Dart Type: Cruiser In Class: 103 at its height In Service: 2284 Mass: 550,000 Sail Integrity: 4 Thrust: 2/3 Fuel: 2000 tons Structural Integrity: 60 Armor: 660 tons of obsolete armor (132, 22+6 each facing) Docking Collars: 0 Fighters: 0 Small Craft: 10 Crew: 400 Lifeboats: 0 Escape Pods: 20 Grav Decks: 2 65 meter Cargo: 30,374 Bay 1: Cargo 1 door Bay 2: Small Craft 4 door Weapons: Heatsinks: 408 Forward: 6 Naval Autocannon 10 Fore Left / Fore Right 5 Autocannon 20 Left Broadside / Right Broadside 10 Autocannon 10 Aft Left / Aft Right 5 Autocannon 20 Ammo: 500 tons of naval AC ammo 500 tons of AC 20 ammo 500 tons of AC 10 ammo Designers Notes: Well, she is one of the first warships, so... KF drive calculated as 60% of the ship's mass. Engine mass is twice that of normal. Jump sail mass is twice that of normal. Bridge mass is twice that of normal. Armor calculated at 0.2 per ton. I also would say that as a house rule, the Dart's non naval autocannons are incapable of engaging fighters beyond two hexes of range. Overview: The Dart was built as an improved mass production version of the TAS Dreadnought. The Dreadnought, though by modern standards appallingly slow, hideously undergunned, and virtually defenseless, was the first real combat warship, capable of (semi) effective combat manuevering and projecting firepower against another craft. [Editor's note: Though the Terran Alliance possessed vessels they classified as "strike cruisers" and "assault carriers" since before the outer reaches rebellion, these craft were not true combat vessels. With as much as ninety five percent of their mass being taken up by the KF drive, the ships simply couldn't mount the weapons or engines to justify being thought of as combat vessels. Their primary purpose was to ferry troops and transport primitive aerospace fighters. The Dreadnought, on the other hand, with only seventy percent of its mass taken up by its KF drive, and mounting the first prototypes of naval lasers and naval autocannons, could actually on its own be a threat to another ship.] Construction of the Dart was as chaotic as the Terran Alliance Government had become. The first few dozen ships underwent sporadic construction, with seperate factions of the parliament each backing construction of their own semi-private squadrons of ships (anticipating their loyalty when the inevitable civil war began). As a consequence, several incomplete hulls would languish for months or years with little or no work done on them because of a sudden shift in the balance of power in the parliament. Despite this, roughly three dozen Darts were completed and in service when everthing came to a head. However, aside from a few rogue ships, the vast majority of the fleet did not side with any of the parliamentary factions. Instead they backed James Mckenna when he made his bid to disolve the parliament and found the Terran Hegemony. Capabilities: Lets face it, the Dart is bloodly obsolete. The armor would be subpar for a destroyer, the thrust capabilities are down right sad, and the arsenal is sort of a joke. Okay, at first glance that might not seem the case. Sure the six naval autocannons aren't all that much, especially given their very narrow arc of fire (the early naval cannons were physically too big to be mounted in any direction except along the spine, with very limited ability to track targets), but that is one kick-*** anti fighter defense she's got, right? 'fraid not. The Dart does carry some forty autocannons which in normal circumstances would prove very effective against fighters. The problem is that the Dart's obsolete fire control system was simply incapable of tracking and engaging such small targets beyond more than five or six kilometers. The secondary guns were actually meant to be short range supplements to the main guns, intended to engage other warships, not the primitive fightercraft of the era. [editor's note: of course, as time passed and Darts filtered across the inner sphere, it became common practice to refit the fire control system with a more effective model. This increased the engagement range for the Darts autocannons to about thirty six kilometers, however it was still not very effective because the Dart's old autocannons lacked the muzzle velocity to effectively engage small moving targets at great distances. Though this could be corrected by replacing the autocannons, that practice was uncommon outside of the Taurian Concordat. The Taurians, on the other hand, were willing to expend the resources neccessary in order to create an effective AA ship.] Deployment: James Mckenna ordered the completion of the remaining Dart class ships as soon as he assumed control of the Hegemony, and over the next few years ordered continued production of the class in order to quickly bolster his navy in the face of increasingly sophisticated and powerful neighbors. Despite that, the class was short lived. In fact, she was obsolete even before she was launched. The Terran Alliance had been lost in a state of tech stagnation for decades, with many of its most briliant minds fleeing the oppression of the Alliance Parliament, and with virtually no funding trickling into Research and Development. With the Hegemony in power and with R&D once again getting the money it needed, stunning new advances were made at a breakneck pace. Barely thirty years after the founding of the Hegemony, advanced new ships like the Lola class destroyer and Winchester class cruiser were appearing on the scene making use of new, more advanced and compact jump cores and propulsion systems, armed with sophisticated new weapons providing a level of firepower that Dart captains could only dream of. This led to the quick retirement of the class, and before the start of the 25th century, no Darts remained in service with the Hegemony fleet. Though most of these ships were scrapped, many were sold off to foreign powers during the mid 25th century. Though the ships were obsolete, they WERE warships, and the price was dirt cheap. Most powers didn't make use of them for long before retiring them (some were retained as training ships), however both the Taurian Concordat and Rim Worlds Republic had active Dart class vessels in their fleets as late as the Reunification War. More significantly, many major corporations and other private concerns were able to acquire their own Dart class vessels. These handful of Darts would last longer than any others, and Dart class ships were sited in service as late as the early 28th century. In fact, nobody is entirely certain as to the fate of all of them. Though it is presumed that they were all destroyed by the succession wars (on the assumption that the great houses would comandeer anything that could carry a naval cannon for their warfleets) the fate of many of these ships is really unknown.