Azul Frigate

## Commentary

The Azul-class Frigate was a standard sight along the outer rim of recently-founded DAOT colonies and outposts, which teamed up with the Amethyst-class Destroyer would constantly run border patrols along barely-trafficked and often not fully surveyed interstellar space, keeping criminal activity such as smuggling, piracy, and colonial exploitation down to a minimum. While the Amethyst destroyer's boosted sensor suite would provide the eyes and ears, the Azul would provide the legs with both STL and FTL drives, its design optimized for particularly swift STL propulsion and combat maneuvering, which made it a particularly-talented watchdog of the spaceways.

The Azul's frame is renowned for its sheer durability as well, both in terms of armor composition and overall ship design, enabling an Azul to take on tougher opponents or larger groups and come out with much less damage than anticipated. Though this comes with a high cost to initial manufacturing, it means Azuls in service for over millennia are still going strong.

A common reconfiguration of the Azul, one so common it became a standard default feature two-thirds through the ships' service life, was adding modular cargo containers to sections of the Azul, enabling the ship to double as a partial transport. Said cargo modules were armored, and could be used to store anything from civilian supplies or colonists to serving a military nature and transporting troops, various war machines, or just spare logistical parts to aid larger ships in extended campaigns far from service stations back in friendly territory.

## History

As for its combat history, the Azul was introduced in the 16th​ millennium, and almost immediately partnered up with a newly-refitted Amethyst-class. It was quite formidable in battle formation as well as its normal interdiction duties, serving against the Outer Rim Secession quite reliably, but the Azul's crown jewel of service was serving with pride during the MOI Revolt.

When the horrors of the Age of Strife came, many Azuls were hastily converted into generation ships or immobile space stations of a sort due to their tough hulls and internal frames, perfect places to protect and shelter those who they could in the rising dark night.

## Features

Measurements: 1000 meters (length), 450 meters (width), 450 meters (height)

Mass: 1,440,000 metric tons

Crew: 1500 cyber-augmented organics, 5 Men Of Stone, 3000 repairbots

Weapons (Primary): x1 80cm Antiship Plasma Lance (combining best attributes of Plasma and Lance weapons)

Weapons (Secondary): x6 24cm Railgun Batteries (x2 Railguns/battery; rounds fired at ~10k km/second, 10 rounds per minute)

Weapons (Tertiary): x8 18cm Lance batteries (x2 Lances/battery)

Weapons (Point Defense - Alpha): x20 Uber-Lascannon Batteries (3 Uber-Lascannons/battery)

Weapons (Point Defense – Beta): x8 10cm Onager-class Railgun Batteries (x2 railguns/battery; fired at ~20k km/second, 20 rounds per minute)

Armor: 1 meter of nano-armor modular plating, with 9 meters underneath of plasteel/ceramite/micro-beading adamantium mix, with interspersed vacuum cavities sandwiched between layers in a hexagonal grid format.

Shields: Integrated Energy, capable of withstanding 420 megatons of direct firepower per second before final collapse. Regenerate within 5 seconds of shield collapse back to normal.

Sensors: starship-grade Auger sensor suite. Links and coordinates incoming sensor data from all other DAOT vehicles, processes data, then dispenses firing/tactical data as needed.

Reactor: x4 Antimatter-boosted Fusion Reactors (dual reactor synergy setup).

Propulsion (STL): High-capacity VASIMIR plasma drive. The plasma generated by the reactors is channeled into a series of exhaust manifolds, which vector it into the ship's engine nozzles. The drive exhaust serves as reaction mass, providing propulsion for the ship. The drive system also includes an exotic mechanism that utilizes higher-order manifolds to eliminate the otherwise-devastating fusion backblast.

## Miscellaneous

- The Azul carries standard high-energy Comm Lasers as well as standard ship Voxes, guaranteeing complete secrecy in event of need. This has proven quite handy in countless occasions, having a communications system that no enemy can tap into.

- The Azul's Warp drive systems are much faster and efficient than prior generations of Warp drives, allowing them to go much longer distances in shorter periods, reducing transit times between more developed Inner Systems and the Outer Rim colonies.

- Azuls possess sophisticated Sensor Fields, which are derivatives of Shield tech, especially Transduction and Ion Shields. They utilize field emitters to build large phased arrays, by analyzing the feedback into the emitters from particles and radiation impacting the fields. Thus, in a way, Azul shields can provide enhanced sensor data, providing very enhanced knowledge of local space within close range (1000km) of the ship.

- Azuls carry further Point Defense systems that are standard in the DAOT. Drone Bays provide a cloud of separate PD, Shield, Sensor, or ECM Drone types, generally held in position by interfacing with the Ship's PD systems or onboard pilot command. In addition, Foam Chaff Deployment systems provide another layer of defense, with a high-pressure feed tank with external sprayers spraying heat-resistant foamed plastics (and a one-time flurry of self-inflating ablative 'spores') onto the hull or into space, with ECM microdrones mixed in for additional confusion to enemy sensors, blurring the ships outline and any specific intel gathered.

- While its hangar bays were not optimized for carrying fighters like dedicated carrier-transports were, Azuls often carried at least one squadron's worth of drone or remotely-piloted interceptors to spread its area of influence and interdict smaller smuggler ships, as well as (a common DAOT safety practice) enough shuttles, dropships, and escape pods to provide for ship's crew in the event of shipwide evacuation.

- To further facilitate the Azul's long-distance travels, both it and the Amethyst-class had significantly beefed up internal repair bays and onboard nanoforges to drastically cut down on the need for spare parts, as well as slightly improved life support systems.