Castle

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Class Overview

Template:InfoBox    These were the very first ships turned over to Humanity at the beginning of the Swarm War.  They are described in Call This A Castle as:

   Technically they were classed as a patrol or escort vessel with a nominal complement of six officers and thirty-eight ratings.  They were just short of eighty metres long and had a mass of two thousand, two hundred tonnes, which might be a lot for a ground vehicle but when compared to the Presidential class attack carriers, which came in at nearly a hundred times that, they were dinky.  The key details were the minimalist weapon fit, a forward arc plasma torpedo launcher as the main strike weapon and two class one particle beam projectors in three hundred and sixty degree hemispherical mounts to support it.  In simple terms it meant that anything dead ahead of the ship could be hit by two beams and a torpedo, which was a fair punch but away from that it could be down to a single particle beam.  Throw in the four-point defence systems for protection against incoming missiles, systems that weren't even consider as weapons and you had everything that the corvette had to offer.

Further design and arrangement notes can be found at Castle_Design_Notes.

   It was clear from the first that these ships weren't designed for open warfare, but rather as armed police or revenue cutters.  Still, they were what we had so we made what improvements we could shoehorn in and sent them out to scout and, if needed, fight.  It soon became clear that they were more than a match for the Sa'arm equivalent light patrol ship, the even smaller vessels we labeled 'Vacuna'.   However, the Sa'arm learned quickly to stay in groups of three or more, and an individual Castle was not up to combat with those triads.

Has no transporter nexus.  As placed into service, the ships had a designated place to put a portable transporter pad in the mess room, but the class never got a pad built in.  Instead, the Castles either hard-docked at a station or ship or used a portable pad.

Only the first 60 were actually old ships turned over to us from Confederacy storage.  Roughly 2000 more were built during the first several years of the war, as they were smaller and used less resources than any other design we had that could serve as scout, escort, raider, and all other normal uses of a light combatant.  No two were exactly alike, the basic design was slowly changed as we gained experience.

After ~200 Castles had been built, a change in manning enabled a significant change in internal arrangements and shorter construction times.  The revised ships are often called the "Ainsworth" class although only someone familiar with the class can tell them apart.  Functionally, they are equivalent.

Once we had better designs like the Shiro class, at least some Castles/Ainsworths were modified as small troop transports as in the WW2 'APD' converted destroyers.  This experiment did not go far, as actual experience gained on the ground in combat showed immediately that surprise was a short-lived advantage, and of no value unless backed up by a large enough force to convert the surprise into a meaningful result.  Since the Sa'arm had no high-value surface objectives like factories, political leadership, or bridges, and sub-surface targets couldn't be reached by small raider groups, there was little use for these transports and most converted Castles were later returned to their patrol ship configuration.  See Uffington Castle.

Weapons and Defensive Systems

• 1 forward arc plasma torpedo launcher
• 2 class one particle beam projectors in 360-degree turrets

Protective Systems

Shields

The ship is described as having shields that are fairly rudimentary, designed to protect the ship from space debris and also providing some degree of protection from Particle Beam fire. The shields are not configurable to orient protection in a specific direction. (Described in Independent_Command at Year 6)

Armor

The ship is described as only having "light" armor

Castle Class - Assigned Names and Hull Numbers

Shown below are the original 60 Castles delivered to Jupiter Station by the Confederacy, at the beginning of the war.  Upwards of 2000 more were built in various systems, primarily Earthat.  Once other designs were available most colonies stopped building Castles in favor of more survivable classes but Central Command kept building Castles at the Jupiter and Saturn yards until CC was dismantled early in Year 15.

Each surviving system has records showing what ships were built there and what they were originally named.  We have no collected list of all Castles built everywhere, and for some of the systems lost during the war we have no records for their shipbuilding.

• DE001 Allington Castle
• DE002 Alnwick Castle
• DE003 Alton Castle
• DE004 Amberley Castle
• DE005 Appleby Castle
• DE006 Bamborough Castle
• DE007 Barnard Castle - Captain Agathe Katsaros - Assigned to Atalanta-at
• DE008 Bere Castle
• DE009 Berkeley Castle - mentioned in Behind Enemy Lines
• DE010 Caistor Castle
• DE011 Caldecot Castle
• DE012 Calshot Castle
• DE013 Carisbrooke Castle
• DE014 Denbigh Castle
• DE015 Dover Castle
• DE016 Dudley Castle - Lost in action - 'Second Contact (unpublished)'
• DE017 Dumbarton Castle
• DE018 Farnham Castle - Modified for long-range mission in Behind Enemy Lines
• DE019 Flint Castle - Lost in combat at Neptunat
• DE020 Guildford Castle - Lost in combat at Neptunat
• DE021 Hadleigh Castle
• DE022 Hedingham Castle
• DE023 Hever Castle
• DE025 Hunney Castle
• DE026 Hurst Castle - Modified for long-range mission in Behind Enemy Lines
• DE027 Kenilworth Castle
• DE028 Knaresborough Castle
• DE029 Lancaster Castle - Lost in combat in Behind Enemy Lines
• DE030 Launceston Castle
• DE031 Leeds Castle
• DE032 Maiden Castle - Lost in Action at Beerat- Call This A Castle
• DE033 Monmouth Castle
• DE034 Morpeth Castle
• DE035 Norham Castle - Assigned to Tulakat OPF -ZM
• DE036 Norwich Castle
• DE037 Oakham Castle
• DE038 Oswestry Castle - Mentioned in 'In The Name Of The Prophet'
• DE039 Oxford Castle
• DE040 Pembroke Castle
• DE041 Pendennis Castle (Assigned Task Force 12 - Thule)
• DE042 Pevensey Castle
• DE043 Portchester Castle
• DE044 Rayleigh Castle (Assigned Task Force 12 - Thule)
• DE045 Rhuddlan Castle
• DE046 Rising Castle (Guard duty year 5- Vulcan Colony)
• DE047 Rushen Castle
• DE048 Sandgate Castle (mentioned in In Loco Parentis and Wayward)
• DE049 Scarborough Castle (Assigned Task Force 12 - Thule)
• DE050 Sherborne Castle
• DE051 Shrewsbury Castle
• DE052 Tamworth Castle
• DE053 Thornbury Castle
• DE054 Tintagel Castle
• DE055 Tonbridge Castle
• DE056 Walmer Castle
• DE057 Warksworth Castle
• DE058 Woolvesey Castle
• DE059 York Castle

• (Aydon Castle and Bodlam Castle were at the Battle of Tulakat)
  
• (Uffington Castle was mentioned in 'The Chinese Obligation')
  
• (Sleeping Beauty Castle was mentioned in 'Pussy Pirates')
  

Story Usage

A textual analysis of the story repository, current as of 9/2019 and performed on 2019-09-21 and using SS Lib ver 1.15.07 (9/21/2019) identified the following top ten usage counts for Castle:

• The First Command by Zen Master 122 instances.
• Behind Enemy Lines by deGaffer 84 instances.
• Independent Command by Zen Master 65 instances.
• Living a CAP Based Present by Allan Joyal 62 instances.
• Ending This Mess by Zen Master 30 instances.
• Crisis at Ishtar by Allan Joyal 28 instances.
• A Peril at Ishtar by Allan Joyal 16 instances.
• Call This A Castle by Duke of Ramus 12 instances.
• Neptune by Duke of Ramus 11 instances.
• Rosencrantz And Guildenstern by lordshipmayhem 11 instances.

See Also

• Ainsworth or "Improved Castle"
• Castle_Design_Notes
• Warships

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