The Na-F/A-7X “Goliath” Fighter/Assault-Bomber is a variable-role endo-/exo-atmospheric heavy fighter/bomber designed in early YE 36 and fielded (after plenty of delays) over two years later in the summer months of YE 38 by the Nepleslian Star Navy; although difficult to handle and vulnerable if engaged by other aerospacecraft, the Goliath (or “Goli”) compensates by packing devastating amounts of firepower and armor - thus enabling it to excel in its intended mission profiles.

• STOL/VTOL capable
• Capable of fielding vast amounts of ordinance via modular hardpoint system
• Two-stage spacial/planetary propulsion system
  • Extremely durable
• Dedicated anti-starship weaponry

• Mobile Long-Range Indirect Fire-Support
• Ground/Spacial-Attack Fighter/Bomber
• Starship Neutralization
• Limited Anti-Fighter Capability

The tale of how the Na-F/A-7X “Goliath” Fighter/Assault-Bomber came to be is an………unusual one, to say the least - and is a brilliant example of the ingenuity (and tragedy) that can arise from last-minute, balls-to-the-wall improvisation.

The year was YE 35. Following the staggeringly high losses of the successful (yet very, very costly) Rok'Veru Offensive, it was determined by the top brass of the Nepleslian Star Navy that a major overhaul program was necessary to modernize the Navy's strike craft, for the FA4 - although still relatively young, having only been introduced three years prior in YE 32 - had quickly gained the infamous reputation of being a “flying deathtrap,” owing to its tendency to claim the lives of its pilots within their first sortie. Lead by Rear Admiral Titus Orion, the program would serve the twofold purpose of overhauling the Navy's pre-existing aerospaceframes, while also introducing several next-generation strike craft into the mix - thus leading to the creation of several top-secret engineering ventures later that year, such as Project Reaper………….and Project Maelstrom.

Project Maelstrom, see, had the seemingly easy task of “modernizing” the newly-released Na-F/A-5 “Hornet” Fighter-Bomber, with the requirements that the second iteration (dubbed the “Super Hornet”) have a heftier main gun, vastly-increased munition stores, and FTL capability. Problem was, there was only enough room on the Hornet for two of the upgrades, no matter how much re-routing, shunting, bypassing, or cursing was performed; as days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and YE 35 turned into YE 36, it became clear to the engineers of Project Maelstrom that something…different would be needed - especially after they received a final three-month ultimatum from the Star Military following the Red's attack on Fort Sentinel in YE 37.

It was in this state of frenzied panic that the F/A-7X was born.

Given how precious the quantity known as time now was, it was decided by the designers that the starfighter - named the “Goliath,” after a discussion heavily influenced by lack of sleep - would have several self-imposed constraints of its own. First was that it, above all, would be simple - both in design and in maintenance/repair (the former for obvious reasons, the latter as a selling point); secondly, it would be constructed completely out of locally-produced components - as, well, there just wasn't any time to conduct the lengthily negotiations required to secure anything foreign-made (and it provided yet another selling point). Lastly, it would carry all of its secondary ordinance externally - which while very risky allowed for utterly stupid amounts of the aforementioned ordinance to be carried and, more importantly, meant that the internal volume of the fuselage (one of the biggest frustrations with the never-to-sufficiently-be-damned Hornet) could be devoted entirely to the Goliath's subsystems. With that in mind, the Maelstroms set about their task - and while the next ninety days were worse then Hell itself for them, they somehow (despite the odds, despite the pressure, despite everything) managed to finish with just minutes to spare.

