Battlecruisers

Overview

Battlecruisers are often refered to as an Overlap Class, as Battlecruisers share characteristics from both Cruiser class and Battleship class vessels, often providing great all round firepower and durability. They are usually perfectly capable of facing off against small squadrons of ships completely alone, only relying on their own strike craft complements. Within a fleet formation, they are usually employed in supporting roles, supplementing the firepower of a Battleship from far closer range or providing close fire support to a Carrier.
Battlecruisers often have one massive advantage over other classes; their speed relative to their size and mass. This allows them to keep up with formations of smaller vessels to either provide heavy firepower or to shield them from the heavier guns of enemy vessels. This speed combined with a great balance of firepower and durability makes Battlecruisers excellent choices for flanking moves against larger vessels.
Battlecruisers often act as centre pieces for battlegroups where it would be deemed inappropriate to deploy a Battleship or Carrier or other larger vessel, such as anti-piracy or anti-terrorism operations. Their more compact size makes them ideal for supporting patrols in debris or astroid fields.
Sub-classifications of battlecruisers include Heavy Battlecruisers (sacrifices turreted and guided firepower for spinal mounted firepower, fill in when a battleship is not present), Command & Control Battlecruisers (equipped with advanced central targetting and sensor arrays, perfectly capable of coordinating entire battlegroups, Relay Battlecruisers (specialized communications ship for use in larger fleets) and Interdiction Battlecruisers (a larger version of the Interdiction cruiser, offers a larger area of effect, but is far slower and extremely vulnerable to long range missiles and torpedoes)

Emergeny Planetary Union Battlecruisers

The EPU was not as economically robust as other interstellar states such as the Keplarian Imperium or the Scr'hal Democratic States and as such, large Battleships were simply unfeasible to field in large numbers for the EPU navy. In addition their slow speed made them relatively incompatible with EPU naval doctrine, which promoted use of hit-and-run tactics over direct confrontation where possible. The solution developed by the EPU's Department of Stellar Naval Research was to use small numbers of high quality Battlecruisers in place of Battleships. The criterea for such vessels was to be able to move at the pace of EPU Destroyer-class vessels, while carrying spinal mounted weaponry specialised with dealing with large Keplarian ships or to adequately fill a Command & Control role.

Two designs are known to have been in mainline service with the EPU, the Retaliator-class and the Perception-class. The Retaliator-class made use of an incredibly advanced shield generation system, that allowed for shields to be triple layered in any direction when focused to a particular angle. It also featured a robust hangerbay system, allowing for the rapid launch of its complement of 24 XF-45 Lightning III Multi-Role Fighter . The Retaliator was armed with a weapon system codenamed "Trifecta". Trifecta was a Linked Railgun system, meaning when fired 3 different spinal mounted railguns (one underneath the chin and one underneath each wing) would fire in a defined partern depending on the ammunition loaded. The standard ammunition profile of the Trifecta system was one EMDS (Electro-magnetic Discarding SABOT) round and two APEDS (Armour Piercing Explosive Discarding SABOT) round, which was fired in a "1-2" format. The first shot fired was the EMDS, which would disable an enemy ships shields in a single shot. The following 2 shots would be the APEDS rounds fired in unison, which were capable of penetrating an enemy vessel's armour layers and detonating their payload deep inside the hull. In spite of all this durability and firepower, the Retaliator-class struggled in enviroments where it was forced into the Command and Control role. It simply did not have the hardware and computing systems to act in such a way, which is why the EPU developed the Perception-class.

The Perception-class was far more focused around combat utility than direct combat. Its armament was light for a ship of its size, having only a few batteries of missile launchers for direct ship-to-ship combat and an large Point Defence array. It made up for it's lack of firepower by being a computing and engineering marvel. It featured the most sophistacted tracking system in the known galaxy by the time of the Interstellar War in 2065, a triple layered shield generation system and communication arrays capable of sending near instantaneous messages across a star system thanks to its use of a Graviton Array. It's linked tracking system, codenamed TAPS (Target Aquistion and Prediction System), allowed less sophistacted vessels to rapidly aquire targets and had the most accurate trajectory prediction algorithm of any ship in the EPU or Imperium navies. It was also incredibly agile, thanks to its near total reliance on the shield layers for defence instead of armour and oversized fuel injector system in its engines, which made it incredibly hard to pin down and destroy.

Length

1500m minimum length to be classified as Battlecruiser, 2000m upwards classed as Battleships

Weight

10,000s metric tons

Speed

200-500km/h in Atmosphere, 200-800km/h outside Atmosphere

Complement / Crew

750-10,000

Cargo & Passenger Capacity

Cargo space for ground vehicles, extra munitions and extra fuel and passenger space for 1,000s of embarked troops