# Covered In Bees **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [October 31, 2024, 4:19pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955 "2024-10-31T16:19:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2024, 4:19pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/1 "2024-10-31T16:19:53Z")
**HURRICANE-CLASS DRONE BATTLESHIP (CARRIER)** **Operated by:** Empire of the Star **Type:** Drone Battleship, General Operations **Construction:** Palaxias Fleet Yards **Length:** 2.3 km **Beam (avg.):** 0.8 km **Dry mass:** 2,900,000 tons **Gravity-well capable:** No. **Atmosphere capable:** No. **Personnel:** 1,294 - 396 crewers - 514 flight operations - 384 espatiers - Thinker-class AI **Drives:** - Imperial Navy 3×3 “Neutrino Dawn” antimatter pion drive - Nucleodyne Thrust Applications 4×4 “Nova Pulse” fusion torch **Propellant:** - Deuterium slush/metallic antideuterium - Deuterium/helium-3 slush blend **Cruising (sustainable) thrust:** 5.6 standard gravities (5.2 Earth G) **Peak (unsustainable) thrust:** 6.6 standard gravities (6.1 Earth G) **Maximum velocity:** 0.3 c (rated, based on particle shielding, with flight deck doors closed) **Drones:** - 43,200 x AKVs (loadout varies by mission, typically _Daggerfan-_class) - Associated thrust packs and modular swapout payloads, by mission - 64 x “Buckler VI” point-defense supplementary drones, Artifice Armaments, ICC - 32 x “Rook” tactical observation platforms, Sy Astronautic Engineering Collective (with supplementary IN hardware) - 64 x general-duty modular drones (not counting flight operations hardware) **Sensors:** - 3 x independent standard navigational sensor suite, Cilmínar Spaceworks - 6 x [classified] enhanced active/passive tactical sensory suite, Sy Astronautic Engineering Collective - Imperial Navy tactically-enhanced longscan **Weapons (Auxiliary):** - 96 x “Slammer III” dual turreted mass drivers (local-space defense) - Artifice Armaments, ICC “Popcorn” point defense/CQB laser grid **Other systems:** - 3 x Artifice Armaments, ICC cyclic kinetic barrier system - Biogenesis Technologies, ICC Mark VII regenerative life support (multiple independent systems) - 3 x Bright Shadow, ICC custom-build megaframe data system, plus multiple EC-1140 information furnaces for sectoral control - AKV repair facilities - 3 x Extropa Energy, ICC “Calviata” second-phase fusion reactors - 6 x Imperial Navy AKV tactical management suite - 3 x Imperial Navy DN-class vector-control core and associated technologies - 3 x Nanodynamics, ICC “Phage-a-Phage” immunity - 6 x modular swapout regions (large) - Systemic Integrated Technologies, ICC high-capacity thermal sinks and dual-mode radiative striping; 3 x deployable droplet heat radiators - Tactical bridge **Small craft:** - 4 x _Nelyn_-class modular cutters - 2 x _Ékalaman_-class pinnace/shuttle (atmosphere capable) - 16 x _Élyn_-class microcutter - 32 x _Adhaïc_-class workpod _(You’ll notice the obvious similarities to the_ Leviathan_-class dreadnought in systems installed, which should come as no surprise; these two came off the drawing board at roughly the same time. And if you’re wondering why a BB-sized carrier has a DN-sized vector-control core – well, you’ll note that the much more tightly packed supplies of, for example, bunkerage plus AKV bunkerage, plus the need to propel all those AKVs, make it mass significantly **more** than a_ Leviathan _in practice. Carriers tend to be thus._) The core hull of the _Hurricane_-class drone battleship (carrier) is divided into five segments: from bow to stern, the **flight operations** section, the **AKV bunkerage** , the **command** section, the **bunkerage** , and the **propulsion bus** , laid out tail-lander style. The flight operations section, by design, is a hexagonal prism, flat faces to dorsal and ventral, and the other ship segments follow this pattern. Attached to this on the starboard side, extending to dorsal and ventral of the core hull, and running from 100 m ahead of the flight operations section (to give AKVs exit and entrance cover) back to cover the first 100 m of the bunkerage, is the starship’s **“buckler”**. The core hull of the _Hurricane_-class is relatively lightly armored for an IN vessel, since carriers are intended, doctrinally, to stay out of CQB and mass conservation supervenes. However, to provide protection against long-distance fire in the outer engagement envelope, as a less maneuverable ship class, the buckler – heavy armor plate connected to the core hull by shock-absorbing trusses – covers and extends slightly beyond the two starboard facets, providing additional protection for as long as the vessel maintains the proper attitude. The **flight operations** section at the bow, taking up the first half-kilometer of the ship, is effectively a single large flight deck, opened to space by an armored spacetight door in the for’ard hull. (Unlike smaller flight decks, this region cannot be pressurized.) The 43,200 carried AKVs occupy hexagonal cells