You've read my mind aldo. And now my thoughts on, at least, the evolution of the destroyer. All names, except Sagittarius, may be changed. Please comment to correct any canon errors. Enjoy the probably history of the destroyer.
Orion: The First Destroyer For this I have decided to, for the time being, ignore the Shivans. We know so
little about them that it simply isn’t practical. However, we know quite a bit about the Terrans, and can speculate with some accuracy about the Vasudans, especially their interactions. So I will start the story here, and a bunch of speculation.
The first destroyer class vessel was nothing like what we know today. In fact,
destroyers probably haven’t been around for nearly as long as we suspect. To begin, though, we must examine the ships that came before, for which the only evidence we have is our own imagination. So allow me some leeway here.
The final war of a series known as the Unification Wars ended in 2316, and with it the GTA as we have come to know it was formed. A united Terran military force to help keep the various alliance members in line and protect all from pirates was formed, and former enemies now became shipmates and wingmen. The transition would not be easy, and until the 14 Year War some five years later would it be complete.
But the fleets now united under GTA command were each enormous. The biggest three fleets, from the old Terran Alliance, Lunar Republic and Jovian Alliance, had nearly a thousand ships each, creating a logistical, and financial nightmare. As the various Admirals of the united fleet met for the first time in one of the new Arcadia stations high above Earth, their most pressing matter was to try to figure out how to manage such an unmanageable fleet. Though many ideas were purposed, and some used, the one we’ll be concerned about is the decision to retire one of the ship classes that all but dominated the fleet: the Leo battleship.
In an age before advanced anti-capital ship bombs had been developed, a whole battleship was needed to fight off their equivalents, and protect the fleet. This was a role that, in 2301, the Leo was designed for. But time had finally come knocking, and the ship was no longer up to standards. Their reactors were old, inefficient, and falling apart. The weapons weren’t on the same technological level as the newer ship in the fleet, the Fenris cruiser. So the decision was handed down to replace the Leo with a more modern
battleship.
The project was eventually turned over to the Han-Ronald Corporation, the famed creators of the Fenris cruiser. Within their employ was a genius, Robert Williams. Williams had been the key designer of the Fenris as well as a multitude of impressive transports including the Elysium, a transport that would serve far into the future. He was an expert at making designs that could be easily upgraded with the latest technology. So good was he that the Fenris and the later Leviathan would serve far beyond their predicted lifetimes.
The problem for Williams, of course, was to make a much larger, more powerful warship than a simple cruiser. After careful study of the tactics and theories regarding the use of such ships he decided that replacing the Leo was not the answer. Instead, he decided that both the Leo and its carrier companion, the Sagittarius, could, and should, be replaced by one ship that could do both. The leadership of the GTA liked the idea, and
Williams was given the green light to try. The result would change battlefield tactics
forever. But first, he had to fail.
It took him nearly five months to design the new class of ship, doing most of the work by himself. His blood, sweat and tears went into the design, and he named it the Orion Destroyer. But this isn’t the destroyer we have all come to know and love. In fact, many who would study this ship would call it the Pocket Orion, a name that fits it far better than any other I could come up with. The PO (easier to write don’t you think) was little more than a third of the size of our Orion, about 750-800 meters long. Though small, the ship was quite advanced supporting the ability to literally replace every part short of the hull with the most advanced technology, something that would carry over to our Orion. It was designed to combine the capital ship smacking power of the Leo with the swarming fighter capacity of the Sagittarius.
The problem, however, was that it couldn’t do either job very well. Primitive
reactors and low fighter compliments didn’t allow it to accomplish missions as well as the pairing of the Sagittarius and Leo through computer simulations. The design was still brilliant, but failed in too many areas. The first destroyer was rejected, not even a prototype was built. And Robert Williams was crushed. Many believed that he was washed up at this point, the spark gone. History would prove them wrong.
He returned to the task he had begun, and tried to fix the problems with the PO.
Though its unclear how the final design for the Orion came to him, but according to his own biography, Williams was bored one night and simply ordered the computer to simply upscale the ship. He liked the idea, and called in everyone he knew, because this was a project that would need more than just him to do. It took two months, and the Orion as we know it was born of the genius of every Terran ship designer alive.
The Orion we know today faced only one hurdle to approval, cost. The ship was
frighteningly expensive, even to the very deep pockets of the GTA. In the short term, it was decided that the Orion would be little more than a figurehead, and aside from a prototype, the GTD Orion, only four would be initially ordered, and due to their size, Han-Roland couldn’t do the job. Instead, the Orions would be built by the newly formed Department of Starship Management (DoSM), an office designed specifically to build the Orion. As the years would go by, every warship would pass through DoSM, including the Hecate and Aeolus. But as a symbol of their pride, the insignia that hangs on the main office door still has a picture of an Orion under construction.
