Blood, Sweat, and Tears (WH40k Design Bureau)
- Thread starter DaLintyGuy
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
A Buncha Fings Wot Playurz Fot Uv
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
- Location
- Indonesia
@DaLintyGuy here is all of the suggested research suggestions that have been posted on the thread but haven't been researched. Let me know if there is a tech that you don't think will work. @ me if you have an idea you want to be added to this list or you want to edit a reasearch.
Record of Suggested Research
Record of Suggested Research
(Utility) (@Magus Explorator I need a name for this module): as traitor and Ork forces try to initiate boarding combat and the inevitable conflict in the ground perhaps we can adapt some industrial Exo suits for combat operations for anti boarding teams and heavy weapons in the guard, a plated Exo suit seems best for that kind of conflict, upgrading the wearer strength and allowing him to carry heavier weapons and more equipment, it would allow a soldier to fight a low-level boy in single combat and depending on training and equipment almost always win, although the plate cannot stop direct hits it can deflect and tank shrapnel. - Shelter Power Armor
(Ordnance) Wasp Strike Fighter: With recent combat including performance data from both Fury and Starhawk Squadrons, home grown combat craft, and heretic converted civilian strike craft, as well as orkinoid crafted fighter-bombers, it has been decided to try once more to design a new form of strike craft for Calavar. Unlike former efforts the new 'Wasp' class craft are not based a on converted civilian hull, but instead designed from ground up to meet the projected performance needs of a dedicated space combat parasite, using heavy laser projectors and light plasma armaments derived from the collection of superheavy plasma weaponry retrieved from the orks to be a proper threat to other small craft. As well, attachments based on the external hardpoints for mission packages that the Arvus Combat Lighter possesses are included to enable the Wasp to carry short ranged unrotated projectiles based on the Indigent class Torpedo to allow properly equipped Wasps to damage, at least somewhat, enemy naval assets.
(Intended Statline - Fighter 1 or 2, Bomber 1) - Savior S-1 Multirole
(Housing) 'Bastion' housing complex. Further experience with ship building has allowed for more effective placement of ratings and deckhands living space; giving better 'elbow room' while keeping mass and space costs low. As an additional benefit, this redesign includes security garrisons at vital locations (reactor, warp drive etc) to counter on-board rebellions or boarding attempts.
(Engine) Plasma Pulse Drive Array: One means of increasing the thrust of the merchant grade drives is to compress the expelled plasma and propel it through a narrower aperture in the drive nozzle. Such would even theoretically allow the new drives to retain much of the original's fuel efficiency, more so than simply making the drives bigger. The only complication to doing so is the increased thermal stress on the components, which made long burns infeasible without access to more advanced materials. Instead, the reduced size has been taken advantage of to include a greater amount of thrusters in the drive assembly, firing in short pulses in tandem to facilitate greater speed without risk of melting the drive. Because of the smaller size, each nozzle can now also be mounted on a gimbal, which allows for greater fine maneuvering mid-burn.
(Defence) Haptrix-Alpha Interlock Shields: The Haptrix-pattern shields are a serviceable design, but are fairly expensive, and have proven somewhat unreliable in practice. Perhaps worse, they are projected to scale up poorly both in terms of cost and in ability to stop capital-scale weaponry. This redesigned version uses a smaller number of larger shields to simplify the design and strengthen each pane, and arranges them in two concentric shells with the panes offset like bricks to provide redundant coverage.
(Sensor) Distributed Array Auspex: The time when merchant grade sensors, no matter how expensive or cheap, can serve the crusade is now almost over. Fortunately, before this happened they've given the Mechanicus of Calavar ample information on what capabilities are needed for an actual, proper, militarized sensor array. Such requirements include hardened receivers that do not overload from detecting voidfire, a wide and distributed structure spread across the ship's hull for accurate long ranged scans, ample backups in case of combat degradation of said sensors, and specialized integrated cogitators to make sense of what the sensors are actually seeing. And lastly, they need to be hardened against enemy electronic counter-measures... or just plain old blasphemous screaming across the void. Fortunately, such capabilities are within the capacity of the Mechanicus to build. - T-150 Auspex
(Farstrike Lance add-on) Laser Containment Array: The Farstrike lance boasts damage output within spitting distance of standard IN lances, but its range is far shorter. This modification attempts to address this weakness by surrounding the particle beam in a shell of lasers. The additional damage dealt by these lasers is marginal at best; their real purpose is to contain the main beam by nudging stray particles back in the right direction.
(Weapon) Standard Macrocannon Battery Mk2: A natural iterative development of earlier Calavan macrocannons, the Mk2 utilizes many of the same components as the Mk1 to ease logistics concerns regarding spare parts. The key difference is two-fold; the electromagnetic coils in the gun's barrel have been wound twice as tightly to provide a significant increase to projectile velocity, and the batteries themselves have been installed with shock dampeners not unlike those in structures built on seismically active regions, so as to mitigate an incoming impact's effects on accuracy.
(Defense) Multilayer Rapid Shielding: As the distributed shield design of Haptrix-pattern shielding seems to be inherently unworkable at cruiser-scale, a new approach is needed. This new system still layers multiple weak shields, but uses conventional full bubble shields rather than smaller scales. The outermost layers are weakest and fastest to recharge, with the shields getting progressively stronger farther in, although of course even the innermost is much weaker than a traditional shield.
(Economy) Dockyard militarization: Although the Calavar-V dockyard has been greatly expanded and is being expanded further, replicating and expanding the existing systems does not change the fact that they were originally designed for small civilian vessels. Although they can nonetheless produce capable warships, it is not without some difficulties, especially when casting the great structural beams of a ship's frame. This project seeks to change that, reviewing the various bottlenecks of warship construction and improving the least adequate systems.
(Ground Army Core/Attachment) Lapis Signum-Pattern Shelter Armor: With the success of the Shelter Armor, many a techpriest has wondered how to upend the table on this discovery. The Lapsi Signum-Pattern Shelter Armor is the answer. By upscaling the armor instead of trying to fit technology that the Calavar Mechanicus does not have in a fitting size, the Lapis Signum aims to provide a 5-meter tall "micro knight" to carry multiple heavy armaments and anti-tank as well as anti-infantry weapons in the righteous fight. Due to the fact that this enhancement of the Shelter Armor is intended to play the role of super-heavy tank hunter and bunker-buster to aid in speedy reclamation of fallen worlds, heavy armor is utilized. Several plans for specialized versions to operate in Hives or onboard ships have already been tentatively planned, though they have been deemed as a non-priority to getting the Lapis Signum functional and in the field.
- Levy Medium Walker: The fruit of the collaboration that broke the stranglehold of the Conservative faction on the Outpost of Lexicalum. While less capable in every way than the slightly taller Armiger Pattern Knight chassis due to using plasteel and ceramite instead of Adamantium for armor and inferior weapon systems derived rather than designed, the Levy nonetheless proved a successful test of the concept as a flexible trooper design.
A small plasma reactor was placed just above the hips with the pilot seated above that in a reinforced capsule and armored derivative of the Preserver infantry armor. The small "head" of the unit mounted the primary sensor clusters with backups mounted on the chest and back while supplementary seismic and auditory receivers lined the feet. Armor plating ranged in thickness equivalent to a Leman Russ on the torso down to a Chimera on the limbs.
(Defense) Corona-pattern PD Array: While our strike craft have thus far proven adequate defense against the enemy's, it has been considered prudent by the Admiralty to have additional countermeasures on ships that the Crusade could scarcely afford to have struck by torpedoes. The cogitator framework that directs the fire of the Lascannon turrets has been adapted from conventional flak arrays and spliced into the ship Sensorium's datafeeds for enhanced target acquisition and tracking.
(Ordnance) Plasma Explosive Manufacturing Protocols: Thermo-cavitation shells have proven their value in Calavar's arsenal, but the high cost of manufacture prevents a widespread rollout. In order to make them more widely available, a standardized manufacturing process and associated specialized machinery will be created (possibly requiring some small tweaks to the design). In particular, automation of the most delicate parts of the reactor production should remove the need for direct Mechanicus involvement in every shell. In addition, the shells will be adapted for use in the Mk2 Macrocannons.
(Strikecraft) S-2 Interloper: An evolution of the S-1 Savior, this multirole strikecraft incorporates a number of small improvements. The engines are enlarged, and horizontally-mounted grav plating is added to serve as crude inertial compensation (though only for the main engines). The lascannons are replaced with more powerful models, and alternative clamps for anti-fighter missiles are available for when ship-killing munitions are not a priority. Perhaps most importantly, a slightly enlarged hull provides space for a copilot and some cramped crew space where the crew can eat (protein bars), drink (water), and see to their other bodily needs in the calmer moments of long deployments, extending the Interloper's effective range significantly.
(Life Support) Redoubt life support: Built with an eye towards redundancy and damage control, this improved life support system incorporates improved compartmentalization to more easily seal off damaged sections, fire suppression systems, numerous caches of repair tools and spare parts, and a few machine shops for supplying them. As it is not unusual for a ship to have months of relative downtime between engagements, training much of the crew to assist in damage control as needed should be straightforward. Although the additional air scrubbers and water purifiers are intended primarily for redundancy in case of damage, they also provide increased capacity, improving living conditions on board and therefore morale.
(Ordnance) "Intolerant"-model Torpedo: The Indignant model torpedo has served us well, but in the face of greater threats it is time to create something stronger. Removing the built-in point defense, and using the sensors to instead help guide the torpedoes into enemy ships, increasing the chance of hitting. Create an improved engine, allowing for stronger armor combined with more powerful explosives for a faster torpedo and an even stronger jet against enemy armor.
(Economy) Subsidiary Shipyards: With the expansion of the Calavar-V shipyard complete, projections are that further expansion would encounter significant diminishing returns. However, building small subsidiary shipyards in Crusade-controlled systems has the potential to multiplicatively increase their contributions. Preliminary plans are to build a central foundry and factorum surrounded by a docking ring, with slipways for repairs and construction on one side and heavy cargo-handling systems on the other.
(Engine) Pulsed Torch Plasma Drive: Although the maneuvering thrusters of the Pulsed Plasma Array Drive have proven more than satisfactory, the main bank of engines leaves something to be desired. Finally, after years of using the more standard Militarized Engines, a more voracious and powerful main thrust has been thought of that provides the speed that the old Array didn't. A veritable torch, if one would, while still having the same over all set up.
(Army) Cataphract Super-Heavy Armored Vehicle: In the face of the emergence of the Orkish 'Stompa', and the grievous casualties they have wrought, Calavar's minds turned to design a vehicle that could stem the advance of the green tide's newest creations. The Cataphract makes use of the cutting edge of Hegemon's technological base to become a tank that, while not individually the match of a Stompa, could fight on parity with them and win as a full squadron of three. The Cataphract's main armament consists of the ubiquitous Earthshaker Cannon, fully mounted on a turret large enough to contain the necessary recoil dampeners. The key difference to the main gun found on a Basilisk is the ammunition; the new Giantlancer shells are based on a miniaturized version of the Thermo-Cavitation Shells that have served Calavar's warships long and well. As well, the large turret allows for the inclusion of a coaxial twin-linked Lascannon and a new development; an autoloader for the gun's shells that will allow for an unprecedented rate of fire. To save room within the hull for ammunition, the rest of the armament on the Cataphract is energy-based, mounting several Multilasers in sponsons and in smaller secondary turrets to secure the tank against infantry assaults. The most advanced technology is found in it's fire control systems, however. Without need to calculate fire solutions for guns firing building-sized shells through the depths of space, the cogitator framework that has been derived from the design of the Groupsight Bridge has been miniaturized. Combined with state of the art communications systems, all tanks within a squadron are able to share target telemetry to focus fire on breaches in enemy armor. In addition to extensive armour plating, the Cataphract also features the protection of a Void Shield.
(Weapon) MK.III Macrocannons: The MK.II and even MK.Is have proven a success beyond all thought and doubt. But recent struggles with the Orks suggest that their short range renders any ship with them somewhat...vulnerable. The MK.III aim to fix that. Using data collected from a score and more clashes, both big and small, raids or actual battles, cognitator banks as well as more streamlined data processors will hopefully allow the Macrocannons to gain target acquisition at a much farther distance as well at a much faster rate.
(Ordnance) Wasp Strike Fighter: With recent combat including performance data from both Fury and Starhawk Squadrons, home grown combat craft, and heretic converted civilian strike craft, as well as orkinoid crafted fighter-bombers, it has been decided to try once more to design a new form of strike craft for Calavar. Unlike former efforts the new 'Wasp' class craft are not based a on converted civilian hull, but instead designed from ground up to meet the projected performance needs of a dedicated space combat parasite, using heavy laser projectors and light plasma armaments derived from the collection of superheavy plasma weaponry retrieved from the orks to be a proper threat to other small craft. As well, attachments based on the external hardpoints for mission packages that the Arvus Combat Lighter possesses are included to enable the Wasp to carry short ranged unrotated projectiles based on the Indigent class Torpedo to allow properly equipped Wasps to damage, at least somewhat, enemy naval assets.
(Intended Statline - Fighter 1 or 2, Bomber 1) - Savior S-1 Multirole
(Housing) 'Bastion' housing complex. Further experience with ship building has allowed for more effective placement of ratings and deckhands living space; giving better 'elbow room' while keeping mass and space costs low. As an additional benefit, this redesign includes security garrisons at vital locations (reactor, warp drive etc) to counter on-board rebellions or boarding attempts.
(Engine) Plasma Pulse Drive Array: One means of increasing the thrust of the merchant grade drives is to compress the expelled plasma and propel it through a narrower aperture in the drive nozzle. Such would even theoretically allow the new drives to retain much of the original's fuel efficiency, more so than simply making the drives bigger. The only complication to doing so is the increased thermal stress on the components, which made long burns infeasible without access to more advanced materials. Instead, the reduced size has been taken advantage of to include a greater amount of thrusters in the drive assembly, firing in short pulses in tandem to facilitate greater speed without risk of melting the drive. Because of the smaller size, each nozzle can now also be mounted on a gimbal, which allows for greater fine maneuvering mid-burn.
(Defence) Haptrix-Alpha Interlock Shields: The Haptrix-pattern shields are a serviceable design, but are fairly expensive, and have proven somewhat unreliable in practice. Perhaps worse, they are projected to scale up poorly both in terms of cost and in ability to stop capital-scale weaponry. This redesigned version uses a smaller number of larger shields to simplify the design and strengthen each pane, and arranges them in two concentric shells with the panes offset like bricks to provide redundant coverage.
(Sensor) Distributed Array Auspex: The time when merchant grade sensors, no matter how expensive or cheap, can serve the crusade is now almost over. Fortunately, before this happened they've given the Mechanicus of Calavar ample information on what capabilities are needed for an actual, proper, militarized sensor array. Such requirements include hardened receivers that do not overload from detecting voidfire, a wide and distributed structure spread across the ship's hull for accurate long ranged scans, ample backups in case of combat degradation of said sensors, and specialized integrated cogitators to make sense of what the sensors are actually seeing. And lastly, they need to be hardened against enemy electronic counter-measures... or just plain old blasphemous screaming across the void. Fortunately, such capabilities are within the capacity of the Mechanicus to build. - T-150 Auspex
(Farstrike Lance add-on) Laser Containment Array: The Farstrike lance boasts damage output within spitting distance of standard IN lances, but its range is far shorter. This modification attempts to address this weakness by surrounding the particle beam in a shell of lasers. The additional damage dealt by these lasers is marginal at best; their real purpose is to contain the main beam by nudging stray particles back in the right direction.
(Weapon) Standard Macrocannon Battery Mk2: A natural iterative development of earlier Calavan macrocannons, the Mk2 utilizes many of the same components as the Mk1 to ease logistics concerns regarding spare parts. The key difference is two-fold; the electromagnetic coils in the gun's barrel have been wound twice as tightly to provide a significant increase to projectile velocity, and the batteries themselves have been installed with shock dampeners not unlike those in structures built on seismically active regions, so as to mitigate an incoming impact's effects on accuracy.
(Defense) Multilayer Rapid Shielding: As the distributed shield design of Haptrix-pattern shielding seems to be inherently unworkable at cruiser-scale, a new approach is needed. This new system still layers multiple weak shields, but uses conventional full bubble shields rather than smaller scales. The outermost layers are weakest and fastest to recharge, with the shields getting progressively stronger farther in, although of course even the innermost is much weaker than a traditional shield.
(Economy) Dockyard militarization: Although the Calavar-V dockyard has been greatly expanded and is being expanded further, replicating and expanding the existing systems does not change the fact that they were originally designed for small civilian vessels. Although they can nonetheless produce capable warships, it is not without some difficulties, especially when casting the great structural beams of a ship's frame. This project seeks to change that, reviewing the various bottlenecks of warship construction and improving the least adequate systems.
(Ground Army Core/Attachment) Lapis Signum-Pattern Shelter Armor: With the success of the Shelter Armor, many a techpriest has wondered how to upend the table on this discovery. The Lapsi Signum-Pattern Shelter Armor is the answer. By upscaling the armor instead of trying to fit technology that the Calavar Mechanicus does not have in a fitting size, the Lapis Signum aims to provide a 5-meter tall "micro knight" to carry multiple heavy armaments and anti-tank as well as anti-infantry weapons in the righteous fight. Due to the fact that this enhancement of the Shelter Armor is intended to play the role of super-heavy tank hunter and bunker-buster to aid in speedy reclamation of fallen worlds, heavy armor is utilized. Several plans for specialized versions to operate in Hives or onboard ships have already been tentatively planned, though they have been deemed as a non-priority to getting the Lapis Signum functional and in the field.
- Levy Medium Walker: The fruit of the collaboration that broke the stranglehold of the Conservative faction on the Outpost of Lexicalum. While less capable in every way than the slightly taller Armiger Pattern Knight chassis due to using plasteel and ceramite instead of Adamantium for armor and inferior weapon systems derived rather than designed, the Levy nonetheless proved a successful test of the concept as a flexible trooper design.
A small plasma reactor was placed just above the hips with the pilot seated above that in a reinforced capsule and armored derivative of the Preserver infantry armor. The small "head" of the unit mounted the primary sensor clusters with backups mounted on the chest and back while supplementary seismic and auditory receivers lined the feet. Armor plating ranged in thickness equivalent to a Leman Russ on the torso down to a Chimera on the limbs.
(Defense) Corona-pattern PD Array: While our strike craft have thus far proven adequate defense against the enemy's, it has been considered prudent by the Admiralty to have additional countermeasures on ships that the Crusade could scarcely afford to have struck by torpedoes. The cogitator framework that directs the fire of the Lascannon turrets has been adapted from conventional flak arrays and spliced into the ship Sensorium's datafeeds for enhanced target acquisition and tracking.
(Ordnance) Plasma Explosive Manufacturing Protocols: Thermo-cavitation shells have proven their value in Calavar's arsenal, but the high cost of manufacture prevents a widespread rollout. In order to make them more widely available, a standardized manufacturing process and associated specialized machinery will be created (possibly requiring some small tweaks to the design). In particular, automation of the most delicate parts of the reactor production should remove the need for direct Mechanicus involvement in every shell. In addition, the shells will be adapted for use in the Mk2 Macrocannons.
(Strikecraft) S-2 Interloper: An evolution of the S-1 Savior, this multirole strikecraft incorporates a number of small improvements. The engines are enlarged, and horizontally-mounted grav plating is added to serve as crude inertial compensation (though only for the main engines). The lascannons are replaced with more powerful models, and alternative clamps for anti-fighter missiles are available for when ship-killing munitions are not a priority. Perhaps most importantly, a slightly enlarged hull provides space for a copilot and some cramped crew space where the crew can eat (protein bars), drink (water), and see to their other bodily needs in the calmer moments of long deployments, extending the Interloper's effective range significantly.
