Oriente Type: Frigate In class: 207 In service: 2575 Mass: 700,000 Sail Integrity: 4 Thrust: 3/5 Fuel: 4000 tons Structural Integrity: 80 Armor: 1120 tons of standard armor (76+8 fwd and aft, 74+8 rest) Docking Collars: 2 Fighters: 18 Small Craft: 4 Crew: 300 Lifeboats: 10 Escape Pods: 10 Grav Decks: 1 85 meter Cargo: 63,632 Bay 1: Small Craft (4) 1 door Bay 2: Fighters (18) 3 doors Bay 3: Cargo (63,632) 2 doors Weapons: Heatsinks: 6980 (enough) Forward 2 Naval Autocannon 30s 10 Light Naval PPCs Fore Left/Fore Right 2 Naval Autocannon 30s 5 Naval Laser 55s 1 Killer Whale Launchers Left Broadside/Right Broadside 2 Naval Autocannon 30s 5 Naval Laser 55s Aft Left/Aft Right 10 Light Naval PPCs Aft 2 Killer Whale Launchers Ammo 40 Killer Whales 1250 rounds of Naval Autocannon ammo Overview: The Free Worlds League has, for many different and at times competing reasons, always valued the frigate as an integral key in ensuring their security. As a nation devoted to free trade, the League considered frigates essential for patroling the shipping lanes and ensuring their safety from pirates and other forces. Each of the member states also valued the frigate, but for different reasons. Though each of the major members of the Free Worlds League had shipyards in their territory, it was only the League as a whole that could afford to fund construction of the massive battleships and battlecruisers that made up the core of the fleet. Frigates were the largest ships that individual member states could build in reasonable numbers. In that way they were a symbol of their autonomy and their ability to stand on their own feet. [Editor's note: In fact, many of the League's provincies actually opposed a large battleship fleet. They felt the necessity of league wide funding to build such a force would lead to a heavily centralized command structure, and therefore denude their authority in the fleet, and they were right. Though many provinces could claim to have personally built and staffed many of the ships in the League fleet, and in times of crisis could even expect pledges of loyalty from some of them, in practice the provinces had little impact on the day to day opperations of the FWL fleet.] Many Captain Generals on the other hand saw the frigate as an excellent tool for asserting their authority. The widespread placement of warships able to opperate on their own for extended periods of time would allow for the quick response to any threat to the League's security, both from within and without. [Editor's note: these three somewhat contradictory reasons for employing frigates actually led to the development of a rather unique subculture in the FWL navy, that of the independent frigate captains. These captains, knowing full well the many different and competing reasons for the existance of their ships, simply tried to stay out of the politics and did their jobs. Many even went so far as to declare that their loyalty was not to the Captain General or the Parliament, but to their ship and the people they protected. Though usually distrusted by both the Parliament and the Captain General, the independent frigate captains still did an exceptional job in keeping the League safe and at the same time keeping out of the petty politics that plagued the League.] In 2573, with the newly formed Star League on the brink of war in the Periphery, the Free Worlds League decided that their venerable Stewart class frigates (a variant of the Terran Hegemony's Riga built under liscense) was becoming long in the tooth. The old Stewart, though mobile and well armed for her day, was quickly being outperformed by newer ships like the Hegemony's Congress and the Taurian Concordat's rebuilt Wagon Wheel. Even the Lyran Commonwealth's much older Victory class frigates were outperforming the Stewart. This was simply unacceptable, so design work began on a replacment. In 2575, on the same day that the Pollux Proclamation was announced, the FWLS Oriente was launched. Capabilities: The Oriente was built to outshine its contemporaries, and it succeeded. Ten heavy naval cannons make up the main firepower, backed by thirty light naval PPCs. This gave the ship the firepower needed to match the Lyran Victory and the Hegemony's Congress, along with House Davion's Rodney class cruiser. It was also enough to dominate almost any ship fielded by any of the minor powers. Fighter defenses were another matter. In a somewhat controversial decision, designers limited the ship's anti fighter weaponry to four naval missile launchers, which is noticiably less than that carried by the old Stewart. However, the Oriente makes up for that deficiency by including space for a full fighter wing, giving it a fighter complement rarely matched in other frigates. The Oriente was built for long distance flights far from supply, and has sufficient cargo space and fuel