Bellerophon, Pegasus, and Chimera"General Soter? The final checklist is complete. Your ship is prepared for battle."
The voice came through the audio-neural interface. It was the ship's first officer, manager of the non-capsuleer crew. The checklist was a formality, something easily done with a simple mental glance of monitoring systems and queries to the ship computer. But Julianus kept with the ancient custom, as a matter of procedure. The human element, in whatever ship, must not be forgotten. He took the ship out of the station, to war.
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BB-X 209 Bellerophon,
Scorpion-Class, stationed Dodixie rally point. Assigned to Synenose Coalition forces, Federation Sector.
Role: Modified Battleship. Refitted with advanced graviton radiation generators and gravimetric monitoring equipment. Full combat complement of drones, cruise missiles, and repeating artillery batteries.
Technical: Doctor Kybernetes Moros conducted extensive rerouting of central battleship power conduits to the cargohold. This provides the necessary power supply for a range of specialized equipment as specified by Doctor Moros.
[[
Attached: Report of Doctor Kybernetes Moros]]
With the revelation of information relating to the Nation such as their apparent presence in Directorate space or their possession of the Kyonoke protein, much attention has been turned to them. However, it must not be forgotten that, at least for the time being, the success of their attacks is largely contingent upon the creation and maintenance of wormholes. Of course we must also analyse recent findings and work with them, but the fact remains that if the Nation's wormholes could be decisively countered their movements in empire space would be, for the moment, significantly hindered.
Of course, gravimetric ECM is effective to a certain degree, as has been shown by activities such as Operation Bad Moon. However, ECM attacks can only go so far and are susceptible to ECCM counterattacks. As such, I have revived some work of mine from some time ago with a number of alterations that it might provide a much more reliable counter to the Nation's wormholes -- Project Bellerophon, named for the testbed ship.
Put simply, Project Bellerophon takes the basic idea of using gravimetric ECM against the wormholes and amplifies it with the utilisation of large quantities of graviton pulse generators. Regrettably, due to computing, power and size requirements, the equipment necessary can only be fitted to battleship-class vessels or larger.
The ideal battleship for Project Bellerophon is the Scorpion, owing to the extended capacity for ECM built into its hull as standard, but hypothetically any battleship or larger would be suitable, though admittedly to varying degrees. In quantities varying with accordance to the available carrying capacity of the ship and indeed what ship is being used, the components required are as follows:
- Graviton pulse generators
- Sensor clusters covering all four spectra -- these allow for computer systems to modulate the output of the pulse generators to maximise efficiency in forcing a wormhole collapse
- Quantum microprocessors -- the core component of the aforementioned computer systems
- Antimatter reactors and oscillator capacitor units -- these provide supplementary power to the apparatus such that the vast majority of the ship's powergrid can be reserved for normal usage
I thus propose that capsuleers working to combat the Nation's incursions flying battleships fit such equipment. I would be perfectly happy to provide the quantities of components required given the class of the ship and additional cargo requirements, and, for that matter, technical information such that it may be rapidly and efficiently incorporated by typical in-station maintenance and fitting drones. Regrettably, I am by no means able to fund the purchase of components; I paid for those used on the Bellerophon, but I could not afford to do so for every battleship that may participate in the project.
As an example, the following were mounted on the Bellerophon, a Scorpion class with a base cargo capacity of 550 m^3, leaving 120 m^3 for spare ammunition and the like:
- 390 graviton pulse generators
- 5 sensor clusters for each spectrum (radar, ladar, gravimetric and magnetometric)
- 5 antimatter reactors
- 5 oscillator capacitor units
- 10 quantum microprocessors
I am in no way suggesting that we lose sight of recent developments, or attempting to belittle their significance -- but we must also remember to counter what incursions there may be as best we can.
Doctor Kybernetes Moros
γλωσσαι πασσαι εμοι Ελληνικη εισιν
[[EndReport]]
Conclusion: Ship has yet to be field-tested during a Nation incursion. Requesting additional information from CONCORD Operation Snowblind for expected effectiveness of loadout. Cross referencing theoretical output of Spatial Destabilizers to those used by Operation Bad Moon would also be informative. Request priority contact with Officer Yoshitaka Mormuo.
Mass production of the ship's design, while possible, would require the unique expertise of Doctor Moros and specialized training of staff for the juryrigged subsystems. Additionally, the specific components necessary for these subsystems increases the overall unit cost, and needs sufficient tech-2 market supply. This limits the number of systems the ship could be easily assembled in situ.
Command remains optimistic of ship's performance in combat situations. Given restart of Nation incursions, leadership predicts first engagement using vessel will occur within one standard day.
Author
Topic: Project Bellerophon (Read 1857 times)