The Decoy Drones are a new development from Elysia in order to aid them against their numerically superior opponents – especially in order to draw fire from more essential ships onto them selves – given that they are naturally less essential and also capable of sustaining a great deal of damage and still functioning.

There are two different varieties of drone, corresponding roughly to different size categories – the smaller of the two is designed to mimic a Concordia and the like, whereas the larger one is meant to mimic a Frigate, Destroyer and also to work with others in order to duplicate larger capital ships. The appearance of the Drone, on a cosmetic basis at least looks simply like another Elysian ship, albeit one of rather uncertain design.

The drones work in a rather simple manner – they contain systems which are designed specifically to be noticed – given that this, rather than efficiency, is their target they are capable of doing it with less than military grade technology – none the less by having its various systems run in such a way that that which is picked up by sensors mirrors that of other ships the Drone can make other ships believe that it is indeed that ship, albeit often hidden from visual sight (but then against most modern ships are). Several Drones together can imitate larger ships with particular accuracy.

The Drone is completely uninhabited and in not wasting space on life support or living areas the drones are capable of fitting a large amount of (admittedly sub-standard) armour and shield generators – using bulk over quality – which in combination mean that the Drone is particularly hard to damage efficiently. It is actually armed with a series of low powered energy weapons, although its energy expenditure is significantly higher which suggests to others high powered weapons – this is combined with the ability to replicated the process of charging up a min weapon – although it is not armed with a main weapon – in order to pull fire.

The Echir Decoy Drone is an automated 'dummy' ship designed by the Elysians to deceive the enemy and serve as a method of drawing enemy fire as a force multiplier.

The primary reason for designing the Echir was to account for the numerical inferiority the Elysians faced when compared to the other major powers, combined with its lack of external support and the presence of weapons that could easily cripple even its most powerful ships. In order to make sure that these weapons were less often targeted at the places that they could actually do some damage the Echir was developed, a resilient drone deceptive enough to draw fire and resistant enough to weather it.

The Echir's key systems are rather simply its primary ones - systems which are designed to be noticed and to be interpreted as coming from a fully functioning warship. Thankfully this does not mean that the resources have to be military standard - only that they have a similar presence on scanners. Combined with this the drone makes use of the room that is freed due to it ebing automated to have additional armour and shielding - using quantity not quality to create a very enduring body.

This ship is of most use as a decoy within pitched battle, or possibly to lure the enemy ships - acting as bait.

The Echir comes in two forms, looking vaguely similar - the two diverging primarily on a matter of size. Both of them have the smooth curves and organic look of an Elysian ship, but have a combination of features which make it hard to discern exactly what variety of ship it is - it certainly lloks more like a warship than a drone. However the ship is designed to be invisible the majority of the time.

Class: Drone Type: Decoy Designers: Elysian Celestial Weapons Manufacturer: Veritas Shipyards Fielded by: Elysian Celestial Navy

Within the drone there are no actually habitable areas, and the ship is primarily solid with it large propulsion, shielding and armour systems.

Length: 80 meters Width: 40 meters Height: 10 meters Decks: None

Continuum Distortion Drive: 5,000c Hyperspace Fold Drive: 0.3 LY/minute. Sublight Engines: 0.7c Range: Theoretically unlimited except by the lifetime of the vessel Lifespan: 5 years Refit Cycle: The systems of the Echir on a fairly frequently in order to keep them identical in observed output to the ship it intends to be imitating.

The hull of the Echir is effectively the poor mans version of the rather more commonly used plate armour - the use of super-durable plates set within a regenerative base. The hull on the Echir uses an inferior quality of plates, a inferior organism but makes up for this by having a far far thicker hull which grants it a very strong, and cheap, hull. Class 7.

The Echir uses, for economy's sake, a high powered DNA-Quantum sub-AI computer which is none the less capable of running the complicated calculations needed to operate the Mimicary Package correctly. However it is not capable of many of the tasks associated with modern ship computers, including remote control of other vehicles

The Mimicary Package is one of the essentials of the Echir Decoy Drone. Its first component consists of a complex set of programs and energy regulation which allow the systems of the Echir to emulate the performance of other Elysian vessels highly specifically - so much so that as far as a sensor scan is concerned, rather than being a drone it is a mid-end warship. The second part is a set of volumetric projectors which are spread across the hull which serve to project the image of another ship, which is reinforced through the sheilding system in order to make it appear to be something else - several Echir can unify this effect to emulate a much larger ship with great precision.

Unidirectional sensors the Thantros uses variable wide-band imaging clusters,

These sensors sense the presence of ships and other objects through the warping effect their mass has on space-time. While this sensor is not particularly good at getting exact information about the ship, it is extremely good at working out where something is, and the speed it’s moving at. It also beyond many types of cloaking device to foil this indirect form of scanning.

This sensor is used to identify what the targets hull is composed of, and also the other elements that compose the ship.

