Infobox - Nebulon-line Frigates
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer
(So, I. picked a bad week to start teaching myself a new skill! Took a while to make the art for this and the style clearly switched halfway through, but I'm proud of my little experiment and might consider doing it again in the future! With no further ado, have another infobox with my take on the long-theorized "true version" of the Nebulon-B. Updates might be slow from here, even for regular writing, but not giving up yet.)
The Nebulon-Class Frigate was first rolled out five years before the Separatist Crisis and fifteen years before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and its design reflects the limited resources available to Kuat's engineers prior to the centralization of the Republic military. This design was a basic picket frigate, more closely resembling something like Rendili's Neutron Star or Dreadnaught than any modern Kuati vessel, made for affordability above quality. It was armed with a handful of light turbolasers and ion cannons and used to patrol relatively volatile spacelanes; the Nebulon sported an extremely advanced communications suite (for the time) that allowed it to monitor local communications and quickly pick up distress calls, leading to its primary usage as an anti-piracy convoy escort.
The design was hampered, however, by numerous technical issues. In order to remain fast enough to chase down pirates, its engines burned incredibly hot, quickly chewed through fuel and could even damage the metal around them when pushed to their limits for enough time. Its armament was too light to confront ships of similar sizes and the automation that went into reducing its crew compliment could prove fickle and frequently encountered issues when trying to intercept enemy fighters; the Nebulon's only advantageous match-up was when it went against slower transport vessels, usually modified civilian freighters pressed into piracy. While the Nebulon was affordable enough to make up for these deficits, and saw decent service in local defense forces prior to and during the Clone Wars, it was no surprise that the design was thoroughly supplanted by the Arquitens-Class Light Cruiser, which was better-armed and significantly more nimble, cementing its role as the primary escort of the Republic Navy.
The Arquitens, however, encountered an unexpected stumbling block: Its sole competency as a warship made it less appealing to planetary governments who used the Nebulon as a support vessel. Its speed and automation made it well-suited to serving as an emergency response vessel when a government needed to respond to natural or industrial disasters on its other planets, as it had the internal capacity to support thousands of beings for short periods of time and could ferry medical supplies and foodstuffs faster than many freighters. Many of these vessels had their primary cargo bays retrofitted into medical bays and small hangars and served as mobile hospitals prior to the advent of the Pelta-class and would maintain civilian duties for years after the Clone Wars.
It was with this information in mind that junior Kuat engineers began toying with a modernized version of the Nebulon following the rise of the Galactic Empire as vast regions of the galaxy were brought into the Imperial fold. A new vessel could be standardized and optimized to serve the needs of the thousands of worlds now under the Imperial banner while correcting many of the errors of its predecessor. While they had extremely limited resources to work with, they would use the general form of the Nebulon-A while bringing it within Imperial sensibilities and codifying many of the retrofits that had given the frigate its staying power with resource-strapped planetary governments.
The Nebulon-B first rolled off the assembly line five years after the end of the Clone Wars as a "crisis response" frigate that could serve equally well within the Imperial Navy or the numerous civilian administrative divisions within the Empire. The lumpy nature of its predecessor was replaced with a sharp and well-defined hatchet-shaped hull capable of supporting a wide variety of modules attached with seamless magnetic seals – most prominently, the massive primary medical ward capable of supporting hundreds of patients at a time while having facilities for water purification, basic medical research, and even the transportation of livestock. The engine block was greatly expanded and complemented by new ionic vanes that helped dissipate heat, allowing the vessel to maintain a respectable cruising speed for long periods of time.
Certain compromises were made, however. The starboard hangar bay (not pictured) was still only large enough to support a pair of airspeeders and a pair of new TIE-line starfighters at a time and the vessel was still under-armed compared to other warships of its size. The automation of the prior edition was stripped away, making the frigate somewhat cumbersome for planetary governments with few available resources to operate, and the modularity of its systems necessitated the additional purchases of said modules, quickly driving up the price of maintaining such a frigate. It was best suited to service in the Imperial Navy; however, the Navy was never especially interested in the Nebulon-line and only fielded the vessel in limited numbers.
For the Nebulon-Bs active in civilian service, they would need to find ways to circumvent the limited hangar capacity in order to maintain the vessel's efficiency as a mobile hospital. It would find its complement in the most unlikely of ships; the Corellian Engineering Corporation's YT-1300 light freighter. Though the humble freighter was already considered outdated, it had a stroke of engineering genius that Kuat would take advantage of in order to convert the YT-1300 into a hospital ship - its central passage (frequently used to mount weaponry) could be replaced with an elevator that could support a bacta tank, allowing for patients to be directly loaded into the tank before even entering the ship. Its cargo bays could be replaced with rudimentary medical wards, allowing for the freighter to support several cots and three bacta tanks at a time. The vessel only needed a crew of three humans to operate, with maintenance and medical duties assigned to droids as needed before handing off patients to the crew of the frigate. The Nebulon could have up to six freighters docked along its primary hull at once, allowing it to maintain a constant stream of patients, passengers, and cargo with a planetary surface, and used freighters were easily cheap enough to field in large numbers.
