The Aconit-class warship is probably the most commonly encountered design in colonial space. It is a general purpose warship which can be operated from any frontier colony or outpost. It is not a fast ship, nor is it regarded a well-armed or armored vessel. Rather, its strength lies primarily in its basic, flexible and relatively inexpensive design.
The ship has an operating endurance of two weeks, after which it must refuel. This is enough to allow the ship to travel between any two star systems within the 7.7 LY limit. But as with the bulk of MHD powered vessels, the two-week endurance limits the ship to patrol or combat duty among populated systems where refueling facilities are available, or within tanker equipped battle groups.
One aspect that makes the vessel particularly flexible is its interface capability. The ship's streamlining and thrusters allow the Aconit to land itself on a world's surface, alleviating the need for carrying landers or relying on local facilities for getting personnel and equipment to and from a planet's surface. While a full-length landing strip is strongly recommended, the vessel's use of vertical thrusters allows the ship to set down on short runways, and on planets with 0.6G or less gravity, it can set down vertically.
The characteristically blocky hull configuration of the Aconit comes from its modular construction and the use of an integrated sensor array system that combines a deep system scanner and navigational radar with the active sensor array. This system is made up of two large panels, each mounted on the forward end of the secondary hulls.
The Aconit is well suited for many types of adventures because of its extra accommodations ( for troops or other necessary passengers), its landing capability, and the fact that there are so many of these vessels operated not only by France, but also by Russia, the Ukraine, Germany, Australia, Soviet Asia, and Japan.
The vessel itself is perfect for carving out rescue missions, or for transporting military, governmental, or civilian VIPS or reconnaissance teams. With a little internal reorganization, including the removal of the missile bay, it is possible to carry a small load of cargo - possibly even a small vehicle. As a special note, directors should be aware that French Aconit captains operating along frontier areas often have a great deal of freedom to use their own discretion when dealing with unexpected situations, which can make adventures much easier to play and to run.
Bridge: The dimly lit bridge of the Aconit is relatively small and cockpit-like. At the forward end is the command station on the left and the helm on the right. Midway back is the navigation station on the left with the communications station on the right, each facing the sides of the bridge. The fifth and final bridge workstation is the rear-facing computer station located in the back left corner. The bridge is positioned slightly lower than the rest of the upper deck, so a ramp leads up the door leading into the ship's TAC.
Ship's Locker: This small room is used for secure storage accessibly only by senior command personnel ( Captain and First Officer). It may be used to carry extremely valuable equipment as well as sensitive documents. A small safe contained within is used to hold codebooks and orders.
TAC: The Tactical Action Center is a small room with a path running through down the center. To either side are the control stations which operate the ship's combat systems. The stations on the left from front to rear are Passive Sensor, Forward Gunnery, and Remote Pilot. On the right are Active Sensor, Aft Gunnery, and a second Remote Pilot station.
Ready Room: A general purpose work space with functions that vary from one ship to the next. In most cases, however, this serves as an additional lounge for bridge and TAC personnel.
Lounge: The main lounge is used for feeding and recreation of the ship's crew. An automated food preparation unit is located in the forward port corner of the room. This unit cooks and dispenses prepackaged meals ( of which about 3,000 are carried aboard ship for about a full month's supply). During war time, the ship's ready room is often converted into the main lounge, while this room is used to house additional damage control personnel, ship's troops, mission specialists, or replacement TAC and bridge crew.
Commons: The Aconit has two large rooms used as common gathering places for the ship's crew. Both are surrounded by crew quarters and used as general recreation and training space.
Library: This room contains assorted books, tapes, and cartridges for use by the ship's crew. Items include novels, films, musical recordings, and various instructional materials from a variety of sources. The room also contains viewers and players for examining recorded material.
MedBay: The Aconit's MedBay is well equipped and includes a single full-sized AutoMed as well as a pair of portable AutoMeds which can be locked into horizontal wall racks for additional patient care.
