Spaceship blog 8
Escort ship
Star navies design escort ships to patrol borders or screen their fleets. Whatever their mission, escorts come off the assembly line equipped with a lot of rapid moving point defense turrets and powerful engines. Most vessels of this type are at least one hundred meters long and forty meters wide.
Escorts are not designed to go toe to toe with bigger starships and will retreat when facing their nemesis – the larger and better-armed Corvette.
Bulky and sluggish, the capital ships are vulnerable to starfighter and strike craft attacks. Wave after wave of torpedoes, heavy missiles, or just the strike craft themselves could overwhelm even the most efficient defenses. Which is why having plenty of escorts to provide another wall of point defense fire is often the decisive factor in winning large fleet engagements.
“Escorts are nimble ships, yet lightly armed and armored.”
More often than not, the fleets of rival star nations rely heavily on their strike craft to cripple their opponent’s capital ships. The nimble, yet lightly defended escorts, rush in and try to plug the gaps in their fleet line. There is nothing scarier and more hated by any starfighter or bomber pilot than the sight of an escort ship blocking their way, its battery unleashing barrage after barrage of devastating point defense fire.
Because of the nature of spaceship combat and the weapons employed, escort ships are often equipped with one of the best heatsinks that their manufacturer has access to. Having multiple and fast firing beam weapons necessitates this since if the ship lacks heatsinks or they are of an inferior quality, the vessel would fire a couple of bouts only and then stop, or the crew would boil alive in their space suits.
“Some escorts are so fast that their fleet commanders use them for courier duty.”
CN employs its few escorts in a much different and quite scary way.
Colonists do not view these starships as a purely defensive craft, but more like an offensive weapon platform. The Colonial Navy has their own design which not only has a unique gas cooling weapon system installed on top of their best quality heatsinks – a starfighter docking port. This external port gives their escorts the ability to carry, refuel and rearm a full sized SSF fighter craft.
Combined with their rapid firing railguns equipped with flack shells and the extremely well-cooled lasers, Terrans have one of the most feared escort craft among all Star States.
In most cases, the CN commanders rely on their fighters to screen the fleet and deploy the escorts in an offensive role. They are sent to wipe their enemy’s own escort vessels, which they have an edge against since Terran escorts have their flack railguns which out-range most beam guns of the same size. Together with the small number of starfighters they carry, CN escorts could wipe their counterparts, enabling their carrier strike craft to bomb the living shit out of the enemy’s capital ships.
“Why are the barbarians moving their escorts out of position? Their fleet is now wide open to strike craft assault. Wait... the Terrans are actually moving into an attack formation?! They are coming straight at us, the Fools! Disperse the fleet, we will blast them to pieces when they come into range of our big guns! Wait, what do you mean their escorts have deployed starfighters?!” - Unknown Taz’aran border fleet commander.
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Scout Fighters Starfighters Strike Craft Interceptors Space Shuttle Escape Pod Modular Ships Escort ships Corvettes
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