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Na-S3-1a Jackdaw-Class Heavy Corvette

The NA-S3-1a Heavy Corvette, otherwise known as the Jackdaw, is a long ship often painted in either green or black with a pincer-like armored tip. A variation of design, the Jackdaw has an angular and still rather blocky form. It earns its name from a type of smaller bird, in respect to the naming of prior Nepleslian fighter craft being named after bugs.

About the Ship

The Jackdaw-Class Heavy Corvette is, without a doubt, an attempt to produce a lighter, intercepting-focused ship and a planetary-assault support ship into one corvette. Developed near the end of YE 38 and finalized in YE 39, the Jackdaw was produced as an answer to Nepleslia's lacking abilities to face enemies who could turn tail before their fleet arrived. Designed with mostly fixed weaponry, the Jackdaw is intended to ambush hostile forces or to chase them down when the stronger and slower navy behind it isn't quite enough. With its Fabricators and Hydroponics, it performs its jobs best when used abroad as it can often obtain supplies and prolong its service periods.

This acts as a somewhat obvious weakness, as flanking the ship drastically hinders its firing capabilities, but is countered by the intent to field it in groups.

Key Features

Mission Specialization

Appearance

The Jackdaw-Class, like other ships before it of escort capability, is a long ship. Not particularly slender, it bulks up into a six-finned shape with four of its ERS systems mounted at the rear of the craft. Thicker armor plating reinforces the fin-like juts of its body, bulkheads and rises littering its main body. A decoy bridge lies near the top of one of its main cannons, placed near the back and between two of these fins. Two more guns are positioned on its side-most fins, with a final main cannon near the front and along the bottom. Smaller turrets adorn the sides of the ship, with two additional ERS positioned near the start of its side fins. A VLS system rests near the center of the ship, with multiple doors to ensure each individual tube is sealed. The most prominent trait, however, would be the pincer-like armor doors at the front of the craft, kept “pinched” to conceal its main torpedo tubes. These will often open, allowing it to fire its heavy payload when the moment is right.

Color-wise, the ship is often painted with green or black. Its small turrets are often painted gold. If necessary, however, the ship can be painted in solid green or black. When given its symbols, such as the NSN anchor or the Nepleslian star, it's often placed on the ship's armored fins in-front of its back-most turrets on four spots.

History and Background

In YE 38, analyzing the Nepleslian fleet presented a great flaw. With threats that required fast response times, such as the potential enemy Kuvexians and the species that served them, it was decided that a venture into fast-response was necessary. Area 52's answer, along with the rest of NAM, was to create a corvette. Nepleslians hadn't designed a ship of such purpose and fielded it as a main asset, which led to countless issues. Gunships blurred the line considerably, but their attempts bore fruit with the invention of the Jackdaw. Dubbed a Heavy Corvette, it was able to contend with speeds similar or even above the Sword thanks to armor-shedding. It resulted in the ship having more obvious “armor plates”. The interior was further furnished to field a potentially massive crew of support staff and the like to enhance its field-time.

As YE 39 came around, the ship's design was made final. Fitted with many launchers, an unintentional boon was presented that the Jackdaw could fulfill multiple roles. A jack-of-all-trades, capable of flexing or specializing its payloads for ground-support, anti-missile defenses, anti-fighter, and anti-shields. While it still lacks the sheer might of a dedicated frigate such as the Sword, its premise for a flexible weapons platform that can get the job done sets it to become an asset for individual crewing and fleet operations alike.

Statistics and Performance

Below are the statistics and performance numbers and categories for the Jackdaw-class Heavy Corvette.

General

Passengers

Dimensions

Propulsion and Range

Damage Capacity

See Damage Rating (Version 3) for an explanation of the damage system.

Inside the Ship

The following is a general description of the areas inside the Jackdaw-class Heavy Corvette.

Deck Layout

Deck 1 Deck 2 Deck 3

Compartment Layouts

Airlocks

While its cargo bay has an elevator that effectively could serve as an airlock, there are two primary airlocks aboard the Jackdaw. Both of these are positioned in extending hallways positioned near its side fins. These are both capped with Standard Airtight Doors, as well as traditional mag-locking equipment to allow it to pull up alongside resupply ships and ferry smaller supplies around through two sides at once.

Armory

The Jackdaw favors a total of two armories. The reason for this lies in that they want both the Marines to be able to easily access them without clogging a single room, but also so that in the case of being struck on one side the ship may still have access to one of its other armories.

