The Earth Alliance Destroyers is misnamed. The ships jobs is combination of both a Battleship and an Aircraft Carrier. This is the most powerful ship in the Earth Alliance Fleet previous to the new Advanced Omega Destroyer that uses Shadow Technology.
While this ship is very impressive for a race new to space travel, this ship is a conglomeration of copied technology from other races, especially Narn and Centauri, and advanced Earth technology.
The ships propulsion is by four Ion fusion engines that can put out a good thrust to weight ratio but the ratio is much less than the engines of the Minbari, Centauri, and the races of the Three Galaxies. This is not significant because without inertial dampening systems, high accelerations like those race's ships perform would kill the Nova's crew.
In terms of fire power, the ship is impressive but many of the weapon systems are copies of other races technology. The main weapons of this ship are six heavy Ion laser cannons and 18 heavy pulse cannons. The ship has 12 particle guns for anti starfighter defense. The ship also has a long range missile battery that can be used both against capital ships and fighters. The ship also has an interceptor grid for defense of the ship against weaponry. The interceptor grid fires low powered energy beams to intercept incoming fire and uses electromagnetic fields to disperse energy that is fired at the ships. The interceptor grid also employs a system designed to decoy incoming missiles. The systems is more effective against plasma cannons and pulse cannons (Actually another style of plasma cannon - does not work as efficiently on weapon systems that simply fire in pulses) than the system is on other energy weapons. The system quickly get overloaded though and cannot operate continuously and is not as effective as the shields on Minbari and Centauri ships.
The ships crew section rotates to provide artificial gravity for the crew and control rooms and the ships berthing areas are located in the rotation crew section. This means that the ships crew can serve on the Omega class longer than the crews could for the previous Earth Force ship classes. The ship also has more spacious berthing areas than previous ship classes and have more recreation facilities as well. Because these ships are more comfortable than previous ships, they are very popular with ships crews.
The ship has a small fighter compliment and the fighter compliment can either be the older SA-23E Aurora Starfuries or can be the newer SA-26 Thunderbolt Starfuries that are slowly replacing the older fighters. The ship carry a large amount of assault troops for assault mission but normally only carries 120 marines for shipboard defense.
Listed is the formula to allow player and game masters to calculate the Destroyers velocity and distance traveled:
Model: Earthforce Omega - Class Destroyer
Class: Battleship / Light Carrier
Crew: 600 (25 Officers and 575 Enlisted)
Troops: Standard; 120, Maximum; 800
Vehicle Compliment:
32 | SA-23E Star Fury or SA-26 Thunderbolt Star Fighters | |
6 | Standard Shuttles | |
6 | Atmospheric Shuttles |
M.D.C. by Location:
Ion Laser Cannons (6, 2 forward / 4 aft ): | 1,200 each | |
Pulse Cannons (18, 2 forward / 4 aft / 12 in weapon pods): | 500 each | |
Particle Guns (12, in weapon pods): | 300 each | |
Weapon Pods (12, sides): | 1,000 each | |
Long Range Missile Battery | 800 | |
Launch Bay (1, front): | 4,000 | |
[1] Main Sensor Cluster (1, front): | 3,000 | |
[2] Main Body: | 55,000 | |
[3] Engineering Section: | 15,000 | |
[4] Rotating Crew Section: | 20,000 | |
[5] Ion Fusion Engines (4): | 5,000 each | |
[6] Interceptor Grids (6): | 4,000 per side |
Notes:
[1] The Main sensor cluster is located above and below the Launch Bay.
Destroying it means that the ship will have -40% to read sensory rolls,
all sensor ranges are halved, and all long range weapons have a -2 to strike.
[2] Depleting the MDC of the main body will put the Destroyer out of
commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support.
Rotational crew section will stop rotating. 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] If the MDC of the Rotating Crew Section is reduce to less than
half, the crew section will loose power to the rotational system. The rotating
crew section will slow down at the rate of 10% of its speed for every twenty
minutes that the power is out for rotating the Rotational Crew System.