clustered on the inner hull to port, starboard, dorsal, and ventral from which they launch themselves, while a small conventional flight deck at the aft end of the section provides space for the _Hurricane_‘s small craft. The after hull of the flight operations sections is heavily armored, to provide what protection it can against a lucky shot penetrating the flight deck. Immediately behind the flight operations section is the **AKV bunkerage** section, which houses fuel and propellant, along with ammunition and other consumables, for the carried AKVs, permitting refueling and rearming. This is the most protected area of the ship, as AKV fuel and ammunition tends to be highly volatile. The  **command** section, the primary habitable area of the starship, is a relatively small area sandwiched between the AKV bunkerage and the carrier’s own bunkerage, also protected behind the buckler, and housing both the starship’s own operations and the majority of the outsize flight operations department. From dorsal and ventral, **sensor towers** extend beyond the buckler, allowing line-of-sight sensing and communications with the battlespace without exposing the core hull. (As a side note, the _Hurricane_-class, like most large carriers, is an example of the IN’s dual command system. The starship itself is commanded by a Flight Commander, ranked Captain [O-7], from the line branch, while the AKV wings are commanded by a Group Captain, an equivalent rank. Overall command of both is held by a Mission Commander, ranked Commodore [O-8].) Aft of these, a conventional **bunkerage** section and **propulsion bus** , equipped with droplet radiators for primary cooling, fills out the remaining length of the vessel. Scattered about the length of the vessel is the same heavy-duty (“Popcorn”) point-defense grid used on the _Leviathan_-class dreadnought, along with 96 small turreted mass drivers – similar to those used on lighter IN classes – for heavier local-space defense. _(They are  **not** intended as offensive weapons; the carrier has 43,200 of those in its AKVs, and would-be Flight Commanders who can’t resist the urge to take their ships into close-quarters battle are redirected towards frigates, destroyers, and other roles where such is (a) tactically useful and (b) much less likely to get one either cashiered for gross incompetence or relieved of command by an XO for whom it is not a good day to die.)_   * * * This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at [https://eldraeverse.com/2018/09/29/covered-in-bees](https://eldraeverse.com/2018/09/29/covered-in-bees) ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 3:04pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/2 "2024-11-20T15:04:40Z")
**Comments migrated from WordPress:** > [@R.C. \ on 2018-09-29 13:09:40 wrote](#): > > Do the drives have to fire off-axis to compensate for the mass of the buckler, or is the rest of the ship laid out to be mass-heavy to port to balance it out? Also, does it have both fusion and antimatter pion drives to allow a choice between high thrust (with fusion) and high exhaust velocity and delta-v (with antimatter pion)? > > > [@Alistair Young \ on 2018-10-15 19:57:46 wrote](#): > > > > On the first, both. Well, not so much fire off-axis as are located somewhat off-axis to compensate for what the mass adjustment does not. > > > > On the second, the fusions - at the outer edge of the drive cluster - also provide additional maneuverability in terms of vectoring, and mean that running out of antimatter doesn’t leave it dead in space, which is important because refining He3 and deuterium in situ is a lot easier than refining antimatter. > [@ahd \ on 2018-09-30 01:10:25 wrote](#): > > Don’t suppose I could assume that the Invictus is a supercarrier of this general outline give or take an order of magnitude, with many deckloads of admiralty sandwiched between command and engineering? > > > [@Alistair Young \ on 2018-10-15 19:52:54 wrote](#): > > > > _Invictus_ does carry more AKVs than average for defensive purposes, but it’s heavily specialized for C3I functions rather than direct or indirect offense. > [@Scott \ on 2018-09-30 03:07:45 wrote](#): > > One would hope that a tendency towards putting a ship up close and personal with the enemy would be identified long before someone was promoted to Flight Commander in the first place, since lighter ships are commanded by lower ranks _here_. The Commanding Officer still gets the courtesy-title of Captain, though, with any ground-forces O3 captains get a social promotion to ‘Major’ and any naval O6 Captains get called ‘Commodore’ while onboard. > > There is only EVER one ‘Captain’ onboard, and that’s the Boss of the Boat. > > > [@Alistair Young \ on 2018-09-30 17:25:40 wrote](#): > > > > They organize things a little differently in the IN, as you might expect given the language designers’ distaste for ambiguity. There, “Flight Commander” (see: [here](https://eldraeverse.com/2012/07/31/trope-a-day-command-roster/)) is