The Shipyard: Earth Alliance Fleet Carriers for A Call to Arms

To say the Earth Alliance Crusade Fleet is a departure from the previous Early Years and 3rd Age lists would be something of an understatement. Earth ships are very middle of the road with their fighters being what pushes them up to a fairly competitive force. Their fighters are not the best and are outmatched by those of other races such as the Minbari Nial and Dilgar Thorun, but you can take lots of them. The Nova Dreadnoughts and Avenger carriers allow you to deploy fighters in huge numbers giving you quantitive superiority against almost all opposing fleets, and qualitative superiority against most of those.

With the Crusade Era fleet you lose access to most of your fighter carrying capacity and you will find that you have to use your fighters defensively and the only thing in the Crusade fleet that makes that possible is the Chronos-class Escort Frigate introduced in Powers and Principalities. This is one of the best anti-fighter platforms in the game and will level the field against a lot of opponents.

EAS Midway, Poseidon-class, Avenger-class and EAS Kommandorski Straits

What you get in exchange for this lack of fighters is the Marathon-class Advanced Cruiser, which while a fast ship, is your only fast ship, well, excluding the Delphi but thats not something you in particularly close proximity to your opponent, and will quickly outpace the Chronos escorts that are supposed to be protecting it, and thats before you consider the fact its one of the more fragile of the Battle Level ships in the game.

You could take an Explorer, its a pseudo carrier at Raid level with 6 squadrons of fighters, and it has scout but little else. You could invest heavily and take a Poseidon, and if that happens just ignore everything above since it will, on its own, give you fighter superiority. You could also go by the Alpha cannon and take Nova Dreadnoughts, since they were actually still on strength during the Crusade Era. Several Nova Dreadnoughts are actually newer than the first Omega-class ships. or you could just make up your own ships, which is what I've done.

Omega (Delta) Strike Carrier

The Omega (Delta) was built in an effort to provide Earth Force with a dedicated carrier to replace the aged Avenger-class which had suffered immense attrition during the Minbari war and the few remaining ships were both insufficient to meet deployment requirements, and worn out through constant use. A proposed use of the Hyperion-class to form the basis of a fleet carrier, in the form of the one off Kommandorski Straits was unsucessful and suffered many of the same issues the previous EAS Midway, a converted Nova-class Dreadnought, had suffered. 

The Omega-class was selected as the basis of a conversion for several reasons. Firstly the Earth Alliance had prioritised production of Omega-class hulls over other production meaning the manufacture of the Hyperion-class had been discontinued. Secondly, the modification was failrly simple and finally the hull was large enough that problems with previous conversions, primarily endurance, could be mitigated somewhat.

Never produced in large numbers, the Omega (Delta) did exactly what it set out to do, and provided the Earth Alliance with an (Interim) replacement for the Avenger.
Can be used in Both 3rd Age and Crusade Fleets using the in service date

History by R.Bax: EA Big Carriers 2004

The ship

Based on the Omega-class the ship has the same base hull, the modifications being mainly to the armament. The ship loses its big laser cannons and heavy pulse cannons, instead being equipped with medium pulse cannons, and it gets an improved fighter carrying capacity. It is still an Omega hull, so the launch capacity is somewhat limited at Carrier 2 meaning the Fleet Carrier ability may not be quite as useful as you would like if you happen to make lots of saves for your fighters. It is also Unique because it is one of the rarer Omega Variants

Witch-class Fleet Carrier

Based on the Witch-class Escort Carrier STL by Tyrel Lohr. I like the mini, I wanted to make it into a useable ship. Sue me.

The Battlemaster project that ultimately resulted in the Warlock-class Advanced Destroyer provided the Earth Alliance with a front line ship that could match the feared Minbari Sharlin. Production of the ship was slow, however, with the gravitic drive, Gravitic Reactors and Particle cannons suffering delays in manufacture due to supply chain issues. Production of other components, the hull, armour, plasma drives and more conventional fusion reactors did not suffer the same issues. This resulted in increasing delays to the Warlock production schedule and growing stockpiles of components.

Several proposals were forthcoming, including completing the ships with conventional Drives and already proven weaponry but this was rejected as the ships would have simply been a much more expensive and only marginally more capable version of the Omega, but without the endurance provided by the rotating sections simulated gravity.

The winning solution was for a new fleet carrier, one that could keep pace with the Warlock destroyers, and have, as far as possible, commonality of parts. With no Gravitic drive the Witch was going to be smaller in order for the plasm Drive to have sufficient thrust to match the acceleration of the Warlock, and while a powerful primary armament was proposed, this would be on par with the Hyperion class with the majority of the ships internal volume going to fighter operations and command facilities. The ship was designed in such a way that upgrading it to have artificial gravity and a gravitic drive in the future once supply issues had been resolved would be very simple.

The Ship.

Another Battle level carrier. This one is slightly faster than the Omega, and has a primary Beam weapon and reduced all round firepower compared to the Omega (Delta). This makes it a more offensive ship with more potential firepower, but it still needs to get closer than the Warlocks to deal damage. Its also more vulnerable to being attacked by smaller ships since it lacks a comprehensive secondary battery. Its actually fairly weakly armed. the defensive ability is slightly reduced, it is in the same fleet as the Chronos-class Escort Frigate after all, so it can count on that ship being present to fend off enemy fighters if it needs to. Finally, it is also Unique to prevent it from being taken very widely. 

What do you think? do you like the ships? are they too strong, too weak? what would you change?
What ships have you come up with?


Next time I will reveal what I've been up to, I've been having a lot of fun

STL's by Tyrel Lohr

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