(Life Support) Redoubt life support: Built with an eye towards redundancy and damage control, this improved life support system incorporates improved compartmentalization to more easily seal off damaged sections, fire suppression systems, numerous caches of repair tools and spare parts, and a few machine shops for supplying them. As it is not unusual for a ship to have months of relative downtime between engagements, training much of the crew to assist in damage control as needed should be straightforward. Although the additional air scrubbers and water purifiers are intended primarily for redundancy in case of damage, they also provide increased capacity, improving living conditions on board and therefore morale.
(Ordnance) "Intolerant"-model Torpedo: The Indignant model torpedo has served us well, but in the face of greater threats it is time to create something stronger. Removing the built-in point defense, and using the sensors to instead help guide the torpedoes into enemy ships, increasing the chance of hitting. Create an improved engine, allowing for stronger armor combined with more powerful explosives for a faster torpedo and an even stronger jet against enemy armor.
(Economy) Subsidiary Shipyards: With the expansion of the Calavar-V shipyard complete, projections are that further expansion would encounter significant diminishing returns. However, building small subsidiary shipyards in Crusade-controlled systems has the potential to multiplicatively increase their contributions. Preliminary plans are to build a central foundry and factorum surrounded by a docking ring, with slipways for repairs and construction on one side and heavy cargo-handling systems on the other.
(Engine) Pulsed Torch Plasma Drive: Although the maneuvering thrusters of the Pulsed Plasma Array Drive have proven more than satisfactory, the main bank of engines leaves something to be desired. Finally, after years of using the more standard Militarized Engines, a more voracious and powerful main thrust has been thought of that provides the speed that the old Array didn't. A veritable torch, if one would, while still having the same over all set up.
(Army) Cataphract Super-Heavy Armored Vehicle: In the face of the emergence of the Orkish 'Stompa', and the grievous casualties they have wrought, Calavar's minds turned to design a vehicle that could stem the advance of the green tide's newest creations. The Cataphract makes use of the cutting edge of Hegemon's technological base to become a tank that, while not individually the match of a Stompa, could fight on parity with them and win as a full squadron of three. The Cataphract's main armament consists of the ubiquitous Earthshaker Cannon, fully mounted on a turret large enough to contain the necessary recoil dampeners. The key difference to the main gun found on a Basilisk is the ammunition; the new Giantlancer shells are based on a miniaturized version of the Thermo-Cavitation Shells that have served Calavar's warships long and well. As well, the large turret allows for the inclusion of a coaxial twin-linked Lascannon and a new development; an autoloader for the gun's shells that will allow for an unprecedented rate of fire. To save room within the hull for ammunition, the rest of the armament on the Cataphract is energy-based, mounting several Multilasers in sponsons and in smaller secondary turrets to secure the tank against infantry assaults. The most advanced technology is found in it's fire control systems, however. Without need to calculate fire solutions for guns firing building-sized shells through the depths of space, the cogitator framework that has been derived from the design of the Groupsight Bridge has been miniaturized. Combined with state of the art communications systems, all tanks within a squadron are able to share target telemetry to focus fire on breaches in enemy armor. In addition to extensive armour plating, the Cataphract also features the protection of a Void Shield.
(Weapon) MK.III Macrocannons: The MK.II and even MK.Is have proven a success beyond all thought and doubt. But recent struggles with the Orks suggest that their short range renders any ship with them somewhat...vulnerable. The MK.III aim to fix that. Using data collected from a score and more clashes, both big and small, raids or actual battles, cognitator banks as well as more streamlined data processors will hopefully allow the Macrocannons to gain target acquisition at a much farther distance as well at a much faster rate.
- Firestorm Light Lance: While the technology behind Lances is well understood, mounting them on escorts presents two challenges. First is that advanced plasma reactors are needed to charge the capacitors in an acceptable time frame and the weapon can be 'overkill' against lighter targets. The Firestorm borrows from adjustable setting lasgun patterns by giving the weapons crew the option of either firing a full strength blast (draining the capacitors) or multiple weaker, shorter ranged shots.
- Lightning Bolt Macrocannon: While the Thunderclap's performance is lacklustre due to the ion having cohesion problems once it leaves the barrel, why not use the linear accelerator of the Thunderclap and use it to launch solid Macro slugs instead, circumventing the problem. By having it be mounted on the prow, there is more space for linear accelerators than from Macrocannons on Broadside mounts, resulting in the ability to launch the rounds much faster at increased range, accuracy, and kinetic impact as it will arrive at its target much faster than shots from our Macrocannons.
- Cavalan macrocannon battery MK1* (turreted): The experience the gun crews on Cavalan corvettes have gained during the early stages of the Crusade as well as the more experienced Cavalan shipwrights lead to an improved turreted macrocannon batteries. This improvement mainly consists of a better lay out for the turret that simplifies the operation of the guns through somewhat improved ergonomics. This allows for a more efficient maintenance and simplifies reloading operations. The main improvement however is the improved gun laying equipment that allows for a more reliable adjustment of the guns through the use of hydraulic power based on mining equipment and the introduction of a rotating, enclosed turret basket that provides additional shielding of the turrets interior from shrapnel and spelling. And finally, the better local fire control that comes from experience with Groupsight Combat Bridges. All in all, this improves reliability and accuracy.
- Thunderhead Disruption Battery: While the thunderclap was a rather disappointing first generation experiment in ionized particle weapons, it did offer proof of concept and unveil new avenues of development. In particular, the properties of the energy transfer on target have aroused some speculation and interest. While the Thunderclap was a failure at getting a lance scale weapon out, some have thought 'well, why not make it a battery then?'. And so they utilized the same particle acceleration principles as used in the lance in mass bank arrays, using a higher number of expected impacts and repeated attacks to both damage the enemy with ravening particle bursts and cause disrupting havoc throughout as the charges electrocute stuff that should not be covered in electricity.
- External Fighter Racks: These external servicing gantries and launch catapult allow a ship to carry one or two void-craft. While this is a pittance, a dedicated interceptor design can be attached to freighters to give them organic support, or a bomber used as a long-range scout. They are cheap, and take up only a token amount of space, primarily on the ventral surface where most Imperial ships don't have weapons to block their launch angles.
- Long-Barrel Macrocannon Battery Mk1: In an effort to match the range of standard Imperial Navy macrocannons, this battery sports several modifications. First, it fires smaller shells at a much higher velocity in an effort to simplify long-range targeting, ideally with minimal reduction in damage output. Second, the great engines that aim the cannons are fitted with variable gearing, allowing them to make precise fine adjustments. Lastly, the predictive aiming cogitators are upgraded to consider not only the target's position, velocity, and current acceleration, but also its observed maneuverability, allowing the crew to aim shots at places the target might try to dodge to.
- Hellblaster-Pattern Macrocannon: The admiralty is always looking for better weapons to fight the enemies of Man and so improving the firepower of our vessels will be a welcome advantage to have. Because we do not have the materials or the means to construct an Imperial Macrocannon yet, we will have to think unconventionally as it were. Damage and Range aren't the only measure that we should focus on, rate of fire is another factor that can tilt the balance of power. Hellstorm Pattern Macrocannon imitates the design of the ancient Stub-Revolver in the form of a motorized cylinder to hold Macrorounds and a powerful hydraulic piston to push the rounds into the breach, the Hellstorm is estimated to be able to shoot its entire cylinder (Corvettes and Frigates are estimated to be able to hold 3 or 4 rounds in its chamber depending on the cylinder) in one initial burst before returning to a slightly slower rate of fire to an mk1. However when there is a lull in battle, the crew will have the time to reload all of the Macrocannon's cylinders regaining its ability to fire in a burst once again. With the extra space and not needing to be limited to rounds that would break current Macrocannon turrets, Hellblaster rounds can be significantly larger.
- Fulminate pattern particle batteries: Using the innovative dual ring design of the Farstrike system to feed multiple turret emplacements using a continuous feed of charged particles ready for harvesting. Each turret contains multitudes of emitters, with cogitators handling the transition between targeting fighters, bombers, and boarding craft; and linking the emitters to target naval targets. Provides ship scale weapons and Point Defense. Synergy bonuses if built with other dual ring designs, as they can share charged particles.
- Dual-Purpose Laser Batteries: These laser battery mounts consist of clusters of Lascannons focusing on a single point. Although a single larger beam would be more efficient, the advantage of this layout is that the constituent lasers can also be aimed independently for point defense work. (Intended stats: battery 1, PD 2+, range ideally short, very short is acceptable)
- Wave Motion Lance: The issue of range is best solved by keeping the particles from dispersing. We can create coherent beams of atoms (coherent matter waves), analogous to coherent light waves emitted by a conventional laser. This will allow the coherent atoms without separating from random bumping into each other, as happens in our current Lance. This may allow finer control of the output in future designs, as the coherent matter is affected by interference and diffraction.
- Pyroclast Plasma Lance: Like many lance weapons, the Farstrike lance has a tendency to overpenetrate, wasting much of its fury on the empty space behind its target. In an effort to solve this problem, this lance uses a cluster of smaller particle accelerators feeding into its beam rather than just two, allowing it to fire a larger volume of particles at a lower velocity for a longer period of time. Range and armor penetration both suffer, but when the beam strikes a target it decoheres into a cloud of furiously incandescent plasma, dangerous to armor and ruinous if it reaches a ship's internals. Any resemblance to the plasma weapons of the Hashim is surely coincidental.
- "Sunspot" Plasma Battery: A design based on studies of the plasma cannons salvaged from the Ork asteroid base these guns represent Calavar's first true steps into the field of naval plasma weaponry.
- Doublestrike Lance: By increasing the power of the Farstrike lance's containment lasers, it should be possible to produce a dual-action lance that inflicts damage with both the particle beam itself and the lasers surrounding it. Some Mechanicus believe they can go further, and use the lasers to continue accelerating the beam as it travels, while at the same time improving containment further. Well, actually they start talking about precisely aligned polarization, and interference patterns, and quantum wave-guides, and probability troughs, but "make the particles go faster" is about all that normal people can get out of it.
- "Tachocline" Las macrocannon: Essentially a lascannon enormously scaled up, the "Tachocline" would be Calavar's first foray into capital scale laser weaponry. The simplicity of las weapons in general should lend itself to a reduced logistical footprint in reduced maintenance as well as no longer needing shells to be manufactured.
- "Blaze Lock" Capacitor System: Should the Tachocline perform as expected, a capacitor system similar in function to Hotshot las power packs has been proposed to further increase firepower. Reinforced power feeds, increased cooling, and a lens more forgiving of heat warping may be required if the capacitor system increases yields beyond standard tolerances.
- Rapid-Fire Mode: Another approach for making main weaponry pull double duty as point defense. Lances already excel at taking precise shots at targets the size of a reactor, magazine, or shield generator, even at long range against rapidly maneuvering targets. In theory, the only thing that stops them from easily dealing with strike craft and torpedoes is their extremely limited rate of fire. Adding the ability to discharge small fractions of the capacitor in rapid succession instead of discharging the whole capacitator once should easily solve this, albeit the reduced beam intensity likely leads to a reduced maximum range before dispersion overcomes it's ability to inflict damage at all.
Mechanical effect: Lances gain a PD stat, but with less than their full range, possibly also with minimum range due to limited traverse.
Projected difficulty: Low. Relatively easy trigger modification.
Projected cost: Low. Some alternate or added electrical components.
- Secondary battery: With the introduction of dual-purpose guns, a warship's main armament becomes a capable supplement for point defense, but only on lighter vessels. For capital ships to take advantage of this, some of their armament will need to be drastically reduced in caliber, making up for the reduced firepower per shot with number of barrels and reload speed, and mounted in turrets to have good all-round coverage.
Prerequisite: Airburst Shells
Mechanical effect: Modifies a slot's worth of turret or broadside macrobattery to consist of many escort/light cruiser-sized turrets instead of the normal small number of heavy guns; Reduces armor-piercing ability, possibly reduces range and damage (though sheer volume of fire may offset that), in exchange the modified weapons gain a PD stat. Can only be mounted on cruisers and larger, light cruisers at absolute minimum. Broadside turrets have a 180° field of fire, to the front and the respective side.
Projected difficulty: Lowish. Mostly consists of figuring out how to cram as many guns as possible into limited volume without compromising fields of fire, armor, or ammo and power feeds.
Projected cost: Same as conventional batteries, or possibly cheaper.
- Ionstrike Lance: Based directly on the Farstrike Lance, the Ionstrike uses the same systems, but in a different matter. Instead of being a particle lance, it is an ionized particle lance, not just damaging targets with the impact of the particles but also dumping huge amounts of charge into whatever target the lance shoots at. This ionic overload... well, overloads equipment around wherever the lances hits, causing cascading malfunctions around the impact zone. Granted, against a well designed, well maintained target this first stride in the direction of disruption weapons will likely have only minimal effect, but neither ork freebooters or cultist scum are known for well maintained and well designed vessels.
- Lightning Bolt Macrocannon: While the Thunderclap's performance is lacklustre due to the ion having cohesion problems once it leaves the barrel, why not use the linear accelerator of the Thunderclap and use it to launch solid Macro slugs instead, circumventing the problem. By having it be mounted on the prow, there is more space for linear accelerators than from Macrocannons on Broadside mounts, resulting in the ability to launch the rounds much faster at increased range, accuracy, and kinetic impact as it will arrive at its target much faster than shots from our Macrocannons.
- Cavalan macrocannon battery MK1* (turreted): The experience the gun crews on Cavalan corvettes have gained during the early stages of the Crusade as well as the more experienced Cavalan shipwrights lead to an improved turreted macrocannon batteries. This improvement mainly consists of a better lay out for the turret that simplifies the operation of the guns through somewhat improved ergonomics. This allows for a more efficient maintenance and simplifies reloading operations. The main improvement however is the improved gun laying equipment that allows for a more reliable adjustment of the guns through the use of hydraulic power based on mining equipment and the introduction of a rotating, enclosed turret basket that provides additional shielding of the turrets interior from shrapnel and spelling. And finally, the better local fire control that comes from experience with Groupsight Combat Bridges. All in all, this improves reliability and accuracy.
- Thunderhead Disruption Battery: While the thunderclap was a rather disappointing first generation experiment in ionized particle weapons, it did offer proof of concept and unveil new avenues of development. In particular, the properties of the energy transfer on target have aroused some speculation and interest. While the Thunderclap was a failure at getting a lance scale weapon out, some have thought 'well, why not make it a battery then?'. And so they utilized the same particle acceleration principles as used in the lance in mass bank arrays, using a higher number of expected impacts and repeated attacks to both damage the enemy with ravening particle bursts and cause disrupting havoc throughout as the charges electrocute stuff that should not be covered in electricity.
- External Fighter Racks: These external servicing gantries and launch catapult allow a ship to carry one or two void-craft. While this is a pittance, a dedicated interceptor design can be attached to freighters to give them organic support, or a bomber used as a long-range scout. They are cheap, and take up only a token amount of space, primarily on the ventral surface where most Imperial ships don't have weapons to block their launch angles.
- Long-Barrel Macrocannon Battery Mk1: In an effort to match the range of standard Imperial Navy macrocannons, this battery sports several modifications. First, it fires smaller shells at a much higher velocity in an effort to simplify long-range targeting, ideally with minimal reduction in damage output. Second, the great engines that aim the cannons are fitted with variable gearing, allowing them to make precise fine adjustments. Lastly, the predictive aiming cogitators are upgraded to consider not only the target's position, velocity, and current acceleration, but also its observed maneuverability, allowing the crew to aim shots at places the target might try to dodge to.
- Hellblaster-Pattern Macrocannon: The admiralty is always looking for better weapons to fight the enemies of Man and so improving the firepower of our vessels will be a welcome advantage to have. Because we do not have the materials or the means to construct an Imperial Macrocannon yet, we will have to think unconventionally as it were. Damage and Range aren't the only measure that we should focus on, rate of fire is another factor that can tilt the balance of power. Hellstorm Pattern Macrocannon imitates the design of the ancient Stub-Revolver in the form of a motorized cylinder to hold Macrorounds and a powerful hydraulic piston to push the rounds into the breach, the Hellstorm is estimated to be able to shoot its entire cylinder (Corvettes and Frigates are estimated to be able to hold 3 or 4 rounds in its chamber depending on the cylinder) in one initial burst before returning to a slightly slower rate of fire to an mk1. However when there is a lull in battle, the crew will have the time to reload all of the Macrocannon's cylinders regaining its ability to fire in a burst once again. With the extra space and not needing to be limited to rounds that would break current Macrocannon turrets, Hellblaster rounds can be significantly larger.
- Fulminate pattern particle batteries: Using the innovative dual ring design of the Farstrike system to feed multiple turret emplacements using a continuous feed of charged particles ready for harvesting. Each turret contains multitudes of emitters, with cogitators handling the transition between targeting fighters, bombers, and boarding craft; and linking the emitters to target naval targets. Provides ship scale weapons and Point Defense. Synergy bonuses if built with other dual ring designs, as they can share charged particles.
- Dual-Purpose Laser Batteries: These laser battery mounts consist of clusters of Lascannons focusing on a single point. Although a single larger beam would be more efficient, the advantage of this layout is that the constituent lasers can also be aimed independently for point defense work. (Intended stats: battery 1, PD 2+, range ideally short, very short is acceptable)
- Wave Motion Lance: The issue of range is best solved by keeping the particles from dispersing. We can create coherent beams of atoms (coherent matter waves), analogous to coherent light waves emitted by a conventional laser. This will allow the coherent atoms without separating from random bumping into each other, as happens in our current Lance. This may allow finer control of the output in future designs, as the coherent matter is affected by interference and diffraction.
- Pyroclast Plasma Lance: Like many lance weapons, the Farstrike lance has a tendency to overpenetrate, wasting much of its fury on the empty space behind its target. In an effort to solve this problem, this lance uses a cluster of smaller particle accelerators feeding into its beam rather than just two, allowing it to fire a larger volume of particles at a lower velocity for a longer period of time. Range and armor penetration both suffer, but when the beam strikes a target it decoheres into a cloud of furiously incandescent plasma, dangerous to armor and ruinous if it reaches a ship's internals. Any resemblance to the plasma weapons of the Hashim is surely coincidental.
- "Sunspot" Plasma Battery: A design based on studies of the plasma cannons salvaged from the Ork asteroid base these guns represent Calavar's first true steps into the field of naval plasma weaponry.
- Doublestrike Lance: By increasing the power of the Farstrike lance's containment lasers, it should be possible to produce a dual-action lance that inflicts damage with both the particle beam itself and the lasers surrounding it. Some Mechanicus believe they can go further, and use the lasers to continue accelerating the beam as it travels, while at the same time improving containment further. Well, actually they start talking about precisely aligned polarization, and interference patterns, and quantum wave-guides, and probability troughs, but "make the particles go faster" is about all that normal people can get out of it.
- "Tachocline" Las macrocannon: Essentially a lascannon enormously scaled up, the "Tachocline" would be Calavar's first foray into capital scale laser weaponry. The simplicity of las weapons in general should lend itself to a reduced logistical footprint in reduced maintenance as well as no longer needing shells to be manufactured.
- "Blaze Lock" Capacitor System: Should the Tachocline perform as expected, a capacitor system similar in function to Hotshot las power packs has been proposed to further increase firepower. Reinforced power feeds, increased cooling, and a lens more forgiving of heat warping may be required if the capacitor system increases yields beyond standard tolerances.