GTD Orion would come off the assembly lines in July of 2319, some six months before the Vasudans were encountered. This triggered a push on construction, completing the second Orion, GTD Gaia, by July of the next year. Gaia and Orion were in functional service just as the 14 Year War began. The Gaia would be the first Orion in combat, defending Earth from a Vasudan raiding party very early in the war. So successful was it, that the Gaia would become the defender of Earth, and the command ship of the 1st Terran Fleet. Following the raid, the remaining four came out of the Io shipyards, with orders for many more to follow. By the 2328, all of the old Leos had been either destroyed or retired, and only a handful of Sagittarius’ remained in limited service. The Orion would serve as the biggest ship in the combined Terran and Vasudan fleets until 2349, when the Hatshepsut (or Hecate, unsure on this issue) was introduced. Even as new technology was developed, the Orion would be updated, replacing reactors, weapons, sensors, fighter bays, nearly everything, and this ability was used to stuff the Bastion and Nereid with meson warheads and seal the nodes to Capella.
A bust of Williams was placed outside the offices of DoSM after his death in 2333.
His last design, the Hippocrates, wouldn’t be built until after the Great War. In his honor, one was named after him, but was destroyed in a Hammer of Light raid in 2338. There are no plans to name another one after him.
The Vasudan Destroyers The raid on Earth in late 2321 changed the Vasudans greatly. After training for years to fight hoards of religious fanatics, they couldn’t get over the accuracy, and power of GTA weapons. But what scared them more than anything were the rumors of a super ship that had dished out most of the damage. The Gaia shook PVN command to core, and they quickly scrambled to meet the new challenge. In less than six months, the Vasudans produced their first destroyer, the PVD Thanatos. Unfortunately for the Vasudans, they had made the same mistake Williams had made nearly four years earlier, the Thanatos was simply to small to be very effective.
Though the Thanatos was an unmediated disaster, it showed the GTA the speed with which this new enemy could adjust their tactics. The Vasudans cranked out nearly fifty Thanatos’ in less than four years, swamping the battlefield with them. Despite their design, however, they were eventually regulated to the classic battleship role, leaving the small and ineffective fighter bays to be turned in to a easily destroyable reactor housing.
Eventually, the Thanatos would vanish from the battlefield, the last one going down in the Battle of Talnia in 2327.
But those four years of mass producing Thanatos’ had not been wasted. Careful study of the Orion had revealed the flaws in the design, and a new destroyer, the Savior class, was developed. In 2326, the first Savior’s came off the line. They were one and a half kilometers long, and capable of taking on an Orion at point blank range. But their true weakness was soon exposed. In an attempt to emulate some of the design decisions of the Orion, they placed the Saviors reactor near the outer hull without realizing that it was there to be easily removed in case of failure or need for replacement. Of course, they weren’t stupid and quickly placed a turret on the spot to protect the reactor. But instead of protecting it, they simply turned it into a target. By the end of the cease fire of 2328, the GTA began exploiting the poor design decision, and sending Saviors down in droves.
Despite the horrendous losses of Saviors, the Vasudans continued to produce them until 2333, when the first Typhon came off the line. Eventually, the remaining Saviors were either destroyed or recycled, and the Typhon became the frontline destroyer for the Vasudan Empire. The new design made the Terrans laugh, until the Eisenhower and the 4th fleet fell at the hands of a fleet led by one. The reason it finally worked, as opposed to the old Saviors, was that it was based on Vasudan design philosophy instead of Terran. This led to the reactor was buried deep in the hull to protect it. Despite this, GTA planners tried to blast the turrets off of Typhons hoping to hit the reactor, thus the reason why GTA info on the ship indicated that the turret armor was weaker than expected.
The Typhon would serve a long and proud history, but by placing the reactor deep in the hull, the new weapons of the fleet doomed many to death. As time would pass, the new Hatshepsut class leaned even farther toward their own design ideas and away from the Orion. But at the same time, the general destroyer concept changed as well. While the Hatshepsut became more like the battleship of old, the Hecate, then new Terran destroyer, became more like a carrier. Considering this trend, eventually the old division between carrier and battleship will make a comeback, and the reign of the destroyer as queen of the fleet will fade once again into history.
I'm working on another version of the 14 Year War timeline and history. That'll take a bit longer than this did. Later.
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I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.
