Luna-class battlecruiser

## *Luna* class

The ***Luna*-class star battlecruisers** were the most advanced and powerful main-line starships of their type within the Terran Alliance Navy. Quite heavily armed—and featuring an impressive superlaser—they were the Alliance's preferred capital ships when it came to offensive actions and incursions into enemy territories.

 Design

### Dimensions and Role

At just over one kilometre in length, the *Luna* class were designed from the ground up to be the first of the new 'mainstay' ships in the post-Djangor Alliance fleet: compared to the older (but still dependable) *Mars* class, it had superior characteristics in every respect—especially firepower.

The primary role of the *Luna* was aggressive: while the older *Mercury*- and *Mars*-class starships led patrols and made up the bulk of the fighting fleet, the new *Luna* and *Iapetus*-class vessels could led the latest bleeding-edge warships on incursions into enemy territory and take the fight to them. Alliance worlds had suffered terribly during the Razorbird Crusade, showing the Terrans would have to rethink their battle strategy in the future: while their tactics of allowing the Razorbirds to overextend themselves before being cut off and destroyed had succeeded, it had proven far too costly. Therefore, the next generation of warships were to be offensive: this new style of warfare bore fruit during the Rin invasion and during the Iktharan Crisis, when Alliance warships were able to respond immediately and in-force to the threat.

The *Luna*-class battlecruisers had a conventional Alliance twin "two-pronged fork" hull configuration: the upper and the lower hull were joined by a superstructure which began about two-thirds of the length of the vessel towards the stern. Coated in Alliance gunmetal grey, they were unassuming ships, but after their display of fighting potential vs. the Rin Empire they were treated with respect by the Galactic Council's members.

### Weapons

The *Luna*-class battlecruiser was built around its armament: the primary weapon of the battlecruiser was a single, spinal-mounted burnthrough laser located on the prow of the vessel's ventral hull. While power-intensive and vulnerable to breakdowns—the coolant exchangers in particular were liable to fail during prolonged firing—the laser was powerful enough to render most defenses on smaller starships moot, and even starships far larger than a *Luna* would have to be wary of the effort they would need to expend on shielding in order to protect against such an attack.

The heavy gun armament of a *Luna*-class battlecruiser—aside from its superlaser—consisted of four triple turrets (two dorsal, two ventral) for heavy laser cannons. The same sort of guns which armed an *Iapetus*-class star battleship, these were high-output weapons, with power exceeding multiple lighter laser batteries (like those which armed the *Mercury*) in a single shot: the 174-megaton calibre also made them relatively 'handy', as the old 46-megaton laser cannons had been, and they did not suffer from rate-of-fire decreases as in the 400-megaton and 457-megaton cannons assigned to a few experimental starships and the *Star of Terra*. Due to the location of the mounts, a *Luna* had a particularly wide arc of fire: all four turrets could concentrate on any target in front of the vessel, with only an extremely narrow 'blind' cone aft.

The 'medium' anti-ship battery of the *Luna* class was handled by a mixture of twin and single 15-mt laser batteries, the standard medium anti-ship cannon of the Terran Alliance and a handy weapon in any scenario. The same weapon which armed its light cruisers, the 15-mt laser cannon had a rapid rate of fire, excellent handling, and wide arcs of fire. A *Luna* carried thirty-eight (38) of them: concentrated around the main guns aft, they had good broadside arcs but poor ahead/astern fire.

The light anti-ship guns and heavy dual-purpose artillery functions of the *Luna* were handled by forty-two (42) twin 10.5-kiloton long-range laser batteries: the standard dual-purpose guns of Alliance warships, they were useful against both smaller vessels such as destroyers and as point defense against starfighters and ordnance like torpedoes. They had an extraordinarily high rate of fire and were completely subdivided from the hull once 'closed up' for action, meaning that even if one was destroyed the ship would not suffer depressurization.

Medium-range point defense was handled by a battery of twenty-five quad 6.5-ton laser batteries: upscaled 2-ton "snapper balls", they could reliably engage targets at about half the range of the 10.5-kt laser cannons, but outside the 'kill zone' of the 2-t lasers: these weapons proved highly successful, first seeing service on the *Pandora*-class maintenance carriers.

For close-in defenses, the *Luna*s were equipped with over two hundred 20-t laser cannons in twin 'snapper ball' mounts - so-named because they could snap a crewman out of their seat from the G-forces if their harness was not secured. The guns could be controlled remotely in their default setting or operated on-site by a single gunner. With a sustained 'burst' mode of 10,000 shots every minute, they were capable of burning clean through an entire swarm of torpedoes launched at close range and were one of the most well-regarded point defense systems in the entire galaxy.

### Protection

In contrast to their battlecruiser designation, the *Luna*-class starships were very well armoured, in keeping with Terran design: 400-mm plates covered the hull and divided it neatly into thousands of airtight compartments, and 1-metre-thick plates were used to protect critical systems such as the artillery, life support, and power conduits from the reactors to their subsystems. The CIC received a thick layer of armour as well, despite being buried behind numerous armour layers: to penetrate to the heart of a Terran ship took considerable effort.

## Notable Ships

* *Luna* (CC-901)
* *Indomitable* (CC-911)
* *Allegiance* (CC-934)
* *Repulse* (CC-969)
* *Glorious* (CC-999)
* *Inflexible* (CC-1000)
* *Reprisal* (CC-1701)