Walkers, Drones and Starfighters

While the bulk of the Imperial, Royal and Protectorate fleets are composed of warships of various sizes, a large group of units exist under the starship class.

## Walkers

All factions have been using **walkers** for ground combat for the longest time, generally as support units for their infantry units. While the role was originally filled by giants in the Star Empire and Union, as the population of those races dwindled, they were replaced by the original Knight-class walkers. The Protectorate favours hovertanks over walkers as support units, but in order to match the Elven armies, they built their own walkers over time. Baal'Ken have taken a great liking to this type of combat unit, allowing them to get "up close and personal" in combat. Terrans were very slow to adopt such units, having their own preference for heavy, threaded land combat units, but the early models ED-class walkers were employed as ship support units and as infantry support units.

Modern walkers are meant for use in ground combat, but almost all of them can be retrofitted with space boosters to serve as support unit in space combat, some of them more heavily armed to be able to critically damage enemy ships. The average size of walkers stands between 4.5 meters and 5.5 meters (anything larger would make them too easy to hit by conventional aircrafts and helicopters), with weights going between 14 tons and 26 tons.

#### Models of walkers

* ED-416 Walker (Terran Confederation)
* MachTek-class Knight "Sir Kay" (Elven Star Empire)

## Drones

Drones had been used by most factions as simple devices for quite some time, but the Terran Confederation pushed the envelope in regards to drone usage, using them as their primary ship support units rather than battlepods and walkers until the introduction of starfighters.

Drones are generally small, unmanned ships built for a single task, generally controlled by a AI managed by a pilot on board a nearby ship. Their biggest defensive advantage is being small and agile, because they have very low shield rating and generally almost no armour. Imperial and Union drones were generally only simple sensor modules, but Terran models generally included basic weapons, then various electronic warfare equipment and even unusual equipment, like Warp disruptors and heavy duty claws to grapple unto ships.

#### Models of Drones

* SkyEye
* Predator

## Starfighter

Conventional air force and air power was always considered a necessity in modern war and one of the hardest part of a physical planetary invasion was to bring this into play. The Protectorate had found a good way around this with their battlepods, which acted as both land weapons and air weapons, and believed this would always grant them an advantage over their opponents, until they met the Terrans. During the Third World War, one of the major world power had deployed what had become known as "The Net", space-borne weapons which would target indiscriminately any air unit that would not provide proper IFF codes to a nearby control station. When the Protectorate began their first invasion of Earth, they lost almost 75% of their pod force and many of their invasion barges were crippled by orbital fire. "The Net" technology was sold to most Imperial and Baal'Ken allies of the Terrans, which seriously crippled the offensive capabilities of most air force.

As time went by, a former professional athlete-turned engineer, Alain Allard, was attempting to find ways to circumvent "The Net" and provide simple air support for ground forces on most planets. His solution was rather simple: to disable "The Net", you had to destroy it from orbit, and once that was done, the unit that did that should be the one supporting ground forces. As Nets were now being able to be deployed from orbit, the unit had to also be able to go from the ground to orbit on its own to perform this task while waiting for reinforcements to take out invading force. Converting an old F-55 "Peregrine" with ion turbines, anti-grav generators and manoeuvring jets, Allard was able to make Mike "Storm" Chaney and Steven "Roadkill" Collins reach orbit, destroy multiple test satellites and come back down to planet side in a very efficient manner. As the engineering team behind the now officially designated XF-1 Wrath started to work on enhancing the capacities of the fighter, Allard introduced his father, Joseph Allard, micro-warp drive technology on top of the entire design, which allowed the starfighter to perform intra-system warps, turning them into mobile combat platforms which were drastically superior to any walker, battlepod or drones currently in use.

The technology was not popular at first, but as the newly dubbed "Alpha Squadron" performed a short mission against a Protectorate reconnaissance group in the Deltabar system, the power of a starfighter squadron was recognized by the Confederate Space Forces, which commissioned a large number of fighters to be produced as the Protectorate War were escalating and the Korrenian conflict was beginning in full.

#### Models of Starfighters

* F-1 Wrath, multipurpose starfighter (Terran Confederation)
* SF-105 Thunderbolt, Heavy assault fighter (Terran Confederation)
* Illusion Inteceptor, rapid response interceptor (Terran Confederation)
* Derfanstreik, "Streak" multipurpse starfighter (Elven Empire)
* Termandereik, "Richter" Defender-class starfighter (Elven Empire)
* AB-116 "Zapata", multipurpose starfighter (Baal'Ken Horde, Dread Ones, Etherite Federation)
* Zeeko Starfighter Hunter, "Starbat" interceptor (Elven Union)
* Guoki Attack Fighter, "Flying Fox" assault fighter (Elven Union)
* R-4 Templar, "Shortswords" multipurpose starfighter (Apex Consortium)
* R-8 Centurtion, "Longswords" Assault starfighter (Apex Consortium)