- Rapid-Fire Mode: Another approach for making main weaponry pull double duty as point defense. Lances already excel at taking precise shots at targets the size of a reactor, magazine, or shield generator, even at long range against rapidly maneuvering targets. In theory, the only thing that stops them from easily dealing with strike craft and torpedoes is their extremely limited rate of fire. Adding the ability to discharge small fractions of the capacitor in rapid succession instead of discharging the whole capacitator once should easily solve this, albeit the reduced beam intensity likely leads to a reduced maximum range before dispersion overcomes it's ability to inflict damage at all.
Mechanical effect: Lances gain a PD stat, but with less than their full range, possibly also with minimum range due to limited traverse.
Projected difficulty: Low. Relatively easy trigger modification.
Projected cost: Low. Some alternate or added electrical components.
- Secondary battery: With the introduction of dual-purpose guns, a warship's main armament becomes a capable supplement for point defense, but only on lighter vessels. For capital ships to take advantage of this, some of their armament will need to be drastically reduced in caliber, making up for the reduced firepower per shot with number of barrels and reload speed, and mounted in turrets to have good all-round coverage.
Prerequisite: Airburst Shells
Mechanical effect: Modifies a slot's worth of turret or broadside macrobattery to consist of many escort/light cruiser-sized turrets instead of the normal small number of heavy guns; Reduces armor-piercing ability, possibly reduces range and damage (though sheer volume of fire may offset that), in exchange the modified weapons gain a PD stat. Can only be mounted on cruisers and larger, light cruisers at absolute minimum. Broadside turrets have a 180° field of fire, to the front and the respective side.
Projected difficulty: Lowish. Mostly consists of figuring out how to cram as many guns as possible into limited volume without compromising fields of fire, armor, or ammo and power feeds.
Projected cost: Same as conventional batteries, or possibly cheaper.
- Ionstrike Lance: Based directly on the Farstrike Lance, the Ionstrike uses the same systems, but in a different matter. Instead of being a particle lance, it is an ionized particle lance, not just damaging targets with the impact of the particles but also dumping huge amounts of charge into whatever target the lance shoots at. This ionic overload... well, overloads equipment around wherever the lances hits, causing cascading malfunctions around the impact zone. Granted, against a well designed, well maintained target this first stride in the direction of disruption weapons will likely have only minimal effect, but neither ork freebooters or cultist scum are known for well maintained and well designed vessels.
- Metal Foam Armor: With the amount of ship repairs starting to add up, a new type of modular armor that is cheaper to make and provide superior protection than previous generation of armor would help cut costs and save more lives. By introducing bubbles inside of the armor, the armor will crumple and deform which will absorb more of the impact of kinetic weapons while also providing a noticable resistance against energy weapons as the air bubbles inside the foam provide a significant degree of thermal insulation. Because it can be considered a foam, it is much lighter than conventional solid armor allowing for faster ships of the same size or larger ships of the same speed. Used in conjunction with Scaffold armor can provide a significant upgrade in the amount of protection for a relatively low price using standard plasteel alloy armor.
- Advanced Composite Armor: While the recent creation of scaffold armor ha improved survivability, the bones of our ships are still those of merchant vessels; not designed to take the stresses of combat. By re-examining the materials we can use and combining them in new ways, it should be possible to create stronger alloys then what were typically used for non-combat ships.
- Haptrix-B Rapid Shields: As successful as the Rapid Shields have been on the Hegemon's warships, the current production models are not projected to be sufficient for ships beyond the size of Frigates. In the interests of simplicity, the Haptrix-B shall operate on similar principles as its predecessor, but takes advantage of being mounted on a larger vessel to scale up the Void Shield generators and their emitters, so as to provide adequate coverage.
- Thunderhead Disruptor Array: While the Thunderclap was rather disappointing as a lance, new avenues of research to pursue have been uncovered by this first attempt to develop our own domestically produced void combat scale direct energy weapons. In particular, the properties of the energy transfer on target have aroused some speculation. In any case, the weapon is much too large in its current state to be serviceable, so the first stage of development for the Thunderhead array is to attempt to miniaturize the weapon to a scale not much larger than conventional point defense guns. While such would make the weapon useless against true voidships, it would allow the Thunderclap to be used as a point defense weapon, especially if the energy transfer were to be enhanced, to say nothing of the possibility of mounting such weapons to smaller platforms than warships...
- Ultralight Void Shield: Taking advantage of Calavar's experience with undersized void shields, this miniaturized shield is less powerful than even a single pane of a Haptrix-pattern shield array. Undersized and underpowered, it provides no meaningful protection against anything heavier than a point-defense turret. However, for strike craft and especially boarding craft, protection against point-defense is a major asset, and this generator is so small that these vessels can reasonably mount it.
- Hydra class sprint missiles: Simple tube style launchers containing a multitude of small sprint missiles to engage ordinance and strikecraft attached to the PD turrets as a one time surprise against any hostile groupings of such things.
- Calavar Typewriter: A pair of battle cannon with an improved auto loader and a feed for either flak or sabot (depending on target) are linked together and mounted as Point Defense on ships to fire at incoming strike craft and ordinance. The turret itself is linked with a small cogitator to help the one manning it fire effectively at the quite fast targets it's intended to be used against.
- Macrostrike Macro-lance: A scaled down version of the Farstrike Lance, using the same basic twin-accelerator loops, at about 1/10th the scale and power to produce a broadside weapon free from the need for ammunition.
- Light Defense Suite: Consisting of a cut-down set of Haptrix shield generators and a thin layer of plassteel composite armor, this set of lightweight defenses masses only about as much as a typical shield or armor belt would alone. Of course, the performance of both suffers, but this is still a boon to ships that would otherwise be unable to mount both shields and armor.
- "Thunder Snow" Point Defence Battery: These Batteries use electromagnetic rails to launch discharging sabot seeker munitions inspired by the executioner shells used by the Adeptus Arbites, once impact is achieved, through the guidance of the munitions murderous machine spirit, the ancient Munroe effect is used to penetrate and if not destroy then seriously damage the target, alternately the munitions machine brain can be programmed to detonate it's duel-purpose warhead a set distance from the ship releasing a spray of hyper-velocity shrapnel and multi spectrum chaff.
- Fortress Pattern Shield Generator: As successful as the Rapid Shields have been on the Hegemon's warships, the current production models are not projected to be sufficient for ships beyond the size of Frigates and the limitations of a distributed array are becoming increasingly apparent. As such, drawing on all available information from previous shield designs and any safely usable data on enemy shield arrays possessed by Calavar, a new shield is to be designed that functions more standardly, with a single primary generator generating a shield bubble big enough to cover an entire ship. As such, it can be scaled up to fit cruiser sized vessels without the projected reliability issues of distributed arrays, and while it does not possess an arrays ability to quickly come back online it also does not have their weakness to Lance type weapons and other attacks with a single great impact.
- Void Cluster Capacitors: While the Haptrix Rapid Shields have done good work in protecting our vessels, it's unique design is starting to show it's weaknesses, especially against Lances which shields are designed to defeat. One solution would be to backtrack and use more conventional singular shield that covers the whole ship. Another solution is to double down and improve the recharge speed of the Haptrix Shields. The Void Cluster Capacitors are multiple capacitors systems that can independently recharge a section of a Haptrix shield multiple times, with 1 capacitor in a cluster of 6 being able to fully recharge a section of Rapid Shields before needing a short amount of time to be fully charged enough to be used again. Should a ship be under fire from 1 direction, the Cluster Capacitors can fully recharge that section 6 or more times, drastically increasing our ships survivability. Each capacitor recharges one at a time. When used to charge a Mono-Shield system, the Cluster will dump all of its capacitors to charge the main shields requiring a long recharge period before it can be used again.
- Composite Armor: Long suffering from neglect, the field of warship armor has been left without significant development for years even as technology in other areas improved. The Composite Armor seeks to change that. Inspired by the armor found on the Sacred Legacy, the Composite Armor is, as the name suggests, a composite of different types of materials layered into a single whole. Taking the experience from the development of the Scaffold Armor (where multiple layers of primitive armor was utilized along with a hardened plasteel facing) and improved ship building combined with the inspiration from the wisdom of the Ancients the next generation of Calavan warship armor will be created.
- Hekatoncheiros-Pattern Point Defense Network: The Corona-pattern point defense turrets are tolerably effective, but their effective range is sharply limited by the low power of their small integrated sensors. By tying the point defenses into the ship's sensor network instead; it should be possible to extend their targeting range enough for ships in formation to protect each other.
- Echelon-Type Rapid Shield: While the Bubble-type shield does represent an improvement over the earlier Haptrix-type, it is not a straight upgrade; Part of the cost of the switch from pane- to bubble-geometry was the inherent redundancy of the former. This project aims to integrate the two types, retaining the advantages of both and the weaknesses of neither. Overall, it retains the concentric multilayered bubble layout of the Bubble, giving it that shield's resistance to lance strikes. However, each bubble is in turn made up of multiple panes as in the Haptrix, albeit with relatively large panes and few generators per layer - both scale with ship size, so that a larger ship doesn't necessarily have more emitters than a smaller one. The edges between panes are chosen so that they overlap the panes of adjacent layers. Perhaps the biggest innovation of the Echelon, however, is each emitter's ability to adjust in which direction exactly it projects it's section, allowing the pane to either be centered over the emitter, or offset to the side. In this way, adjacent panes can be shifted over holes and weakspots, or the entire canopy can be adjusted to strengthen coverage in one direction at the cost of weakening it towards the opposite.
Mechanical effect: Straight improvement of the Bubble-type Rapid Shield.
Projected difficulty: Medium to high. Known technology, but a significant advance within that.
Projected cost: Same as current shields, or possibly somewhat higher.
- DPDT 36 Point Defense Cannon: This cannon is made up of 6 liquid cooled rotating barrels that fire 6000 rounds per minute, mounted on a turret capable 360' of rotation and also capable of fire straight up (relative to the mounting point) and adjusting their aim rapidly to track the target and acquire new targets.Due to the nature of these cannons intended target they cannot be used to manually, unless you are targeting large ships at very close range but considering the armor of such vessels this gun would have very little effect. The intended target of these cannons are enemy strike craft and munitions which move too fast for a normal human therefore a computer targeting system is necessary.
- Advanced Composite Armor: While the recent creation of scaffold armor ha improved survivability, the bones of our ships are still those of merchant vessels; not designed to take the stresses of combat. By re-examining the materials we can use and combining them in new ways, it should be possible to create stronger alloys then what were typically used for non-combat ships.
- Haptrix-B Rapid Shields: As successful as the Rapid Shields have been on the Hegemon's warships, the current production models are not projected to be sufficient for ships beyond the size of Frigates. In the interests of simplicity, the Haptrix-B shall operate on similar principles as its predecessor, but takes advantage of being mounted on a larger vessel to scale up the Void Shield generators and their emitters, so as to provide adequate coverage.
- Thunderhead Disruptor Array: While the Thunderclap was rather disappointing as a lance, new avenues of research to pursue have been uncovered by this first attempt to develop our own domestically produced void combat scale direct energy weapons. In particular, the properties of the energy transfer on target have aroused some speculation. In any case, the weapon is much too large in its current state to be serviceable, so the first stage of development for the Thunderhead array is to attempt to miniaturize the weapon to a scale not much larger than conventional point defense guns. While such would make the weapon useless against true voidships, it would allow the Thunderclap to be used as a point defense weapon, especially if the energy transfer were to be enhanced, to say nothing of the possibility of mounting such weapons to smaller platforms than warships...
- Ultralight Void Shield: Taking advantage of Calavar's experience with undersized void shields, this miniaturized shield is less powerful than even a single pane of a Haptrix-pattern shield array. Undersized and underpowered, it provides no meaningful protection against anything heavier than a point-defense turret. However, for strike craft and especially boarding craft, protection against point-defense is a major asset, and this generator is so small that these vessels can reasonably mount it.
- Hydra class sprint missiles: Simple tube style launchers containing a multitude of small sprint missiles to engage ordinance and strikecraft attached to the PD turrets as a one time surprise against any hostile groupings of such things.
- Calavar Typewriter: A pair of battle cannon with an improved auto loader and a feed for either flak or sabot (depending on target) are linked together and mounted as Point Defense on ships to fire at incoming strike craft and ordinance. The turret itself is linked with a small cogitator to help the one manning it fire effectively at the quite fast targets it's intended to be used against.
- Macrostrike Macro-lance: A scaled down version of the Farstrike Lance, using the same basic twin-accelerator loops, at about 1/10th the scale and power to produce a broadside weapon free from the need for ammunition.
- Light Defense Suite: Consisting of a cut-down set of Haptrix shield generators and a thin layer of plassteel composite armor, this set of lightweight defenses masses only about as much as a typical shield or armor belt would alone. Of course, the performance of both suffers, but this is still a boon to ships that would otherwise be unable to mount both shields and armor.
- "Thunder Snow" Point Defence Battery: These Batteries use electromagnetic rails to launch discharging sabot seeker munitions inspired by the executioner shells used by the Adeptus Arbites, once impact is achieved, through the guidance of the munitions murderous machine spirit, the ancient Munroe effect is used to penetrate and if not destroy then seriously damage the target, alternately the munitions machine brain can be programmed to detonate it's duel-purpose warhead a set distance from the ship releasing a spray of hyper-velocity shrapnel and multi spectrum chaff.
- Fortress Pattern Shield Generator: As successful as the Rapid Shields have been on the Hegemon's warships, the current production models are not projected to be sufficient for ships beyond the size of Frigates and the limitations of a distributed array are becoming increasingly apparent. As such, drawing on all available information from previous shield designs and any safely usable data on enemy shield arrays possessed by Calavar, a new shield is to be designed that functions more standardly, with a single primary generator generating a shield bubble big enough to cover an entire ship. As such, it can be scaled up to fit cruiser sized vessels without the projected reliability issues of distributed arrays, and while it does not possess an arrays ability to quickly come back online it also does not have their weakness to Lance type weapons and other attacks with a single great impact.
- Void Cluster Capacitors: While the Haptrix Rapid Shields have done good work in protecting our vessels, it's unique design is starting to show it's weaknesses, especially against Lances which shields are designed to defeat. One solution would be to backtrack and use more conventional singular shield that covers the whole ship. Another solution is to double down and improve the recharge speed of the Haptrix Shields. The Void Cluster Capacitors are multiple capacitors systems that can independently recharge a section of a Haptrix shield multiple times, with 1 capacitor in a cluster of 6 being able to fully recharge a section of Rapid Shields before needing a short amount of time to be fully charged enough to be used again. Should a ship be under fire from 1 direction, the Cluster Capacitors can fully recharge that section 6 or more times, drastically increasing our ships survivability. Each capacitor recharges one at a time. When used to charge a Mono-Shield system, the Cluster will dump all of its capacitors to charge the main shields requiring a long recharge period before it can be used again.
- Composite Armor: Long suffering from neglect, the field of warship armor has been left without significant development for years even as technology in other areas improved. The Composite Armor seeks to change that. Inspired by the armor found on the Sacred Legacy, the Composite Armor is, as the name suggests, a composite of different types of materials layered into a single whole. Taking the experience from the development of the Scaffold Armor (where multiple layers of primitive armor was utilized along with a hardened plasteel facing) and improved ship building combined with the inspiration from the wisdom of the Ancients the next generation of Calavan warship armor will be created.
- Hekatoncheiros-Pattern Point Defense Network: The Corona-pattern point defense turrets are tolerably effective, but their effective range is sharply limited by the low power of their small integrated sensors. By tying the point defenses into the ship's sensor network instead; it should be possible to extend their targeting range enough for ships in formation to protect each other.
- Echelon-Type Rapid Shield: While the Bubble-type shield does represent an improvement over the earlier Haptrix-type, it is not a straight upgrade; Part of the cost of the switch from pane- to bubble-geometry was the inherent redundancy of the former. This project aims to integrate the two types, retaining the advantages of both and the weaknesses of neither. Overall, it retains the concentric multilayered bubble layout of the Bubble, giving it that shield's resistance to lance strikes. However, each bubble is in turn made up of multiple panes as in the Haptrix, albeit with relatively large panes and few generators per layer - both scale with ship size, so that a larger ship doesn't necessarily have more emitters than a smaller one. The edges between panes are chosen so that they overlap the panes of adjacent layers. Perhaps the biggest innovation of the Echelon, however, is each emitter's ability to adjust in which direction exactly it projects it's section, allowing the pane to either be centered over the emitter, or offset to the side. In this way, adjacent panes can be shifted over holes and weakspots, or the entire canopy can be adjusted to strengthen coverage in one direction at the cost of weakening it towards the opposite.
Mechanical effect: Straight improvement of the Bubble-type Rapid Shield.
Projected difficulty: Medium to high. Known technology, but a significant advance within that.
Projected cost: Same as current shields, or possibly somewhat higher.
- DPDT 36 Point Defense Cannon: This cannon is made up of 6 liquid cooled rotating barrels that fire 6000 rounds per minute, mounted on a turret capable 360' of rotation and also capable of fire straight up (relative to the mounting point) and adjusting their aim rapidly to track the target and acquire new targets.Due to the nature of these cannons intended target they cannot be used to manually, unless you are targeting large ships at very close range but considering the armor of such vessels this gun would have very little effect. The intended target of these cannons are enemy strike craft and munitions which move too fast for a normal human therefore a computer targeting system is necessary.
- Field Extendable Repair Dock : Designed to provide access to shipyard scale repair and scavenging capacity, the Field Extendable Repair Dock is clearly based on the much simpler, and smaller, Repair Deck. But unlike the Repair Deck, which generally only allows for minimal repairs of the vessel it is built into, the Field Extendable Repair Yard is meant to, well, be used on other starcraft. While unfolding its vast gantries effectively immobilizes the equipped ship while so deploying, doing so allows it to provide vital support for either repairing friendly ships such that they can make their way back to a proper port instead of needing to be scuttled, or for scavenging the wrecks of other ships, whether the hulk of a friendly ship being brought in for scavenging, an enemy ship being taken apart for intelligence, or even a space hulk being looted for vital parts or new hulls.
There is, of course, a prize to this kind of ability. The Field Extendable Repair Dock is, well, really big. Super big. Even for the scale of starship parts, it's huge. It's so gigantic, in fact, that you can't fit it into an escort hull at all. It's cruiser or greater or nothing. And even then, it's, well, ginormous. As such, even though it's already too big to fit on an escort, it still takes up two utility, omni, or a combination of omni and utility slots to fit it onto a ship. But isn't it worth it, to get the superior repair and looting ability?
- Tank Hold: A purpose-built troop deck made for the specific requirements of supporting formations of armored vehicles. Besides standard barracks and housing, it features dedicated manufactorium and workshops to produce spare parts and ammunition, simulators for tank crew training, and loading bays configured with heavy-load systems to accomodate tank hauler landers. The Tank Hold is not suited for hosting masses of infantry due to lacking facilities for bulk masses of grunts. (Intention: A dedicated tank-focused troop deck that bolsters their strength and helps recover their losses. Penalties to basic infantry stored within is acceptable early penalty)
- Drop Pod Deck: Escape pods are a known technology, as is the knowledge that the Emperor's holy Astartes descend into combat by assault drop pod. While we are unlikely to reproduce the extreme velocities endured by the Space Marines, similar drop pod systems would allow us to insert assault and beachhead troops into hostile warzones quickly and through defense grids intended to stop conventional landers. A significant portion of the ship's keel is taken up by arrays of drop pod launchers and their storage and maintenance bays. During planetary invasion, elite infantry will be deployed as spearhead units to key installations and defense clusters to clear the way for bulk landers. (Intention: Force multiplier for deploying elite infantry units)
- Standardized macrocannon ammunition storage compartment MK1: In conjunction with the new turret designs, Cavalan shipwrights have come up with a module that should allow for a safer storage of macrocannon ammunition as well as new equipment designed to give gun crews better endurance for extended gun duels. The safer storage was achieve by turning each magazine into a self-contained armored silo, where macro cannon shells are stored inside reinforced racks. The center of each magazine is taken up a by a hydraulic equipment lift based on mining hoists. When such a silo is placed under a turret, the hoist can then lift a shell up to the breach of the cannon. This arrangment allows for a more efficient use of the gun crews, as more effort can be put into maintenance and damage control by replacing some of the muscle powered equipment with hydraulics. This system is intended to increase the endurance of gun crews during extended gun duels. In case of a power failure, a crew powered capstan based auxiliary power system is included.
