Regent (Luna-class)

## *Regent*

 The ***Regent*** (**CC-10000**) was a heavily modified version of the *Styx*-class star battlecruisers, themselves a variant of the *Luna* class: renowned as the flagship of Admiral Selena Ashleigh-Ryder's Battlefleet Coralis (11th Fleet), "Ryder's Roughnecks", it saw action in a number of skirmishes and border conflicts with both the Star Empire and the Razorbirds.

## Design

### Dimensions and Role

*Regent* was a very unique ship from her inception: her design was personally commissioned by Admiral Ashleigh-Ryder as a command and control vessel for her 11th Fleet, which was tasked with defending the Coralis system and its surrounding system from incursions by the neighboring Iktharans. She expended a large amount of her family's fortune in order to have Avalon StarDrive Industries draw up the detailed designs for the project, based on their *Styx* subclass, which themselves were based on a Velian design; much of her wealth was actually sunk into construction before the ship's construction was approved by the Terran parliament and her personal funds reimbursed.

At 1.45 km in length, *Regent* was not a standard *Luna* or a *Styx*: she was considerably larger to accommodate the extra power generators for her more powerful and more numerous guns. Her dual role - as a fleet flagship and as a scout vessel for determining the presence of enemy forces - also led to her adoption of the specialized and highly secretive cloaking technology used on a few Alliance capital ships during this time.

### Hull

As with most Avalon StarDrive designs and in keeping with its role as a "battle scout", the *Regent* had a single-hull configuration: it broadly resembled the *Styx*-class battlecruisers and the larger experimental flagship/battleships *Minerva* and *Euryale*, with a single hull that was extensively curved over and smoothed. Aggressive geometry obfuscated her basic boxy shape along with her wings and canards, and like the *Styx* class, her hull had a transparency that wrapped around the bow, though *Regent*'s did so dorsally and ventrally. This housed the cloaking equipment she needed, but due to her size and the increased number of weapons she carried, it also had a number of guns installed.

Like the *Styx* battlecruisers and the *Minerva* command ships, *Regent*'s outer hull was coated in an ablative material to reflect energy cannon fire and dissipate laser blasts: unlike the former, but like the latter, this was the expensive full-scale version that had originally been tested on the Alliance's supreme flagship *Furious*. The hull was painted over to prevent analysis—particularly to prevent the Collective or the Directorate acquiring the specialized technology. The standard paint was a glossy black, to make visual identification more difficult: the *Regent* was painted a deep red at Admiral Ashleigh-Ryder's personal expense, giving her a clear resemblance to the extragalactic Alparan *Barbarossa*.

### Power Plant

The *Regent* had an extraordinary amount of energy generation for its size: it was equipped with a Lucaelian ionization reactor, an efficient miniaturized Dyson sphere that could produce a massive amount of energy at minimal cost in fuel. A secondary reaction chamber for a standard deuterium/tritium annihilation-type reaction was also carried, for emergency and secondary generation purposes.

Part of the success of this starship was due to this ample power generation: it could run all systems at maximum efficiency with just the ionization plants, leaving the reaction chamber free to divert power to any subsystems as required or to its superlaser.

### Propulsion

*Regent*'s propulsion plant was unstandard: she utilized a number of **plasma-shift drives**, a unique model of radial plasma nacelles that improved output and decreased fuel and energy consumption. However, their high operating cost in terms of maintenance meant that their overall usefulness as a mass production engine block was limited.

Manoeuvring capabilities were handled by a number of drive vents and Vernier thrusters studded throughout the ship.

### Armament

“Onward, through death and hell, we fight”

 *Regent* was well-armed: there was no doubt about that. From her inception Ashleigh-Ryder had demanded an armament that was no less than twice the standard *Luna*'s guns, and to fit that requirement, *Regent* had grown in size *and* sacrificed some of her durability to do so. Her main weapon was her spinal 'burnthrough' boring laser: a type only slightly less powerful than *Minerva*'s, it was close to double the strength of a normal *Luna* battlecruiser's own heavy gun.

*Regent*'s heavy gun armament was also aggressive: no less than twenty-four (24) 381-megaton PC-5200 cannons, mounted in and around the prow in fixed forward-firing mounts. These were, additionally, not the same model used in *Luna*: they were the more powerful variant, accorded to the *Iapetus* battleships as well as the Alliance's Star Dreadnoughts. The arrangement had a number of advantages: chief among these, for the designers who tried to achieve the admiral's goals, was that more guns could be fitted in the given space. The guns were also easier to service, and their placement—mostly along the sides of the sharply inclined and curved bow as in *Minerva*, rather than in the forward part of the bow like most of the *Styx* type—meant that their lenses could be titled almost ninety (90) degrees, giving them a wide arc of fire forward. This did not solve their problems with poor offensive firepower towards the sides and rear, but it did alleviate it.