This sensor basically detects the radiation given off by hot bodies. In space almost everything is cold, space itself is only around 3 Kelvin, and the only things which are significantly above this are stars, planets and other celestial bodies. As such, if something is giving of Infrared radiation and it’s not a celestial body then it must be something artificial. This sensor won’t work on the more advanced ships out there, but can be surprisingly useful at detecting less advanced, or damaged, ships.

This highly sensitive sensor is capable of sensing the distortions of space which are created through CDD and CFS use, as well as other technology that utilizes similar effects. The sensor was designed to combat the danger that vessels cloaked using the CFS system could present.

This device combines the information from many different bands to create a far more accurate depiction.

The Spectrometres measure the properties of light in particular sections of the electro-magnetic band.

These advanced sensors detect tiny variances in the Electro-magnetic bands across all of the spatial planes. It functions as an incredibly advanced visual sensor, but only more so.

These sensors face the front of the ship and have a range up to 4 light-years.

Omnidirectional sensors of the Echir include

This sensor simply detects mass in subspace, and its passage through this domain. This sensor also functions on the related hyper-space. It is vital for detecting vessels which are travelling through these domains. It is notably hard to hide mass from these variety of sensors when traveling through Hyperspace or Subspace.

These sensors have a range of 2 light-years.

The Echir's computer is equiped with complex encryption protocols in order to secure communication, although preferably a higher-level computer will ensure its security.

Useful for covert, ship-to-ship communications – have to be in the way of the beam and is limited to light-speed.

Limited to the speed of light.

Has a range of fifteen light-years.

The Echir Type 1 moves its at superluminal speeds through the generation of distortions in space-time using spatial distortion technology, and wrapping them in order to create asymmetric peristaltic fields which drives the ship through space in a similar fashion to that of a Alcubierre Drive. The complexity of the system allows for superluminal speeds equivalent to many thousands of times the speed of light. The ship can stop completely or increase to full speed almost instantly due to the lack of kinetic energy in the ship – it simply required deactivating the special peristaltic effect.

In addition to this the Echir T1 is equiped with a Hyperspace drive partially so it may imitate those that do, and also so it can serve as 'bait' more efficiently. These drives function through projecting the ship into another dimension – Hyperspace. The exact physics of hyperspace aren’t understood perfectly, but it is capable of achieving enormous speeds – relative to the normal universe. This is only really used for inter-system travel, if it is used at all.

The shields of the Echir Type 1 are formed through the distortion of space using its SDG. Through distorting space-time beams and projectiles pass through and around it as if it is not there. It has a rating of 6.

The reason for the decoy having weapons is twofold. The second and least significant is to give it some measure of protection. However the primary purpose is to maintain the facade - it does this by not creating the weapon itself of equivalent power but to ensure that the weapon has a similar energy output to a conventional weapon but most of it in useless light and heat which looks impressive but does very little - the logic being this is that with modern technology it is actually far harder to shape and focus energy than actually generate and vent it in a specific fashion. As such this ship has five of these weapons spaced around its hull, three on its front nose and two on its wings which serve to give the imipression of powerful weapons firing.

• Primary Role: Deception.
• Secondary Role: Anti-armour.
• Damage Rating Value: 4.
• Range: 0.5 AU.
• Rate of Fire: 60 SPM.
• Payload Unlimited.

Length: 350 meters Width: 250 meters Height: 35 meters Decks: None

Continuum Distortion Drive: 4,500c Hyperspace Fold Drive: 0.2 LY/minute. Sublight Engines: 0.7c Range: Theoretically unlimited except by the lifetime of the vessel Lifespan: 5 years Refit Cycle: The systems of the Echir on a fairly frequently in order to keep them identical in observed output to the ship it intends to be imitating.

The hull of the Echir is effectively the poor mans version of the rather more commonly used plate armour - the use of super-durable plates set within a regenerative base. The hull on the Echir uses an inferior quality of plates, a inferior organism but makes up for this by having a far far thicker hull which grants it a very strong, and cheap, hull. Class 8.

The shields of the Echir Type 2 are formed through the distortion of space using its SDG. Through distorting space-time beams and projectiles pass through and around it as if it is not there. It has a rating of 7.

Designed to emulate the firing of a powerful main weapon, this floods a large ammount of Electro-Magnetic energy throughout the damage-inducing radius in a large beam which, due to the Echir's emulation technology, has readings which would suggest a far more significant weapon.

• Primary Role: Imitation.
• Secondary Role: Anti-powerarmour.
• Damage Rating Value: 7
• Range: 2 AU
• Rate of Fire: 1/minute.
• Payload Unlimited.

As with all weapons on the Echir this is designed to be cheaply produced and to expend energy in such a fashion, unfocused and leaking energy in a particular pattern, as to suggest a far more powerful weapon payload. It is sufficiently powerful to do some damage however.

• Primary Role: Imitation.
• Secondary Role: Anti-powerarmour.
• Damage Rating Value: 5
• Range: 1.5 AU
• Rate of Fire: 1/sec.
• Payload Unlimited.

Zakalwe created this article on 2007/12/20 08:07; Andrew approved it on 2007/12/26 20:39.