Raptor

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Raptor Class of Cruiser

The Raptor class medium cruiser is a fast cruiser named after Raptor type birds with a tonnage of 40,000 metric tons and is 160 meters in length. It carries a crew of 60, including the 12 officers. Each crewman may bring one concubine, who are used for Scut work and auxiliary crew.

This cruiser fits the more conventional cruiser model of being fast and nimble, highly dangerous to smaller or same-sized craft, and makes an excellent escort vessel for capital ships given the flexibility of the Particle Beam weapons system which can accurately and rapidly engage smaller vessels as well as deliver damage on larger ones. The "Sandcaster" canister launching system provides additional flexibility making this a workhorse cruiser design for escort and independent ship operation.

This design is not able to absorb significant amounts of damage, which is not unusual for a cruiser, nor does it carry long-range weaponry. In a one-on-one fight with a capital ship, a Raptor would suffer terribly. In a fight against a Sa'arm destroyer, a Raptor would quickly reduce it to wreckage before it could deliver much damage. The platform is not a great choice for protective escort against fighters and bombers. While the Sandcaster system can engage those smaller ships, the platform lacks anything other than a medium particle beam to engage them which doesn't have the rate of fire needed to effectively engage small craft.

Transporter Nexi (3).

Weapons

• Beams (4) Heavy Particle Beams Firing Arc FX
• Beams (12) Medium Particle Beams in 180 degree turrets - 4 each in 4 broadside arcs
• Missiles (4) Canister Dispensers Firing Arc FA (90degrees)
• Missiles (12) Canister Dispensers Firing Arc Broadside - 3 each in four arcs (90 degrees)
• Magazine 512 capacity in 4 magazines

The Missile tubes or Canister Launchers are primitive coilguns kicking out canisters. The magazines can carry 512 canisters. Current choices are sand, chaff, remote sensors, mines and ECM modules. Sand and chaff can be used offensively, defensively and for concealment. Weapons are aligned along four "sides" of the ship, giving four broadsides with supporting particle beam fire from adjacent sides. Each "Broadside" is 3 launchers and 4 medium particle beams with the support of one heavy beam from the bow.

Weapons launched at 0.01 c = 1% c =3,000km/sec ---- 1 kg at 1%c = 450 gigajoules = 107.5 tons of tnt = 0.1kt Barrels hold approximately 100 kg of sand or chaff.

At 65 gs of acceleration, 3000 km/sec takes 4709 seconds (less than 79 minutes) for the ship to reach.

Propulsion

Speeds
Normal Space (in G's)
Drive Generation Number 3rd
Standard sustained accel. 65 Emergency accel 95
Gravitic compensation (% felt) 4

Hyper space
Cruise Speed 22 light years per day
Emergency Speed 27 light years per day

Embarked Small Craft Number:(2) Type: gig/shuttle

Specials: Has transporter nexus with a loci next to infirmary and one near each magazine for ship's supply and emergency evacuations

Hull Listing

• CM-101 Raptor
• CM-102 Aquila
• CM-103 Bald Eagle
• CM-104 Bat Hawk
• CM-105 Buzzard - destroyed in Invasion of Conan Country (unpublished) year 13
• CM-106 Condor
• CM-107 Cuckoo Hawk
• CM-108 Falcon
• CM-109 Fish Eagle
• CM-110 Golden Eagle
• CM-111 Goshawk
• CM-112 Harpy - Flagship for 'Independent Command'
• CM-113 Harrier
• CM-114 Hawk
• CM-115 Kestrel - Assigned to 'Independent Command'
• CM-116 Kite
• CM-117 Perigrine
• CM-118 Sea Eagle
• CM-119 Serpeant Eagle
• CM-120 Snake Eagle
• CM-121 Sparrowhawk (mentioned in Thrust Upon You)
• CM-122 Vulture

Variants

This hull design was adapted as a logistical support ship in Ending This Mess by Zen Master. That story mentions several other variants, some with more armor, or different weapons loadouts including missiles. One named variant was the "Atlanta" class which was specialized as a close-defense escort cruiser.

Story Usage

A textual analysis of the story repository, current as of 2018 and performed on 2019-09-06 identified the following usage counts for Raptor:

• Independent Command by Zen Master 16 instances.
• Pyrrhic Victory by akarge 9 instances.
• Ending This Mess by Zen Master 6 instances.

Timeline Appearances

Canon timeline indicates Raptor appears at Month 72 Keyword appearances in stories with identified timeline placement

• Month 72 in Independent Command
• Month 162 in Pyrrhic Victory
• Month 164 in Ending This Mess

Story References

From Pyrrhic Victory by akarge relevance:1214 at paragraph 54 of 102
And slowly, surely, the Swarm took their attackers with them as they died. Half of the Raptor class ships did not survive their speed runs. The 40,000 metric ton ships were killing nearly three times their weight in enemy warships and they had totally scrambled the Swarm formation, but there was too much debris in the battlefield for their speed now. The Semmes class ships were relegated to launching their dwindling supplies of heavy torpedoes from their extreme range. The lighter missiles were just too slow to get in close. Two ships had tried to take them in closer before launch and they had died.

From Independent Command by Zen Master relevance:1186 at paragraph 442 of 1714

Using the Raptors in a fleet was going to be difficult. For close-in work they had a good fit of beam turrets, but for long range they didn't have any self-guided missiles. All they had were "canister" launchers which launched an assortment of non-guided, non-self-propelled items. They carried canisters of sand, chaff, sensor platforms, and mines. All of which could be incredibly useful, if we could predict where a Sa'arm ship was going to go next, but none of them were self-propelled or guided, so anything they launched was guaranteed to miss if the Dickheads changed course afterwards.

From Ending This Mess by Zen Master relevance:770 at paragraph 202 of 1455

We also came up with a quick design for an escort cruiser; something that served the same purpose as the original Europa design, but built on a Raptor hull with a lot more armor and a lot of traditional weapons instead of the new big guns. We were trying to hedge our bets. We set the last extra frames to building four of them, then when they were done we shut those frames down too.

See Also

• Warships
• Cruiser
• Atlanta

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