Coronet

Type: Light Cruiser
In Service: 2766
In Class at its height: 28 in service with the SLDF, 20 in service with House Davion 

Mass: 780,000
Sail Integrity: 4
Thrust: 4/5
Fuel: 5000
Structural Integrity: 80
Armor: 1248 tons of lamellor ferro carbide armor: 208+8 per facing

Docking Collars: 3
Fighters: 18
Small Craft: 2
Crew: 50 (see designer's notes)
Passengers: 200
Lifeboats: 10
Escape Pods: 0
Grav Decks: 1 80 meter
Cargo: 39,000

Bay 1: 2 Small Craft 1 door
Bay 2: Cargo (39,000) 5 doors
Bay 3: Fighters (18) 6 doors

Other Equipment:
Lithium Fusion Battery
Automated control system



Weapons
Heatsinks: 2160 (4320)

Fwd:
10 Heavy Naval PPCs
	
FR/FL:
4 Heavy Naval PPCs
12 Extended Range PPCs

AR/AL:
5 Naval Autocannon 40s
12 Extended Range PPCs

Aft:
2 Naval Autocannon 40s
12 Extended Range PPCs

Ammo:
1000 rounds of Naval AC 40 ammo


Designer's notes:
Inspired by J Austin Wilde's crossover fanfic The Saotome Gambit. The capabilities of this ship are probably way off the capabilities of the Coronet as they were described in that story, but the big frickin gun is intact, even if only in fluff form.

Fifty crewmen? What am I on? Well, the ship's automated control system handles most of the stuff with only a handful of crewmembers necessary to issue commands to the computers. To make it balanced (or something like it) I assigned a mass of 3040 tons to the automated control system, or sufficient tonnage to accomodate another four hundred officers and men. Think of it this way. This ship has a crew of four hundred and fifty guys, it's just that four hundred of them don't eat (or for that matter, can't do basic maintenance).



Overview:

The SLS Coronet is generally refered to derisively by most veteran spacers as "Widdle Richard Cameron's Shiny New Toy", which is actually a pretty fair description of its origins.

When Richard Cameron turned 18 and took his place on the Throne of the Star League, he decided that the League (and by the League he meant him) needed a new symbol of its (his) power (manhood) and authority. As many a state had done over the centuries, he decided that this symbol would be a new warship, A cruiser that could demonstrate the power of the Star League to everyone in the human sphere.

Of course, there actually wasn't a need for a new cruiser in the SLDF fleet. The League's main line cruisers, the Sovettski Soyuz, had seen barely twenty years at the oldest. In addition, two exceptional fast cruiser designs, the Sovremenyy and Milwaukee, were currently already under production. Nevertheless, Richard Cameron didn't care about these powerful warships from someone else's reign. He wanted a symbol to signify HIS reign. Therefore, over the objections of much of the admiralty, plans for the new cruiser, for the new symbol of Richard Cameron's power, went forward.

However, the concepts chosen for the new ship were, to say the least, radical, untested, and highly experimental. As a consequence it would be four years before the first ship of this new class, the SLS Coronet, would see the light of day.

Capabilities:

The Coronet is on the surface a marvel of Hegemony technology, incorporating all the best the greatest minds of the Star League had to offer. Its most marvelous feature is the extensive role automation plays in its design. Using systems originally developed for the Caspar drones, designers managed to reduce the necessary crew complement to fifty crewmen, and twenty of these are computer technicians who's only purpose is to monitor the automated systems. In fact, in certain circumstances the ship can actually run itself without human intervention at all.

[editor's note: Of course this system was far from perfect. Though the automated systems were great for eliminating the need for a large crew to run the ship, no circuit board can turn a wrench or replace a broken length of conduit. Without a large crew aboard to conduct general day to day maintenance, all Coronet class ships had to return to port regularly for overhauls. Though multiple redundancies on the systems allowed the ships to opperate even when suffering multiple malfunctions, this wasn't exactly the ideal solution to the problem. Coronets serving in the Davion fleet were victims of malfunctions as much as the succession war]

The SLS Coronet incorporated the single largest particle cannon in existance. This cannon, modeled in part after the abandoned spinal particle accelerator intended for the old Winchester class cruiser, massed thirty thousand tons and, when fired, produced a beam capable of immense devastation. Though many in the Admiralty were dubious of this weapon, the First Lord absolutely loved the idea, and ordered its inclusion on the Coronet. Of course, no other ships in the class, or for that matter any other class, would mount the weapon, because it soon became apparent that it was a BAD IDEA. In the first case the weapon was almost impossible to aim at a moving target. It was so large that it could not traverse on its own, therefore aiming the gun required pointing the ship's nose at the target, and warships were just plain too cumbersome to line up on a target moving thousands of kilometers an hour. This meant the gun could only really be used against space stations, planets and other imobile targets.