Despite initially showing solid results, the Nebulon-B's Achilles' heel would only come to light after several years in service. The magnetic seals that supported the various modules scattered along its hull – especially along the front and back of its blade-like primary hull – came with expiration dates unbeknownst to their manufacturers and failed en masse roughly three years into the frigate's life, resulting in these modules decoupling from their motherships and drifting off into space while killing tens of thousands from depressurization and prolonged exposure to the vacuum of space. While Kuat scrambled to issue repairs and correct the issues on the frigates still under construction, the majority of Nebulon-B's active at the time were simply discarded, tossed into scrapyards littered across the galaxy.
While the Nebulon would gradually rebound and enter civilian service once again, the discarded Nebulon-A's and B's were already finding new operators. Their solid armament and engines were extremely appealing to pirates and insurgents, with the crew requirements of the Nebulon-B just within what large pirate crews could operate. The issue of magnetic decoupling did little to deter these ruffians, as they had little use for the ship's modularity and would simply weld the offending modules to the vessel's hull and work with their vessels as they came. Empty modules would be used to mount additional weapons or converted into additional hangar bays, with some Nebulons rumored to support up to 24 starfighters if properly retrofitted. Many of these vessels were lightly armored, as the outer hull was first to go in the reclamation process, but that only served to make the engines even more efficient.
These ships would serve at the core of pirate armadas as makeshift flagships who could equally serve in fleet actions or provide logistical support to other pirates. Their medical and life support facilities allowed for pirates to operate away from planets or ports for weeks at a time and frequently carried sensors powerful enough to track down unprotected vessels or monitor and avoid warships that could pose substantial threats to the frigate. While their armament was nothing impressive, it was easily enough to incapacitate civilian freighters long enough for them to be boarded and ransacked before the offending frigate disappeared into the night well before any other ship could respond to their distress call.
The Nebulon's service, in hindsight, is regarded as incredibly mixed and will largely depend on an individual's experience with them. For those who received medical support or were ferried away from danger by such a frigate, they generally left with positive impressions of the vessel and couldn't understand the animosity so many developed towards them. For those threatened with the vacuum of space during a sudden decoupling, raided by a pirate frigate, or baffled by its peculiar engineering, it's seen as a failure across the board who deserved to slip out of relevancy as time left it behind. Still, the vessel served an important role over its decades of usage, saved hundreds of thousands of lives across dozens of worlds, and saw combat countless times across the Outer Rim, cementing its place in the historical record.
Infobox – Nebulon-line Frigates
The history of the Nebulon-line of frigates from Kuat Drive Yards is one marred by controversy, corporate incompetence, and the ever-adapting face of galactic security as power was increasingly concentrated into central authorities and challenged by belligerency from within and beyond. Its history sees Kuat evolve from a subsidiary of the Techno Union to the leading Imperial conglomerate who would go on to spearhead Imperial expansion while inadvertently providing the fuel for anti-Imperial resentment and rebellion.The Nebulon-Class Frigate was first rolled out five years before the Separatist Crisis and fifteen years before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and its design reflects the limited resources available to Kuat's engineers prior to the centralization of the Republic military. This design was a basic picket frigate, more closely resembling something like Rendili's Neutron Star or Dreadnaught than any modern Kuati vessel, made for affordability above quality. It was armed with a handful of light turbolasers and ion cannons and used to patrol relatively volatile spacelanes; the Nebulon sported an extremely advanced communications suite (for the time) that allowed it to monitor local communications and quickly pick up distress calls, leading to its primary usage as an anti-piracy convoy escort.
The design was hampered, however, by numerous technical issues. In order to remain fast enough to chase down pirates, its engines burned incredibly hot, quickly chewed through fuel and could even damage the metal around them when pushed to their limits for enough time. Its armament was too light to confront ships of similar sizes and the automation that went into reducing its crew compliment could prove fickle and frequently encountered issues when trying to intercept enemy fighters; the Nebulon's only advantageous match-up was when it went against slower transport vessels, usually modified civilian freighters pressed into piracy. While the Nebulon was affordable enough to make up for these deficits, and saw decent service in local defense forces prior to and during the Clone Wars, it was no surprise that the design was thoroughly supplanted by the Arquitens-Class Light Cruiser, which was better-armed and significantly more nimble, cementing its role as the primary escort of the Republic Navy.
The Arquitens, however, encountered an unexpected stumbling block: Its sole competency as a warship made it less appealing to planetary governments who used the Nebulon as a support vessel. Its speed and automation made it well-suited to serving as an emergency response vessel when a government needed to respond to natural or industrial disasters on its other planets, as it had the internal capacity to support thousands of beings for short periods of time and could ferry medical supplies and foodstuffs faster than many freighters. Many of these vessels had their primary cargo bays retrofitted into medical bays and small hangars and served as mobile hospitals prior to the advent of the Pelta-class and would maintain civilian duties for years after the Clone Wars.