The secondary armament was altogether more comprehensive, and entirely unique among Alliance starships: it was composed of a homogeneous battery of the Alliance's newly-developed 14.5-megaton laser cannons, mounted in retractable twin turrets around the ship. These guns had been developed for the *Pallas*-class destroyers, and were competent in both anti-ship and point defense roles: this contrasted the normal 'split' battery of anti-ship cannons and dual-purpose guns of an Alliance star cruiser, even on warships as experimental as *Reprisal*.

Medium and light point-defense work was handled by a mixture of twin and quad mounts: the medium guns were the standard Alliance 6.5-ton laser cannons, and the light weapons were 2-ton 'snapper balls' that could be slaved to the Aegis for rapid response. *Regent* had more than two hundred such guns, providing total coverage over the ship's length.

Other weapons comprised a number of heavy Lucaelian shatter missile launchers and vertical launch cells, conventional Alliance swarm torpedo launchers and the Aegis: a point-defense direction system and network of high-intensity short range lasers that was regarded as the best in the galaxy.

### Hangar

Though her hangar capacity was not large—she had just two small hangar bays, and four docking bays for loading cargo and supplies—*Regent* could carry up to two squadrons of I-1 *Poniard* interceptors, or sixteen (16) fighters and their support crews. This also included replacement craft and repair equipment; serious work on any fighters, however, would have to be done either aboard a *Pandora* maintenance carrier or at a planetside facility.

### Shielding & Armour

*Regent* was, as with most Terran starships, well-protected by galactic standards: according to Alliance doctrine, however, she was very weak in this regard. Her outer layer of defense was a *Prydwen*-II sectored shield: whether oscillating at different frequencies to stop phased energy attacks or directing power to specific points within the shield to increase its resistance to impact, the *Prydwen* system was capable of all and more. It was widely considered one of the best defensive systems in the galaxy, and held in very high regard among Alliance forces for the protection it could provide.

*Regent*'s armour—her second defensive layer—was on the 'weak' side for a Terran ship: 250-mm-thick armour plates covered most of her hull, increasing to 500-mm around the bow and gunports for her 38-cm batteries and also around the superlaser projector. The internal plating behind this, which also formed the pressure hull, was 200-mm thick: in the area of the bow this increased to 350-mm, but it was still a far cry from the 500-750 mm of contemporary Alliance battleships. Armoured bulkheads that varied depending on importance between 250-mm and 500-mm divided the ship neatly into twelve main sections, and then further subdivided those into thousands of different airtight compartments: each section housed one of the reactors and a shield generator, as well as its own independent life support system, so that the ship could continue to survive in the face of what could be considered crippling action damage.

(This design feature was tested extensively on the *Mars*-class battleship *Chancellor*: after a series of weapons tests, the *Chancellor* could still be considered 'combat-capable' despite having her entire forward half blown to smithereens and the twin hull bisected, so that both halves were floating free.)

Critical subsystems received the most amounts of armour: the main guns had between 1 and 2 metres of armour around their tubes and firing chambers, while the secondary battery turrets had 1-metre-thick armoured casings and barbettes. The reactors were subdivided apart from their sections by 2,000-mm-thick armour plates: the ionization reactors, which were a special technology that was delivered to the Alliance and could not be assembled in Terran space, received a double layer of armour plates to make certain that they would go unharmed. The power conduits, CIC, and observation bridge also received comprehensive protection, varying between 500 and 2,000 mm depending on location.

## History

 *Regent* was designed and laid down over New Avalon, at Avalon StarDrive Industries' own Orbital Yard No.1: she commissioned into service on 26 June 2505, Captain Richard 'Rico' Finn commanding. She was assigned to Admiral Selena Ashleigh-Ryder's Battlefleet Coralis, the 11th Fleet—jokingly known as "Ryder's Roughnecks" for their derring-do attitudes and highly aggressive tactics—as her new flagship on 20 October of that year after workups, replacing the *Mars*-class battleship *Protector*; the ship did not take long to be 'blooded', as she fought and captured two pirates within that week alone.

## See Also

* *Furious* — The supreme flagship of the Grand Navy of the Terran Alliance and the command vessel assigned to Fleet Admiral Altantsetseg.
* *Minerva* — A specialized and experimental flagship built for the Alliance Navy and the command of Admiral Song Fen.
* *Euryale* — *Minerva*'s sister-ship, a modified *Iapetus*-class star battleship and a powerful gun combatant that could also serve command and control functions.
* *Solidarity* — An extensively modified Alliance battlecruiser that served as the flagship of Admiral Victor Reed's command, Battlefleet Roi Aliscay (12th Fleet).
* *Teraevyn's Grace* — The supreme flagship of the Na'alu Collective's Navy, a massive dreadnought-style battleship.
* *Hatsuse* — A *Miyagi*-class star battleship and one of the flagships of the Consortium Navy.