Carriers

A space carrier is a warship with typically more than two flight decks and facilities for carrying, maintain, arming, deploying, coordinating and recovering space fighter crafts, and it serves a mobile space base. It is usually the biggest warship of any fleet, a superior capital ship, as it allows any navies to project space force anywhere without relying on local bases for staging major operations. Carriers are extremely expensive and valuable addition to any fleet and it is important to provide protection to them.

Description and design[]

Present day carriers evolved from dreadnoughts, so in armour, armament and offensive/defensive capabilities they are often comparable to their forebears.  Since space fighter crafts are still considered as a new technology that has not found its' right place yet in space warfare, the carriers are a bit of mixture of everything: they have a high number of turrets, trooper compliment, cargo hold and are generally the strongest vessels in present day.

The first carriers appeared on the colonies as an attempt to counter the Empire’s superior dreadnought-class vessel Perun. The Perun ruled the interplanetary space in every star system settled by the humans for a decade, and the colonies had a hard time producing their own dreadnoughts that can face the Perun. They looked back to the age of seagoing naval warfare and figured that carriers could be the answer just as it was long ago, when battleships and dreadnoughts ruled the oceans and seas.

They faced a huge problem right away: carriers needed effective fighter craft to carry as main armament, and the capital ships they were supposed to fare against were too heavily armoured for a ship of this size and power. Fighter craft could only hope to overcome any capital vessel in great numbers and thus requiring extensive supporting facilities on the carrier’s part, which in turn was far beyond the technological capabilities of any Colony. They settled for a cross between a dreadnought and a real all-flight-deck carrier: the resulting vessel got as many turret hard points as the planned frame could possibly support, and received more flight decks a normal dreadnought is equipped with.

Historically the very first carrier appearing in the warzones was the Tzar, developed and manufactured by the Baeldor Republic. In their first engagement two Tzar carriers annihilated an entire Empire battle fleet consisting of a squadron of five Peruns and several support vessels. The Empire immediately saw the threat the new ship class posed and rushed their own design to the fields called the Equinox. All the other major houses also created their own designs and these days carriers are effectively the flagships of any navy, backed by dreadnought battlefleets.

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