Equipment

Bridge

Positioned within the ship almost at its core in both width and height, the bridge is somewhat further back to allow the Jackdaw's armored bands and cargo panel to act as further buffers. While this prevents the crew from having any direct vision outside the ship, it means that the command staff of the Jackdaw is almost guaranteed to survive anything short of a complete breakdown and rupture of the ship's integrity. Best filled with the Captain and a group of three officers, the bridge itself can support a group of seven including the Captain.

Brig

The jackdaw contains a centralized brig nearby the armory for convenience and features over a dozen cells.

Captain's Suite

The Jackdaw, like many of its features, doubles up on Standard Captain's Suites. This is to allow the CO and the XO their own quarters, especially based upon the primary goal of the Jackdaw to always be hunting and moving behind enemy lines. While one commands, the other is resting and attending to crew requests. While it isn't quite the norm, it fits well with ensuring the connection between the NSN's large crew requirement to keep the warship operating at full efficiency.

Cargo Storage Areas

Unlike most warships, the Jackdaw's cargo storage sections are along its belly due to the scattering and different position of its space-faring equipment. Nicknamed “The Breast”, this belly-mounted section is large enough to hold many ground assets, power-armor bays, and effectively any cargo or supplies they may find in the field. A large elevator panel is positioned near one side, allowing it to lower things rather than act as a ramp. The decision for this design relies solely on the fact that it can lower and allow Marines or PA troops to deploy in more directions or even fire from it while using it as a shield.

Crew Cabins

The standard crew cabins aboard the Jackdaw are, as one would imagine, fitting to regulation alongside the Standard Crew Cabin. Four humanoids can reside in each cabin aboard the Jackdaw, though many of its Navy members are positioned near the elevators and battle stations to allow fast response. Marines who come aboard are often positioned near the core of the ship and its entry paths, allowing them to protect the bridge, armory, or the boarding tubes.

Crew Recreation

Many Standard Crew Lounges dot the Jackdaw's second deck, further emphasizing the idea of keeping its crew spread and providing plenty of space for the different scheduled groups from butting heads. It also functions well for when the ship is packed with a Marine detachment, allowing the Marines their own lounges and the Navy their own to ensure neither groups get into any military-superiority complexes!

Engineering

A single Standard Ship Engineering Compartment is positioned at the back of the ship, rising from the second deck to the third. The second deck houses the electrical and the life support components, positioned to best allow the crew to respond in an emergency. The third deck houses the direct controls housing for the engines, effectively positioned at the biggest blindspot of the ship. While this can make it a fatal mistake if outmaneuvered, the entire philosophy of the Jackdaw promotes this position significantly as an advantage.

Hallways

Standard Ship Hallway make up the entirety of the ship's many interconnecting spins. Straight forward, these are what one would expect when boarding a Nepleslian ship.

Hydroponics

To fit its purpose as a Deep-Space operating vessel, the Jackdaw has two dedicated hydroponic bays. The sheer amount of space in these large bays allows the ship to even grow small amounts of alcoholic beverage-making ingredients, essentially allowing the ship's most endeavoring bunch to make homebrews to help promote good morale.

Maintenance Conduits

Maintenance conduits and passages, like on most ships, dot the many halls and rooms of the ship.

Medical Bay

One can find the Standard Shipboard Medical Bay near the center of the ship's second deck, its position intended to allow people to immediately rush wounded to it. It also helps that, centralized as it is, the Medbay can effectively serve as a traditional doctor's office in a far more personal manner than most might find aboard other ships.

Mess Hall

While each Crew Lounge can serve as a mess hall, one specifically tends to fulfill the job. Positioned near the simulation room, the largest crew lounge on the entire ship has half of its space dedicated to preparing and serving the ship's food-based needs!

Power Armor Bay

Five strips of power armor bays line the ship's cargo area. Combined, these five sections can support up to forty units of Power Armor at once, while others can be stored within the Cargo Bay and brought to the strips for rapid deployment. In short, the Jackdaw lacks the traditional ability for Fighters for being able to outfit up to forty soldiers for PA combat at once, then deploying all of them via the cargo bay's elevator.

Shuttle Bay

While the ship is long, its narrow width and short height means that the Jackdaw only has space to take on a single Na-S/Sh-01 Zachitnik-class Shuttle. This allows the ship to export and bring aboard supplies when it may not, even fitted with a fairly wide passage between its shuttle bay and cargo bay to allow the transportation of heavy vehicles onto the craft.

Wardroom

See the Mess Hall. The same crew lounge holds many monitors and equipment to help promote the social atmosphere of the ship.

Ship Systems

The following is a general description of the subsystems utilized by the Jackdaw-class Heavy Corvette.