exclusively a position, that of the boss of the boat, and “Captain” is strictly a rank title for IN O-7s in branches other than Flight Ops, which has “Group Captain” instead. And the ground forces don’t have a “Captain” rank, per the table of ranks: [here](https://1drv.ms/x/s!AqrcZdowvFOLqPwn0nYwzmL388Qq5w). > > > > In the case of these carriers, the Flight Commander _is_ entirely in charge of the carrier; but the information load is far too heavy to expect them to also manage the operations of 43,000 AKVs. So they have their own operations, and an on-board mission commander to coordinate the big picture, treating the carrier plus its AKVs as essentially a squadron in its own right. > > > > > [@Scott \ on 2018-10-01 03:33:33 wrote](#): > > > > > > Yeah, the naval captain rank versus naval captain position versus ground captain rank leads to quite a bit of amusement in the USN, too. It manages to confuse Marines that haven’t had a sea tour yet! > > > > > > US Space Force is probably going to get saddled with the USAF’s rank structure, up until we get 20+ people in starship crews (and probably not until we lose a full starship due to a personnel issue that any Navy has had sorted out for a thousand years but no Air Force has ever had to deal with). > > > [@Alistair Young \ on 2018-09-30 18:27:32 wrote](#): > > > > (And yeah, they try and sort that out at the Academy. Aggressive line officers get FFs and DDs, where such qualities are more useful.) > [@Ru \ on 2018-09-30 13:54:14 wrote](#): > > It is interesting that there appears to be no equivalent of a catapult or other carrier mounted boost system for the AKVs, given that preserving as much as possible of their delta-V would seem to be a valuable design goal. One could conceivably use the point defenses as a beam or pellet-stream propulsion system, but that might be a little clunky given that they’d be optimized for, y’know, point defense. The vector control system would work too, but for that irritating inefficiency thing… > > > [@Alistair Young \ on 2018-09-30 18:24:25 wrote](#): > > > > Oh, it’s there: but it’s not listed as a separate system because, well, _every_ flight deck has a launch/landing accelerator. > > > > > [@Ru \ on 2018-10-01 03:43:31 wrote](#): > > > > > > Right, but a launch system capable of boosting an AKV to a _userful_ velocity would be difficult to distinguish from a large mass driver, which isn’t something I see on the armament list. > > > > > > > [@Robert Houghton \ on 2018-10-01 04:59:49 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > There’s probably a protocol for dropping something like the beer fridge from the enlisted ranks rec room into the catapult in an emergency… > > > > > > > > > [@Ru \ on 2018-10-01 06:44:29 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > > > I draw your attention to the following document, paragraph 16: > > > > > > > > > > [Things You Are No Longer Allowed To Do In The Imperial Military Service](https://eldraeverse.com/2017/06/01/things-you-are-no-longer-allowed-to-do-in-the-imperial-military-service/) > > > > > > > > > > > [@John D. Bell \ on 2018-10-01 10:31:54 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > > > > > In re paragraph 16, and Robert’s assumption that it’s an _emergency_ - > > > > > > > > > > > > If things have gotten so dire that you are flinging random mass at the enemy, **no one** should be laughing. > > > > > > > > > > > > Grim smiles, possibly. See also “shooting your wad”. > > > > > > > > > > > > > [@Alistair Young \ on 2018-10-01 10:32:58 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > > > > > > > “Case shot and langrage!” > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > [@John D. Bell \ on 2018-10-01 11:33:07 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _langrage_? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Damn, I didn’t know the beer was that strong! > > > > > > > > > > > > > [@Ru \ on 2018-10-01 14:05:13 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > > > > > > > \< > > > > > > > > > > > > > > blockquote\>If things have gotten so dire that you are flinging random mass at the enemy, no one should be laughing. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > If you’re on a 3 million tonne warship that is designed to operate as part of a fleet of other warships and be run by people who’ve glued their brains to a postsophont superintelligence and you’ve found yourself fighting against a foe so powerful that it wiped out all of that and yet left you, the fridge and the catapult all operational and in a position where they might usefully be used together… well. The laughter is probably coming from the comedian who put together that particular training simulation. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > [@Robert Houghton \ on 2018-10-02 03:01:38 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > kobiyoshi Maru is _not_ a brand of Japanese Beer. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > [@Robert Houghton \ on 2018-10-02 03:08:53 wrote](#): > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > This is true. perhaps we should be using a pallet of ‘MRE (Ravioli, tinned)’ ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 3:04pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/3 "2024-11-20T15:04:40Z")
---