It was with this information in mind that junior Kuat engineers began toying with a modernized version of the Nebulon following the rise of the Galactic Empire as vast regions of the galaxy were brought into the Imperial fold. A new vessel could be standardized and optimized to serve the needs of the thousands of worlds now under the Imperial banner while correcting many of the errors of its predecessor. While they had extremely limited resources to work with, they would use the general form of the Nebulon-A while bringing it within Imperial sensibilities and codifying many of the retrofits that had given the frigate its staying power with resource-strapped planetary governments.
The Nebulon-B first rolled off the assembly line five years after the end of the Clone Wars as a "crisis response" frigate that could serve equally well within the Imperial Navy or the numerous civilian administrative divisions within the Empire. The lumpy nature of its predecessor was replaced with a sharp and well-defined hatchet-shaped hull capable of supporting a wide variety of modules attached with seamless magnetic seals – most prominently, the massive primary medical ward capable of supporting hundreds of patients at a time while having facilities for water purification, basic medical research, and even the transportation of livestock. The engine block was greatly expanded and complemented by new ionic vanes that helped dissipate heat, allowing the vessel to maintain a respectable cruising speed for long periods of time.
Certain compromises were made, however. The starboard hangar bay (not pictured) was still only large enough to support a pair of airspeeders and a pair of new TIE-line starfighters at a time and the vessel was still under-armed compared to other warships of its size. The automation of the prior edition was stripped away, making the frigate somewhat cumbersome for planetary governments with few available resources to operate, and the modularity of its systems necessitated the additional purchases of said modules, quickly driving up the price of maintaining such a frigate. It was best suited to service in the Imperial Navy; however, the Navy was never especially interested in the Nebulon-line and only fielded the vessel in limited numbers.
For the Nebulon-Bs active in civilian service, they would need to find ways to circumvent the limited hangar capacity in order to maintain the vessel's efficiency as a mobile hospital. It would find its complement in the most unlikely of ships; the Corellian Engineering Corporation's YT-1300 light freighter. Though the humble freighter was already considered outdated, it had a stroke of engineering genius that Kuat would take advantage of in order to convert the YT-1300 into a hospital ship - its central passage (frequently used to mount weaponry) could be replaced with an elevator that could support a bacta tank, allowing for patients to be directly loaded into the tank before even entering the ship. Its cargo bays could be replaced with rudimentary medical wards, allowing for the freighter to support several cots and three bacta tanks at a time. The vessel only needed a crew of three humans to operate, with maintenance and medical duties assigned to droids as needed before handing off patients to the crew of the frigate. The Nebulon could have up to six freighters docked along its primary hull at once, allowing it to maintain a constant stream of patients, passengers, and cargo with a planetary surface, and used freighters were easily cheap enough to field in large numbers.
Despite initially showing solid results, the Nebulon-B's Achilles' heel would only come to light after several years in service. The magnetic seals that supported the various modules scattered along its hull – especially along the front and back of its blade-like primary hull – came with expiration dates unbeknownst to their manufacturers and failed en masse roughly three years into the frigate's life, resulting in these modules decoupling from their motherships and drifting off into space while killing tens of thousands from depressurization and prolonged exposure to the vacuum of space. While Kuat scrambled to issue repairs and correct the issues on the frigates still under construction, the majority of Nebulon-B's active at the time were simply discarded, tossed into scrapyards littered across the galaxy.
While the Nebulon would gradually rebound and enter civilian service once again, the discarded Nebulon-A's and B's were already finding new operators. Their solid armament and engines were extremely appealing to pirates and insurgents, with the crew requirements of the Nebulon-B just within what large pirate crews could operate. The issue of magnetic decoupling did little to deter these ruffians, as they had little use for the ship's modularity and would simply weld the offending modules to the vessel's hull and work with their vessels as they came. Empty modules would be used to mount additional weapons or converted into additional hangar bays, with some Nebulons rumored to support up to 24 starfighters if properly retrofitted. Many of these vessels were lightly armored, as the outer hull was first to go in the reclamation process, but that only served to make the engines even more efficient.
These ships would serve at the core of pirate armadas as makeshift flagships who could equally serve in fleet actions or provide logistical support to other pirates. Their medical and life support facilities allowed for pirates to operate away from planets or ports for weeks at a time and frequently carried sensors powerful enough to track down unprotected vessels or monitor and avoid warships that could pose substantial threats to the frigate. While their armament was nothing impressive, it was easily enough to incapacitate civilian freighters long enough for them to be boarded and ransacked before the offending frigate disappeared into the night well before any other ship could respond to their distress call.
The Nebulon's service, in hindsight, is regarded as incredibly mixed and will largely depend on an individual's experience with them. For those who received medical support or were ferried away from danger by such a frigate, they generally left with positive impressions of the vessel and couldn't understand the animosity so many developed towards them. For those threatened with the vacuum of space during a sudden decoupling, raided by a pirate frigate, or baffled by its peculiar engineering, it's seen as a failure across the board who deserved to slip out of relevancy as time left it behind. Still, the vessel served an important role over its decades of usage, saved hundreds of thousands of lives across dozens of worlds, and saw combat countless times across the Outer Rim, cementing its place in the historical record.
