The Shipyard: Earth Alliance Nova-E Dreadnought

The Nova-Evolution, or Nova-E, was a proposed development of the Nova-B Dreadnought that had been battle tested in the Dilgar War (2230-2232). It was to utilise technological developments made throughout the war as well as technologies recovered from the Dilgar to create an improved version of the Nova-B. This project was ultimately cancelled but the proposed ship would have been quite the force to be reckoned with. 

The ship is a Fan design and full details of the ships history can be found on the E.F.N.I. (Earth Force Naval Intelligence) site.

Nova-E alongside a Nova-B

The Ship

Translating the ship to the tabletop is quite the challenge. The Nova-E is an upgraded Nova-B. The Nova-B as appears in the Earth Alliance Early Years fleet list is arguable (in my opinion) the best Raid level ship in the game. It sports excellent firepower, Good surviveability, excellent Utility in the form of its carried fighters and its jump engine. The only real weaknesses of the ship are its lack of mobility being Lumbering, Limited range on the primary weapons, and those primary weapons providing all round firepower rather than concentrating it in one arc. The trick then, given the lack of granularity in ACTA is to make the ship distinctive while balancing it appropriately. the Nova-E is supposed to be an upgrade but its hard to upgrade the best ship in the game at its tier.

The Nova-E retains the mobility and surviveability of the Nova-B. The hull and mobility stats are unchanged. The ship also retains the 4 flights of fighters, these would have been Nova Starfury's had the ship entered service.

Armament is where the ship really changes over its existing counterpart with a more concentrated forward battery. Heavy pulse cannons and railguns fire forward, plus the spinally mounted Javelin Mk1 lasers. with lighter weapons to the side and rear.
The Mjolnir plasma mortar is a weapon that is conspicuously absent from the Novas and Omegas and other ships that share the hull. It is a dedicated ship killer boasting incredible damage capability but very short range and has difficulty firing on moving targets.
In the forward arc the Nova-E boasts excellent firepower while still having good, but no longer amazing, side and rear weapons. this is all balanced by the fact the ship is still lumbering and will have a lot of trouble bringing some of its weapons to bear.

The other cancelled project post Dilgar war was the Sabre

The Mjolnir Plasma Mortar

This weapon is incredibly destructive and equipped on Nova Dreadnoughts and other ships based on the hull design. It can be seen as the 2 oblong shapes at the bottom of the forward hammerhead below the launch/recovery bay. It is very short ranged and very destructive and has been called a plasma shotgun.
The Babylon 5 station was equipped with one of them during its refit and this single weapon caused the majority of the damage that destroyed the EAS Roanoke during the events of the episode 'severed dreams'

If you want to use it in your games (it could be fun) here are the stats I would use. It is equipped on:

Nova Dreadnought (All Versions)
Omega Destroyer (All Versions)
Warlock Destroyer 
Tantalus
Poseidon

All these ships have Mjolnirs

As always, if you plan on using the Nova-E in your games please speak with your opponent first, these are not official rules. the same goes for the plasma mortar

I hope you found this interesting. In the next Shipyard I will look at some of the Early Earth Alliance ships that came before the Nova and Hyperion.

Nova-E STL is a remix by me
Starfury STL by Badhaircut55
Other STLs by Tyrel Lohr
Miniatures painted by me

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