Unioner Gunboat

The Unioner reputation for technical genius combined with a pragmatic utilisation of an inconstant and frequently self-incompatible supply pool of underworld ship components and machined goods, has lead the Unioners to favour modular, bolt-on architectures that answer the puzzle as to how the disparate organisation is able to mass produce high-performance spaceframes of frightening consistency; tailored for the rough, factional realities of the Rheinland underworld; perhaps the deadliest environment for ship and crew that the houses have to offer. Unioner spacecraft survive, and, arguably, embody, the most frightening elements of the underworld with grace and precision.

The artisan is no different, indeed, it typifies the philosophy. Born emergently out of the violence that has surrounded the revanchist syndicates in recent years, the Unions' need to replace its oxidising stockpiles of Oder gunboats with designs less intolerant of jury-rigged repairs and extended operations in asteroid fields, has led to the Artisan's creation in a technical eureka that violates hundreds of intellectual property laws. By adapting the base structural components of the Oder by ripping away what the Union callously refers to as 'expenditures in the mass budget', such as any meaningful crew creature comforts or hull sculpting, and filling the negative space with layers of Unioner proprietary armor composites, the Union has created a phantom of the asteroid belts that gives even the latest Renzu, DSE, or Daumann escort design pause before promptly crushing their pork-infused wreckage against the Artisan's hull in a display of violent disrespect. Whilst aesthetically functional, the Artisan is filled with technical sophistry that gives her a charisma all of her own, although few officers of the federal police dare get close enough to scan exactly what hardware she has under the hull. To the Unioners, the Artisan is the defender of the belts, an infinitely reconfigurable modular raider platform that lends itself to the pallet of any craftsman, from the genius shipwrights who manufacture her by hand alone in adverse conditions, to the syndicates who sortie her against a brutal cosmos.

Alike its Arbeiter and Solidaritat cousins, the Artisan upscales the fast burning thorium powerplants of the Unioner fighter line to a gigantic drive torus pushed to operating only a hair away from a criticality incident. Law enforcement personnel who first sighted the Artisan have been noted to comment derisively about the back-heavy appearance that the plus-sized reactor gives the ship, often before being blown apart by the expanse of its weapons array that reactor gly sustains. The few foreign entities that the Unioners already sold Artisan export models to have been known to voice concerns about the longevity of the vessel's flight crew over the wisdom of placing the vessel's cramped tactical bridge within several metres of the drive, a reaction to which the Syndicates of the Hammer treat with disdain. Man up, and take the iodine.

## Handling

* This ship is too large to use docking bays, it must use mooring points.
* Max Turn Rate: 37.1°
* Time to Max Turn: 3.13s
* Time to turn 180°: 5.31s
* Maximum Strafe Speed: 9.71m/s
* Distance Strafed in 0.5s: 1.6m

## Hardpoints

* 1x Gunboat Shield
* 1x Hyperspace Beacon
* 1x Gunboat Forward Gun
* 2x Gunboat Turret - Heavy
* 4x Gunboat Turret - Standard
* 1x Cruise Disruptor
* 1x Countermeasure
* 1x Mine
* 2x Thruster

## Purchase Includes

* VP-G3 Engine Mk I ($1)
* Ageira Mark IIc Fusion Reactor ($0)
* Scanner ($5)
* Unioner Gunboat Forward Gun ($25,000)
* Redoubt Gunboat Shield ($30,000)
* Gunboat Thruster ($0)

## Availability

*NOTE: Page generated on the 28/10/2023 at 17:59:43 UTC*