In the second case, the cannon was just too plain powerful. The power drain was enormous, the heat generated would usually overwhelm the cooling system and melt something, and the massive magnetic field generated by the cannon would cause all kinds of problems with the computer systems (which as you can imagine is a bad thing for a ship that it utterly dependent on its computer system). What it all boiled down to was that after the Coronet fired its main gun, it would be essentially dead in space for up to a minute afterward while the crew tried to get control of the computer system and wait for main power to be restored.

[editor's note: though these problems led to the abandonment of the spinal particle cannon concept, SLS Coronet still retained its big gun, and even used it in combat situations (though operating well below full power to prevent, or lessen, problems)]

When these problems became readily apparent, the decision was made to delete the spinal cannon from all future Coronets. The monstrous main gun was replaced by ten heavy naval particle cannons, suplementing the eight existing NPPCs and twelve monstrously huge Winchester-Boeing autocannons. For anti-fighter defense, the ship carries five dozen of the most advanced PPCs available in ten turrets, along with three squadrons of aerofighters.

And of course, as she was meant to be the new pride of the fleet, the Coronet was fitted with the most advanced armor available, along with a lithium fusion battery.

Deployment:

At roughly the same time as the plans for the Coronet were being finalized, the first Rim Worlds troops began landing on Terra in order to "help defend" humanity's homeworld during the crisis of the Periphery uprising. Perhaps anticipating what was to come, a number of officers in the admiralty successfully lobbied for the subcontracting of several naval projects, including the Coronet, to shipyards outside of the Hegemony. Though officially meant to take some of the load off of Hegemony shipbuilders, it prevented a potential disaster when Amaris made his move. The Coronet was subcontracted to Universal Air of Delevan in the Federated Suns.

SLS Coronet was completed in January of 2766 and made the voyage to Terra, where she would play an omnious role in First Lord Cameron's upcomming birthday celebration. 

[Editor's note: On the day of his birthday, the First Lord unveiled the Coronet to the inner sphere in an extravagant sphere wide HPG broadcast, claiming her to be the new symbol of the Star League's power. As a big finish, the Coronet was shown destroying a small asteroid with one powerful shot from her spinal particle cannon. For most of those watching, it was a stunning spectacle, a true symbol of the power of the Star League.]

[For those naval officers watching the show, though, those who every day saw more and more Rim Worlds troops pouring into the Hegemony, the spectacle was far more ominous. While most people saw the asteroid split in half by the powerful beam and saw little else, those veteran spacers saw the aftermath. They saw the Coronet, her main power offline, her runing lights dark, hanging dead in space. Many officers later said that the sight of that ship, the new symbol of the Star League, hanging helpless chilled them to the bone. Ten months later the Amaris Coup began and for all intents and purposes the Star League ceased to be.]

When the Amaris Coup began, construction of the Coronet class continued unabated at Delevan. Twenty seven more Coronets would be delivered to Kerensky's fleet during the war against the Usurper, and though most would be destroyed, the first ship, SLS Coronet, would survive.

[Editor's note: curiously enough, though it had long been assumed that the Coronet had accompanied the Exodus fleet, careful studdies of clan records show no indication that the ship was a part of the Exodus. This raises an interesting question. If it didn't go with Kerensky, then where did it go?]

After the Exodus, Davion wasn't shy about using the information left behind. Many of the Coronet's secrets would be incorporated into the new Ascalon class battleship, and the Davions continued to crank out new Coronets until the crippling of the Universal Air yards early on in the First Succession War. However, the sophisticated technology of the Coronet, and the inability of the Federated Suns to maintain that technology, soon proved the downfall of the class. The entire class was wiped out by the end of the First War, as much because of equipment failure as combat damage.