This month's SciFi release is the carriers and small craft of the Zirakthargūm Divinity!
Thullzūd Light Carrier
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Compact for its role, the Thullzūd Light Carrier is the size of most battlecruisers, but still manages to house two squadrons of small craft. The dwarven emphasis on power over tactical flexibilty is particularly evident in their fighter forces, which have no hyperdrives. This has, in turn pushed the dwarven carriers into being smaller and lighter to maximise their flexibility and ease of supply.
The Thullzūd has enough speed to keep up with other capital ships and, like all dwarf vessels, powerful shields and good armour. However, the trade off means the Thullzūd's armament is poor, coinsisting of a single plasma battery and several autocannon point-defence arrays.
Zakzūl Heavy Carrier
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The Zakzūl Heavy Carrier is so far the largest vessel of the new generation of Zirakthargūm starships. Like the smaller Thullzūd, it is compact for a heavy carrier. The Zakzūl carries four squadrons of fighters, yet is itself only the size of most superdreadnoughts, being perhaps three quarters of the size of most similar heavy carriers.
This compactness comes at a price, however; the Zakzūl is necessarily slow and lightly armed. Its protection, while still significant, is less than that of the dreadnoughts two-thirds its size. However, it is well protected with numerous blasterand autocannon point and interdiction defence systems, and while its plasma batteries are only modest, they can still pack a powerful punch to an overconfident foe.
Dālen Fighter
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The Dālen Fighter is the mainstay of the Dwarven fighter forces. It is extremely heavily shielded and well-armoured, yet retains good maneouvrability. It is armed with quad autocannons and an internal missile bay capable of carrying up to sixteen missiles.
The Dālen's major drawback is that it does not possess a hyperdrive, confining it to short-rnage missions from a carrier or planetary hangar.
Thorodin Bomber
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The Thorodin Bomber is a dedicated attack craft. It shares the same shielding, armour and agility as the Dālen, but instead only carries a pair of autocannons for self-defence. The rest of its mass is taken up by a pair of heavy torpedo launchers.
Like the Dālen, the Thorodin has no hyperdrive and relies on carrier support for FTL transit.
Bāel Dūne Fighter Cruiser
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The Bāel Dūne Fighter Cruiser performs the dual role of assault shuttle and attack craft. Armed with two heavy autocannons on the wing tips, and twin turreted autocannons for point defense, the Bāel Dūne's attack power comes from the twin torpedo launchers just above the wings. The torpedo launchers can carry a considerable amount of reloads. Combined the the Bāel Dūne's enormous shielding – equal to some medium cruisers, this ensure that vessel can be a sustained threat throughtout a battle. In addition, in carries two boarding parties for capture operations, or a similar amount of ground troops for planetary drops.
As with the other Dwarven light craft, the Bāel Dūne's primary weakness is a lack of hyperdrive.
(All images are Replicator 2 prototypes.)
Next month will be the release of the last ships currently in the fleet (and after that, the 144 ground forces.)
(Also, from next time, the images will be a little smaller! I uploaded these a while back, but have since taken to scaling the pictures down, since the amount of space they use on my photobucket account was rather excessive. (My camera is relatively new to me and considerily higher resolution that the one I've been using for the previous four years or so; 4000x3000 is a touch high (I have to shrink the images for Shapeways anyway!)