I've been thinking on this stuff for some time and I finally just started writing it down for no real reason. This is an EXTREAMLY ROUGH draft, and it'll have nasty little starts and stops, lots of random rambling and even ends abruptly. Please feel free to comment as one day I might actually, you know, polish it up or something.
Rise of the Destroyer
An Examination of the Original Purpose and Use of the Destroyer Class Ship in the Freespace Universe That's a big title
Size may not be everything, but it sure means a whole lot. In Freespace, size is represented by the destroyer, a massive warship at least 2 kilometers long, often larger. For a science fiction ship, it's not the biggest, even within the Freespace universe it's dwarfed by the Juggernaut classes. What makes the destroyer interesting is the massive difference in size between the only other warship class to be seen in the original game: the cruiser, a ship less than half a kilometer long, if that.
Why such a massive difference in sizes? Why the lack of any other classes of ships besides those two? Beyond that, when did the first destroyer appear? What was its intended purpose? How has that purpose changed? What is the future of the class? This document hopes to answer these questions and more.
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Let us begin with what is a destroyer. Originally, the term destroyer was used to refer to a class of ship designed to screen the navel fleets against small torpedo boats, and later submarines and even aircraft. At some point, the destroyer became a jack of all trades type ship and its original role was taken over by smaller ships.
Though the destroyer has never been the smallest ship in the fleet, it's at least a few grades above that title, it has always been dwarfed by the carriers and battleships that it was tasked with protecting. In the Freespace universe, however, the destroyer is pretty near the top in sheer size only surpassed by the massive juggernaut class warships, of which there are only two known classes.
It should be fairly obvious that the destroyers of Freespace were designed with one thing in mind: To be very big. So important was this that everything in FS is actually designed to enhance how truly, awesomely big these ships are, despite the fact that many of the fighters one flies are massive in their own right. This size and power is enhanced with the introduction of beam cannons and flak guns that now make these ships not only really big, but quite dangerous as well.
Even with these new weapons, it seems the main purpose of the destroyer to carry fighters, lots of fighters. In a sense, the FS destroyer is very much like a real destroyer, a kind of jack of all trades, fulfilling the role of the biggest ships in the modern naval fleet at the same time, the carrier and the battleship. What is surprising, however, is how well they actually accomplish both tasks. Often the idea of being a jack of all trades comes with the additional phrase "master of none," yet the destroyers of Freespace often perform both tasks with a great deal of skill, nearly mastering both, at least until the second generation of destroyers enters the scene.
This brings up the question of how such a feat is possible. What the destroyer is seems to be a product of history of the FS universe, but at the same time it seems to have driven that history into moving in that particular direction. The only way to truly understand this deep connection is to examine the one class of destroyer whose service life spanned the whole of FS history, the mighty Orion class destroyer.
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Aside from the Shivan destroyers, the Orion is generally assumed to be the first destroyer constructed by either the Terrans or the Vasudans. The main reason for this is the lack of any previous class being mentioned in any of the canon documentation. To supplement this, the second oldest, the Typhon, is mentioned as a reaction to the Orion, and even destroys one in its opening campaign.
Prior to this comment, only one other destroyer class vessel is described, the Galactic Terran Destroyer Goliath. Given that the Orion is the only class known, it can be safely assumed that the Goliath was such a vessel. This does not confirm this fact, as there are only two mentions of the Goliath, and the inclusion of a date for one of them possibly even harms the possibility as it states that the Goliath was destroyed "12 years ago" or in 2323.
If true, then it seems that the Orion destroyer was around for the bulk of the 14 Year War between the Terrans and Vasudans, if not for its entire length, during which time the Vasudans had no viable counter. How, then, did the Vasudans manage to wage an effective military campaign, let alone create a blood draining stalemate with the GTA? After all the Orion, regardless of its armament during this period, would be next to impossible to destroy short of massed kamikaze attacks, which is how the Goliath is said to have been brought down.
There are several possibilities for how it was done. First, the Goliath was not, in fact, an Orion, but some other, proto destroyer class that was far easier to defeat. This would mean, however, that the Orion is a relatively recent development for the GTA, something they do not treat it as. The second possibility is that the Vasudans actually had a comparable destroyer of their own that preceded the Typhon. There is, however, no mention of it, and when the Typhon is described, it is compared to the Aten class cruiser, not to another destroyer.