Armor and Hull-Integrated Systems

Like most ships, the Jackdaw fields Nerimium hull plates and a durandium frame. The ship has a junker-hive in the “deadzone” near its right side fin's bottom-side while supporting a NCS accessible via maintenance hatch on the left fin.

Computers and Electronics

As one would expect, the Jackdaw's systems are linked and assisted through the Advanced Command Executive AI computer core.

Sensors

Communications

Electronics

The Jackdaw rivals its fellow Nepleslian ships, utilizing the Brainspammer Electronic Countermeasure Suite. However, this system is provided with far more power due to the lighter load than the heavier Sword and make the Jackdaw considerably greater at slipping in and off sensors and guided ordinance detection.

Emergency Systems

While it can remain combat effective while burning on its four auxiliary generators, most commanders will recognize the moment as one to evacuate the ship while the fire management system tries to handle the damage. A pair of Na-EP-01a Scapegoat Escape Pods are crammed into the middle of the ship precisely to evacuate the crew that wouldn't be capable of reaching shuttles or suiting into power armor in the cargo bay. Upon loading the crew into these, the crew pulls a lever that prepares a mix of various gases beneath the armored bulkheads on the ship's top, sending all five away and causing structural detonation to vent the escape-pod room. The result essentially throws the escape-pods clear using venting air pressure, combining with AI control to stabilize and then activate to fire the pods in another direction.

The result is an almost one turn-like maneuver, allowing the pod to clear the ship initially and then use its fuel solely for an escape vector from combat.

Life Support Systems

The Jackdaw fields the most basic suite of life-support, known as the Na-C3-V3102. Thanks to its hydroponics bay, however, and its refined design philosophy, the ship has tremendous capabilities of refreshing and extending itself to support the ship's long voyages.

Power Generation

Primary Power
Secondary Power

Utilized to power the ship's secondary systems. While in in STL, the remaining power can be siphoned away from charging and powering the plasma drives to instead focus on the ship's fabrication bays.

Auxillary Power

Used only when suffering full power loss from the destruction or destabilization of its primary and secondary power sources, there are four of these positioned along the length of the ship in armor deadzones. When activated, all four can allow the ship to keep fighting, but cannot power the fabricators during combat.

Propulsion

STL Propulsion Systems

FTL Propulsion Systems

Barrier Systems

While the Jackdaw stands as one of the smaller ships within the Nepleslian Navy, a lot of its combat power comes from the development and implementation of a six-faced variant of the traditional CPS known as the CPS-05 Combined Barrier System. This variant grants the Jackdaw the ability to skirt in and out of an enemy's blind-spots or to give it the survival to re-position within a firefight with larger ships, allowing it to “roll” its protection and dissipate damage across its various faces. This shield, when combined with a near fighter-like mentality, works to make the Jackdaw's costly investment a modern boon and allows it to punch at or above the weight class of most Corvettes.

Stealth Systems

As one would expect, the Jackdaw fields the traditional MMD-XX Mass Mesher Device of the traditional Nepleslian warships. Thanks to its size, this allows it to more effectively utilize its various forms of concealment when completely stationary. However, one down-side is the sheer amount of power the ship draws on when it goes into its engaged mode, making it little beyond the average system while prowling.

Weapon Systems

Because of its intended use as a fleet scout, pack hunter, or exploration vessel, the armament of the Jackdaw is at first glance rather light in terms of direct-fire turrets. Instead, it relies heavily on its ability to overwhelm larger ships with its swarms of micro-missiles when fired in packs. The Jackdaw's VLS and plasma cannons act as its equal-weight fighting armament, accented with its harder-hitting Curbstompers to strike unprepared or unshielded larger craft. Putting a Jackdaw into a direct fight and expecting to win requires the use of its far stronger supporting systems such as mobility and shielding to keep within optimal range or in the closest thing to the enemy's blindspot as possible, rather than brute-forcing the enemy from afar.

Vehicle Complement

The following is the typical complement of small craft found aboard a Jackdaw-class Heavy Corvette.

Shuttles

x1 Na-S/Sh-01 Zachitnik-class Shuttle

Armor Elements

x2 Maximus (RUSE) or x4 NA-K2 Outrider Armored Car-size equivalent vehicles

OOC Notes

belatedly created this article on 2017/05/01 12:05 at the request of Legix.

1)
2.14 light-years/hour
2)
0.81 light-years/minute
3)
110,923 kilometers/second, 68,924 miles/second
4)
Along the longest wall of the armory
5)
Occupy the other two walls along with their armament
6)
In Lockers near the door, to act as replacements
7)
Versus barriers and unprotected electronics/Versus everything else.