When the Interstellar Alliance was formed, then president Sheridan recognized that the new Alliance would need more ships in its military inventory than just the Whitestar fleet. The idea was that the alliance needed a larger warship, capable of forming the nexus for strikegroups made up out of Whitestars. His idea was to have the ship build and designed by both the Humans and the Minbari, using the best technology available to them, much as had been the case with the designing of the Whitestars, which was done by the Minbari and the Vorlons. As it turned out, although humans had a large say in the design of the ship, most of the technology used was still of Vorlon and Minbari origin. The main production of the craft would be done by the Humans, because of their immense industrial base.
Although the ships are named as being Destroyers, this should be taken as a indication of their power rather than their true designation, as their size and strength qualifies them as Super Dreadnoughts.
This conglomeration of Minbari and Humans is in some ways very useful, as it puts different ideas together in a way not thought about before, for example, the Minbari had not put their ships weaponry in turrets in ages, yet this Human addition to the design solved all blind spots in its field of fire, without adding undue mass to the design. The main contractor for the ships is Edgars Industries of Mars, working together in a joint venture with Minbari of all three Casts.
The Victory and the Excaliber were the first two prototypes of these ships, and their manufacture was marred by difficulties, encountered by the human engineers who had to reverse-engineer not only Minbari, but also Vorlon technology in order to make it work well with much less advanced human tech. Unfortunately the Victory was destroyed in a battle against a Drahk controlled Shadow Planet Killer. While the Drahk were retreating, they destroyed the facilities constructing the new destroyers which means that the Excaliber will be the only ship of this class until new facilities can be constructed. This may actually take several years, and the new ships will likely include several design changes inspired by experience gained with the (currently) single ship of the class, the Excalibur.
The main power supply is a Minbari/Vorlon type quantum singularity reactor, similar, but rather larger than the reactors aboard the Whitestar class ships. The main propulsion is Gravity based and has three nodes that look similar to wings that are the generators of the thrust. This class can perform higher accelerations than any previous Earth-build ships, and the inertial dampening system allows the crew to survive high accelerations. The ships FTL drive is a standard Jumpgate generator, and the speed the ship can make in hyperspace is quite impressive, certainly when compared to Human designed ships.
In raw firepower this ship actually has greater firepower than two Minbari Sharlin Warcruisers, and is thought to be better or equal to any other ship currently found in the galaxy . The main weapon of the ship is a Quantum Gravitic Discharge Cannon that fires from the three gravity drives and is concentrated near the front of the ship. The weapon is a copy of the Vorlon Quantum Gravitic Discharge Cannon but lacks that weapons ability to overcharge. The other problem with the weapon is that it drains all systems and the ship only has life support, gravity, and some sensors after firing it main weapons. For secondary weapons, the ship has eight standard Quantum Gravitic Discharge Cannons, four forward and four aft, based upon the weapons of the whitestar ships. The tertiary weapons array consists of eleven fusion cannons, also with four forward, four aft, and three in turrets. The ship also has 6 neutron/particle beam cannons, also located in the turrets.
Point Defense is taken care of by fifteen Gatling Pulse Cannons. These cannons are mounted in groups of three in windows on the wings of the destroyer. These windows are located in the small bulges on the leading edge of the wings. This means that the upper wing holds three windows of each three cannons, and the other two wings each hold one window. When not in use the cannons are retracted beneath a blast shield.
Lastly the ship has two long range missile launchers of Minbari design. The Ship has relatively little point defense, but this is not considered a drawback, as its armor and shields (certainly that of the later versions) are almost totally impervious to fighter based weapons anyway.
The ships armor is the latest in Minbari armor: a Plasteel/Poly-Crystalline armor mesh. This new armor is physically not as strong as the old crystalline armor, but it has the ability to reflect almost 80 percent of all energy directed at it, and can therefore be much lighter than the old kind of armor, while providing similar protection against directed energy weapons. The only problem might be that kinetic energy weapons and explosions do not suffer any penalties against this armor.
Originally this would not have been a problem either, because a Vorlon armor would have been grown over the Minbari armor, adding greatly to the physical protection of the hull, and providing learning capabilities to the ships hull, the ability to repair the hull, and a powerful Vorlon forcefield. As it is, the ship is not fitted with the Vorlon adaptive hull, nor the Vorlon shields, because the ships were pressed into service before the Vorlon armor could be grown over the ships hull. The only remaining ship in the class will not carry the armor in the forseeable future either, as it has been pressed into service as a research and exploration ship. Adding the armor would take too long, but the ships first combat performance showed that even without the Vorlon armor and shields, she is a force to be reckoned with.
Currently the ship carries a Minbari style forcefield, and the same Minbari ECM systems that made the Minbari ships almost impossible to target during the Earth vs Minbari war. Future ships of this class WILL mount the Vorlon armor and shields, and will likely feature several improvements over the first two vessels. Unfortunately this is still several years in the future.
Unlike any previous Earth-build ships, the Victory class has true artificial gravity systems. This allows the ships crew to operate on the ship indefinitely. When these ships actually enter full scale production, the ships will probably be preferred by ship crews over any previous class. The ship is fitted with spacious berthing and have more recreation facilities than most other ships. The ship's bridge is arranged differently than most ships and is arranged similarly to military submarines that were operated prior to long range space travel.