The third, and most likely possibility, is that during this period of the war there were very few Orion class ships available, and those were considered very, very valuable either by command or the GTA civilian government. After the destruction of the Goliath, Orion's may have been pulled from most frontline service to protect them from another such attack, muzzling their ability to crush the PVN. This is reasonable given the reaction to the destruction of an Orion. During the 14 Year War, such action is classed as a "major defeat," while during the NTF rebellion and the Second Incursion, the destruction of large warships is shockingly common. They are still terrible defeats, but compared to the reaction of the 14 Year War period, the defeats are much less major and even expected, especially when fighting the Shivans. This is perhaps a result of the Great War itself when massive chunks of the GTA and PVN fleets were simply annihilated.
There are likely other reasons, but these seem most reasonable and simple to establish.
If we accept the third possibility, then that says that the Orion entered service either just before or just after the 14 Year War started in 2321. This, incidentally, makes the Orion amongst the longest served ships in history as they were still in active service in 2365, some 44 years after entering service. Very impressive for any ship, but considering the absolute size of the vessel, it probably is unsurprising. It is even likely that the original designers intended the ship to serve somewhere on the order of 100 years or more.
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What were they really designed for though? Combat is the obvious answer, but let us examine the Orion in a bit more detail. For one thing, it has one fighter bay. Redundancy is the name of the game when it comes to full time combat operations. While one deck is good if it's all you have, it's better to have at least two ways to launch your fighters. Most modern carriers have an angled deck off the main one for just this purpose. In World War II, when such a deck wasn't available, there were often dozens of smaller carriers on the scene that brought their own fighter squadrons to bear when the situation required. Even the Typhon has two launch bays.
Aside from that, the abysmally low number of turrets, a mere 16 cover the hull, only 7 more than the Fenris and Leviathan class cruisers which are a fraction of the size. Of course, this is pretty much standard, as Typhon has a 15 and the Hades has 16, but these are in response to the Orion, not the original. Later models of destroyer, Hecate and Hatchepsut, have 45+ turrets, so they are much more up to date in comparison.
Where things get odd is the incredible number of radar dishes the Orion sports. There are three large ones, two just on top with a third near the front, right next to massive array of antennas. This giant array is as large as a Fenris cruiser and is virtually unprotected in any major way. No other destroyer has such a system that is as obvious as that of the Orion. Could this just be the result of improvements over the original design? Of course, there is no evidence that this is not the case. However, it might indicate that the Orion may not have been designed for full fledged combat from day one.
Even with a lot of advanced technology, it would take years to design the Orion. The Colossus, a ship many times larger than the Orion, took at least 20 years to design and build, the first Orion likely would have needed less time, but if scaled it would still take seven years from concept to completion. If we assume the Goliath was an Orion, then the class had to be on the drawing board a full five years before the 14 Year War began, if not longer, and thus likely before any contact with alien races had been established. This indicates that the Orion was not designed to fight the Vasudans.
Who was it supposed to fight then? The Galactic Terran Alliance seems to have been well established before the Vasudan war began, and since the majority of Terrans still lived in the Sol system even as that war ended, it can be assumed that there are few, if any, independent Terran groups, even at that early stage. A massive warship like the Orion would be unnecessary in that political environment, and the military arm of the GTA would have to find a way to gain support for such an endeavor, one that could justify building even one of these behemoths.
To find this reason, it becomes necessary to study the concept of subspace, the advanced physics that allows for the faster than light travel of the Freespace universe. The intra-system drive, the one that allows for travel within a star system, is probably the fastest, most efficient form of travel for small craft in nearly any science fiction universe. From a military standpoint, it offers a massive amount of flexibility with forces, enabling one centralized location to deploy forces throughout a system on a whim. This, of course, assumes that small craft like fighters were capable of this action during the pre-war years. Even so, one carrier could fight an entire war without engaging the enemy at all, or even being seen.
A carrier can be justified this way, but not one as large as an Orion. The second element of subspace is the inter-system drive, which requires massive coils and can only be performed at jump nodes. This creates a bottleneck that restricts the movement between systems, and gives the defender of a given star system a great advantage over the attacker. The bulk of the 14 Year War was fought over control of these nodes, not the systems, and even the Shivans preferred node control to occupying planets. To have a successful invasion, the attacking force needs to be able to enter and hold position on the far side of the node until further reinforcements can arrive.