- Banisher High-Accuracy Point Defence Targeting System: The Banisher is a collection of short range, high accuracy sensor clusters that tracks hostile munitions and strick craft, that are then interpreted by dedicated cogitators which calculate optimum target solutions that can be fed to point defence turrets.
- Missionary's Temple-Shrine to the God Emperor: While according to reports some rogue traders possess temple-shrines to the God Emperor that may be dropped from orbit to aid in conversion efforts before being returned to their home ship, Cavalar engineers are not quite too that level. They are, however, more then skilled enough to create a truly impressive Temple-Shrine to He on Terra, fit for prayer and inhabited by myriads of the faithful. But not just any faithful are intended for these shrines, but the learned faithful, wise in scripture and keen of mind, those trained as missionaries both by Cavalars church and also, should they be willing, certain members of the Adepta Sororitas, of both appropriate non-militant orders as well as a small number of SIsters of Battle. Together, these individuals can, hopefully, bring any poor unfortunate misguided souls to the proper light of the imperium, as well as definitely bolstering the faith and morale of the crew of such an equipped ship. And even a squad of the Sisters of Battle can stiffen the spines of Naval Armsmen in boarding combat.
- Naval Armsmen Garrison: By dedicating an utility component's worth of space to housing Naval Armsmen and associated gear, as well as the needed equipment to maintain and repair frame armor such as Shelters, it is possible to maintain a substantial amount of them on board in both the deck itself and across the ship to supplement already existing security stations. This vastly increases both the quantity of trained manpower for shipboard combat operations and the amount of Shelter type Frame Armor available given the continual maintenance and repair issues such assets face. With this increased manpower, a ship so equipped can expect consistently superior results for onboard combat, both defensively or, if paired with an appropriate delivery system, offensively.
- Armsmen Garrison Deck: By dedicating an utility component's worth of space to housing Naval Armsmen and associated gear, as well as the needed equipment to maintain and repair frame armor such as Shelters, it is possible to maintain a substantial amount of them on board in both the deck itself and across the ship to supplement already existing security stations. This vastly increases both the quantity of trained manpower for shipboard combat operations and the amount of Shelter type Frame Armor available given the continual maintenance and repair issues such assets face. With this increased manpower, a ship so equipped can expect consistently superior results for onboard combat, both defensively or, if paired with an appropriate delivery system, offensively.
- Combat Servitor Bay: While all ships carry armsmen aboard, they are primarily meant to combat human-scale opponents and lack the strength and melee prowess of some xenos and heretic forces. Supplementing onboard troops with monotask combat servitors outfitted with integrated chain-weapons and heavy firearms will give our troops means to contend with hostile invaders and supplement our boarding forces with readily available and obedient forces stationed across the ship. Their numbers can also be maintained by a built-in servitor processing facility where Adeptus Mechanicus adepts can recycle the gravely wounded into functional combat servitors.
- Exoskeleton Support Bays: With Crusade ships under ever increasing pressure and the Shelter Exoskeletons having proved their worth over Uniary, they were pushed forward as a replacement for the more difficult to produce Servitors. (2M, Housing Add-on) (Role: Fire support and close combat brawlers)
- Respite-pattern Naval Garrison: In many ways much the same as the regular expanded housing and life support for ground armies being conveyed from one theatre to another, the Respite-pattern diverges in replacing the space allotments for transporting a motor pool with expanded medicae facilities and armories able to maintain a greater stock of Preserver and Shelter armors. While this makes the housing unsuited for housing units with logistical needs that differ from Void Infantry, it allows for the presence of a dedicated boarding force, as well as improved longevity for the ship's Armsman complement.
- Vault-pattern Magazine: As the Thermo-Cavitation shells have proven to be of great use in improving the firepower of Calavan warships, the admiralty is keen to continue additional research into special munitions. However, the concerns of having to dedicate entire gun batteries to storing specialized shells being a limit to their tactical versatility have necessitated designing a workaround to the usual practice of each cannon having its own munition stocks. The Vault-pattern Magazine takes the form of a cargo bay, modified with additional armored bulkheads and reinforced to mitigate the tremors of impacts on the hull. A network of overhead crane lines kept isolated in non-grav plated sections conveys the shells to the gun crews in preparation for a volley.
- Veil-pattern Stealth System: The first attempt to create a system with which to conceal the presence of our ships from enemy sensoriums. Internal heat sinks reduce the thermal signature of the plasma generators and drives, and combine with dispensers of auspex-obscuring particle clouds to render a ship to appear on scans as no more than a passing asteroid. While only functional when the ship is not engaged in maneuvers, the potential defensive advantages are sure to be useful.
- Wail-pattern Electronic Warfare System: An initial foray into developing a means to protect Calavan ships from weapons fire other than armor plating and Void Shields, the Wail-EWS broadcasts a vast array of signals across the span of an entire star system, to scramble enemy sensors by simply making it appear as though their target is everywhere. Since even the crudest macrobattery is reliant on logic engines to calculate the shell's trajectory, the enemy vessels would theoretically have to fire completely blind into the void or spend time to clear away the false positive auspex readings. The Hegemon's ships, of course, will have their sensors working on frequencies unaffected by the Wail.
- Minelayer Factory: To augment our static defenses, we can outfit our stations with the ability to manufacture and deploy mines on-site. These simple munitions will be useful for area denial and covering our station's blind zones. Supported by local resources, they will produce and deploy mines proportionate to local support and importance.
- Remora construction tugs: Designed to address the problems of constructing and repairing ships in deep space, these heavy shuttles are ideal for carrying heavy machinery, towing structural beams and armor plates around, and supporting workers. In addition to their conventional plasma engines, they can use reversed grav plating to anchor themselves to the ship they're working on. Intended primarily for field repairs, they're also helpful when constructing ships too large for any available conventional slipways.
- Automated Refueling Station: With a majority of our fleet having hangars, improving their performance by automating most of the refueling procedures will help in reducing the time they need to fully restock, which results in more sorties overall resulting in more damage delivered.
There is, of course, a prize to this kind of ability. The Field Extendable Repair Dock is, well, really big. Super big. Even for the scale of starship parts, it's huge. It's so gigantic, in fact, that you can't fit it into an escort hull at all. It's cruiser or greater or nothing. And even then, it's, well, ginormous. As such, even though it's already too big to fit on an escort, it still takes up two utility, omni, or a combination of omni and utility slots to fit it onto a ship. But isn't it worth it, to get the superior repair and looting ability?
- Tank Hold: A purpose-built troop deck made for the specific requirements of supporting formations of armored vehicles. Besides standard barracks and housing, it features dedicated manufactorium and workshops to produce spare parts and ammunition, simulators for tank crew training, and loading bays configured with heavy-load systems to accomodate tank hauler landers. The Tank Hold is not suited for hosting masses of infantry due to lacking facilities for bulk masses of grunts. (Intention: A dedicated tank-focused troop deck that bolsters their strength and helps recover their losses. Penalties to basic infantry stored within is acceptable early penalty)
- Drop Pod Deck: Escape pods are a known technology, as is the knowledge that the Emperor's holy Astartes descend into combat by assault drop pod. While we are unlikely to reproduce the extreme velocities endured by the Space Marines, similar drop pod systems would allow us to insert assault and beachhead troops into hostile warzones quickly and through defense grids intended to stop conventional landers. A significant portion of the ship's keel is taken up by arrays of drop pod launchers and their storage and maintenance bays. During planetary invasion, elite infantry will be deployed as spearhead units to key installations and defense clusters to clear the way for bulk landers. (Intention: Force multiplier for deploying elite infantry units)
- Standardized macrocannon ammunition storage compartment MK1: In conjunction with the new turret designs, Cavalan shipwrights have come up with a module that should allow for a safer storage of macrocannon ammunition as well as new equipment designed to give gun crews better endurance for extended gun duels. The safer storage was achieve by turning each magazine into a self-contained armored silo, where macro cannon shells are stored inside reinforced racks. The center of each magazine is taken up a by a hydraulic equipment lift based on mining hoists. When such a silo is placed under a turret, the hoist can then lift a shell up to the breach of the cannon. This arrangment allows for a more efficient use of the gun crews, as more effort can be put into maintenance and damage control by replacing some of the muscle powered equipment with hydraulics. This system is intended to increase the endurance of gun crews during extended gun duels. In case of a power failure, a crew powered capstan based auxiliary power system is included.
- Banisher High-Accuracy Point Defence Targeting System: The Banisher is a collection of short range, high accuracy sensor clusters that tracks hostile munitions and strick craft, that are then interpreted by dedicated cogitators which calculate optimum target solutions that can be fed to point defence turrets.
- Missionary's Temple-Shrine to the God Emperor: While according to reports some rogue traders possess temple-shrines to the God Emperor that may be dropped from orbit to aid in conversion efforts before being returned to their home ship, Cavalar engineers are not quite too that level. They are, however, more then skilled enough to create a truly impressive Temple-Shrine to He on Terra, fit for prayer and inhabited by myriads of the faithful. But not just any faithful are intended for these shrines, but the learned faithful, wise in scripture and keen of mind, those trained as missionaries both by Cavalars church and also, should they be willing, certain members of the Adepta Sororitas, of both appropriate non-militant orders as well as a small number of SIsters of Battle. Together, these individuals can, hopefully, bring any poor unfortunate misguided souls to the proper light of the imperium, as well as definitely bolstering the faith and morale of the crew of such an equipped ship. And even a squad of the Sisters of Battle can stiffen the spines of Naval Armsmen in boarding combat.
- Naval Armsmen Garrison: By dedicating an utility component's worth of space to housing Naval Armsmen and associated gear, as well as the needed equipment to maintain and repair frame armor such as Shelters, it is possible to maintain a substantial amount of them on board in both the deck itself and across the ship to supplement already existing security stations. This vastly increases both the quantity of trained manpower for shipboard combat operations and the amount of Shelter type Frame Armor available given the continual maintenance and repair issues such assets face. With this increased manpower, a ship so equipped can expect consistently superior results for onboard combat, both defensively or, if paired with an appropriate delivery system, offensively.
- Armsmen Garrison Deck: By dedicating an utility component's worth of space to housing Naval Armsmen and associated gear, as well as the needed equipment to maintain and repair frame armor such as Shelters, it is possible to maintain a substantial amount of them on board in both the deck itself and across the ship to supplement already existing security stations. This vastly increases both the quantity of trained manpower for shipboard combat operations and the amount of Shelter type Frame Armor available given the continual maintenance and repair issues such assets face. With this increased manpower, a ship so equipped can expect consistently superior results for onboard combat, both defensively or, if paired with an appropriate delivery system, offensively.
- Combat Servitor Bay: While all ships carry armsmen aboard, they are primarily meant to combat human-scale opponents and lack the strength and melee prowess of some xenos and heretic forces. Supplementing onboard troops with monotask combat servitors outfitted with integrated chain-weapons and heavy firearms will give our troops means to contend with hostile invaders and supplement our boarding forces with readily available and obedient forces stationed across the ship. Their numbers can also be maintained by a built-in servitor processing facility where Adeptus Mechanicus adepts can recycle the gravely wounded into functional combat servitors.
- Exoskeleton Support Bays: With Crusade ships under ever increasing pressure and the Shelter Exoskeletons having proved their worth over Uniary, they were pushed forward as a replacement for the more difficult to produce Servitors. (2M, Housing Add-on) (Role: Fire support and close combat brawlers)
- Respite-pattern Naval Garrison: In many ways much the same as the regular expanded housing and life support for ground armies being conveyed from one theatre to another, the Respite-pattern diverges in replacing the space allotments for transporting a motor pool with expanded medicae facilities and armories able to maintain a greater stock of Preserver and Shelter armors. While this makes the housing unsuited for housing units with logistical needs that differ from Void Infantry, it allows for the presence of a dedicated boarding force, as well as improved longevity for the ship's Armsman complement.
- Vault-pattern Magazine: As the Thermo-Cavitation shells have proven to be of great use in improving the firepower of Calavan warships, the admiralty is keen to continue additional research into special munitions. However, the concerns of having to dedicate entire gun batteries to storing specialized shells being a limit to their tactical versatility have necessitated designing a workaround to the usual practice of each cannon having its own munition stocks. The Vault-pattern Magazine takes the form of a cargo bay, modified with additional armored bulkheads and reinforced to mitigate the tremors of impacts on the hull. A network of overhead crane lines kept isolated in non-grav plated sections conveys the shells to the gun crews in preparation for a volley.
- Veil-pattern Stealth System: The first attempt to create a system with which to conceal the presence of our ships from enemy sensoriums. Internal heat sinks reduce the thermal signature of the plasma generators and drives, and combine with dispensers of auspex-obscuring particle clouds to render a ship to appear on scans as no more than a passing asteroid. While only functional when the ship is not engaged in maneuvers, the potential defensive advantages are sure to be useful.
- Wail-pattern Electronic Warfare System: An initial foray into developing a means to protect Calavan ships from weapons fire other than armor plating and Void Shields, the Wail-EWS broadcasts a vast array of signals across the span of an entire star system, to scramble enemy sensors by simply making it appear as though their target is everywhere. Since even the crudest macrobattery is reliant on logic engines to calculate the shell's trajectory, the enemy vessels would theoretically have to fire completely blind into the void or spend time to clear away the false positive auspex readings. The Hegemon's ships, of course, will have their sensors working on frequencies unaffected by the Wail.
- Minelayer Factory: To augment our static defenses, we can outfit our stations with the ability to manufacture and deploy mines on-site. These simple munitions will be useful for area denial and covering our station's blind zones. Supported by local resources, they will produce and deploy mines proportionate to local support and importance.
- Remora construction tugs: Designed to address the problems of constructing and repairing ships in deep space, these heavy shuttles are ideal for carrying heavy machinery, towing structural beams and armor plates around, and supporting workers. In addition to their conventional plasma engines, they can use reversed grav plating to anchor themselves to the ship they're working on. Intended primarily for field repairs, they're also helpful when constructing ships too large for any available conventional slipways.
- Automated Refueling Station: With a majority of our fleet having hangars, improving their performance by automating most of the refueling procedures will help in reducing the time they need to fully restock, which results in more sorties overall resulting in more damage delivered.
- Rocinante Class Strike-fighter: The Arvus refit has served us well, but it is hardly a true void fighter. While the naval designers only had the most general understanding of what made the fury interceptor so effective, they were aware that it was many times the size of their current designs. With this in mind they decided to strip down a Harbringer instead of size up an Arvus. The cargo hold was largely stripped away and replaced with improved engines and armor. Lascannon are mounted in a twin turret in the nose and three forward mounted on each of the "wings". Two twin Auto cannon turrets serve as point defense on the top and belly of the craft. What little cargo space remains is used for an internal bomb bay capable of carrying larger versions of the missiles used by the Arvus. In the end they had a craft a bit larger than the Fury that inspired it and capable of serving as a fighter-bomber. In honor of is origin as a bulk hauling craft they christened it the Rocinante.
- Brigand-class Bomber: Basing the design on the Maruader-class bombers of the Imperial Navy, the Brigand must be capable of matching the performance of our current generation bombers. However, as a warplane, it will boast improved survivability and a heavier payload. Utilizing the same Maruader engine layout, the Brigand can fly in atmosphere to support the troops as well as in space to attack enemy ships.
- Narwhale Breacher Craft: The first dedicated boarding craft developed in the Crusade, the Narwhale outwardly bears a great deal of resemblance to the Harbinger Transport, because it uses the same hull configuration. Internal space has been sacrificed to add additional reinforcement to the superstructure, more powerful engines, and even install a small Void Shield. An array of hull cutters is affixed to the prow to force entry onto an enemy vessel and deliver its cargo of boarding parties.
- Chaff Shells: In order to degrade an opponent's targeting systems, special chaff shells were thought up. They consist of a hollow macrocannon shell that has sufficient integrity to withstand the acceleration forces of being fired but allows for the maximum payload to be delivered. The payload consist of a frangible polymer lattice filled with strips reflective material. Upon reaching intended target area, the shells fuze will trigger a bursting charge. The explosive charge will then spread the chaff in a conical pattern.
- Foreshock Shells: There is a universal principle for defeating armor; transferring lethal force through it is easier than piercing it, whether the subject is the Feudal World plate donned by the Ashen Legion or the hull cladding of battle tanks. The Foreshock Shells endeavour to exploit this principle. Instead of a solid shell, the munitions fired takes the form of a thin, soft metal container of high explosives activated by a delayed impact fuse, encompassed within an armored fairing that will allow the payload to be fired by the electromagnetic coils and shield it throughout its trajectory. A proximity fuse will cause the fairing to be discarded with explosive bolts, creating a cloud of man-sized flechettes as the payload impacts. Upon impact, the explosives will squash into a (relatively) thin disk on the hull's surface before detonating, creating a staggeringly powerful shockwave that will destructively stress the ship's superstructure and cause internal damage through mass spalling. It is also theorized that the shell's overall weight will be less than that of solid shot, and thus will be propelled to a greater range.
- Small Craft Rearmament: Even after decades of effort, Calavar's navy is still working with weapons markedly less effective than Imperial Navy standards, but Calavar now has access to standard-issue Imperial Guard equipment. Although the vastly different scales of combat make it impossible to apply most Guard technology directly to naval warfare, the weapons of fighter craft aren't all that different from the Guard's heavy weaponry. By adapting, redesigning, and reverse-engineering Guard heavy weapons and aircraft munitions, many improvements can be made to the armament of our strike craft - in some cases, this may be as simple as replacing the lascannons with better models.
- Macro-bolter shells: Macrocannon sized gyrojet rounds that operate on the same dual-launch principle as standard bolters, being launched from guns, then accelerating to even higher speeds via their own rocket engines. While these shells have less room for explosive and less mass at point of impact, their boster engine gets them up to a higher speed and lets them be fired over a longer distance. Macro-bolter shells are slightly more volatile than standard types, and require a crude control machine-spirit and other specialized hardware to maximize their effectiveness.
- Repented Torpedo: A short-range fast-burning torpedo that packs a larger than normal warhead and highly tuned engine, at the cost of total range. A brutal, unsophisticated weapon, designed to be fired as a second or third wave of torpedoes.
- Seekershard Shells: Though thus far the foes encountered by the Crusade have been largely a non-issue with regards to repelling strikecraft, the Admiralty has expressed interest in countermeasures that would be ready for rapid deployment among existing fleet elements. As the amounts of required space for allocation of proper point defense arrays is at a premium in the Hegemon's warships, an alternative has been proposed in the form of a unique form of macrocannon munitions. The Seekershard Shell consists of a fairing that ensconces the shell's payload, in effect a communications receiver pylon, which will feed targeting telemetry from the ship's sensorium to the dozen anti-fighter rocket pods mounted on it. Upon receiving their target locks, the missiles, alone far too weak in propulsion to achieve meaningful range, will fire towards the enemy craft. While the system is reliant on the ship in question spotting the enemy strikecraft prior to engagement and the missiles themselves are projected to rely more upon area denial than advanced targeting to achieve their objective, there are high hopes for the project.
