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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.
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.
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.
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.
Below are the statistics and performance numbers and categories for the Jackdaw-class Heavy Corvette.
See Damage Rating (Version 3) for an explanation of the damage system.
The following is the typical complement of small craft found aboard a Jackdaw-class Heavy Corvette.
x2 Maximus (RUSE) or x4 NA-K2 Outrider Armored Car-size equivalent vehicles
belatedly created this article on 2017/05/01 12:05 at the request of Legix.