware and tools necessary to project a large region of friendly Architecture and even overwrite hostile Architecture, as well as internal military foundries capable of building and upgrading even Hunter/Killers, making them critical for FORCE/Combined offensive operations. To contain these systems, Anchors are large enough that their mere inert presence can disrupt solar systems, and they are relatively poorly protected and defended for their size - although they are still capable of driving off anything short of a massive task force.