- 'Auger'-model Boarding Torpedo: The first foray by the Hegemon's admiralty into dedicated boarding craft. Making use of the Indignant as a base, the warhead has been replaced with an array of grav harnesses to keep boarding parties from expiring due to high-G acceleration, alongside a breaching charge in the sealed compartment in front, based on the Thermo-Cavitation shells modified for even shorter lifespan and shaped by magnetic fields to project the plasma burst entirely forwards. Spring-loaded hooks will anchor the torpedo into the enemy vessel and explosive bolts will propel the breaching charge compartment to reveal the boarding party.
- Frustration-class Torpedo: Instead of an explosive warhead like those of the Indignant Torpedo, The Frustration instead has a particle generator similar to the one used on the Thunderclap lance. Except instead of exploding the Torpedo attaches itself to the enemy vessel and send constant stream of ions that disrupt the targets electronic systems. Reducing the target's performance in battle from weapon accuracy to shield recharge speed, and with enough disruption, prevent them from using their Warp Drive to escape safely. Once the ion generator has run out of power, the torpedo will self-destruct to prevent the enemy from gaining intelligence on this technology.
- Refined Thermo-Cavitation Shells: There are literal decades of data to draw on when it comes to the performance of the now familiar plasma shells. Drawing on the experience of their manufacturing, the special ammunition has been at long last been determined to be held back by their inception design. This obviously cannot do. As such, steps have been taken to make the Thermo-Cavitation Shells live up to their Omnisiah-given potential. No longer are they going to be half-butchered plasma engines encased inside a shell, instead they are going to be equipped with a plasma reactor dedicated to economically use the space inside their shells AND explosively fail at their peak from the ground up. This comes with a rearrangement of the standard plasma engine sensors, so that the machine spirit inside of them can track and vent plasma so that the inner chamber can reach prime fusion at each individual Shell's peak.
- "Casablanca"-type Fusion Shell: Explosively formed penetrator weapons are not unknown to the Mechanicus; generally the weapons of the desperate, which is a fair assessment of the Lativa sector in general. The Casablanca is essentially an EFP with a large, high-yield atomic weapon forming a relativistic jet of plasma out of a metallic plate. With the power of the Motive Force and AdMech mastery of physics, the Casablanca (in theory) should match or surpass current kinetic penetrator performance as well as increase effective range of our current macrobatteries due to the speed at which the plasma jet propagates. The shell must still be fired away from the ship in order to avoid damage from atomic detonation however, which may affect accuracy until gun crews can adjust to the initial "lag" between firing the shell and detonation. Archival data suggests that this style of weaponry originates as far back as M2, though analysts are still mystified by references to piano music in the data dumps.
- "Boggart" seeker head: If the Casablanca yields favorable results, tentative plans call for adding a seeker head and fuse that would aim the shell in flight and detonate at a more favorable proximity to the enemy, contributing to longer range and more accurate fire.
- "Dragon's Teeth" Lance Torpedo: Inspired by the Ork's crude, if potent, "Zappas", the Dragon's Teeth torpedo utilizes an atomic warhead to power an array of expendable laser devices to generate a barrage of powerful x-ray lasers. In theory this subjects the target to a concentrated barrage of firepower, though whether that barrage is "merely" the equivalent of a storm of macrocannon shells or the equivalent of the armor shredding power of a Lance is dependent on how much the Admech can extrapolate from the Ork's haphazard designs. The Dragon's Teeth, should the design meet projected expectations, has the advantage of being able to hit a target beyond the effective range of most point defense batteries, however this means that the laser barrage can be blocked by Void shields and other energy screens that a standard torpedo would not be subject to.
-"Fossorial" Torpedo: Partially inspired by orkish boarding craft and predicated by the lack of energy weapon expertise, the Fossorial pattern torpedo relies on a massive drill bit and laser cutters to bypass enemy armor and deliver its payload. The torpedo itself its more or less merely a delivery vessel for an expendable automated mining rig, which bores into the target's hull. Once the rig bypasses the armor, the explosive payload onboard detonates, devastating the afflicted ship. Current payloads will consist of atomic ordnance or sub-critical plasma reactors. The primary drawback foreseen with this delivery mechanism is the expense in manufacturing a drilling platform that can cut through armor in a timely manner. It is possible that this could be further developed into a true boarding torpedo. Further advances in laser cutters or true melta weapons could make the mining rig redundant and provide more space for increased ordnance payloads.
- Airburst Shells: Currently deployed point defense weapons are somewhat anemic, and rectifying this without compromising armor structure and the power feeds for shield generators is projected to be a challenge. Our macrocannons on the other hand are relatively excellent, and we are already looking into an expanded repertoire of specialty ammunition; An obvious solution would be to introduce macroshells with integrated time- and proximity-fuses, intended to destroy entire strike craft wings and torpedo salvos in a single proximity hit. Workable solutions range from modified plasma shells that fill a volume of space with searing gas, compact nuclear warheads to fry systems and outright melt airframes with radiation, to fragmentation rounds to project cone-shaped hailstorms of metal.
Even with these shells though, rate of fire and tracking speeds likely limit the role of dual-purpose guns to turrets of relatively small calibers (escort size, possibly light cruisers at the utmost). This is not to say however that larger guns can't gain use out of them; Big enough that the area of effect of shells of this size becomes noticeable even on the scale of ships, removing the need for a direct hit would in turn increase the effective range of these guns. Such hits would suffer against any kind of armor, but should still be capable of ablating shields, destroying exterior components such as sensor masts, and damaging lightly-defended hulls.
Mechanical effect: Small-caliber macrocannons and Self Defense Batteries gain a PD stat. Large-caliber macrocannons as well as Fusion Breakers gain an increase in range, albeit at the cost of damage and armor-piercing ability.
Projected difficulty: Low. A relatively simple permutation of existing shells, with multiple different avenues of approach.
Projected cost: Same as existing shells.
- Dead Hand Missile Pods: A deployable one-salvo missile pod that can be dropped by our ships as deployable ordinance. Their functionality will be to shred enemy dropships and strikecraft that get in close. In sufficient densities, they may be a threat to enemy escorts.
- Shade Stealth Transport: Using a material coating that absorb and reflect Auspex signals along with muffling thermal signatures of its engine, the Shade Stealth Transport can safely and stealthily deploy an army through an orbital blockade by imitating the auspex signature of an asteroid the size of a Lighter.
- Macro-Bolter Plasma Shells: Macrocannon sized gyrojet rounds that operate on the same dual-launch principle as standard bolters, being launched from guns, then accelerating to even higher speeds via their own rocket engines. Our plasma shells already have an integrated reactor, piping some of the plasma out of a gimballed thruster nozzle should be relatively simple. The guidance package, meanwhile, we should be able to copy off of our new Intolerant-model torpedos, though it'll need to be hardened to withstand the higher launch velocities. The mass and power consumed by both may lead to slightly lower explosive power, but the increased effective range and impact velocity should more than make up for that.
Mechanical effect: Increased range for macrocannons firing plasma shells. Possibly slightly reduced raw damage in return for higher armor-piercing ability.
Projected difficulty: Low to moderate. Existing technology that we can readily adapt, the only major challenge will be letting the additions survive being launched.
Projected cost: Same as existing plasma shells, or possibly very slightly higher - the reactor should remain the most expensive part by far.
- Omen-class Modular Heavy Transport: A direct successor of the Harbinger, building on it's strengths while also improving it's versatility. Biggest changes are a larger cockpit for improved pilot effectiveness and endurance, overhauled cargo bays with internal connectors to more easily enable a wide variety of strike loadouts, and a bottom-mounted hatch in between the landing skids that can be connected to a bomb bay, an extendable missile rack, or possibly even an extendable superheavy laser cannon or light particle lance. Another modification to consider would be a modular mount for the turbofan engines, so they can be dismounted in order to save weight on purely exo-atmospheric missions, and potentially even replaced with additional weapon hardpoints.
Mechanical Effect: At base, hangar loadout with identical or somewhat superior stats to the Harbinger. Can also be fitted, however, with two add-ons of modular parts, giving a modest fighter and a large bomber rating, respectively.
Projected difficulty: Low to moderate. Modification from what seems to be a fairly capable base, and any of the more difficult parts not working out doesn't inhibit the rest of the project. They're extensive modifications though.
Projected cost: Same as the Harbinger at base. Extra for the add-ons.
- Brigand-class Bomber: Basing the design on the Maruader-class bombers of the Imperial Navy, the Brigand must be capable of matching the performance of our current generation bombers. However, as a warplane, it will boast improved survivability and a heavier payload. Utilizing the same Maruader engine layout, the Brigand can fly in atmosphere to support the troops as well as in space to attack enemy ships.
- Narwhale Breacher Craft: The first dedicated boarding craft developed in the Crusade, the Narwhale outwardly bears a great deal of resemblance to the Harbinger Transport, because it uses the same hull configuration. Internal space has been sacrificed to add additional reinforcement to the superstructure, more powerful engines, and even install a small Void Shield. An array of hull cutters is affixed to the prow to force entry onto an enemy vessel and deliver its cargo of boarding parties.
- Chaff Shells: In order to degrade an opponent's targeting systems, special chaff shells were thought up. They consist of a hollow macrocannon shell that has sufficient integrity to withstand the acceleration forces of being fired but allows for the maximum payload to be delivered. The payload consist of a frangible polymer lattice filled with strips reflective material. Upon reaching intended target area, the shells fuze will trigger a bursting charge. The explosive charge will then spread the chaff in a conical pattern.
- Foreshock Shells: There is a universal principle for defeating armor; transferring lethal force through it is easier than piercing it, whether the subject is the Feudal World plate donned by the Ashen Legion or the hull cladding of battle tanks. The Foreshock Shells endeavour to exploit this principle. Instead of a solid shell, the munitions fired takes the form of a thin, soft metal container of high explosives activated by a delayed impact fuse, encompassed within an armored fairing that will allow the payload to be fired by the electromagnetic coils and shield it throughout its trajectory. A proximity fuse will cause the fairing to be discarded with explosive bolts, creating a cloud of man-sized flechettes as the payload impacts. Upon impact, the explosives will squash into a (relatively) thin disk on the hull's surface before detonating, creating a staggeringly powerful shockwave that will destructively stress the ship's superstructure and cause internal damage through mass spalling. It is also theorized that the shell's overall weight will be less than that of solid shot, and thus will be propelled to a greater range.
- Small Craft Rearmament: Even after decades of effort, Calavar's navy is still working with weapons markedly less effective than Imperial Navy standards, but Calavar now has access to standard-issue Imperial Guard equipment. Although the vastly different scales of combat make it impossible to apply most Guard technology directly to naval warfare, the weapons of fighter craft aren't all that different from the Guard's heavy weaponry. By adapting, redesigning, and reverse-engineering Guard heavy weapons and aircraft munitions, many improvements can be made to the armament of our strike craft - in some cases, this may be as simple as replacing the lascannons with better models.
- Macro-bolter shells: Macrocannon sized gyrojet rounds that operate on the same dual-launch principle as standard bolters, being launched from guns, then accelerating to even higher speeds via their own rocket engines. While these shells have less room for explosive and less mass at point of impact, their boster engine gets them up to a higher speed and lets them be fired over a longer distance. Macro-bolter shells are slightly more volatile than standard types, and require a crude control machine-spirit and other specialized hardware to maximize their effectiveness.
- Repented Torpedo: A short-range fast-burning torpedo that packs a larger than normal warhead and highly tuned engine, at the cost of total range. A brutal, unsophisticated weapon, designed to be fired as a second or third wave of torpedoes.
- Seekershard Shells: Though thus far the foes encountered by the Crusade have been largely a non-issue with regards to repelling strikecraft, the Admiralty has expressed interest in countermeasures that would be ready for rapid deployment among existing fleet elements. As the amounts of required space for allocation of proper point defense arrays is at a premium in the Hegemon's warships, an alternative has been proposed in the form of a unique form of macrocannon munitions. The Seekershard Shell consists of a fairing that ensconces the shell's payload, in effect a communications receiver pylon, which will feed targeting telemetry from the ship's sensorium to the dozen anti-fighter rocket pods mounted on it. Upon receiving their target locks, the missiles, alone far too weak in propulsion to achieve meaningful range, will fire towards the enemy craft. While the system is reliant on the ship in question spotting the enemy strikecraft prior to engagement and the missiles themselves are projected to rely more upon area denial than advanced targeting to achieve their objective, there are high hopes for the project.
- 'Auger'-model Boarding Torpedo: The first foray by the Hegemon's admiralty into dedicated boarding craft. Making use of the Indignant as a base, the warhead has been replaced with an array of grav harnesses to keep boarding parties from expiring due to high-G acceleration, alongside a breaching charge in the sealed compartment in front, based on the Thermo-Cavitation shells modified for even shorter lifespan and shaped by magnetic fields to project the plasma burst entirely forwards. Spring-loaded hooks will anchor the torpedo into the enemy vessel and explosive bolts will propel the breaching charge compartment to reveal the boarding party.
- Frustration-class Torpedo: Instead of an explosive warhead like those of the Indignant Torpedo, The Frustration instead has a particle generator similar to the one used on the Thunderclap lance. Except instead of exploding the Torpedo attaches itself to the enemy vessel and send constant stream of ions that disrupt the targets electronic systems. Reducing the target's performance in battle from weapon accuracy to shield recharge speed, and with enough disruption, prevent them from using their Warp Drive to escape safely. Once the ion generator has run out of power, the torpedo will self-destruct to prevent the enemy from gaining intelligence on this technology.
- Refined Thermo-Cavitation Shells: There are literal decades of data to draw on when it comes to the performance of the now familiar plasma shells. Drawing on the experience of their manufacturing, the special ammunition has been at long last been determined to be held back by their inception design. This obviously cannot do. As such, steps have been taken to make the Thermo-Cavitation Shells live up to their Omnisiah-given potential. No longer are they going to be half-butchered plasma engines encased inside a shell, instead they are going to be equipped with a plasma reactor dedicated to economically use the space inside their shells AND explosively fail at their peak from the ground up. This comes with a rearrangement of the standard plasma engine sensors, so that the machine spirit inside of them can track and vent plasma so that the inner chamber can reach prime fusion at each individual Shell's peak.
- "Casablanca"-type Fusion Shell: Explosively formed penetrator weapons are not unknown to the Mechanicus; generally the weapons of the desperate, which is a fair assessment of the Lativa sector in general. The Casablanca is essentially an EFP with a large, high-yield atomic weapon forming a relativistic jet of plasma out of a metallic plate. With the power of the Motive Force and AdMech mastery of physics, the Casablanca (in theory) should match or surpass current kinetic penetrator performance as well as increase effective range of our current macrobatteries due to the speed at which the plasma jet propagates. The shell must still be fired away from the ship in order to avoid damage from atomic detonation however, which may affect accuracy until gun crews can adjust to the initial "lag" between firing the shell and detonation. Archival data suggests that this style of weaponry originates as far back as M2, though analysts are still mystified by references to piano music in the data dumps.
- "Boggart" seeker head: If the Casablanca yields favorable results, tentative plans call for adding a seeker head and fuse that would aim the shell in flight and detonate at a more favorable proximity to the enemy, contributing to longer range and more accurate fire.
- "Dragon's Teeth" Lance Torpedo: Inspired by the Ork's crude, if potent, "Zappas", the Dragon's Teeth torpedo utilizes an atomic warhead to power an array of expendable laser devices to generate a barrage of powerful x-ray lasers. In theory this subjects the target to a concentrated barrage of firepower, though whether that barrage is "merely" the equivalent of a storm of macrocannon shells or the equivalent of the armor shredding power of a Lance is dependent on how much the Admech can extrapolate from the Ork's haphazard designs. The Dragon's Teeth, should the design meet projected expectations, has the advantage of being able to hit a target beyond the effective range of most point defense batteries, however this means that the laser barrage can be blocked by Void shields and other energy screens that a standard torpedo would not be subject to.
-"Fossorial" Torpedo: Partially inspired by orkish boarding craft and predicated by the lack of energy weapon expertise, the Fossorial pattern torpedo relies on a massive drill bit and laser cutters to bypass enemy armor and deliver its payload. The torpedo itself its more or less merely a delivery vessel for an expendable automated mining rig, which bores into the target's hull. Once the rig bypasses the armor, the explosive payload onboard detonates, devastating the afflicted ship. Current payloads will consist of atomic ordnance or sub-critical plasma reactors. The primary drawback foreseen with this delivery mechanism is the expense in manufacturing a drilling platform that can cut through armor in a timely manner. It is possible that this could be further developed into a true boarding torpedo. Further advances in laser cutters or true melta weapons could make the mining rig redundant and provide more space for increased ordnance payloads.
- Airburst Shells: Currently deployed point defense weapons are somewhat anemic, and rectifying this without compromising armor structure and the power feeds for shield generators is projected to be a challenge. Our macrocannons on the other hand are relatively excellent, and we are already looking into an expanded repertoire of specialty ammunition; An obvious solution would be to introduce macroshells with integrated time- and proximity-fuses, intended to destroy entire strike craft wings and torpedo salvos in a single proximity hit. Workable solutions range from modified plasma shells that fill a volume of space with searing gas, compact nuclear warheads to fry systems and outright melt airframes with radiation, to fragmentation rounds to project cone-shaped hailstorms of metal.
Even with these shells though, rate of fire and tracking speeds likely limit the role of dual-purpose guns to turrets of relatively small calibers (escort size, possibly light cruisers at the utmost). This is not to say however that larger guns can't gain use out of them; Big enough that the area of effect of shells of this size becomes noticeable even on the scale of ships, removing the need for a direct hit would in turn increase the effective range of these guns. Such hits would suffer against any kind of armor, but should still be capable of ablating shields, destroying exterior components such as sensor masts, and damaging lightly-defended hulls.
Mechanical effect: Small-caliber macrocannons and Self Defense Batteries gain a PD stat. Large-caliber macrocannons as well as Fusion Breakers gain an increase in range, albeit at the cost of damage and armor-piercing ability.
Projected difficulty: Low. A relatively simple permutation of existing shells, with multiple different avenues of approach.
Projected cost: Same as existing shells.
- Dead Hand Missile Pods: A deployable one-salvo missile pod that can be dropped by our ships as deployable ordinance. Their functionality will be to shred enemy dropships and strikecraft that get in close. In sufficient densities, they may be a threat to enemy escorts.
- Shade Stealth Transport: Using a material coating that absorb and reflect Auspex signals along with muffling thermal signatures of its engine, the Shade Stealth Transport can safely and stealthily deploy an army through an orbital blockade by imitating the auspex signature of an asteroid the size of a Lighter.
- Macro-Bolter Plasma Shells: Macrocannon sized gyrojet rounds that operate on the same dual-launch principle as standard bolters, being launched from guns, then accelerating to even higher speeds via their own rocket engines. Our plasma shells already have an integrated reactor, piping some of the plasma out of a gimballed thruster nozzle should be relatively simple. The guidance package, meanwhile, we should be able to copy off of our new Intolerant-model torpedos, though it'll need to be hardened to withstand the higher launch velocities. The mass and power consumed by both may lead to slightly lower explosive power, but the increased effective range and impact velocity should more than make up for that.
Mechanical effect: Increased range for macrocannons firing plasma shells. Possibly slightly reduced raw damage in return for higher armor-piercing ability.
Projected difficulty: Low to moderate. Existing technology that we can readily adapt, the only major challenge will be letting the additions survive being launched.
Projected cost: Same as existing plasma shells, or possibly very slightly higher - the reactor should remain the most expensive part by far.
- Omen-class Modular Heavy Transport: A direct successor of the Harbinger, building on it's strengths while also improving it's versatility. Biggest changes are a larger cockpit for improved pilot effectiveness and endurance, overhauled cargo bays with internal connectors to more easily enable a wide variety of strike loadouts, and a bottom-mounted hatch in between the landing skids that can be connected to a bomb bay, an extendable missile rack, or possibly even an extendable superheavy laser cannon or light particle lance. Another modification to consider would be a modular mount for the turbofan engines, so they can be dismounted in order to save weight on purely exo-atmospheric missions, and potentially even replaced with additional weapon hardpoints.