Engineering Control Bay: This large, clean, well lit room is used to monitor and control the ship's stutterwarp drive, split-unit power plant, and thrusters. There are three workstations here - two on the port wall and one in the aft starboard corner of the bay. A large floor panel in the middle of the bay allows easy maintenance and repair of much of the stutterwarp drive. A floor batch by the starboard bulkhead leads down into the stutterwarp drive bay. To either side of the Engineering control bay are passageways leading to the twin power plant/thruster assemblies. These passages run between large banks of power storage batteries which provide up to 150 hours of emergency power for periods when the power plants are shut down. While they cannot provide propulsion power, they do provide power to maintain the magnetic envelope within the stutterwarp drive, thus preventing damage to sensitive drive components during a power failure.
MHD Turbine/Thrust Chamber ( 2): These rooms house the ship's MHD turbine power plants, each producing a sustained output of 3.5 megawatts. These chambers themselves are part of the cooling system with heat exchanging pipes running all around the perimeter of the room. Because of this, the chamber cannot be accessed while the power plant is operating. Inside each chamber, near the entry hatch, is an access panel to that MHD Turbine's cryogenics unit. The unit provides the cooling critical to the safe and efficient operation of the power plant.
Missile Bay: This area consists of a removable launch module housed behind large armored doors. Originally designed to carry a pair of Ritage-1 missiles, modified modules allow the Aconit to carry one Ritage-2 and one Ritage-1 missile, or two Russian Silka missiles, or two German SR-9 or SR-10 missiles. The complete removal of the missile bay module allows the ship to carry 81 m3 of cargo and equipment. On the ground or in space, the cargo can be accessed through the large missile bay door. Aboard some vessels, a removable ramp assembly is installed to assist in the movement of cargo.
Supply Storage: This room is actually a module located directly aft of the missile bay module. It is used to carry the bulk of food and life support supplies for the ship. If necessary the module can be removed, with supplies placed in other free space aboard the ship, giving the ship an additional 60 m3 of cargo storage space.
Troop Bay: This is a large open area nearly identical to the upper and lower crew commons. This room is used for recreation and training of the ship's troop complement. Leading out from this bay are two doors - one leading into the supply storage module and the otherr to the main boarding air-lock.
Waste Treatment: All waste from the ship's freshers, laundry, and food disposal unit is gathered and disposed of in this room.
Central Life Support: The ship's internal atmospheric conditions are controlled from here. Blowers, heaters, refrigeration units, pressure regulators, air filtration units, and such are housed here. Control is handled through the ship's central computer which has a controlled access terminal here.
Stutterwarp Drive Bay: The 2 Megawatt stutterwarp drive is mounted in the center of this room. Ample open space surrounds the drive unit, allowing easy access for maintenance and repair. On the starboard side of this room is a ladder and ceiling hatch leading up to the engineering control room. A hatch on the port bulkhead leads into a parts and tools storage room. On the starboard bulkhead is a hatch leading into the engineering access airlock.
Integrated Sensor System ( 2): These units combine the function of the ship's navigational radar, deep system scanners, and active sensor system.
Fresher: The freshers aboard the Aconit are restrooms designed to function properly in zero-g, as well as normal gravity for those times when the ship is on the ground.
1 Bridge - 2 Ship's Locker - 3 Bridge Systems - 4 TAC - 5 Computer and Fire Control Systems
6 Communications and Sensor Systems - 7 ReadyRoom - 8 Store Room - 9 Airlock - 10 Lounge
11 Senior Officer Quarters - 12 Double Occupancy Crew Quarters - 13 Crew Commons
14 MedBay - 15 Ship's Library - 16 Engineering Control - 17 MHD/Thrusters - 18 Missile Bay
19 Storage Module - 20 TroopBay - 21 Triple Occupancv Troop Quarters - 22 Waste Processing
23 Central Life Support - 24 Drive Bay - 25 Landing Gear Access