A battleship type vessel is ideal for this situation, for long term staying power little matches the heavy armor of such ships. Being able to launch fighters would make the problem of waiting for reinforcements smaller and much more manageable. Thus node invasions are ideal for the destroyer. There is only one problem with this: The Orion was built before such combat was necessary. There is no enemy to fight, no nodes to invade and hold. I do not doubt someone, perhaps a great many people, would predict that such combat would come at some point, but selling it to a civilian government is likely impossible, especially with no viable threat.
How do you sell the future of combat when there isn't an enemy to fight? You change the mission. Remember those giant radar dishes and antenna arrays on the Orion? The purpose and mission of the Orion was changed to sell it to the civilians. Instead of being an invasion ship, they put it out as an exploration ship. The missions are similar, but in a peacetime environment, the exploration element takes precedence. To make an Orion more ideal for this, they slapped on more and bigger sensor arrays.
When the war started, these systems became handy for the great ship to engage in combat, but it didn't really need them. Later designs, like the Hecate, lacked them completely.
Still, even a handful of Orion's couldn't overcome the Vasudans when the war with them began. Being such a massive investment of resources, it is likely they were held back from direct combat, reserved for only the most important missions, ones that could and often did change the fortunes of war. This is obvious in the reactions people are said to have when an Orion did arrive: initial relief, then panic as it stuck around for far, far too long.
The war was fought off the decks of the destroyer, but not with the destroyer as a direct action weapon. Even when the Typhon appeared, the nature of the combat didn't change. If anything, the GTA and the PVN began pushing for stronger bombs and bombers. Had things continued as they were, aside from the eventual economic collapse, it is possible that the destroyers would slowly have been phased out as effective ships, replaced by more specialized carriers and lots of defensive warships.
The Great War changed the game. There is little point in trying to understand the motives and nature of the Shivans, especially why the bulk of their ships and weapons were similar, if stronger, to what the Terrans and the Vasudans fielded. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the most effective weapons against the Shivans, along with excellent intelligent, was not the destroyer, but the bomber and the ultra high lead bombs. The same weapons the two sides were designing to defeat each other.
The story of the destroyer must now take a detour to explore the two ships that helped redefine the role and power of the destroyer: The Lucifer and the Hades super destroyers. They are significantly bigger than their cousins, and most certainly more powerful. The Lucifer remains the only capital ship to have any form of shielding, while the Hades was an attempt to replicate many of the Lucifer's abilities, but was never fully activated. Though both were defeated through the use of Harbinger bombs, the allies never forgot their power and potential. After the Hades was destroyed, development of the destroyer took on a new direction along with a pair of new weapons: the flak gun and the beam cannon, both the result of experimentation and study of the fallen Lucifer and Hades.
Flak guns are about the most mysterious of the new weapons that appeared. The fact that they didn't exist prior to this hard to understand as the Vasudans were fond of using mass swarming fighters, especially in kamikaze raids, and in that kind of environment, such weapons would rule the roost. The Shivans, of course, attacked with even greater numbers than even the Vasudans could ever muster, so perhaps the sudden increase in attackers necessitated the production of flak to protect even the weakest of ships. It's simply unclear, but what is clear is that they made such a massive difference in the way ships protected themselves from bombs and bombers that a new kind of anti-capital ship weapon was needed.
The beam cannon, and its many varieties, from slasher beams to anti-fighter beams, have a very obvious and direct ancestry: The Lucifer's flux cannons. These were replicated, but never fully tested or activated, on the Hades, and it's likely that the beam cannons of today were constructed based on that initial design. Beam cannons, however, were probably not intended to be mounted on a destroyer, and the decision to do so came about only after the initial development proved they could work.
The Colossus would get the bulk of the beams, but they would be moved to the other classes, and the destroyers would once again be tasked with the bulk of the work, and the failure of their designs. The Typhon suffered the most, as they weren't combatable with the new beam weapons for the most part. Many of the class were destroyed as the upgrades were attempted. Even before then, however, the first corvette, the Sobek, rolled off the lines, and they took to the new weapons much more easily.
See, told you it just ends. I ran out of things to write, for now.
