The Shipyard: Pak'ma'ra Var'shun'e-class Destroyer

A Var'shun'e counter attacks a Narn raiding force

Genesis of the Design

    The Dilgar war was a very traumatic experience for the league of non aligned worlds with many members driven to the brink of extinction. It was only the intervention of the Earth Alliance that saved many species from total annihilation.
Of equal, or perhaps greater, significance but given no-where near the same credit was the contribution of the Pak'ma'ra.

Timid by nature, the Pak'ma'ra were not a military power. Instead they concentrated their efforts on commerce and possess one of the largest merchant fleets in the galaxy. Their merchant marine was not defenceless with pak'ma'ra ships being resilient and surprisingly well armed. Dilgar ships that attacked pak'ma'ra convoys found them to be difficult to overcome. these attacks on Pak'ma'ra ships continued until the end of the war with significant losses for the both the Dilgar and Pak'ma'ra.

After the conclusion of the war, analysis by the Pak'ma'ra revealed a major shortcoming in their approach to space combat. the Pak'ma'ra fleet was composed of ships that were tough and well armed, but that lacked speed and maneuverability. they could fight an enemy on equal terms if they could bring them to battle, but their ships lacked the requisite speed to do so. An enemy could almost always dictate the tempo and location of an engagement.

The initial decision was to purchase through legitimate and illegitimate channels ships that had speed and hitting power in order to chase down attackers rather than just be forced to wait. The Drazi were only too pleased to provide sunhawks and warbirds and they quickly became a mainstay in Pak'ma'ra merchant fleets. They were not ideal, however, being designed to meet the requirements of the Drazi rather than the Pak'ma'ra. modifications helped somewhat, but what was needed was an indigenous design. the result is the Var'shun'e-class destroyer.

Conceptually the Var'shun'e is an anti-commerce raider ship. It is designed to engage and destroy raiders and military ships acting in an anti commerce role either as they close to attack or attempt to withdraw. It would also be suited in the commerce raiding role itself.  Accordingly the ship has the highest acceleration of any Pak'ma'ra built vessel, and the armament is installed along the center line so it is limited in its arcs of fire.
The most limiting factor is the availability of suitable crews for the ship. Aggression is a pre-requisite for command of a Var'shun'e, but this is a trait that is very rare in the Pak'ma'ra. Thus, despite the excellent design of the ship, it has seen limited production due to the lack of suitable crew candidates.

Designing the Var'shun'e

A sleek Pak'ma'ra ship.

The Var'shun'e miniature is a fan design by Tyrel Lohr and as such there are no official rules. The official Pak'ma'ra fleet list is a little underwhelming with a total of 3 unique ship designs, the Portafis, Urik'hal and Pshul'shi. The other 5 official ships are from other races, 2 each from the Drazi and Brakiri, and one from the Hurr.
The list was expanded slightly by the Dilgar war fan expansion by Charles Lister but still leaves the Pak'ma'ra as quite a boring faction. Their ships are armed with plasma torpedoes, plasma cannons.... and that's it. The weapons are present in varying combinations but their whole fleet is just a variation on a single theme, slow, tough and not very agile. The Sunhawks and Warbirds provide a little variety being faster ships, but the weapons are still the same as all the other ships..

Making the ship unique but still obviously a Pak'ma'ra ship is therefore something of a challenge. The miniature designed by Tyrel Lohr strongly hints that the ship is somewhat faster than your usual ship. You can represent speed in one of 2 ways, a high base speed or a low base speed but the afterburner trait. I decided on the latter for this ship and while it does have a higher base speed than most Pak'ma'ra ships this only becomes really noticeable when it executes 'All Power to Engines!'

Armament is where the ship really sets itself apart from the rest of the Pak.... ships in the roster. One of the signature weapons of the Pak'ma'ra in Babylon 5 wars is the plasma stream. if you are familiar with the Centauri roster, you will recognise this weapon from the Morgrath. The rest of the armament is plasma cannon based, and to stop the high speed being abused to drop energy mines everywhere, these are plasma batteries as they cannot be used in that capacity. The exception to this is the rear firing plasma cannon, if you have a pair of these they can use their rear firing weapons to generate a small energy mine as they race off to safety.

A Var'shun'e  attacks a convoy of Centauri ships supplying weapons to raiders

Compared to the Morgrath the Var'shun'e is more heavily armed, and a little bit tougher. The Morgrath on the other hand can more easily bring its weapons to bear since the Var'shun'e has a single turn only, and a lower base speed. It is quite easy to outmaneuver the Var'shun'e and get into an area that doesn't have good weapons coverage. The Vorchan, on the other hand, is clearly a much superior ship. not much can match the Vorchan at skirmish level.

Please let me know what you think. Is this a hit or a miss? What would you change?

Are there any ships you would like to see given rules?

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

Miniature STL's by Tyrel Lohr
Painting by me