Mere words wouldn't have been sufficient to convey the sheer amounts of shock that defined the expressions of the NSN's Admirals and Grand Admirals as the weary, burnt-out, on-the-verge-of-collapse (but grinning) survivors of Project Maelstrom presented the initial blueprints for the F/A-7X “Goliath”; to the surprise of everyone present, those Admirals and Grand Admirals not only approved the design - they liked it, and sent the schematics to Aerotech with their wholehearted approval. Tragically, however, the triumphant engineers of Project Maelstrom (the ones that had seemingly performed an impossible miracle) didn't live to witness their child spread its wings and take flight, for by the time the first prototypes were completed in the summertime of YE 38, every single member had tragically died, be it from freak accidents or from what appeared to be natural causes, and not even the IPG could figure out the actual truth - with a single exception: someone, or something, called “Forge”…

Approved by Rear Admiral Titus Orion in YE 38 for extremely limited usage out in the field as a proof-of-concept prototype, the F/A-7X “Goliath” is a variable-role fighter/bomber that, in many ways, is the counterpart of the YF/A-6X(A) “Scythe” (trading stealth for superior defenses and maneuverability for missiles galore); instead of relying on cloak-and-dagger tactics, however, the F/A-7X - built entirely out of bleeding-edge Nepleslian components - utilizes unholy amounts of firepower and even greater amounts of armor to annihilate hardened targets (be they reinforced fortresses or heavily-defended capital ships) and survive any attempts at counter-reprisal. She may not be the fastest, or the most agile……but when it comes to sheer durability, only the Star Army's legendary V9 Nodachi can compete with the Goliath.

That being said, however, the F/A-7X does have several fairly major flaws. It, for instance, is not meant to loiter around in the area of operations, especially when inside a planet's atmosphere (as, after all, that's what the less-expensive Corona Heavy Gunship is for); rather, the Goliath is meant for linear “bombing” runs, as they don't rely as much on the vehicle's lower-then-average maneuverability. Additionally, the Goliath is extremely vulnerable to powered armor and other starfighters, as both can potentially avoid the firing arcs of the ship's two Plasma Chaingun Turrets with relative ease (or, barring that, simply shrug off the damage), neutralize them, and wear the Goliath down via attrition as, well, even a gun as powerful as the Prevenger is useless if your opponent can simply stay behind you……which brings up the third point, namely that the F/A-7X is not equipped with a Combined Field System, granting opponents that do have such technology available to them a potentially lethal advantage…

Unusual for its heavy usage of the super-dense Nerimium metal, the Goliath's hull consists of a Durandium Alloy/Nerimium frame protected by two layers of heavily-reinforced Nerimium plating. Although such…impressive amounts of armor have the downside of decreasing the starfighter's atmospheric handling to suboptimal levels, the survivability granted by the vehicle's armor was considered to be well worth the cost - especially when one considers that not much in the way of maneuverability is needed for linear strafing runs.

Housed in a Nerimium “bathtub” notable for its ability to withstand repeated hits from a Heavy Penetrating Assault Rifle and lined with strategically-placed SynAraS-based spall shields (sourced from the "Super Maximus" HMBT) as an additional layer of defense, the Goliath's cockpit is - in order to compensate for the fact that it's…rather difficult to see through 2 centimeters of Nerimium-based armored plating - equipped externally with redundant arrays of visual sensors whose data-feeds are projected internally via a panoramic Volumetric HUD system that is complemented by “traditional” instruments. Despite this, however, it's strongly recommended that the pilot instead make usage of the starfighter's brand-spanking-new, bleeding-edge Kraken Neural Control System, due to the fact that said system essentially eliminates the delay imposed by the limitations of one's reflexes - thereby improving combat performance by a hundredfold - at the cost of increased mental strain with prolonged usage (as a result of the immense effort required to pilot an aerospacecraft via thought alone).

Though it's not strictly required per say, wearing a M10 Raider Light Armor or Disrupter Flight Suitwhile operating the F/A-7X is highly advisable, as it decreases the chances of pilot injury and/or death that often result from intense, large-scale battles.

Although its endurance leaves a bit to be desired (with storage for a mere 6 days of a highly-nutritious - yet horrifically bland - solution), the Goliath's heavily-protected environmental systems are essentially self-sufficient in maintaining a breathable atmospheric supply for the pilot; interestingly enough said systems are also noteworthy in that they're designed to be quadruple-redundant.