The ship has the ability to carry a good number of fighters but all Earthforce fighters designs are far to slow to keep up with the ship. It is believed that the ship will more likely carry Minbari fighter designs untill a faster Earthforce fighter with inertial compensators is designed. The ship can carry a reasonably large amount of assault troops for assault mission and normally carries 2000 marines for shipboard defense.
This writeup of the Victory class Destroyer uses modified Phase World starship rules. See Revised Starship Rules for Phase World for more details.
Model: Victory Destroyer
Class: Super Dreadnaught
Crew: 600 (40 Officers and 560 Enlisted)
Troops: Standard; 2000, Maximum; 10,000
Vehicle Compliment:
48 | SA-26 Thunderbolt Star Fighters or Minbari Windstar Fighters | |
8 | Atmospheric Shuttles |
M.D.C. by Location:
Quantum Gravitic Discharge Cannons (8) | 4500 each | |
Fusion Cannons (11) | 1500 each | |
Neutron/Particle Beam Cannons (6): | 360 each | |
Gun Turrets (3): | 1000 each | |
Gatling Pulse Cannons (15): | 180 each | |
Gatling Cannon Window Blast Shields (5): | 500 each | |
Long Range Missile Launcher (2): | 1,200 each | |
Launch Bay (1, underside boom): | 30,000 | |
[1] Bridge: | 75,000 | |
[1] Emergency Bridge: | 75,000 | |
[2] Main Body: | 300,000 | |
[3] Engineering Section: | 90,000 | |
[4] Gravitic Generators (3) | 33,000 each | |
[5] Variable Force Field | 12,000 a side (72,000 Total) |
Notes:
[SPECIAL] The ships armor deflect 80% of all incoming energy
away, not counting purely kinetic energy weapons. Subtract 80% of all damage
done to the ships hit locations by energy weapons! Kinetic energy weapons
and explosions do full damage.
[1] In reality this is how much damage needs to be done for a weapon
to hit the bridge through the ships armor. This ship also has an auxiliary
bridge. Even if both bridges are destroyed, the ship can still be piloted
from engineering but ship is -3 to dodge and all weapon systems will be
at local control. Weapon hits near the bridge that do not penetrate the
ships integrity can injure crew members on or near the bridge.
[2] Depleting the MDC of the main body will put the Destroyer out of
commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support.
The ship itself will be an unsalvageable floating wreck.
[3] Destroying the engineering section means that ship FTL propulsion
systems are destroyed and maximum sublight acceleration is reduced to ten
percent of normal (using navigational thrusters).
[4] The Gravitic generators are the three wings near the rear of the
ship. Destruction of a Gravitic Generator will reduce the ships top acceleration
by one third per generator destroyed. The destruction of a generator will
also destroy one section the main gun of the ship rendering it unable to
fire. The destruction of all three generators will reduce the ships the
ship's maximum sublight acceleration is reduced to one percent of normal
(using navigational thrusters).
[5] Shield positions are variable and can be combined into one shield.
The shields regenerate at a rate of 5% (3,600 MDC) per melee round.
Speed:
Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.
Sublight: Has special sublight engines that allows the ship
to travel up to 60 percent of the speed of light. Star Ship can accelerate/decelerate
at the rate of 1 percent of light per melee.
Atmospheric Propulsion: The Victory class Destroyer can operate
within the outer limits of a atmosphere. If the ship enters an atmosphere
deeper than the stratosphere, it will crash.
Stardrive: Uses a hyperdrive system that allows the ship to
reach a maximum of 75 light-years per hour. This means that the Victory
class Destroyer can cover the Galaxy in about 8 weeks. The ship enters
hyper-space by means of a jumpgate. This ship can use an already made jumpgate
or can form its own jump-gate.
The Victory has enough power to open a jumpgate every seven minutes
(28 rounds). The gate then takes one round to open, two rounds to traverse,
and another to close
Maximum Range: Effectively Unlimited by either Drive system.
Carries about four years worth of supplies on board and the Quantum Singularity
ZPF reactor gives effectively unlimited energy.
Statistical Data:
Height: 2,567 feet (770 meters)
Length: 8,020 feet (2,406 meters)
Width: 2,847 feet (854 meters)
Weight: 8.76 million tons (7.93 million metric tons)
Power System: Minbari/Vorlon Quantum singularity ZPF reactor.
Cargo: Cargo holds are scattered about the ship that allows
for carrying up to 70,000 tons of Cargo in addition to standard compliment
of supplies and ammunition
Cost: 190 billion credits to construct. Any race in the three
galaxies would pay many times that amount for a fully functional Victory
class Destroyer due to the Minbari and Vorlon technology that is incorporated
into it.
Weapon Systems
Special Equipment:
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Technical Information partially based on information from from Babylon 5 Technical Manual!
By Mischa (E-Mail Mischa) and by Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune ).
Rifts Conversion Copyright © 1999, Mischa & Kitsune. All rights reserved.