**Author:** ![ahd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/ahd/32/70_2.png) [@ahd](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/ahd)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 1:51am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/4 "2025-08-27T01:51:42Z")
So, does the IN believe in, say, dreadnought-sized or superdreadnought-sized carriers? Or would they just send N regular carriers with an equivalent sized set of AKVs, to avoid the single point of failure? ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 5:17pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/5 "2025-08-27T17:17:53Z")
The dreadnought-sized carriers (such as the _Tesselation_-class¹) are referred to as _dreadwings_. There’s something of an argument going on in BuShips and BuInnov as to whether or not this is a good idea, as the scaling advantage is substantially less for dreadwings than big-gun dreadnoughts, and it does reduce redundancy. On the other hand… fight in the shade, IN SPACE. (As was mentioned back in the day, superdreadnoughts are better typified as peculiar specialized types than “a dreadnought, but bigger” for volume-area reasons, so at this point the distinction breaks down anyway, much as it does for warmoons and dirigible battle planets.) * * * 1. Why? Because it’s _space-filling_. ---
**Author:** ![ahd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/ahd/32/70_2.png) [@ahd](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/ahd)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 4:32am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/6 "2025-08-28T04:32:17Z")
That would be resolved when the fittler comes along, one assumes. If FTL drives are a pain in the ass to stow and deploy and run, having one massive ship with the spare mass and volume for the drive is probably better than having 10 smaller ships with ten drives. That argument gets a lot more nuanced for one dreadnought vs 10 battlecruisers (can be in ten places at once rather than one) than it would for one supercarrier vs 10 escort carriers (the AKVs handle that either way). Or, I’ve finally found a reason for war moons to actually exist. ---
**Author:** ![Morgrim](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/morgrim/32/87_2.png) [@Morgrim](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/Morgrim)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 4:56am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/7 "2025-08-28T04:56:43Z")
If fittlers can haul stargate pairs around they clearly don’t have WEIGHT limitations that can’t be engineered around, but they could have volume restrictions that cap how large a vessel you want to try launching around. Which could also nudge things in favour one way or the other. ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 6:17pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/8 "2025-09-03T18:17:52Z")
> [@ahd](#): > > That would be resolved when the fittler comes along, one assumes. If FTL drives are a pain in the ass to stow and deploy and run, having one massive ship with the spare mass and volume for the drive is probably better than having 10 smaller ships with ten drives. Adding a frameslip drive to a carrier or dreadwing isn’t that big a deal. The thing you have to accomodate are the frameslip rings ([see here](https://eldraeverse.com/2023/10/25/a-ring-on-it/)), and – (Side note: > [@Morgrim](#): > > If fittlers can haul stargate pairs around they clearly don’t have WEIGHT limitations that can’t be engineered around, but they could have volume restrictions that cap how large a vessel you want to try launching around. Stargates - post the ninth millennium - are usually transported by the _Metamotive_-class frameslip superlifter, an upscaled modular version of the _Flatbread_-class, which wraps itself around the whole gate like a megastructure burrito. There is a theoretical limit on volume, based on your ability to coordinate multiple rings and manage the decrease in envelope efficiency - as per post above - but it’s not there yet. Except maybe for warmoons.) – putting them on carriers is easier than putting them on ships of the plane because carriers are expected to stay further back and not put themselves directly in harm’s way. > [@ahd](#): > > Or, I’ve finally found a reason for war moons to actually exist. Think “mobile forward operating base”. That’s what a warmoon is. It’s a portable fleet station that has some big guns on it. ---
