Tech Infantry Assault Ships

Assault Ships

Gryphon-class Tech Infantry Light Assault Vessel: 41 in Service

This is the newest class of assault ships, designed to be fast, small, and easy to maintain. It carriers two Assault Pinnaces along with necessary support equipment, a crew of 58, and generally embarks two complete Tech Infantry platoons. Twin Ion drive systems give the Gryphon the capability to reach .85 light speed. Her armament is designed to repel small vessels and provide general purpose defense.

Veracruz-class Tech Infantry Light Assault Vessel: 1 in Service (sort of)

The class was built in the 2160's for service against the Bugs and Drakat.  Rough contemporaries with the Aegis Blade class, these ships did not last as long in service.  Too small to be as effective as true spacegoing transports like the later Otto Skorzeny class, too big to land on a surface like the Aegis Blade and later Gryphon-class ships, they were all withdrawn from service by the early 2200's.

One was later found abandoned in a scrapyard and put in a parking orbit around Cronos awaiting possible preservation as a museum ship, but instead in early 2244 it was refitted and sent into battle with Task Force David against the Christian Federation during the Third Civil War.

Aegis-class Tech Infantry Light Assault Vessel: 12 in Service

This is an older class of light assault transport. It carries two companies of TI Marines and 8 Assault Pinnaces to land them on the surface. It also has two 8-tube banks of Pod Insertion Launchers, and a distinctive two-pronged Transit Beacon device for the full range of planetary assault options. After heavy losses in the Bug Wars, only twelve of these older ships remain in service. A new class is planned to take the place of these ships, but development has been placed on hold due to the current civil war.

Otto Skorzeny-class Tech Infantry Medium Assault Vessel : 46 in Service

This is a larger assault transport capable of carrying a complete TI Marine Battalion. It can also make atmospheric entry to land its troops directly on a surface, although it can't usually take off again.

Marathon-class Tech Infantry Medium Assault Vessel: 38 in Service

This is a medium-sized vessel capable of landing a complete TI Marine Brigade by assault pinnace, pod insertion, or tranit beacon. It is not capable of atmospheric entry, although it carries several Planetary Assault Pods for carrying heavy equipment down to the surface. The design emphasizes cargo capacity for heavy equipment over large numbers of troops.

Passchendaele-class Tech Infantry Heavy Assault Vessel: 26 in Service

This vessel is designed to carry a full division of 20,000 TI troopers and land them on an enemy planet. It does not normally carry Planetary Assault pods, but emphasizes large numbers of troops. The Passchendaele and Marathon class ships are designed to work together, with the Passchendaele carrying the troops while the Marathon carries the equipment.

MacArthur-class Tech Infantry Heavy Assault Vessel: 30 in service

The largest class of TI Assault vessel, these ships are almost as large as a Star Control Ship and carry two divisions of infantry, plus a large quantity of support equipment and supplies, and an astonishing forty-eight assault pods to land them and their equipment on a hostile planet. As long as you aren't facing a major core world with a billion-plus population, one of these ships might be enough to mount an invasion all by itself.

Sigourney Ridge-class Tech Infantry Heavy Assault Vessel: 1 in service

These are a class of troop transport starships built by Earth Fleet in the late 2250's.  Built to replace losses suffered in the Third Civil War, Vin Shriak War, and Second Vulthra War, they were based on the Passchendaele-class transports of twenty years earlier.  They share a similar catamaran-style double-hull design with a multi-deck shuttlecraft bay serving as a bridge between the hulls, but dropped the heavier offensive armament of Lance Torpedoes and Fusion Cannons of the earlier design in favor of more troop and cargo capacity, as well as a slightly denser layout of point-defense weaponry.  These ships are named for famous ground-combat battles since the War of Gehenna. Originally planned as a class of 24, only one of these ships was ever completed before the fall of the Earth Federation in the 4th Civil War.

Alistar Dimiye-class Tech Infantry Advanced Covert Assault Vessel: 0 in service

Constructed well after the Third Civil War, this was an advanced assault transport designed to insert covert action teams and special forces soldiers deep behind enemy lines.  Due to development difficulties with the drive technology and wartime shortages during the Vin Shriak War, only one ship of this class was ever built.  It was later destroyed during the 4th Civil War following the Caal Invasion.  See its Twiki entry for a full history of that ship.

A one-off experimental design, the EFS Alistar Dimiye utilized an experimental hyperspace-entry system known as "Jump Accelerator Rings."  Based on Horadrim Tunnel Drive technology, the Jump Accelerator Rings utilize a similar principle to rapidly enter or exit hyperspace by forming a jump point around the ship rather than some distance in front of it, but travel through hyperspace in the normal manner rather than through a different layer of the Umbra, as the Horadrim ships do.  Despite this limitation, the system allows ships far smaller than normal to carry their own method of entering and leaving hyperspace with them, without relying on Jumpgates or dangerous explosive devices.

Designed mainly as a transport, from the outset its design also acknowledged a secondary role as a hit-and-run raider.  So it is heavily armed for a transport of its size, packing eight full Lance Torpedo tubes on special diagonally-offset side-mounted launchers, a positioning necessitated by the geometry of the Jump Accelerator Rings.  These in turn contain spiral coils through which liquid neutronium is pumped at very high speed, that much mass in such a small space moving in such a manner twists and buckles the fabric of spacetime around it, creating a tube-like rip in reality all around the ship, enabling it to pierce the Gauntlet and enter Hyperspace.  For its primary role as a covert assault transport, it is equipped with sixteen Drop Pod launchers on each side, plus four sets of retractable Transit Beacon antennae, again their retractability is dictated by the geometry of the tubular jump point.  These same considerations of drive-system geometry mean the ship cannot hold a large launch bay for small craft, and so it only carries two AT-14 Skyranger Assault pinnaces and a handful of other small craft, operating out of two very small launch bays amidshps.  The shuttle hangars double as Transit Beacon rooms, and so the shuttles need to be launched to clear the bays before any transit beacon activity can take place.