While the Drazi are not as advanced as the Earth Alliance, their ships are still well constructed and can be very effective combatants withing their limits. The Drazi also do not have the economy for a large fleet or expensive starships so they must built low cost ships. The Drazi Sun-Hawk is a good example of their ships. It is rugged, well armed, and relatively fast. It is capable of hurting true capital ships and is capable of destroying starfighters and in fact is almost as maneuverable as starfighters. The ship has become an export model for the Drazi because several races have expressed an interest in the ship. The Drazi Sunhawk is also referred to as a War Bird.
The ship only has light armor due to the ships size and the ship cannot take as much abuse as true capital ships. This means that many of the heavy weapon such as the Ion Cannons or Pulse Cannons can destroy the Drazi Sun Hawk within half a minute or less. The ship still carries enough armor that it can withstand attacks from fighters quite well.
The ship uses a Modular fusion reactor for power, this allows the reactor to be repaired quickly and it makes it easier to repair in many cases as well. The ships thrust is provided by a relatively simple plasma drive. The ship does not have a jump drive due to cost and uses jump gates for the ships travel.
The Drazi Sun-Hawk is well armed for its size. Its main weapon are four plasma guns. The weapons are either a copy of Narn Systems or a derivative of Centauri system. It is suspect that the first is the case because the Narn have sold their systems to a great many different groups. For point defense, the Drazi has four particle beams. There is a good chance that these weapon are copied from Narn systems as well. The ship has missile launchers that are designed to be used against both capital ships and fighters.
Like most of the ships of the younger races, These ships do not have artificial gravity and crews can only serve in the ships for limited periods of time or crew will suffer from the effects of no gravity.
Listed is the formula to allow player and game masters to calculate the Sun-Hawks velocity and distance traveled:
Model: Drazi Sun-Hawk class Gunboat.
Class: Gun Ship
Crew: 20 (2 Officers and 18 Enlisted)
Vehicles: None
MDC by Location:
Plasma cannons (4): | 500 each | |
Particle Guns (4): | 225 each | |
Long Range Missile Battery: | 500 | |
[1] Plasma Engine: | 2,000 | |
[2] Bridge: | 2,200 | |
[3] Main Body: | 8,000 | |
Wings (2): | 1,000 each |
Notes:
[1] Destroying the Plasma Engine means that the maximum sublight acceleration
is reduced to ten percent of normal (using navigational thrusters).
[2] In reality this is how much damage needs to be done for a weapon
to hit the bridge through the ships armor. The ship does not have an auxiliary
bridge. Even if the ships bridge is 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.
[3] Depleting the MDC of the main body will put the Gun Ship out of
commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support
and internal gravity. The ship itself will be an unsalvageable floating
wreck.
Speed:
Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.
Space Propulsion: The starship does not have an effective top
speed but is limited by acceleration. The Drazi Sun-Hawk can reach a top
acceleration of 5 G but due to high fuel consumption and extra strain on
the engines, the ship will normally travel at 1 G for any extended trips.
Top acceleration is only meant for emergencies and combat maneuvers.
Because the Gunboat is mostly unshielded from the effects of radiation
and hypervelocity atomic particles (It is not completely unshielded), the
ship is not operated at speeds exceeding 20% of the speed of light.
Atmospheric Propulsion: The Drazi Sun-Hawk can operate within
an atmosphere but the ship is normally limited to around Mach 2 except
when escaping the planets gravity. The ship can reach escape velocity to
do this
Stardrive: The ship does not have a jump drive but can use already
formed jump points such as those formed by jump gates. While in hyperspace,
the ship to reach a maximum of 6.5 lightyears per hour. This means that
the Drazi Sun Hawk can cover the Galaxy in about 18 month (will need to
refuel periodically and the Drazi rarely have these ships travel that far).
Maximum Range: Conditionally unlimited, while the fusion reactor
gives power for three years of service, the ships propulsion is limited
by the ships reaction mass. The ship can be refueled at ground based facilities,
space stations, and other star ships as long as they have the special facilities.
The ship can also be refueled by fuel shuttles. The Sun Hawk carries six
weeks of reaction mass for travel at 1 G of acceleration. Double the consumption
of fuel for every 1.0 G of acceleration beyond 1 G. This means the ship
will burn the fuel 8 times faster than at maximum speed as it does at 1
G of acceleration. The ship will often accelerate for a period of time
and then shut down the engine and travel using the ships velocity. If the
ships uses more than half of its reaction mass when accelerating, the ship
will be unable to decelerate fully and the ship will normally only use
a third or less of its fuel on accelerating so it does not run into a problem..
If the ship runs out of fuel then it must be refueled by another vehicle
traveling faster or be lost.
Statistical Data
Height: 216.4 feet (65.9 meters)
Length: 591 feet (180 meters)
Width: 409.8 feet (124.8 meters)
Weight/Mass: 7616 million tons (6,907 metric tons)
Power System: Fusion Reactor (3 year duration). Also, the ship
only carries about a six week supply of reaction mass.
Cargo: 400 tons
Cost: 650 million credits to construct
Weapon Systems:
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Technical Information from Babylon
5 Technical Manual!
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By Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune ).
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