Equipped with dual second-generation Hyperspace-Tap Reactors (either of which can meet the vehicle's gargantuan energy requirements), the F/A-7X is, as one can probably guess from the sheer size of the two reactors onboard, well-equipped when it comes to power generation - however, should both of the heavily-armored generators be knocked offline from damage, the reduction in combat effectiveness would be catastrophic; though equipped with two Hyper-Capacitor Arrays for usage in emergencies, they can only sustain the Goliath's ravenous systems for 6 hours before being depleted - and that figure was determined outside of combat…

Due to the need to effectively manage the distribution of guidance information to the swarms of missiles the F/A-7X can potentially unleash (and, among other things, perform complex tasks such as electronic warfare, Kraken optimization, and secondary/defensive weapon management), the Goliath is outfitted with an Advanced Command Executive (ACE) AI (and optional JANE(JOHN) AI integrated personality matrix), thereby allowing the starfighter's pilot to focus solely on the tasks of flying and fighting - which (thanks to the ability of the aforementioned AI to carry out the delicate task of fine-tuning the neural uplink and controlling the vehicle's defensive countermeasure) is something that said pilot can carry out with even greater ease.

Like nearly other vehicle employed by the Star Military, the Goliath features the Monoeye Directional Sensor System as its primary means of collecting information about its surroundings; unlike any other vehicle currently employed by the Star Military, the F/A-7X has five of them. Partly out of a desire for even more redundancy and partly for necessity, these cyclopean sensor suites can be found in the following locations:

• On the front of the fuselage, in a slightly-recessed housing between the starfighter's two Prevengers; it's protected by reinforced Nerimium armor. Mounted in a ball socket.

• On the aft of the fuselage, in between the starfighter's twin Dual-Stage Hyperspace-Tap Drives; also mounted in a ball socket.

• Integrated into each of the two Plasma Chaingun Turrets. Sees through Durandium-T “windows” and are further protected by the Nerimium armor of the turrets themselves - though as a tradeoff their field-of-view is limited to whatever direction the turrets are pointing.

• Integrated into the Pulse Laser Array turret on the underside of the fuselage. Sees through a Durandium-T “window” and is further protected by the Nerimium armor of the turret itself - though as a tradeoff its field-of-view is limited to whatever direction the turret is pointing.

The “redundant arrays of visual sensors” mentioned in an earlier section, the OmniEye Sensor System is included on the F/A-7X for several reasons, including the bolstering of the starfighter's overall sensor effectiveness by detecting additional types of emissions, increasing the field-of-vision available to the vehicle's pilot, the necessity of the system's Threat Acquisition Detector for countering hostile self-guided ordinance, and - above all else - because of the sheer effectiveness of the intimidation factor it provides when utilizing active sensors.

The Goliath is equipped with a Na-M11-E3600 Chatterbox Communications Array for the purposes of exchanging information with other allied forces; while lacking in terms of versatility (due to it being restricted to laser and radio-based communication mediums), the designers of the F/A-7X felt that a system as rugged, proven, and (most importantly of all) compact as the Chatterbox would be of far greater utility then something more extensive (and, due to size, unusable) - a principle that, fittingly enough, sums up the thought process behind the Goliath itself.

The Goliath utilizes two massive Dual-Stage Hyperspace-Tap Drives for slower-then-light movement; both are strategically placed to minimize the chances of damage from ground-base enemies during bombing runs - and armored to minimize the chances of being disabled (or worse) during chaotic space-borne battles.

Included in order to grant the Goliath increased maneuverability in exo-atmospheric environments, these small (and Nerimium-armored!) variable-direction micro-thrusters can be found in numerous locations throughout the F/A-7X's aerospaceframe; furthermore, they provide the vehicle with (rudimentary) VTOL capabilities.

The F/A-7X is equipped with the latest in Continuum Distortion Drive technology; although this faster-then-light engine is (when compared its predecessors) extremely advanced, it's still incapable of matching the performance of more…esoteric alternatives, thus limiting the ship's performance in comparison to its experimental counterpart. Additionally, this CDD is also painfully inefficient at lower power settings, owing to its miniscule size in comparison to the F/A-7X - thus, using it as a form of STL propulsion is highly discouraged, except as a last-ditch means of propulsion should the two Hyperspace-Tap Drives be disabled and/or destroyed.