Mechanical Effect: At base, hangar loadout with identical or somewhat superior stats to the Harbinger. Can also be fitted, however, with two add-ons of modular parts, giving a modest fighter and a large bomber rating, respectively.
Projected difficulty: Low to moderate. Modification from what seems to be a fairly capable base, and any of the more difficult parts not working out doesn't inhibit the rest of the project. They're extensive modifications though.
Projected cost: Same as the Harbinger at base. Extra for the add-ons.
- Mace Class Frigate Hull: With many lessons learned, both in the construction of multiple Sabre class hulls, the militarization of merchant hulls, and recovered hulks to study, and with the defensive limitations of the Sabre class hulls showing themselves, plans have been drawn up for something larger. Not large enough to no longer be an escort any more, but still noticeably bigger. The so called Mace Class is still, at it's heart, an iteration of the Sabre, but with greater experience comes greater design goals. Superior redundancies are planned, hull reinforcement is drawn up with lessons learned from the limitations of the Resolute, and extra crew reserves are given the needed and accounted for space within the hull.
Most of all, more space and structural supporting reinforcement is given over to defensive requirements, making the Mace far more sturdy then its smaller cousin. Accusations that this is also based on data and inspiration from data recorded about Bagalog ships are, of course, ridiculous. (2 Weapons, 1 Utility, 3 Defenses, 1 Engine)
- Stingray-class Light Freighter: Built for speed, this partially militarized freighter hull boasts enormous engines for its small size, but its most unusual feature is its ability to land. Its crude anti-grav plates are incapable of bringing it safely to the ground, so they are supplemented with a lifting-body design, a pair of stubby wings, and a set of void shield skids which serve as landing gear. With powerful enough engines, it can even take off again! Its frame is also heavily reinforced, allowing it to better endure both the stress of landing and incoming fire. Unfortunately, its capacity is only a fraction of what a more conventional freighter can carry, thanks to its need to save weight and the inefficiency of its broad flat shape. [2E 1O 1D (shields only)]
- Truncheon-class Frigate Hull: Although the Indomitable is a powerful combatant, its size and complexity make it quite expensive for an escort. It is believed that a more specialized hull design could mount nearly as much macrocannon firepower in a smaller, less expensive ship. The Truncheon-class hull is only slightly larger than a Sabre or Spatha, but its reinforced turret hardpoints allow it to handle the recoil of significantly larger shells, and space is set aside for well-laid-out magazines and shell elevators to streamline the reloading process and improve firing rate. This comes at the cost of flexibility, since the turrets are ill-suited for any other type of weapon, but as macrocannons are the mainstay of the navy, this is of little concern. The prow mounts are less specialized, allowing for split armaments, and can even be omitted to free up space for other systems. [1W (Macrocannons only, increased firepower), 2D (one armor only, one shields only), 1U, 1O, 1E]
- Cobra Hull Reconstruction Project : Torpedoes have repeatedly proven to be a very effective weapon for the crusade, and we're currently disassembling one of the Imperial Navy's choice torpedo hulls. Some people have seen a connection between these two facts, and are now supporting an attempt to, by using data gained from the Harvest Day, gain the schematics and other information needed to produce Cobra class craft of our own. [1 Weapon Slot, 1 Weapon Slot (Torpedoes only, Expanded Magazine), 1 Defense Slot (Reinforced, Armor Only), 1 Defense Slot, 1 Engine Slot.]
- Specialist Lance Frigate Design 'Light Saber': With projections showing that viable lance class weaponry will soon become available to the crusade, a motion has been put forth to design a dedicated lance carrying vessel for said lances instead of doing the normal pattern of just putting them on the Sabre. This so called 'Light Saber' class vessel, named for the traditional laser lances, is to have substantial amounts of the hulls inner workings redesigned to support a dedicated Lance mount and the needed capacitors and extra power sources thereof, as well as the Spartha variant's superior defensive ability. [1 Weapon Slot, 1 Weapon Slot (Lances only, Extra/Dedicated Capacitors/Generators), 2 Defense Slots, 1 Utility Slot, 1 Engine Slot.]
- Martinet-class Hull: The first Calavan foray into the design of Light Cruisers, the Martinet takes much of its design elements from the purified bulk hauler captured in the initial reclamation of Bailafax. But where the heretics had simply battered the civilian hull into serviceable form, the Martinet has been streamlined and built from a foundation for warships. The slapdash strikecraft housing is converted into proper broadside hangars, while the prow mount is reserved for a Lance. The remaining internal space is converted into room for defensive modules, with space given to ensure that the strong points of the superstructure are prepared for the mounting of armor plating. (2W total, 1 Broadside(Hangar) & 1 Prow(Lance), 3D (1 locked to Armor), 1E)
- The Rapier Hull: takes advantage of the lessons learned while designing the Sable and Hawk Hulls and is designed as a fast frigate with two engines. This is achieved by reducing the weapon mounts to two and specializing the interior, the defense slots can hold a shield and armor and nothing else and one of the weapon slots can only hold weapon batteries(2W(one locked to macrocannons),2D(one locked to shields, one locked to weapons),2E,1U).
- Auceps-class Light Carrier Hull: Although the Cove-pattern hangar can be fitted into most weapon mounts, it tends to be cramped and awkwardly laid out, since the needs of hangar bays are rather different from most weapons. The Auceps-class hull does not have this problem. Its large dorsal landing bay connects neatly to its spacious hangar deck, which easily feeds into the launch rails on either side of the hull. Naturally, this space is then packed to the gills with strike craft, making it just as cramped as any Cove-pattern hangar, but with far more capacity. [1W (broadside, hangar only, increased capacity), 1W, 2D (one armor, one shields), 1U, 1E]
- Hammer-class Frigate Hull: Calivar has always been known as the Loyalist faction that focuses more on firepower in their vessel designs. While the War Hawk is a capable and generalist vessel there is a niche for a frontline vessel that can take a lot of punishment yet deliver just a much bigger punch. The Hammer class is designed to use broadside macrocannons giving it plenty of room to use more powerful broadside armaments. A heavily reinforced prow is also added to increase survivability and possibly deflect incoming kinetic weapons. [1 Broadside Weapon (both weapons are on 1 side), 3 Defense (1 locked to shields & 1 locked to armor), 1O, 1E]
- Harbinger Class Light Cruiser Hull: Modeling off the Captured Bulk Hauler, the Harbinger class light cruiser is a relatively unambitious militarized version of a civilian design. With the bare minimum of weapons, defenses, and utility modules, the only thing the Harbinger's layout truly demands is reliability and avoiding the initial problems of poor layout and power issues seen with the War Hawk Mk. I. The Harbinger needs to be efficient and reliable above all else if it is to become Calavar's first true capital ship. (1 Prow, 1 Broadside, 2 Defenses, 1 Utility, 1 Engine.)
- Sai: With the rise in pirate activity and more territory to cover, a dedicated Patrol Vessel that is low cost yet adaptable will become a necessity in the near future. The Sai is one of the proposed solutions. It is a Corvette sized hull meant to be used as a Patrol vessel. This Corvette have dedicated mountings and space for a Hangar for Saviors but will have the option of either a Macrocannon battery or a Lance as its primary weapon. With its 2 engines it can chase down pirates or escape enemy vessels while on patrol. And its Haptrix shields should be able to protect the vessel from light damage while relying on its maneuverability from the twin engines to allow it to dodge much slower forms of damage. (1W(Hangar) & 1 Weapon, 1 Shield, 2 Engines)
- Switchblade: With unknown elements threatening our shipping a defense against them is needed. A proposal is the Shiv, using a hull with a similar outward appearance to the AMM, this hull is further structurally reinforced to increase survivability and retractable coverings that will hide the vessel's weapons from scans before revealing itself once the enemy is close enough to engage. (1W (can be hidden), 1D(armor), 1D(navigation shield), 1E, 2O)
Most of all, more space and structural supporting reinforcement is given over to defensive requirements, making the Mace far more sturdy then its smaller cousin. Accusations that this is also based on data and inspiration from data recorded about Bagalog ships are, of course, ridiculous. (2 Weapons, 1 Utility, 3 Defenses, 1 Engine)
- Stingray-class Light Freighter: Built for speed, this partially militarized freighter hull boasts enormous engines for its small size, but its most unusual feature is its ability to land. Its crude anti-grav plates are incapable of bringing it safely to the ground, so they are supplemented with a lifting-body design, a pair of stubby wings, and a set of void shield skids which serve as landing gear. With powerful enough engines, it can even take off again! Its frame is also heavily reinforced, allowing it to better endure both the stress of landing and incoming fire. Unfortunately, its capacity is only a fraction of what a more conventional freighter can carry, thanks to its need to save weight and the inefficiency of its broad flat shape. [2E 1O 1D (shields only)]
- Truncheon-class Frigate Hull: Although the Indomitable is a powerful combatant, its size and complexity make it quite expensive for an escort. It is believed that a more specialized hull design could mount nearly as much macrocannon firepower in a smaller, less expensive ship. The Truncheon-class hull is only slightly larger than a Sabre or Spatha, but its reinforced turret hardpoints allow it to handle the recoil of significantly larger shells, and space is set aside for well-laid-out magazines and shell elevators to streamline the reloading process and improve firing rate. This comes at the cost of flexibility, since the turrets are ill-suited for any other type of weapon, but as macrocannons are the mainstay of the navy, this is of little concern. The prow mounts are less specialized, allowing for split armaments, and can even be omitted to free up space for other systems. [1W (Macrocannons only, increased firepower), 2D (one armor only, one shields only), 1U, 1O, 1E]
- Cobra Hull Reconstruction Project : Torpedoes have repeatedly proven to be a very effective weapon for the crusade, and we're currently disassembling one of the Imperial Navy's choice torpedo hulls. Some people have seen a connection between these two facts, and are now supporting an attempt to, by using data gained from the Harvest Day, gain the schematics and other information needed to produce Cobra class craft of our own. [1 Weapon Slot, 1 Weapon Slot (Torpedoes only, Expanded Magazine), 1 Defense Slot (Reinforced, Armor Only), 1 Defense Slot, 1 Engine Slot.]
- Specialist Lance Frigate Design 'Light Saber': With projections showing that viable lance class weaponry will soon become available to the crusade, a motion has been put forth to design a dedicated lance carrying vessel for said lances instead of doing the normal pattern of just putting them on the Sabre. This so called 'Light Saber' class vessel, named for the traditional laser lances, is to have substantial amounts of the hulls inner workings redesigned to support a dedicated Lance mount and the needed capacitors and extra power sources thereof, as well as the Spartha variant's superior defensive ability. [1 Weapon Slot, 1 Weapon Slot (Lances only, Extra/Dedicated Capacitors/Generators), 2 Defense Slots, 1 Utility Slot, 1 Engine Slot.]
- Martinet-class Hull: The first Calavan foray into the design of Light Cruisers, the Martinet takes much of its design elements from the purified bulk hauler captured in the initial reclamation of Bailafax. But where the heretics had simply battered the civilian hull into serviceable form, the Martinet has been streamlined and built from a foundation for warships. The slapdash strikecraft housing is converted into proper broadside hangars, while the prow mount is reserved for a Lance. The remaining internal space is converted into room for defensive modules, with space given to ensure that the strong points of the superstructure are prepared for the mounting of armor plating. (2W total, 1 Broadside(Hangar) & 1 Prow(Lance), 3D (1 locked to Armor), 1E)
- The Rapier Hull: takes advantage of the lessons learned while designing the Sable and Hawk Hulls and is designed as a fast frigate with two engines. This is achieved by reducing the weapon mounts to two and specializing the interior, the defense slots can hold a shield and armor and nothing else and one of the weapon slots can only hold weapon batteries(2W(one locked to macrocannons),2D(one locked to shields, one locked to weapons),2E,1U).
- Auceps-class Light Carrier Hull: Although the Cove-pattern hangar can be fitted into most weapon mounts, it tends to be cramped and awkwardly laid out, since the needs of hangar bays are rather different from most weapons. The Auceps-class hull does not have this problem. Its large dorsal landing bay connects neatly to its spacious hangar deck, which easily feeds into the launch rails on either side of the hull. Naturally, this space is then packed to the gills with strike craft, making it just as cramped as any Cove-pattern hangar, but with far more capacity. [1W (broadside, hangar only, increased capacity), 1W, 2D (one armor, one shields), 1U, 1E]
- Hammer-class Frigate Hull: Calivar has always been known as the Loyalist faction that focuses more on firepower in their vessel designs. While the War Hawk is a capable and generalist vessel there is a niche for a frontline vessel that can take a lot of punishment yet deliver just a much bigger punch. The Hammer class is designed to use broadside macrocannons giving it plenty of room to use more powerful broadside armaments. A heavily reinforced prow is also added to increase survivability and possibly deflect incoming kinetic weapons. [1 Broadside Weapon (both weapons are on 1 side), 3 Defense (1 locked to shields & 1 locked to armor), 1O, 1E]
- Harbinger Class Light Cruiser Hull: Modeling off the Captured Bulk Hauler, the Harbinger class light cruiser is a relatively unambitious militarized version of a civilian design. With the bare minimum of weapons, defenses, and utility modules, the only thing the Harbinger's layout truly demands is reliability and avoiding the initial problems of poor layout and power issues seen with the War Hawk Mk. I. The Harbinger needs to be efficient and reliable above all else if it is to become Calavar's first true capital ship. (1 Prow, 1 Broadside, 2 Defenses, 1 Utility, 1 Engine.)
- Sai: With the rise in pirate activity and more territory to cover, a dedicated Patrol Vessel that is low cost yet adaptable will become a necessity in the near future. The Sai is one of the proposed solutions. It is a Corvette sized hull meant to be used as a Patrol vessel. This Corvette have dedicated mountings and space for a Hangar for Saviors but will have the option of either a Macrocannon battery or a Lance as its primary weapon. With its 2 engines it can chase down pirates or escape enemy vessels while on patrol. And its Haptrix shields should be able to protect the vessel from light damage while relying on its maneuverability from the twin engines to allow it to dodge much slower forms of damage. (1W(Hangar) & 1 Weapon, 1 Shield, 2 Engines)
- Switchblade: With unknown elements threatening our shipping a defense against them is needed. A proposal is the Shiv, using a hull with a similar outward appearance to the AMM, this hull is further structurally reinforced to increase survivability and retractable coverings that will hide the vessel's weapons from scans before revealing itself once the enemy is close enough to engage. (1W (can be hidden), 1D(armor), 1D(navigation shield), 1E, 2O)
- Pulse-Hybrid Plasma Drive: Although the maneuvering thrusters of the Pulsed Plasma Array Drive have proven more than satisfactory, the main bank of engines leaves something to be desired. This modification to the system replaces the central thrusters with larger, more conventional ones that employ magnetic containment to avoid the overheating issues of their predecessors, while retaining the nimbler pulse plasma engines around the edges of the bank. This will cost the engines some fine control, likely reducing maneuverability slightly, but should allow for much greater sustained thrust.
- C51 'Crusader' Plasma Drive: While Calavar's engines have primarily been merchant engines moddified to suit the military needs of our time. The C51 is built specifically for war ships. Focusing on reliability, resistance to damage, and power over other design considerations.
- Combat Engine: Calavar has long been reliant on upgraded and militarized merchant engines. While they have sufficed, they have for the most part reached the limits to how much the fundamental technology, the humble merchant engines, can be pushed into accomplishing. The techpriests of Calavar needed a new avenue of research and inspiration to improve the engines of the ships of the Crusade.
The recovery of a previously Imperial engine from the grubby hands of the Orks would provide the inspiration and path forward. Studying the engine, the techpriests of Calavar and the various lay engineers from the companies and noble houses worked together to create a new, superior engine. Focusing on the improvement of acceleration while maintaining the current level of maneuverability, the engine power was boosted by utilizing the availability of better materials brought on by the recovery of the industrial platform to create more sturdy primary engine bells which could withstand more engine thrust. Much of the design of the improved engine bells were lifted from the recovered engines.
- C51 'Crusader' Plasma Drive: While Calavar's engines have primarily been merchant engines moddified to suit the military needs of our time. The C51 is built specifically for war ships. Focusing on reliability, resistance to damage, and power over other design considerations.
- Combat Engine: Calavar has long been reliant on upgraded and militarized merchant engines. While they have sufficed, they have for the most part reached the limits to how much the fundamental technology, the humble merchant engines, can be pushed into accomplishing. The techpriests of Calavar needed a new avenue of research and inspiration to improve the engines of the ships of the Crusade.
The recovery of a previously Imperial engine from the grubby hands of the Orks would provide the inspiration and path forward. Studying the engine, the techpriests of Calavar and the various lay engineers from the companies and noble houses worked together to create a new, superior engine. Focusing on the improvement of acceleration while maintaining the current level of maneuverability, the engine power was boosted by utilizing the availability of better materials brought on by the recovery of the industrial platform to create more sturdy primary engine bells which could withstand more engine thrust. Much of the design of the improved engine bells were lifted from the recovered engines.
- Calavar-pattern Chem Cannon: While burning Promethium is among the most iconic of the Imperium's tools with which to dispense death to the enemies of Humanity, it is at its core only as effective as the enemy is vulnerable to fire. Chem cannons are a superlative means of area denial and strongpoint elimination, regretfully limited by the Imperial Guard's lack of widespread chemical protection equipment. Troops in Preserver suits or Shelter Armor are not so vulnerable to friendly fire in this manner, and the environments they are called to fight in are not always conducive to incendiary armaments. As well, the Imperial Guard's Banewolves are available for construction save for their infamous munitions. The delivery method itself is quite simple, the only true obstacle is developing a serviceable mixture.
- Faith Class Land/Air Mobile Armor: By using advanced and admittedly hard to construct hover technology, the Faith can maneuver from orbit to ground, or ground to orbit, without needing outside aid, and while not not optimized for void based smallcraft combat can still participate in such should they be intercepted by enemy combat parasites. Normally they exist in 'Traveling' mode, where the majority of the combat armor is folded up for superior aerodynamics and centralizing their center of gravity for ease of long distance travel, but when in combat they unfold into their proper combat mode, with all weapons and defense systems activated and deployed for the purpose of giving the enemy a really bad day. For ease of logistics the Faith is armed entirely with energy weapons, primarily lasers, but designers are attempting to replicate both some of the super-heavy plasma weapons with what data was collected before those were traded away as well as attempts at fitting appropriately sized versions of the Thunderhead Disruptor Array's particle guns into this admittedly super-heavy scale vehicle.
- Black Horizon Command Skycruiser: A prototype superheavy air unit, the Black Horizon Command Skycruiser is, well, an airship of collosize size and expanse, said to, in the event that earned it it's name, 'turn the horizon black'. Using a combination of high tech lifting gas in separate lifting cells, giant copter blades, and myriad anti-gravity engines to both stay up in the sky and propel it in its lumbering way through the clouds. And suspended beneath and between these engines of propulsion lie the vast main body of the airship, dotted with autocanons and Earthshakers, adorned with missile silos and spruced up with heavy laser point defense laser. And that is only the surface of this titanic construction, the innards strewn with supply holds for men and materials, graced with distributed and gigantic arrays of logic engines based on the suggested Deep Cogitator Stacks ship component to allow for superior command and control, scattered with silos of kill-servitor defense squads that guard against enemy boarding squads, and of course the needed quarters and infrastructure for the crew.