In about three hours, the rotation will completely stop. Main control is
in the rotating crew section so destroying the section will eliminate the
bridge. If the control center 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 in the crew section that do not destroy the
ship can injure crew members on or near the bridge.
[5] The Destruction of one engine reduces the ships acceleration by
one quarter. The destruction of two Ion Engines reduces the ships acceleration
by one half. Destroying three Ion Engines will reduce the ships acceleration
by three quarters. Destroying all four Ion Engines means that the maximum
sublight acceleration is reduced to ten percent of normal (using navigational
thrusters).
[6] The Interceptor Grid gives only partial defense against energy
weapons and as the system absorbs more damage this percentage of damage
will be reduced. The system will absorb up to 4,000 MDC per side. Initially,
the system will absorb 80% of damage from plasma weapons and pulse cannons
(Actually another style of plasma cannon - does not work at this higher
efficiency on other weapon systems that fire in pulses). This is because
is it much easier to disperse plasma than an actually energy beam. The
system does not absorb damage from rail guns, other projectile weapons,
and from missiles. Initially, the ships will also absorb 40% of other styles
of energy weapons as well (This includes non plasma style pulse weapons
as well). For every 500 MDC that the system absorbs, the system will be
reduced in effectiveness by 10% for subsequent strikes (Example:
If an Interceptor Grid absorbs 1000 MDC, the Interceptor Grid will only
absorb 60% of plasma damage and 20% of the damage for any other energy
weapon when struck next.) The defense grid recovers at the rate of 100
MDC per minute. The missile decoy portion of the system is described separately
below.
Speed:
Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.
Space Propulsion: The starship does not have an effective top
speed but is limited by acceleration. The Earthforce Destroyer can reach
a top acceleration of 4 G but due to high fuel consumption and extra strain
on the engines, the ship will normally travel at 0.5 G for any extended
trips. Top acceleration is only meant for emergencies and combat maneuvers.
Because the Destroyer is mostly unshielded from the effects of radiation
and hypervelocity atomic particles (It is not completely unshielded), the
destroyer is not operated at speeds exceeding 20% of the speed of light.
Atmospheric Propulsion: The Earth Force destroyer cannot operate
within an atmosphere. If the ship enters an atmosphere, it will crash.
Stardrive: Uses a hyperdrive system that allows the ship to
reach a maximum of 11 light-year per hour. This means that the Earth Destroyer
can cover the Galaxy in about 12 month (will need to refuel periodically).
The ship enters hyperspace by means of a jumpgate. This ship can use an
already made jumpgate or can form its own jumpgate.
The Omega has enough power to open a jumpgate every fifteen minutes
(60 rounds). The gate then takes one round to open, two rounds to traverse,
and another to close.
Maximum Range: Conditionally unlimited, while the fusion rector
gives power for a decade 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 Destroyer carries six month of reaction mass for travel at 0.5
G of acceleration. Double the consumption of fuel for 1.0 G of acceleration
and double the consumption again for every 1.0 G of acceleration beyond
1 G. This means the ship will burn the fuel 16 times faster than at 0.5
G of acceleration at maximum speed. 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.
If the ship has a large amount of flight operations, the ship is limited
to about four months endurance at cruising speed from the fighters using
the ships reaction mass.
Statistical Data
Height: 1131.1 feet (344.5 meters)
Length: 4956.7 feet (1,400 meters)
Width: 1131.1 feet (344.5 meters)
Weight: 13.9 million tons (12.6 million metric tons)
Power System: 4 Tokamak 650 Fusion Reactors (10 year duration).
However, it was recommended that the drive and power system have routine
maintenance every 5 years. Also, the ship only carries about a six month
supply of reaction mass.
Cargo: 200,000 tons
Cost: 20 billion credits to construct
Weapon Systems
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Technical Information from Babylon 5 Technical Manual!
CGI of Ship by Craig P. Condu . More of his CGI pictures of B-5 Ships at Epsilon Jumpgate
By Mischa (E-Mail Mischa) and by Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune ).
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