bunkerage for a solid year of continuous opperation. Unlike similar vessels, however, the Oriente offers few amenities for its three hundred man crew. Most crewmen are bunked in quadruple occupancy cabins (double occupancy for the junior officers, and a few single occupancy for the senior officers). Recreational facilities are likewise somewhat sparse, located on a single grav deck. Many Oriente crews didn't mind the rather cramped conditions however. Some maintained that the rough conditions tended to produce a tougher crew more able to handle themselves in adverse situations. They maintained that the Oriente was "a working ship, not a pleasure spa." [Editor's note: During a crew exchange program between the SLDF assault carrier Enlil and the FWL frigate Kiyev, many of the SLDF crewmen were at first appalled at the rather cramped accomodations of the Kiyev, unsure how anyone expected the ship's crew to perform under such conditions. The marik spacers aboard the Enlil, on the other hand, were stunned at the incredible single occupancy cabins and extensive recreation facilities of the assault carrier. For their part, they wanted to know how people were supposed to be able to fight when surrounded by so many creature comforts. This ill fated exchange led to some of Ewan Marik's best insults towards the SLDF and the hardiness of their personel.] Deployment: With the Reunification war quickly heating up, the first Orientes were rushed into battle almost as quickly as they were produced. During the war they usually served as flagships for hunter-killer groups seeking out the elusive ships of the Canopean Navy. Once peace had finally been achieved, the Orientes could begin doing the job they were originally made for. The majority of the class was dispersed to patrol stations across the Free Worlds League, often dispersed into individual ships to better cover their stations (though when HPG communication became common, the League was able to concentrate their Orientes into squadrons to allow for a more flexible response to situations as they arose). These ships were often the first to respond to any crisis. During the crisis on Hellos Minor, a squadron of four Orientes were the first ships in the system, setting up a blockade of the system to prevent the escape of the traitorous Selaj family. One Oriente however, the Abbey, would play an integral role in their escape when its Regulus born crew mutinied, siezing the ship and escorting the survivors of the Selaj family to the Magistry of Canopus. [Editor's note: the Abbey, renamed the Schrack by its crew for the bird that eats eagles, plagued the Free Worlds League for some time after that as a pirate vessel. The Schrack was reported destroyed in 2686 by the battlecruiser Hellos Minor, however some Regulan citizens, whom tend to consider the ship to be a patriotic symbol, maintain that she is still out there and will return when Regulus needs her the most.] The tough minded independent nature of most Oriente captains actually served the class well during the Free Worlds League Civil War. Though each captain had his own opinions on things, the vast majority of the Orientes in service decided on a course of guarded neutrality, focusing on protecting the shipping lanes and making sure the other great houses didn't take advantage of the chaos gripping the League. Though there were instances where one side or the other would attempt to sway the neutral captains, for the most part they were left alone in order to prevent the mayhem of the war from spreading further. As a consequence, the class suffered very little as a result of the war. They would have no such luck during the First Succession War however. Though the Free Worlds League at first attempted to keep as much of its patrol network intact as possible, as losses mounted it became increasingly necessary to dispatch more and more Orientes to the front lines, where their rather heavy guns and decent armor helped bolster the fleet. However, the shear brutality of the fighting would claim the ships just like every other. None of the class survived the first succession war. [Editor's note: or so they say. It was a common tale that many Oriente crews became horrified at the shear destruction of the war, and that some decided to just up and leave. According to the various tales (all of them with little or no evidence to back them up), these ships struck out on their own, in some cases looking for Kerensky to join him in exile, in others just looking for somewhere to settle down away from the chaos. One fanciful tale suggests that these Orientes joined up with other famous lost ships like the Black Prince, the Invincible, the Sullivans, the Oktyabrskava Revolutsiva, and the so called Lost Squadron at some kind of paradise world. This tale, like so many others, is no doubt just war weary mythology.]