- Monsoon Class Submersible Amphibious Carrier-Cruiser: The second of the two proposed Titan scale units, the Monsoon Class Amphibious Carrier-Cruiser is, obviously, a giant boat. You can tell that by looking at it. You can also see the giant treads it bears, that allows it to drive right out of the sea to run over enemies and bring its battery of superheavy artillery cannons closer to the enemy, or to avoid enemy counter fire. Speaking of avoiding enemy counter fire, said superheavy artillery guns, and the hanger openings below them, can be retracted and closed when needed, allowing the Monsoon to submerge itself beneath the waves to serve as a gigantic submarine, stealthily moving across the ocean as needed to bring its firepower to new parts of the world.
- Commandos: Building on the model of special forces formations in service to various PDFs, Calavar intends to create an elite cadre of specialists assembled to perform missions too dangerous or too difficult for regular formations to accomplish. Selected from existing elite formations and promising recruits, the chosen soldiers are then forced through rigorous training programs designed to winnow out the unsuitable and ingrain the skills necessary for their new posting. Expected operation types to be undertaken by these formations include counter-insurgency against rebels and Chaos cults, clandestine operations against suspected heretics, direct action against key formations and targets, conduction of manhunts to capture and/or kill HVTs, and conducting decapitation strikes on hostile commands and movements. The last two capabilities are of interest to Calavaran strategists. Prominent leaders and champions form a notable part of both Chaos and Orkoid doctrines, and it believed that the assassination of such figures on and off the battlefield will give Imperial forces a decisive edge. The goal of these soldiers is not to be a substitute for army groups or prolonged conflict. They are to act as small and versatile teams that rely on stealth and surprise to complete their objectives.
- Calavar-pattern basic Auspex display complex: Gehault is the living embodiment that making yourself too defensible can make you more vulnerable, as losing the initiative can be deadly. Soldiers that are completely armored up also lose situational and battlefield awareness that soldiers who don't have many kilos worth of protective equipment have by the simple of dint of being able to better use their Emperor exalted human ears and eyes. Luckily this is a problem with a solution: Auspexes. The Calavan twist, due toe giving each soldier their own being unteneable due to expense and difficulty of manufactoring is this: Spreading the Auspex between a whole squad and simply sharing the display of the results between everyone. Passive sensors mixed with low frequency communication signals feeds data into the collective parts of a sensor network compromised of a whole squad. This means that soldiers can enjoy battlefield clarity when at full strength but are going to be as blind as everyone else as they start taking casualties. Still, it is better to conditionally have good information then not at all.
-Beowulf Super-Heavy Armored Vehicle: Named after a figure of local mythology that slew a fell monster of great size and power, the Beowulf Super-Heavy Armored Vehicle is an attempt to design a locally produced vehicle capable of dueling with the Orc Stompas that have caused much devastation in the past years. Despite this purpose, Beowulf class vehicles are not designed to duel Stompas one on one, as it was widely agreed that while it was theoretically possible to design such a vehicle, it would likely be too uneconomical in both production and maintenance to actually have enough numbers to match said Stompas one on one. Instead, they are designed to fight Stompas in teams, with support and as a distraction from the super-heavy artillery that was originally used to fight the ork super heavy walkers.
Still, the Beowulf is a Super-Heavy tank, and against enemies lighter then a Stompa it should be quite devastating.
The Beowulf's primary armament is a battle cannon based on, if much simplified and enlarged, the one carried by the Knight Paladin recovered earlier in the crusade, as well as the Leman Russ Battle Tank's battle cannon. It does lack the rapid fire abilities of the one carried by the Knight Paladin, but it was never expected for that capability to be successfully replicated. However, while it is quite able to fire the normal high explosive or armor piercing shells akin to those fired by normal tanks, the most important ammunition type this cannon can fire are the specialized anti-stompa plasma warheads the project has developed. Based on the Thermo-Cavitation Shells used in naval conflicts, if considerable weaker and smaller, they are designed to (attempt to) penetrate a Stompa's outer hull and cause havoc in its innards. Of course, like other Super-Heavy Vehicles, the Beowulf has more then just its primary armament.
As will as the super-heavy battle cannon it carries on its turret, the Beowulf has two heavy stubbers for anti-infantry fire, one mounted coaxial to the main cannon and one on an independent pintle mount, a front mounted flamer to ward off orcish close assaults (alternatively, the front mount can carry a heavy bolter), and two sponson mounts for one on each side that carry either autocannons, heavy flamers, or twin linked lasercannons. While these weapons are all minor compared to the great power of the Beowulf's primary cannon, they are still enough to see of lesser foes then a Stompa, of which there are many, or provide supporting fire while engaged with a Stompa.
- Bulwark Super-Heavy Tank: It has one massive hull-mounted cannon, large enough to demand attention from its targets, but not large enough to act as a mini-ordinatus. The Bulwark's main purpose is to carry extremely heavy armour of the highest quality Calavar can source. It even has a small (though large for the tank's size) rapid bubble shield generator to prolong the battle as long as possible to allow supporting artillery to destroy the enemy. As the target of titan class firepower, it does not have secondary weapons: they would be wiped off the hull the moment it entered real combat.
In combat, it points at a titan, stops, then diverts all freed up power to the cannon and shields. Then it just signals the target's location while trading fire
- Faith Class Land/Air Mobile Armor: By using advanced and admittedly hard to construct hover technology, the Faith can maneuver from orbit to ground, or ground to orbit, without needing outside aid, and while not not optimized for void based smallcraft combat can still participate in such should they be intercepted by enemy combat parasites. Normally they exist in 'Traveling' mode, where the majority of the combat armor is folded up for superior aerodynamics and centralizing their center of gravity for ease of long distance travel, but when in combat they unfold into their proper combat mode, with all weapons and defense systems activated and deployed for the purpose of giving the enemy a really bad day. For ease of logistics the Faith is armed entirely with energy weapons, primarily lasers, but designers are attempting to replicate both some of the super-heavy plasma weapons with what data was collected before those were traded away as well as attempts at fitting appropriately sized versions of the Thunderhead Disruptor Array's particle guns into this admittedly super-heavy scale vehicle.
- Black Horizon Command Skycruiser: A prototype superheavy air unit, the Black Horizon Command Skycruiser is, well, an airship of collosize size and expanse, said to, in the event that earned it it's name, 'turn the horizon black'. Using a combination of high tech lifting gas in separate lifting cells, giant copter blades, and myriad anti-gravity engines to both stay up in the sky and propel it in its lumbering way through the clouds. And suspended beneath and between these engines of propulsion lie the vast main body of the airship, dotted with autocanons and Earthshakers, adorned with missile silos and spruced up with heavy laser point defense laser. And that is only the surface of this titanic construction, the innards strewn with supply holds for men and materials, graced with distributed and gigantic arrays of logic engines based on the suggested Deep Cogitator Stacks ship component to allow for superior command and control, scattered with silos of kill-servitor defense squads that guard against enemy boarding squads, and of course the needed quarters and infrastructure for the crew.
- Monsoon Class Submersible Amphibious Carrier-Cruiser: The second of the two proposed Titan scale units, the Monsoon Class Amphibious Carrier-Cruiser is, obviously, a giant boat. You can tell that by looking at it. You can also see the giant treads it bears, that allows it to drive right out of the sea to run over enemies and bring its battery of superheavy artillery cannons closer to the enemy, or to avoid enemy counter fire. Speaking of avoiding enemy counter fire, said superheavy artillery guns, and the hanger openings below them, can be retracted and closed when needed, allowing the Monsoon to submerge itself beneath the waves to serve as a gigantic submarine, stealthily moving across the ocean as needed to bring its firepower to new parts of the world.
- Commandos: Building on the model of special forces formations in service to various PDFs, Calavar intends to create an elite cadre of specialists assembled to perform missions too dangerous or too difficult for regular formations to accomplish. Selected from existing elite formations and promising recruits, the chosen soldiers are then forced through rigorous training programs designed to winnow out the unsuitable and ingrain the skills necessary for their new posting. Expected operation types to be undertaken by these formations include counter-insurgency against rebels and Chaos cults, clandestine operations against suspected heretics, direct action against key formations and targets, conduction of manhunts to capture and/or kill HVTs, and conducting decapitation strikes on hostile commands and movements. The last two capabilities are of interest to Calavaran strategists. Prominent leaders and champions form a notable part of both Chaos and Orkoid doctrines, and it believed that the assassination of such figures on and off the battlefield will give Imperial forces a decisive edge. The goal of these soldiers is not to be a substitute for army groups or prolonged conflict. They are to act as small and versatile teams that rely on stealth and surprise to complete their objectives.
- Calavar-pattern basic Auspex display complex: Gehault is the living embodiment that making yourself too defensible can make you more vulnerable, as losing the initiative can be deadly. Soldiers that are completely armored up also lose situational and battlefield awareness that soldiers who don't have many kilos worth of protective equipment have by the simple of dint of being able to better use their Emperor exalted human ears and eyes. Luckily this is a problem with a solution: Auspexes. The Calavan twist, due toe giving each soldier their own being unteneable due to expense and difficulty of manufactoring is this: Spreading the Auspex between a whole squad and simply sharing the display of the results between everyone. Passive sensors mixed with low frequency communication signals feeds data into the collective parts of a sensor network compromised of a whole squad. This means that soldiers can enjoy battlefield clarity when at full strength but are going to be as blind as everyone else as they start taking casualties. Still, it is better to conditionally have good information then not at all.
-Beowulf Super-Heavy Armored Vehicle: Named after a figure of local mythology that slew a fell monster of great size and power, the Beowulf Super-Heavy Armored Vehicle is an attempt to design a locally produced vehicle capable of dueling with the Orc Stompas that have caused much devastation in the past years. Despite this purpose, Beowulf class vehicles are not designed to duel Stompas one on one, as it was widely agreed that while it was theoretically possible to design such a vehicle, it would likely be too uneconomical in both production and maintenance to actually have enough numbers to match said Stompas one on one. Instead, they are designed to fight Stompas in teams, with support and as a distraction from the super-heavy artillery that was originally used to fight the ork super heavy walkers.
Still, the Beowulf is a Super-Heavy tank, and against enemies lighter then a Stompa it should be quite devastating.
The Beowulf's primary armament is a battle cannon based on, if much simplified and enlarged, the one carried by the Knight Paladin recovered earlier in the crusade, as well as the Leman Russ Battle Tank's battle cannon. It does lack the rapid fire abilities of the one carried by the Knight Paladin, but it was never expected for that capability to be successfully replicated. However, while it is quite able to fire the normal high explosive or armor piercing shells akin to those fired by normal tanks, the most important ammunition type this cannon can fire are the specialized anti-stompa plasma warheads the project has developed. Based on the Thermo-Cavitation Shells used in naval conflicts, if considerable weaker and smaller, they are designed to (attempt to) penetrate a Stompa's outer hull and cause havoc in its innards. Of course, like other Super-Heavy Vehicles, the Beowulf has more then just its primary armament.
As will as the super-heavy battle cannon it carries on its turret, the Beowulf has two heavy stubbers for anti-infantry fire, one mounted coaxial to the main cannon and one on an independent pintle mount, a front mounted flamer to ward off orcish close assaults (alternatively, the front mount can carry a heavy bolter), and two sponson mounts for one on each side that carry either autocannons, heavy flamers, or twin linked lasercannons. While these weapons are all minor compared to the great power of the Beowulf's primary cannon, they are still enough to see of lesser foes then a Stompa, of which there are many, or provide supporting fire while engaged with a Stompa.
- Bulwark Super-Heavy Tank: It has one massive hull-mounted cannon, large enough to demand attention from its targets, but not large enough to act as a mini-ordinatus. The Bulwark's main purpose is to carry extremely heavy armour of the highest quality Calavar can source. It even has a small (though large for the tank's size) rapid bubble shield generator to prolong the battle as long as possible to allow supporting artillery to destroy the enemy. As the target of titan class firepower, it does not have secondary weapons: they would be wiped off the hull the moment it entered real combat.
In combat, it points at a titan, stops, then diverts all freed up power to the cannon and shields. Then it just signals the target's location while trading fire
- Lego-Class Modular Shipyards: With the need of larger more powerful ships a necessity in the near future, an expansion to our ship building capacity is crucial. A proposed solution is to create a modular shipyard, where multiple Frigate sized shipyards can be attached together to create the space necessary to build a cruiser or larger vessels in proportion to the amount of Frigate Modules are used. This will allow us to create Cruisers without needing a dedicated Cruiser yard by combining multiple Union shipyards and once the cruiser is finished can be easily detached and be used to produce multiple frigates when needed.
- Macrocannon Shell Manufacturing: The macrocannons of the Imperial Navy are clearly a cut above Calavar's best, but it's clear that in this sector, even they are functioning below their usual standards, let down by poor-quality ammunition. With reformulated propellant, improved shell geometry, some adjustments to the quenching process, and robust quality control, this project seeks to bring Calavar's macrocannon shells up to Imperial standards. This should not only allow salvaged macrocannons to perform to their full potential, but improve the performance of natively-built ones as well.
- Planetary Industry Investment: Though the expansion of Calavar's dockyard proceeds apace, the industrial contribution of Calavar-IV itself is relatively small. Some of the Crusade's economically-minded planners believe that this could be changed with well-placed investments of money and high-quality manufacturing equipment. If all goes well, the program could even be expanded to nearby systems.
- Manufacturing Distribution: While building the Herald-class corvettes with their salvaged macrocannons, some of the workers began wondering: if installing a salvaged set of cannons is faster than building them at the shipyard, why can't we do the same with our new-built modules? By bringing fewer raw materials and more finished equipment to the dockyard, large ships can be constructed faster, and the planetary industry of Calavar and its vassal systems can contribute more.
- "Smithy" Military Shipyard: While the shipwrights of Calavar have performed miracles in both converting Calavar's dockyards to military use and expanding them we are starting to approach the limits of what a converted civilian dockyard is capable of and a number of production bottlenecks are making themselves known especially with concerns to the production of cruisers, so a new military shipyard was proposed. The smithy is designed using all the experience accrued by Calavar's ship building industry over the course of the crusade with an eye towards modularity not only to ease the difficulty of upgrading and expanding it's facilities but to also allow it's berths to be easily adjusted to the needs of any vessels they play host to.
- Macrocannon Shell Manufacturing: The macrocannons of the Imperial Navy are clearly a cut above Calavar's best, but it's clear that in this sector, even they are functioning below their usual standards, let down by poor-quality ammunition. With reformulated propellant, improved shell geometry, some adjustments to the quenching process, and robust quality control, this project seeks to bring Calavar's macrocannon shells up to Imperial standards. This should not only allow salvaged macrocannons to perform to their full potential, but improve the performance of natively-built ones as well.
- Planetary Industry Investment: Though the expansion of Calavar's dockyard proceeds apace, the industrial contribution of Calavar-IV itself is relatively small. Some of the Crusade's economically-minded planners believe that this could be changed with well-placed investments of money and high-quality manufacturing equipment. If all goes well, the program could even be expanded to nearby systems.
- Manufacturing Distribution: While building the Herald-class corvettes with their salvaged macrocannons, some of the workers began wondering: if installing a salvaged set of cannons is faster than building them at the shipyard, why can't we do the same with our new-built modules? By bringing fewer raw materials and more finished equipment to the dockyard, large ships can be constructed faster, and the planetary industry of Calavar and its vassal systems can contribute more.
- "Smithy" Military Shipyard: While the shipwrights of Calavar have performed miracles in both converting Calavar's dockyards to military use and expanding them we are starting to approach the limits of what a converted civilian dockyard is capable of and a number of production bottlenecks are making themselves known especially with concerns to the production of cruisers, so a new military shipyard was proposed. The smithy is designed using all the experience accrued by Calavar's ship building industry over the course of the crusade with an eye towards modularity not only to ease the difficulty of upgrading and expanding it's facilities but to also allow it's berths to be easily adjusted to the needs of any vessels they play host to.
- AirGuard Ventilation: What is, apart from expanded oxygen stores, a completely standard life support has been altered to provide a deadly last-ditch deterrent against boarding parties. If boarders have occupied a chamber, it can be isolated from the rest of the system, flooded with oxygen and have a spark introduced within. Gas baffles will disperse the explosive force without damaging internal bulkheads. It is also noted that the description of such serves as an excellent deterrent for crew mutinies.
- 'Oasis' Life support system. By enhancing and expanding the air scrubbers from the minimalist designs present in merchant vessels, the Oasis can handle not only larger numbers of crew but can more easily filter and remove toxic gases created by battle damage and other accidents.
- "Cistern" Life Support System: Typical civilian life support systems are adequate for day-to-day use, but leave something to be desired in crisis situations. To better deal with the stresses of naval combat, this improved system incorporates reinforced bulkheads, strategically placed emergency shutters, specialized cogitators, and various pumps throughout the ship. This allows the crew to more easily seal off decompressed sections, starve out fires, and coincidentally delay and disrupt enemy boarding parties. Additionally, enhanced and expanded air scrubbers and water recyclers reduce the danger of smoke and chemical hazards, allow the ship to support additional personnel, and noticeably improve crew morale.
- "Oubliette" Emergency Supply Caches: Scattered throughout the ship these caches of void suits, repair tools and emergency supplies have their own independent life support systems and air locks allowing them to act as emergency shelters in the case of hull breaches or similar atmospheric hazards.
- "Mercy" Medicae Posts: Located in key areas throughout the ship these facilities are little more the fortified field hospitals but can mean all the difference between life and death when dealing with the many dangers of life in the void, while also acting as a rallying point for the crew during the times the ship is boarded.
- 'Oasis' Life support system. By enhancing and expanding the air scrubbers from the minimalist designs present in merchant vessels, the Oasis can handle not only larger numbers of crew but can more easily filter and remove toxic gases created by battle damage and other accidents.
- "Cistern" Life Support System: Typical civilian life support systems are adequate for day-to-day use, but leave something to be desired in crisis situations. To better deal with the stresses of naval combat, this improved system incorporates reinforced bulkheads, strategically placed emergency shutters, specialized cogitators, and various pumps throughout the ship. This allows the crew to more easily seal off decompressed sections, starve out fires, and coincidentally delay and disrupt enemy boarding parties. Additionally, enhanced and expanded air scrubbers and water recyclers reduce the danger of smoke and chemical hazards, allow the ship to support additional personnel, and noticeably improve crew morale.
- "Oubliette" Emergency Supply Caches: Scattered throughout the ship these caches of void suits, repair tools and emergency supplies have their own independent life support systems and air locks allowing them to act as emergency shelters in the case of hull breaches or similar atmospheric hazards.
- "Mercy" Medicae Posts: Located in key areas throughout the ship these facilities are little more the fortified field hospitals but can mean all the difference between life and death when dealing with the many dangers of life in the void, while also acting as a rallying point for the crew during the times the ship is boarded.
- Deep Cogitator Stacks (Bridge Add On) : It is a fact that many of the tasks a warship undertakes, whether that be laying shot, making sense of long ranged scans, or plotting a course, can be added by sufficient power of calculation. The addition of Deep Cogitator Stacks, row upon row of calculation machines and the tech-priest shrines needed to house the adepts required to keep them working, ensure that any function the ship does have can be conducted faster and with more accuracy. While such a use of supplementary space might not directly add to the ship's capabilities like a hold full of combat cyborgs, sometimes it is more important to do things better instead of do more things.
- Invasion Bridge: Intended to be mounted aboard troopships or bombardment ships intended to orbit in support of ground troops for extended periods, the Invasion Bridge functions as both a standard ship bridge and a flag command bridge for ground force headquarters, giving generals a orbital picture of the planetary battlespace and able to attune starship sensors to assess planetary conditions and relay tactical information. With this, our generals may command without risking themselves close to the battlelines on planet, though they depend upon orbital superiority to remain in low orbit to support their troops. (Intention: Ground Troop force-multiplier as Generals get a HQ on the orbital high ground)
- Flag Bridge: The Flag Bridge is the center of everything needed to control a fleet and contains, besides the actual flag bridge and living quarters for its crew, offices with analysts to help make long term plans, tracing rooms with displays and crews to keep track off all ships in a system, and meeting rooms with a small teams of specialist to be deployed as needed.
