Iron Duke Type: Battleship In Service: 2507 In class: 50 Mass: 1,000,000 tons Sail Integrity: 5 Thrust: 3/5 Fuel: 4000 tons Structural Integrity: 100 Armor: 2000 tons of standard armor (135+10 fwd, 133+10 others) Docking Collars: 6 Fighters: 0 Small Craft: 6 Crew: 500 Lifeboats: 40 Escape Pods: 40 Grav Decks: 1 100 meter Cargo: 100,000 Bay 1: Cargo (100,000) 1 door Bay 2: Small Craft (3) 1 door Bay 3: Small Craft (3) 1 door Weapons: Forward 2 White Shark Fore left/Fore right 1 White Shark 10 Medium Naval PPCs Left Broadside/Right Broadside 5 Medium Naval PPCs 5 Naval Autocannon 35s 1 White Shark Aft Left/Aft Right 5 Naval Autocannon 35s 1 White Shark Aft 3 White Shark Ammunition 1600 rounds of Naval AC 35 ammo 100 White Sharks Refit notes: Armor: Ferro Aluminium (200+10 each facing) All NAC 35s are replaced with NAC 30s Two additional NAC 30s are mounted in the nose 2000 rounds of ammo carried for the NAC 30s Cargo becomes 103,020 Overview The Iron Duke class battleship was first developed at the dawn of Prince William Davion's reign as the new ultimate weapon of the Davion fleet, as well as the ultimate symbol of Davion prestige, and at the time of its launching was one of the fastest and most powerful battleships in service (superior to even the Hegemony's Monsoon, and a nearly fair match for the Farragut). These capabilities, however, could not be achieved without an extremely high pricetag, and as a result Prince William authorized the construction of only four Iron Dukes during his reign. These behemoths likewise saw little combat, as they were widely regarded as far too valuable to risk. This began to change after Prince William's death in 2512. Once the Regents Cassandra and Laura began their squabbles over the throne of the five year old heir Alexander, each knew that the battle must ultimately be settled by force of arms. Each turned to the Iron Duke for their ultimate naval weapon, as did General Nikolai Rostov, another of the Regents that ruled the Federated Suns. Between the three factions, an astounding twenty four new battleships were launched before the Civil War began in 2525. Though incredibly impressive on paper, in the battles of the civil war the ship soon proved to have a number of design oversights. The most glaring of these were its lack of an integral fighter complement. The designers of the Iron Duke had developed an incredibly compact ship, only eight hundred meters long (barely larger than most heavy cruisers of its day), into which has been packed a tremendous arsenal of naval weaponry. With naval autocannons, particle beam weapons, and missile tubes pointing out of pratically every surface, there was simply no room to include fighter bays. The two shuttle bay doors nestled just before the engines were regarded as the absolute maximum that could be built into the design without a complete redesign, and even these have proven insufficient to be used to launch fighters in any great number. At the time it hadn't seemed all that much of a problem, and it was expected that assault dropships could be used to protect the warship from fighter attacks. During the civil war, however, this soon proved to be insufficient. At least a half dozen Iron Dukes were destroyed during the civil war because of fighter attacks. The second design flaw rested with the ship's main guns. The twenty heavy naval autocannons, though hideously powerful, did not have much range, and frequently the Iron Duke would find itself at a disadvantage facing a more maneuverable foe able to attack it from the rear quarters at long range with near impunity. As the need to keep conventional forces fighting the civil war sucked money from the naval budgets of each faction, these problems would not be resolved in the near future. Despite this, each side still made heavy use of the Iron Duke, which, warts and all, served admirably. When the war finally came to an end, twenty of the twenty eight original ships were still operational. Though Prince Alexander ordered two of these ships scrapped imediately upon the war's end, he nevertheless was pleased enough with the performance of the class to declare the ships the principle battleship of house Davion, with plans to construct thirty two new Iron Dukes over the next sixteen years. However, in what some naval historians regard as a serious blunder, no effort was made to correct the design flaws in the new construction, or to refit the existing eighteen ships. Some blame this on Alexander Davion's failings as a military man (it is said that he wasn't the sharpest military mind around), while others see it as an excellent move. Such an ambitious building program, even of a somewhat flawed ship like the Iron Duke, ably demonstrated that though battered by its civil war, House Davion was still strong. There is evidence to support either side of the theory, but the only one who would ever really know which is correct would be Alexander himself. For whatever reason, construction of the new battleships proceeded on schedule, each ship taking two years to build, with construction occuring at eight shipyards across Davion space. It was one of the most massive naval building programs ever undertaken by the Federated Suns, and its success is a testament to Alexander Davion's efforts to rebuild his shattered realm. To honor how far the Federated Suns had come in recovering from the Civil War, Prince Alexander christened the last Iron Duke launched the Ascendant. Though House Davion was very proud of its powerful battleship, as the decades past, technology began to catch up with it. New ships in other fleets, like the Free Worlds League's Atreus, the Draconis Combine's Hie, and the SLDF's Texas began to appear that outperformed the venerable Davion dreadnought. In 2688, the Davion high command finally approved a long needed update for the Iron Duke. Two years of work yielded numerous minor changes and updates to the design (though no success was made in improving its anti fighter defenses or adding a fighter complement). New Ferro Aluminium armor increased the ship's protection by fifty percent. The old naval autocannons were likewise replaced with newer, longer ranged guns which, though slightly less powerful, made up for it by being able to hit more often. Somehow, the designers were even able to cram an aditional two heavy guns just under the ship's nose. These and other less noticible improvements brought the aging behemoth up to par with their neighbors, ably demonstrated during the Summer Lightning wargame of 2693 between the SLDF and Davion fleet, where six newly refitted Iron Dukes served as the main punch for the Davions, scoring a number of impressive victories over ships of the SLDF. By the start of the Davion War of Succesion, all fifty Iron Dukes had been refitted, and all performed extremely well despite the dismal performance of the rest of the AFFS. In the end though, the Iron Dukes would fall victim to the succession wars just like the rest of the Davion fleet. All fifty Iron Dukes were destroyed during the brutal battles of the first succesion war. Notable Vessels: The second ship in the class, the Edward Davion (named for William Davion's son, who was killed a month before the ship was launched) was one of the most well known and honored vessels in the fleet, serving as Nikolai Rostov's and later Alexander Davion's flagship during much of the civil war. After the Civil War, the Edward Davion was assigned on a semipermament status to New Avalon as the First Prince's command ship (though with the peace that followed the civil war, the duty was more ceremonial than anything else). This duty was maintained for better than two centuries, until the First Succession War, when the ship was called up to lead the Naval Counteroffensive of 2790. The Edward Davion was one of the first ships destroyed when the Draconis Combine ambushed the Davion fleet at Cholame. Two other ships had the distinction of sharing the same name, Alexander Davion. When the Civil War began, Prince Alexander had escaped from his Aunt Cassandra and her husband David Varney and gone into hiding. As a way of garnering support among the populace, Cassandra and Varney claimed that Laura Davion, Alexander's other aunt and Cassandra's rival for the throne, had murdered Alexander, and "in honor of the fallen prince," christened their newest battleship the Alexander Davion. In a quirk of fate, however, Laura Davion made similar claims about Cassandra, and likewise christened her newest battleship in Alexander's honor. Both ships survived the war, and Prince Alexander Davion, very much alive and triumphant over both of his aunts, ordered both ships scrapped, considering them a morbid relic of his Aunts' treachery and deciet.