Kongo
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The Kongo class was a developmental battlecruiser design, scaled up from the successful "Snake" Assault Cruiser design. The Kongos were up to their design function of standing toe-to-toe with the larger Sa'arm warships, but just like the "Hero" battlecruiser design they were intended to replace, they could not handle mass attacks by small craft. The Kongos were, in turn, used as the starting point for the developmental "Weird Sister" battleship design.
References
The following quotes were taken from the stories archive documenting how this story element has been handled using get_refs.py v1.21 9/13/2019.
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 69 of 1455
“....I agree that the dreadnaught design still has some bugs, but we may need them to take Sol back. The Kongos just aren’t tough enough and the Weird Sisters still have issues. We can man two battleships ourselves and Jutland gets the next six; we should finish the rest and get them moving as soon as we get the crews for them. We can have a dozen or so in two more weeks if someone supplies the men. But, we cannot wait forever. I submit that the sooner we go the more we can save.”
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 366 of 1455
In keeping with our naval history theme, we designated them as Battlecruisers and named them Kongo and Guam. They had the same propulsion plant as the Snakes did, but they had plenty of room so we gave them six different power rooms: two for the ship itself and one for each turret. Even better, each turret could feed from either the plant forward or aft of it, so no matter what the rest of the ship did each turret should be able to keep firing as long as it existed.
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 370 of 1455
However, we were pretty sure that the Kongos would let us stay and form a close blockade around the dickhead planet if they had some support so we decided that it was time to try to stay in Gamma permanently, like we had at Tulakat.
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 403 of 1455
Our fifth expedition, to take the war to the Sa’arm in what we called “System Delta” wasn’t really anything to talk about. The Kongo design was working very well. It had the armor to stand up to massed laser fire and it had the firepower to destroy the platforms shooting at it. It couldn’t last forever, but we had enough ships to rotate them in and out of the fire so no one got burned too badly. The only Sa’arm weapon system that was still giving us trouble was their bomber-launched Plasma Torpedo, and we could avoid being overrun by them by simply standing far enough off the planet to prevent surprise attacks.
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 474 of 1455
Meanwhile, the boys out at Barton Yard had come up with a new toy for Kevin to take back to Alpha. You know that the Kents were just big fat Raptors, with two huge “Junior Hero” guns, right? And the Snakes were just lengthened, scaled-up Kents with four guns, right? And the Kongos were fattened-up Snakes with enough armor to stand off a Sa’arm planet and trade shots?
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 579 of 1455
We gave Jack a pair of our Kongos to stiffen Taffy Two, but that shouldn’t weaken Second Fleet at all since we were sending the two Weird Sisters out in their place to see how they did. Everyone assigned spent a couple of days getting comfortable with the organization, then they headed out in three groups.
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 621 of 1455
On the negative side, most of the larger ships had been chewed up and would need time in the shop. All the armor we had plastered onto our larger ships proved its worth. Daddy survived two hits from Sa’arm bomber-launched plasma torpedos, while Mommy, one of the carriers, and several of our Kongos all survived one hit each. Of course, when we say that you have to remember that these hit numbers should all be ‘plus one or more’ since it took at least one hit to knock down our shields, often more than one, and only after that was done would we take any damage.
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 683 of 1455
Let’s see.... The first two Kongos were built with railguns, but the rest had coilguns from the start, and the first two got re-equipped when that expedition came back. By the time we went to System Delta the only ‘railguns’ we still had were the original PDRs, the short-range weapons that only got used to swat incoming bombers and Plasma Torpedos.
From Ending This Mess by Zen Master at paragraph 1392 of 1455
Still, we hedged our bets. We transferred all four of our remaining Kongos and an assortment of our lighter ships to the blocking force, to ensure that no one ever bothered the Heros. Their crews stayed onboard as trainers until the new crews were competent, then they all went home to man newer hulls.
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