- Flag Bridge: This expanded bridge is intended to control not just one ship but to manage an entire fleet. With extra communications links, tactical displays, cogitators, and a far larger staff, a flag bridge can collect and collate information from across the fleet, allowing an admiral to far better coordinate his forces. The bridge is intended for capital ships, and although it is possible to squeeze it into an escort hull, it is nearly as expensive as a flag bridge on a cruiser would be, and the sheer size of it requires a utility slot.
- Invasion Bridge: Intended to be mounted aboard troopships or bombardment ships intended to orbit in support of ground troops for extended periods, the Invasion Bridge functions as both a standard ship bridge and a flag command bridge for ground force headquarters, giving generals a orbital picture of the planetary battlespace and able to attune starship sensors to assess planetary conditions and relay tactical information. With this, our generals may command without risking themselves close to the battlelines on planet, though they depend upon orbital superiority to remain in low orbit to support their troops. (Intention: Ground Troop force-multiplier as Generals get a HQ on the orbital high ground)
- Flag Bridge: The Flag Bridge is the center of everything needed to control a fleet and contains, besides the actual flag bridge and living quarters for its crew, offices with analysts to help make long term plans, tracing rooms with displays and crews to keep track off all ships in a system, and meeting rooms with a small teams of specialist to be deployed as needed.
- Flag Bridge: This expanded bridge is intended to control not just one ship but to manage an entire fleet. With extra communications links, tactical displays, cogitators, and a far larger staff, a flag bridge can collect and collate information from across the fleet, allowing an admiral to far better coordinate his forces. The bridge is intended for capital ships, and although it is possible to squeeze it into an escort hull, it is nearly as expensive as a flag bridge on a cruiser would be, and the sheer size of it requires a utility slot.
- 'Longstride' Warp engine. While the typical drive itilized in merchant shipping suffice, the minimal use of technology and advanced components to save costs caused them to have slow charge times, greatly limited speed through the Warp and not being suited for fast/emergency jumps. The Longstride was Calavar's first attempt at improving their engines to something closer to what is utilized on Imperial Navy ships
- Sprint Warp Drive: With the growing number of warfronts and ever pressing need for our warships to be in many places at once, we must prioritize travel speed foremost for our next warp drive. Installing extra capacitor banks and direct reactor feeds into an enlarged warp drive impeller system, additional speed in warp transit may be achieved above merchant-grade warp drives. The gellar field of the ship is also reinforced to face the expected stress caused by the accelerated journey. [Objective: A Warp Drive with faster travel time to allow ships to either be assigned to multiple fronts in sequence, or just be more responsive strategically.]
- Wards of Faith: We must remember that is by the Emperor's Will alone we are blessed with the power to cross the stars. His Light not only fuels the Astronomicon that is our lighthouse amidst the directionless warp, but also our spirits and ships to shield us from the demons that plague the darkness. Reinforcing our gellar fields with icons of faith interwoven with thrice-blessed wards across the ship's hull, culminating in a fifty-meter armored figurehead containing a holy relic and a supplemental gellar field generator for the ship's prow, we can protect ourselves from the deprivations of the warp as we dip deeper into it's currents. [Goal: Reduce warp transit risks by faith and gellar field redundancy]
- Sprint Warp Drive: With the growing number of warfronts and ever pressing need for our warships to be in many places at once, we must prioritize travel speed foremost for our next warp drive. Installing extra capacitor banks and direct reactor feeds into an enlarged warp drive impeller system, additional speed in warp transit may be achieved above merchant-grade warp drives. The gellar field of the ship is also reinforced to face the expected stress caused by the accelerated journey. [Objective: A Warp Drive with faster travel time to allow ships to either be assigned to multiple fronts in sequence, or just be more responsive strategically.]
- Wards of Faith: We must remember that is by the Emperor's Will alone we are blessed with the power to cross the stars. His Light not only fuels the Astronomicon that is our lighthouse amidst the directionless warp, but also our spirits and ships to shield us from the demons that plague the darkness. Reinforcing our gellar fields with icons of faith interwoven with thrice-blessed wards across the ship's hull, culminating in a fifty-meter armored figurehead containing a holy relic and a supplemental gellar field generator for the ship's prow, we can protect ourselves from the deprivations of the warp as we dip deeper into it's currents. [Goal: Reduce warp transit risks by faith and gellar field redundancy]
- Triplex-Void-Auspex: Dedicated sensor towers rising from the back and belly of the ship, the Triplex auspex extends delicate feelers into the void. While they can be shot away, the six masts are multiply redundant, and any two can be lost with no degradation in sensor picture. The large size of the sensor towers mean that on Escort sized ships, this sensor system takes up an extra Utility slot, as it's massive towers are meant for light-cruisers and their ilk.
- Minesweeper Lens: A supplemental active auspex array paired with dedicated cogitator arrays made specifically to home in and detect enemy mines and hidden assets within the void such as ships under silent running. Give our ships more awareness of the void around them, and if they can spot it they can kill it.
- "Dazzler" ECM: This rudimentary sensor-jamming technology is in no way a stealth system. Quite to the contrary, it attempts to blind enemy active sensors with powerful yet unsteady beams of light and radiation (sometimes directly, sometimes reflected off a burst of chaff). No one can miss its presence when it's turned on, but with luck the exact position and speed of the vessel will be obscured. A limited number of decoys are also provided, capable of briefly mimicking the ship's light show. For better or worse, the system is also quite effective at drawing attention away from nearby vessels.
- 'Auditor' T-200 Auspex: The dense sensor clusters of the T-100 are useful and effective sensors, but they can still be improved. The addition of potent active scanning emitters in a variety of spectra allow scans to map battle damage and track hostile fire with laser-focused clarity. The expanded arrays may even reveal important information from fainter traces, at greater distances. (Focuses on active scanning ability, and secondarily increased range. Sacrifice increased range goal to get improved active scans if necessary.)
- Sensor Technology Review: We have access to a large number of advanced sensor technologies that aren't used in our ships' auger arrays to to either impracticality or expense. The problem is we do not know which of those reasons apply. Can the warp energy sensors used to navigate the immaterium be used to detect void shields? Can the electrogravitic field probes used to calibrate gravity plating be upscale to detect the mass of enemy ships? We don't know. It is time to do a review of known sensor technologies to identify which ones can be incorporate into our combat auger arrays to improve their performance.
- Minesweeper Lens: A supplemental active auspex array paired with dedicated cogitator arrays made specifically to home in and detect enemy mines and hidden assets within the void such as ships under silent running. Give our ships more awareness of the void around them, and if they can spot it they can kill it.
- "Dazzler" ECM: This rudimentary sensor-jamming technology is in no way a stealth system. Quite to the contrary, it attempts to blind enemy active sensors with powerful yet unsteady beams of light and radiation (sometimes directly, sometimes reflected off a burst of chaff). No one can miss its presence when it's turned on, but with luck the exact position and speed of the vessel will be obscured. A limited number of decoys are also provided, capable of briefly mimicking the ship's light show. For better or worse, the system is also quite effective at drawing attention away from nearby vessels.
- 'Auditor' T-200 Auspex: The dense sensor clusters of the T-100 are useful and effective sensors, but they can still be improved. The addition of potent active scanning emitters in a variety of spectra allow scans to map battle damage and track hostile fire with laser-focused clarity. The expanded arrays may even reveal important information from fainter traces, at greater distances. (Focuses on active scanning ability, and secondarily increased range. Sacrifice increased range goal to get improved active scans if necessary.)
- Sensor Technology Review: We have access to a large number of advanced sensor technologies that aren't used in our ships' auger arrays to to either impracticality or expense. The problem is we do not know which of those reasons apply. Can the warp energy sensors used to navigate the immaterium be used to detect void shields? Can the electrogravitic field probes used to calibrate gravity plating be upscale to detect the mass of enemy ships? We don't know. It is time to do a review of known sensor technologies to identify which ones can be incorporate into our combat auger arrays to improve their performance.
Logicator Housing Complex: Experience with streamlining logistics and just how much space a human needs before the morale-loss is offset by the gains, has allowed an enterprising Mechanicus-Adept to propose this streamlining of the housing in our honorable ships. Bunks and cabins of the crew are replaced by honey-comb styled tubes that are stacked atop each other, with the inside just large enough to allow for sleep and not much else, though the posibility to combine two or three is there. Canteens, recreational spaces, armories and other needed facilities are similarly placed in positions conductive to increased travel-speed, defensibility and will allow the defenders to seal off portions of it to increase crew-survival-rates due to enemy action. While an increase in cost is predicted, the increase in both crew-number and survival is deemed as justifiable.
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@DaLintyGuy do bombers/fighters get a bonus if their carrier has an improved bridge/sensors?
Is the bulk hauler frame limited to the navigation shields in its defense slot or can any shield be added there?
Is the bulk hauler frame limited to the navigation shields in its defense slot or can any shield be added there?
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Here my idea for a improved macron cannon in a turret:
[Cavalan macrocannon battery MK1* (turreted):
The experience the gun crews on Cavalan corvettes have gained during the early stages of the Crusade as well as the more experienced Cavalan shipwrights lead to an improved turreted macrocannon batteries.
This improvement mainly consists of a better lay out for the turret that simplifies the operation of the guns through somewhat improved ergonomics. The allows for a more efficient maintenance and simplifies reloading operations.
The main improvement however are the improved gun laying equipment that allows for a more reliable adjustment of the guns through the use of hydraulic power based on mining equipment and the introduction of a rotating, enclosed turret basket that provides additional shielding of the turrets interior from shrapnel and spelling.
And finally, the better local fire control that comes form experience with Groupsight Combat Bridges. All in all, this improves reliability and accuracy.]
[Standardized macrocannon ammunition storage compartment MK1:
In conjunction with the new turret designs, Cavalan shipwrights have come up with a module that should allow for a safer storage of macrocannon ammunition as well as new equipment designed to give gun crews better endurance for extended gun duels.
The safer storage was achieve by turning each magazine into a self-contained armored silo, where macro cannon shells are stored inside reinforced racks. The center of each magazine is taken up a by a hydraulic equipment lift based on mining hoists.
When such a silo is placed under a turret, the hoist can then lift a shell up to the breach of the cannon. This arrangment allows for a more efficient use of the gun crews, as more effort can be put into maintenance and damage control by replacing some of the muscle powered equipment with hydraulics. This system is intended to increase the endurance of gun crews during extended gun duels.
In case of a power failure, a crew powered capstan based auxiliary power system is included.]
A third system:
[Navalized powered exoskeletons:
Based on miming and cargo handling equipment.
These suits are intended to facilitate the lifting and manhandleing of loads that a standard human would be unable to move without technical help.
A basic off the shelf civilian exoskeleton that has been augmented with a protective fully enclosed helmet and a sealed undersuit that are intended to protect the wearer from shipboard hazards such as rupturing hydraulic lines, chemicals and falling debris. It is however not armoured to protect against anything more than low velocity shrapnel.
The addition of a magnetic clamping system for the boots has had the fortuitous side effect of insulating the operator from accidental electric discharges.
The suit and helmet combination can protect the wearer from brief contacts with vacuum invade of a containment breach. A limited bottled oxygen supply has therefore been included.
For extended operation, the suit can be operated while plugged into shipboard systems for electricity, breathable air or shipboard communications.
Additionally a basic civilian, short range voxcaster has been included.
All in all this suit is intended to make dangerous shipboard duties less taxing.]
[Cavalan macrocannon battery MK1* (turreted):
The experience the gun crews on Cavalan corvettes have gained during the early stages of the Crusade as well as the more experienced Cavalan shipwrights lead to an improved turreted macrocannon batteries.
This improvement mainly consists of a better lay out for the turret that simplifies the operation of the guns through somewhat improved ergonomics. The allows for a more efficient maintenance and simplifies reloading operations.
The main improvement however are the improved gun laying equipment that allows for a more reliable adjustment of the guns through the use of hydraulic power based on mining equipment and the introduction of a rotating, enclosed turret basket that provides additional shielding of the turrets interior from shrapnel and spelling.
And finally, the better local fire control that comes form experience with Groupsight Combat Bridges. All in all, this improves reliability and accuracy.]
[Standardized macrocannon ammunition storage compartment MK1:
In conjunction with the new turret designs, Cavalan shipwrights have come up with a module that should allow for a safer storage of macrocannon ammunition as well as new equipment designed to give gun crews better endurance for extended gun duels.
The safer storage was achieve by turning each magazine into a self-contained armored silo, where macro cannon shells are stored inside reinforced racks. The center of each magazine is taken up a by a hydraulic equipment lift based on mining hoists.
When such a silo is placed under a turret, the hoist can then lift a shell up to the breach of the cannon. This arrangment allows for a more efficient use of the gun crews, as more effort can be put into maintenance and damage control by replacing some of the muscle powered equipment with hydraulics. This system is intended to increase the endurance of gun crews during extended gun duels.
In case of a power failure, a crew powered capstan based auxiliary power system is included.]
A third system:
[Navalized powered exoskeletons:
Based on miming and cargo handling equipment.
These suits are intended to facilitate the lifting and manhandleing of loads that a standard human would be unable to move without technical help.
A basic off the shelf civilian exoskeleton that has been augmented with a protective fully enclosed helmet and a sealed undersuit that are intended to protect the wearer from shipboard hazards such as rupturing hydraulic lines, chemicals and falling debris. It is however not armoured to protect against anything more than low velocity shrapnel.
The addition of a magnetic clamping system for the boots has had the fortuitous side effect of insulating the operator from accidental electric discharges.
The suit and helmet combination can protect the wearer from brief contacts with vacuum invade of a containment breach. A limited bottled oxygen supply has therefore been included.
For extended operation, the suit can be operated while plugged into shipboard systems for electricity, breathable air or shipboard communications.
Additionally a basic civilian, short range voxcaster has been included.
All in all this suit is intended to make dangerous shipboard duties less taxing.]
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- England
Sir_Travelsalot
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If we have to design it ourselves from the start, why would we then sell it to civilians and then adapt it further instead of just making it suitable from the ground up?
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We can't even build partially powered Carapace Armour right now, I'm not sure we have the capacity to design an exoskeleton period. Much in the same way we can't design a black hole cannon, although that's a little higher end than powered suits I grant.
Also this.
Okay scrap the exoskeletons then. Only build the undersuit for damage control and fire fighters and so on.
Is there a way to trickle down non classified tech to the civs through something like a patent system? Increasing the civilian productivity through increased tech and earning royalties on patents would be ways to increase our budget.
Is there a way to trickle down non classified tech to the civs through something like a patent system? Increasing the civilian productivity through increased tech and earning royalties on patents would be ways to increase our budget.
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
- Location
- Indonesia
I don't think this will work until a few problems are taken care of. The main problem with a turreted Macrocannon is the recoil, we need an insanely powerful shock absorber and thicc reinforcement so the gun don't fly off the ship when it shoots like it was hit by a giant golf club. 2nd problem would be the size of the turret to be able to contain enough space for hydraulics, the loading system, the shock absorbers, the ammo feeding mecahnism, the breach, armor, shield generators/emmiters, and maintenance tunnels or crew operating spaces that it would be much bigger than its broadside version makes this size a vulnerability since armoring a turret means that it needed to be protected in 360 degrees while armoring a broadside only needs to be armored on 1 side, resulting in a bigger turret and requiring more power to move it. Gravity may not exist but there is still inertia to deal with and a building is not easy to move. 3rd problem is the possibility of the turret getting jammed. At this point it is much better to just have broadsides and not having to deal with these problems. If it was Railgun turrets, then it is a different story as we already have a PD turret on our corvette and converting it to Railguns would increase its damage output and accuracy since it is much faster.
I'm gonna leave this to QM but I am okay with this.
could we make a navel academy because at the moment it seams like most of our officers are just former merchant ship captains and well merchants are not exactly know for there understanding of military strategies and tactics.
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
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I just thought of using the linear accelerator of the Thunderclap and just use it to launch solid slugs instead of having to deal with ions. This technology could also be used on our Resolutes' Turret PDs with a smaller version of it. What do you guys think?
(Weapon) Lightning Bolt Coilgun: While the Thunderclap's performance is lacklustre due to the ion having cohesion problems once it leaves the barrel, why not use the linear accelerator of the Thunderclap and use it to launch solid Macro slugs instead, circumventing the problem. The linear accelerator will be able to launch the rounds at incredible speeds, much faster than with our chemical propellant weapons, allowing for increase range and accuracy as it will arrive at its target much faster than shots from our Macrocannons. It maybe possible to replace the PD turrets of our old Resolutes to a smaller version of the Lightning Bolt Coilgun which can be used in a turret. Without the need to store chemical propellant to launch these projectiles, there will be more space for ammunition and the elimination of the rounds getting set on fire when damaged by an enemy attack.
(Weapon) Lightning Bolt Coilgun: While the Thunderclap's performance is lacklustre due to the ion having cohesion problems once it leaves the barrel, why not use the linear accelerator of the Thunderclap and use it to launch solid Macro slugs instead, circumventing the problem. The linear accelerator will be able to launch the rounds at incredible speeds, much faster than with our chemical propellant weapons, allowing for increase range and accuracy as it will arrive at its target much faster than shots from our Macrocannons. It maybe possible to replace the PD turrets of our old Resolutes to a smaller version of the Lightning Bolt Coilgun which can be used in a turret. Without the need to store chemical propellant to launch these projectiles, there will be more space for ammunition and the elimination of the rounds getting set on fire when damaged by an enemy attack.
Sir_Travelsalot
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Macrocannons are coilguns by default, I will point out.
also we need a point defense system to take out strike craft as so far our only counter is our own strike craft
Sir_Travelsalot
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Yes, but PD array's are going to be their own slot, and all the slots on our current ship classes are taken by more important things. If we have to have PD before we get at least LC sized vessels, we can just turn more of the AMM's into Escort Carriers.
the only point defense seen so far is on the Hashim Diamond-class:
1x Pulse Lasers (Damage 1, PD 3, VS Range)
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
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- Indonesia
Would Macrocannons in a Lance format, like I have described provide tangible benefits, like increased speed?
Sir_Travelsalot
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Actually, Now that I think of it... @DaLintyGuy, are there any Stalwart-class System Escorts at Calavar? They're used to escort shipping on their way to the system's Mandeville point. If there ever were any, they wouldn't have been able to leave, since they don't have Warp Drives.
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Sir_Travelsalot
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What, Lance batteries? They'd be more powerful, but the problem with Lances is they're less effective against Void Shields because of their lower rate of fire. Since the only way to bring down Void Shields without something like a Nova Cannon is to keep shooting at it until it overloads and has to cycle, Lances are not a great primary weapon on anything smaller than a Battlecruiser.
So the single lance we do have would be better used in a ship designed to support ground forces as its accuracy allows targeted strikes?
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These are indeed challenging engineering problems but I feel like this particular critique is somewhat undermined by the fact that our current macrocannons are already turrets and not broadsides.
Sometimes. Sometimes they're other stuff. The only thing they're definitely not is modern naval artillery simply scaled up.
Unlikely, since the Stalwart was only a thing in Space Fleet, and Battlefleet Gothic completely changed how the IN worked just in general.
System Monitors are still a thing but probably only for planets more important Calavar.
Sir_Travelsalot
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Oh no, Lances are awesome as ship-mounted weapons, the Dauntless-class is proof of that. I'm just saying that you need to have Macrocannons to batter down Void Shields to get the most use out of a Lance in ship to ship combat with anything that can't just mount kilometers-long batteries of them.