**Author:** ![ahd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/ahd/32/70_2.png) [@ahd](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/ahd)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2025, 10:03pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/9 "2025-09-03T22:03:06Z")
That’s what _I’d_ use one for, yes. What kind of n-space drive systems do they have? ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2025, 4:00am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/10 "2025-09-04T04:00:27Z")
Well, bloody big ones… ---
**Author:** ![ahd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/ahd/32/70_2.png) [@ahd](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/ahd)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/11 "2025-09-04T13:19:35Z")
“I thought you said we weren’t allowed to run antimatter torches in-system!” ”_We_ aren’t, no. That thing? Nothing else will shift it…” ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2025, 1:28pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/12 "2025-09-04T13:28:32Z")
Not that you probably want to take it all that far into the inner system, in most cases. ---
**Author:** ![ahd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/ahd/32/70_2.png) [@ahd](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/ahd)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2025, 6:51am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/13 "2025-09-09T06:51:17Z")
“We’re calling it the _Dread Moon_ class. Yes, it has a moon-sized dreadnought-scale close quarters battery and a point defense grid and shields to match, but mostly it’s a mobile hangar for far too many AKVs and the manufacturing/mining/engineering drone fleet to repair and replenish them indefinitely from whatever it finds to ingest in the field.” ”…you found the _one_ designer in BuShips who also works at Eye-in-the-Flame Arms and you briefed them in on CASE ADHAÏC PARASOL, didn’t you.” ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Kenny](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/scott_kenny/32/226_2.png) [@Scott\_Kenny](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/Scott_Kenny)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2025, 7:37am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/14 "2025-09-10T07:37:06Z")
> [@avatar](#): > > Why? Because it’s _space-filling_. Ye gods, the _pun_ishment! ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2025, 7:34pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/15 "2025-09-28T19:34:53Z")
The currently-in-prototype _Eclipse_-class warmoon is intended as the eventual replacement for the _Supremacy_-class mobile fleet bases, insofar as time and the ongoing expansion and evolution of the six directional fleets has turned the _Supremacies_ into bases which are at best only _technically_ mobile. Having grown from their original super-capital design into massive space structures that would require a lot of months to dismantle, a fleet of tugs and superlifters to move, and more months to put back together at the other end, that is. As such, and given that the fittler and the Spice Way Program will be ringing the death knell of the neat directional fleet organization _anyway_, the long-term plan at the Admiralty is to replace them with smaller regional “sextant fleets”¹, each covering a multiple-constellation region based out of its own _Eclipse_. The _Eclipse_-class, therefore, while equipped with appropriate armaments for a super-cap, leverages the square-cube law to include a complete command base, multiple cageworks, vast stockpiles of bunkerage, ammunition, and chandlery, manufacturing plants, training facilities, research labs, a complete set of matching support facilities for the other military services, and basically everything else that a certain other Empire would have crammed into the Death Star had it been designed by competent celestime architects rather than Tarkin’s fantasy life. * * * 1. Ultimately, the regional centers represented by the intersections on the Spice Way map may play host to hypothetical larger fleets based out of hypothetical dirigible battle planets, but that’s in the super-distant future. ---
**Author:** ![ahd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/ahd/32/70_2.png) [@ahd](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/ahd)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2025, 1:10pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/16 "2025-09-29T13:10:37Z")
Superlaser? Or is the doctrine the same as for carriers, if you’re in melee range of a planetful of hostiles, even a planet you can melt, you’re doing it wrong? ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2025, 8:50pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/17 "2025-09-29T20:50:34Z")
