The Shipyard: Im-Rehsa Mearkat-class corvette

    The Brakiri Mearkat-class corvette entered service in 2235 a few years after the end of the Dilgar war. The Brakiri suffered significant losses of ships and infrastructure during the war and the Mearkat was one of the first new classes of ship introduced after the defeat of the Dilgar.
The ship was developed by the Im-Rehsa Corporation and the hull is an extensively modified Hakara-class fast courier produced by the Tor-Sikar corporation and was first sold in 2207.
The development of the Mearkat was somewhat controversial and led to some hostility between various factions in the syndicracy but the controversy did not prevent the Mearkat from being produced in large numbers with numerous variants.

The Mearkat was designed by Richard Bax for the Babylon 5 Wars game and you can find the full history of the ship and the rules to use it in B5W on the Babylon 5 Wars Vault.

Translating the rules for the Mearkat to A Call To Arms is is not a simple task. B5W and ACTA have different rulesets, and  the ACTA priority system doesn't allow for much granularity. The ships armament in B5W place it as being less well armed than a Halik, which in ACTA terms makes it a skirmish level ship. So far, so good. A problem that now arises is that the Hakara and the Mearkat by extension are neither fast not agile, and one of the main balancing factors for smaller ships is that the smaller ships are faster, and more agile than the larger ships. A departure from the B5W ship is therefore required while sticking to the spirit of the design.

Hakara fast courier

A Hollas and a Mearkat, or is it an Antoph and a Hakara? Attacking Brakiri 'merchant' ships can be a big gamble.

The Hakara is described as a fast courier, and it just so happens that there is a civilian fast freighter in A Call to Arms. The only change that is required to change it to a Brakiri ship is the armament. Its a Brakiri ship, so a Brakiri weapon it shall have, trading number of shots and a little range for AP. It is still woefully under armed as most of the freighters are, but its fast, as befits its name. The Hakara is also used by the Shokan, a heavily upgunned version known as the Rava can often be found being used by the Brakiri Raiders.

Mearkat-class corvette

In keeping with most Brakiri ships, there is very little external difference between a merchant and war ship.

    The Brakiri are somewhat lacking when it comes to official skirmish level ships The Haltana gravitic frigate introduced in Powers and Principalities is the only one that stands out and then because it is a very respectable ship and absolutely devastating if taken in multiples. Where the Brakiri lineup fails is in speed. Brakiri ships are relatively slow, and it seems to me that a ship based on a fast freighter should be..fast. As with ships I have previously (re)designed, the benchmark for how good it is are the same as for the Ikorta Variants. 

Conceptually my vision of the Mearkat is a ship that is fast and can bring a comparatively large number of weapons to bear against a single target. It excels in closing down and overwhelming single small ships, such as you might expect Raiders to field. The trade off is that it will not have any significant firepower in other arcs, nor does it possess a heavy punch such as is provided by a Graviton Beam. 
As an Im-Rehsa design, the ship will also have some defensive measures, in this case, shields.
The Brakiri are one of the races that uses actual shielding on their ships and there are a variety of ways that this can be represented. In the case of the Ikorta and its variants, shields are represented by Interceptors. I wanted to have something slightly different and in my mind a bit worse, a few points of shields. Enough so that a few stray fighters or an armed freighter can't immediately threaten the ship, but will quickly fall apart when faced with a proper warship.

The first version is as the ship was initially built. The Brakiri used Graviton Bolts as either a primary or more commonly, a secondary weapon before the Graviton Pulsar was developed when they were replaced with the newer weapon.

Initially I was going to retain the turret weapon that is mounted on the Hakara, but feedback received was to remove it as it is not a feature of any other official Brakiri ship. There are lots of Mearkat variants which I will explore at a later point, and several of them will have the turret, but the base version will not.
Overall the Mearkat is fairly fast and agile. It has decent but not overwhelming forward firepower and the defences are weak but should be effective against lighter ships than it. The Vorchan is faster and more powerfully armed, with a little less durability, and the Artemis has equivalent speed and agility, but much more firepower all round. I think that my Mearkat is worse than both, so its probably not unbalanced.

Next time I will delve into some Pak'ma'ra ships. The A Call to Arms fleet list is very limited in the number of ships available, and their designs are all very similar. Some variety is required.

Please let me know what you think of the Mearkat. Would you use it in your games? What would you change?

Thanks for reading, and I will see you next time.

STL's by Tyrel Lohr
Painted by me