Though arguably another casualty of the over-redundancy built into the Goliath's aerospaceframe, the shielding systems of the Na-F/A-7X (a heavily miniaturized, top-of-the-line Combined Shield System Array sandwiched between the Capacitors mentioned earlier) are, while lacking in stamina, very difficult to penetrate - as it was reasoned that the Goliath's superheavy armor would be its first line of defense, whereas its shields would be an “expendable” barrier that could be recharged in between bombing runs.

Essentially an upgraded version of the pre-existing Na-M/V-E3600 Brainspammer, the Flashbang Electronic Warfare Suite takes the best features of both and pairs the result with the lightning-fast (literally!) electronic reflexes of an ACE AI - thereby ensuring that the Goliath can fight both virtual and physical opponents with the same awe-inspiring degree of lethality.

Included to supplement the Goliath's “direct” anti-missile defenses, the AEGIS - although as of early YE 38 still untested in actual combat - should (in theory) increase the vehicle's already-high survivability rate by decreasing the number of targets its other defensive systems have to contend with.

• x2 Na-V7-W3700 "Prevenger" High-Velocity Plasma Rotary Cannons (Nose-mounted)
  • Purpose: Anti-Vehicle, Anti-Structure
  • Damage: SDR 2
  • Range (Planetary): 5.0 miles (8,407 meters)
  • Range (Space): 270,000 miles (434,523 kilometers)
• Rate of Fire: 70 rounds/second
  • Payload 4200 rounds, self-replenishing²⁾

• x2 PCT-01C Plasma Chaingun Turrets (One on the dorsal surface of each wing)
  • Purpose: Anti-Armor, Anti-Fighter, Anti-Missile, Anti-Infantry
  • Damage: ADR 3
  • Range (Planetary): ~1.24 miles (2,000 meters)
  • Range (Space): ~125,000 miles (201,168 kilometers)³⁾
• Rate of Fire: 15 rounds/second
  • Payload 6000 rounds, replenishable

• x1 PLA-03a Pulse Laser Array (Located on the ventral surface of the fuselage)
  • Purpose: Point-Defense
  • Damage: PDR 5/ADR 1
• Range: ~112 miles (180,000 meters)
  • Rate of Fire: Continuous
  • Payload Effectively unlimited⁴⁾

• x1 Hyperspace-Tap Flare Launcher (Located on the aft surface of the fuselage)
  • Purpose: Anti-Missile
  • Damage: PDR 5/ADR 1
• Range: 5,000 meters (~3.107 miles)
  • Rate of Fire: 5×3 charges/second⁵⁾
  • Payload 75 charges, self-replenishing

• x4 Anti-Radar Chaff Projectors (Located on the dorsal, ventral, port, and starboard surfaces near the aft of the fuselage)
  • Purpose: Anti-Missile
• Range: 325 meters (~0.202 miles)
  • Rate of Fire: 2 charges/second⁶⁾
  • Payload 12 charges⁷⁾

As mentioned above, the Na-F/A-7X is outfitted with an unprecedented six under-wing hardpoints; each is capable of equipping one of the following configurations:

• x3 SWARM Missiles
  • Purpose: Anti-Armor, Anti-Fighter
  • Damage: ADR 2-3⁸⁾
  • Area of Effect: 10-20 meters⁹⁾
  • Range (Planetary): ~100 miles (160,000 kilometers)
  • Range (Space): Effectively unlimited.

• x24 "Pufferfish" Airburst Missiles
  • Purpose: Anti-Vehicle, Anti-Armor
  • Damage: ADR 2
  • Area of Effect: 35-50 meters¹⁰⁾
  • Range (Planetary): ~1.2 miles (2,000 meters)¹¹⁾
  • Range (Space): Effectively unlimited.

This page was originally created on 2015/12/31 10:58 by .