Despite what certain other Empires who regrettably possess some of the few size-comparable warmoons might think, the Imperial Navy has no RFPs for planet-cracking _wunderwaffen_, due to their basic galactostrategic uselessness. (Or indeed anti-usefulness, since adding such things to your regular fleet mix is more or less having yourself announced at diplomatic parties as Genocide Sam The Genocide Man. Having a few special weapons systems tucked away in the Black Flotilla - or equivalent - against the galaxy going to hell is one thing; forward-deploying planet-crackers with every regional fleet base when their main job is nominally showing the flag, protecting trade, and upholding treaty obligations would be quite rightly seen as declaring war on the universe and that only ends one way.) ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2025, 9:05pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/18 "2025-09-29T21:05:36Z")
I should perhaps clarify that the general thinking here is that warmoons aren’t _ships_ in the big naval assets table; they’re _bases_. They shouldn’t be engaging things directly: their weapons are the equivalent of defensive shore artillery, and like SDs, they’re basically using dreadnought/dreadwing weapons systems. (Weapons systems and the ships to house ‘em don’t scale up that far: dreadnoughts - battleships, really - already house the biggest mass drivers that have anything worth firing at, and as such further force increases are done better, cheaper, and faster by simply building more of them.) Their closest equivalent in Earth naval terms isn’t the aircraft carrier, although that might be closest in ship terms; it’s what you would hypothetically get if you could take Norfolk, or Pearl Harbor, or Portsmouth, or Scapa Flow, or Yokosuka, then wrap a hull around it and move it to wherever you happen to need a major naval base today. (In _Star Wars_-analogy terms, thus, I conclude that the fleet faction that concluded that spending the budget on more bases and Star Destroyers was absolutely correct, in military terms, and that which favored “Tarkin’s Folly” was absolutely wrong, _especially_ since you only _can_ build a Death Star if everyone’s already so cowed and controlled that you don’t need to. The only practical use for the thing even in its ‘verse is to feed Palpy’s hoodoo, and without that, it has none at all.) ---
**Author:** ![ahd](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/ahd/32/70_2.png) [@ahd](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/ahd)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2025, 12:08am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/19 "2025-10-02T00:08:50Z")
Not disagreeing with any of the above, but I _would_ point out that the only thing you _might_ use a warmoon-scale superlaser for, in a non-apocalyptic war, is to break _another_ warmoon, or larger defended construct, quickly enough and from far enough away that its conventional defenses don’t eat you alive on approach. Also something slow enough to not effectively dodge. But how often does someone do an attack run on Esilmur? And as you say, who could build a viable target of that kind other than the Presidium powers in peacetime, and why would they? ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2025, 5:00am UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955/20 "2025-10-02T05:00:19Z")
Yeah, but even then the fleet procurement guys take one look at your design and ask you why you’re mounting it on a warmoon and not a bombardment-specialist superdreadnought, because in such a scenario you have no use for everything that makes the warmoon a warmoon, and definite use for ship-type maneuverability ratings. tl;dr You don’t want the Death Star for that. You want the _[Eclipse](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Eclipse-class_dreadnought)_, or at least the slimmed-down version of it that would pass BuShips review. In the meantime, an escorted squadron of bombard-dreadnoughts and/or a shitton of torpedo cruisers will get the job done. (As a side note, even leaving aside its difficult location to get to with a hostile fleet and it being one jump from Prime Base, Palaxias, Esilmúr is the system _least_ likely to have anything to fear from a Death Star-type weapon, because it’s freakin’ huge, massively redundant, and mostly empty space. It’s like shooting at a zeppelin. “Oh noes,” says the Sunlord, “someone has put a pinprick in my over-500-million-times-the-size-of-a-typical-lithic-planet bubble. Whatever shall I do?” _[Then_ he pushes a button and returns fire with [one of the polar beams](https://eldraeverse.com/2025/01/30/and-a-bottle-of-sun/), and treats you to the energy of maybe two million tons-mass-equivalent per second, because there is very little point in commanding the full might of a star if you can’t unleash truly Docsmithian ravening beams of actinically lambent flame every so often. (Side effects include the annoyingly tricky task of rebalancing the star after this irregular energy beam gave it an irritating unplanned thrust vector, and hurt e-mails from the captain of _Photophoros,_ who you just deprived of [his award for Most Gratuitous Use Of Overkill (Photonic Category)](https://eldraeverse.com/2014/04/12/let-there-be-light/).)]) [Next page](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/covered-in-bees/955.md?page=2)