It looks good to me - and a scout cruiser could also be a sort of central gathering point for other light scouting craft too. I think I'm all good with all this stuff. HSA politics would certainly allow heavy railgun equipment to be retrofitted to other faction's ships, for the purposes of joint ventures - I like that idea a lot, and it also gave me a convenient place to gather everybody together.
I've got reasons and politics and higher story arcs for this thread, so don't worry about any of that.
PRE-MISSION BRIEF
The Casters are a diplomatically-immune faction with motives and technology incomparable to our own. What they want is unclear, how they could get it is even less so. However, since making a few brief contact transmissions and one diplomatic meeting, contact with the Casters has been scarce.
However, fairly recently a colony in the Outer Spiral Arm (15 days travel with HSA transluminal acceleration arrays) transmitted that they had received firm contact with the Casters, with negotiations and trade underway. The Casters subsequently contacted colonies all along the outer edge of the outer spiral arm, none of which were affiliated to the UCE, UOSE or the UEE.
This all changed exactly two weeks ago. A stray emission of radio waves and neutrino bursts in identical, but unidentifiable, patterns was captured by one of the colonies' advanced detection platforms monitoring their sun. A diplomat mentioned this to the Caster diplomatic group, and after viewing the pattern immediately boarded their ships and left the system. Reports hold that all other diplomatic parties left at the same time.
Their vectors have been traced to a small binary solar system right on the edge of the Milky Way, which has no record of exploration even by the Templar corporation. The UCE and UOSE shipyard and communication activity has trebled in the last week, and we suspect that they will be launching an armed exploration group. For this reason, Spacetech, Templar and HSA will be constructing a joint task force to reach that system before any other group. Heading out in four days, the joint task force will consist of ships from all three factions and will set off with the aid of an HSA transluminal boosting station.
The aim is to find out why the Casters retreated and ran, and if possible to establish diplomatic relations with the Casters. Armed confrontations with the UCE and UOSE is likely, perhaps even certain.
Affiliation: Spacetech
Ship Name: Subjective Beauty
Ship Type: Light Cruiser
Armament: 8 forward heavy energy projectors, 10 long-range pulse laser batteries, 28 medium-range heavy pulse laser turrets, 10 short-range solid-state laser batteries. 10 missile launch bays holding 500 missiles apiece. 1 hangar bay holding 20 strike craft and 25 anti-fighter drones, plus mission-specific spacecraft.
Armour: Standard Spacetech cruiser-class tungsten-titanium alloy with dense crystal-state artificial diamond weave sheathing. Heavy and limiting, but capable of taking heavy weapons fire comfortably.
Construction: Three standard cruiser-class fusion reactors, one cruiser-class auxiliary reactor. Like all Spacetech ships, the Subjective Beauty has multiple redundant frames throughout its construction maintaining structural strength even under 60% destruction.
Engines: Four heavy-class V9 fusion drives, sixteen interstellar-rated heavy-class V12 ion engines, one medium-class V3 secondary fusion drive, one V5 combat drive. Low manoeuvrability, medium acceleration ceiling. However, the brutal weaponry it carries removes the need for agility.
Additional Information: Crew of 275. Built as for an anti-destroyer role, the Subjective Beauty can take and deal a lot more damage than her size suggests, but she pays for this. Heavy armour and armaments means she lumbers around the battlefield and cannot easily chase destroyers to finish a battle.
The Subjective Beauty is currently en route to a classified HSA shipyard to await the retro-fitting of the Perpetuating Light as part of a joint strike force, having just been recalled from active duty elsewhere in the front lines.
Now working on Reclaimer Canon Fiction #3 (May be called Array).
