Earthforce Monsoon Class Gunboat

Class:Monsoon
Type:Gunboat
Length:200 meters
Mass:4.6 million metric tons
Crew:46 (5 Officers and 41 Enlisted)
Troop:NONE
Fighter:2 SA-23E Aurora Starfuries
1 Standard Shuttle
Power:1 General Fusion C-600 Fusion Reactor
Duration:1 year
Weapon:Particle Beam Cannon
2 Pulse Cannons
Double Pulse Cannon turret
4 Gatling Pulse Cannons
2 optional mission pallets of:
standard Missile pallet
Pulse Cannon Pallet
Sensor pallet
Defense:Refractive Hull made from Crystalline/Plasteel Armor mesh
Missile Decoy System
ECM Countermeasure sensor system

In the year of 2266 Earthforce general Meade opened a competition for the design of a Gunboat class ship, officially to replace the aging Olympus class corvettes. Unofficially the competition was held because Earthforce had been very impressed by the performance of the Whitestar class ships of the Interstellar Alliance. While all senior officials realized that even with gravitic technology now at their disposal the new ship would never equal the Whitestar design, they were also aware that a dedicated gunboat would be a very potent weapon when used in large numbers.

The competition itself was successful, attracting designs from half a dozen firms. The ultimate winner was the Monsoon Class design from Hyperspace Industries, and was the brainchild of their highly successful chief designer Lars Joreteg.

The Monsoon is a rather squat and blunt design, with as much machinery and weapons packed into a small hull. At the corners of the hull are four Ion engine clusters, made up of maneuvering thrusters, braking thrusters, and four main thrusters. The spacing of these engines gives the Monsoon a good maneuverability. Located on the bottom of the ship is a single hangar bay, used mainly to hold a single shuttle, although in a emergency it can also accommodate two Starfuries. The ship is however not designed to carry more fighters than that, not even with the shuttle removed. Internally there are two decks for the crew, and both are equipped with artificial gravity, just like the hangar bay. This protects the crew and the shuttle against the rigors of sudden combat accelerations

These ships are too small to carry jump engines and must be escorted by a ship with jump engines to travel from system to system, or use Jumpgates to travel through Hyperspace. The ship is propelled by four Ion engines and a gravitic drive. The engines output is actually equal to that of a Olympus class corvette which, coupled with the Monsoons smaller size, makes for a very fast ship. However, at full power the ship needs to be refueled multiple times for long range missions.

The most dominant feature of the Monsoons is without a doubt the huge Particle Beam Cannon mounted in the upper part of the hull. This massive weapon is a (smaller) derivative of the GOD satellite weapons, and accounts for nearly 20% of the ships empty mass. It is a very powerful weapon for a ship this size, and it allows the Monsoon to take on much larger ships. The ships secondary weapons are a pair of Pulse cannons, located on the sides, between the engine blocks. These weapons are also quite powerful, but have a much lower range than the Particle beam cannon. Like the Particle Beam Cannon, they can only fire in a limited arc forward. Under the chin of the ship is a turret with another two pulse cannons. This turret gives the two cannons a much better arc of fire than the slightly larger fixed cannons. For defense against fighters the gunboat has four turret mounted pulse Gatling cannons. These are essentially the same weapons as carried in the Thunderbolt Starfury, although the turret mounted mounts have nearly double the range of the fighter mounted version.

For further defense there is a interceptor grid which 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. For Armor the Monsoons have a version of the Plasteel/Crystalline armor also carried by the Warlock class destroyer. This would seem to be a copy of the Armor on the IA Victory class Destroyers, but is less effective and is in reality a development of the EA itself. It has been made possible due to the study of Shadow Bio-armor, pieces of Minbari Crystalline armor, and the study of the armor the Dilgar used.

The final weapons of the ship are located in two interchangeable mission dependant pods. In this case these are two missile pods, carrying four Long Range Missiles for anti-ship purposes and two Medium Range Missiles for fighter defense each. Other pods carry Pulse cannons or extra sensors. The last option changes the role of the ship to that of a Scout.

Although the ship has artificial gravity in all of its crew spaces, it is still very cramped, and the ship is much less luxurious than true capital ships. Since most of the ship mission will be short-ranged and/or limited to one system only, this is not a real problem.

The ship carries one shuttle and a maximum of 2 fighters. There are no facilities for marines on the ships.