The Dragon-class Titan is a class of ship designed and built by the Nivenian Empire, and is their most powerful ship produced in large quantities. Generally regarded as the precursor of the Hydra-class, the Dragon-class' main armament are its fusion rocket and nuclear missiles. The Dragon-class is much heavier than the Hydra-class, with most of the extra mass being in propellant for the millions of nuclear missiles onboard.
While the ship is almost invulnerable to plasma weapons, and has a strong defense against kinetics, it is weak against lasers and electron beans. The ship has plasma weapons and thermonuclear missiles comprising its armament, leading to them notably only being able to harm each other by imparting massive amounts of momentum through thermonuclear bombardment until the crew of the other ship is killed from the massive accelerations.
History[]
The Dragon-class Titan has had a relatively uninteresting history. It was invented in 96 BNE as a new, larger class of ship, and has not noticeably improved since. As has been noted by many, Nivenian Technology does not qualitatively improve quickly; it just tends to get bigger.
Armament[]
The Dragon-class Titan's main armament is comprised of a mixture of missile and plasma-based weaponry. As its shield is designed to be anti-hadron, neither weapons nor propulsion are functional when it is up. A common strategy used by these ships is to launch a massive battery of missiles at high speed, and turn the shield off for a few milliseconds as the missiles pass through.
The Medium Missiles that make up the Dragon-class' main weaponry are actually toroidally shaped thermonuclear fusion weapons launched by electromagnetic accelerators (usually single-stage coilguns) at high megagee levels to nearly a hundred kilometers per second. Due to the cylindrical symmetry of coil-generated magnetic fields around the axis of the coil, high megagee accelerations can be applied to ring-shaped projectiles uniformly, without causing massive material stresses. This, when combined with a metallic hydrogen-based onboard propulsion system, some solid-state electronics alloyed with an enriched neodymium-uranium projectile and fusion fuel, yields a gun-launched homing missile launched at nearly a hundred kilometers per second, and a delta-vee for onboard rockets of ten kilometers per second, allowing for a range of 45,000 kilometers for targets at similar relative velocity with maximum accelerations of 20 m/s^2.
The Extra-Large Missiles are launched by more conventional methods, and are better suited for combat against stationary targets, as well as orbital bombardment.
Main Components[]
| Component | Number | Component type | Other information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protium Fusion Reactor | 1 | Power generation | 125 GW to 6.0 PW output |
| Main Protium Fusion Rocket | 1 | Main engine |
|
| Protium Fusion Thurster-Turret | 4000 | Reaction Control Systems | 1.6 GN thrust each |
| Interstellar ramjet | 1 | Fuel extraction and refining |
|
| Basic Computer System | 1 | Computer System | 40.0 THz processing power, 20.0 TB RAM, 144000 1U pizzabox servers. |
| Life Support bay | 2 | Gravity, Food, Air, and Water generation | 6.00 m/s^2 gravity, maximum sustainable crew 20,000,000. |
Weapons[]
| Weapon name | Number | Weapon type | Energy | Fire rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main Protium Fusion Rocket | 1 | Plasma | 800 EW | Continuous |
| Protium Fusion Thurster-Turret | 4,000 | Plasma | 25.6 PW | Continuous |
| Medium Missiles | 12,000,000 | Explosive | 850 PJ | Single-use |
| Extra-Large Missiles | 40,000 | Explosive | 2.1 ZJ | Single-use |
Armor[]
| Armor material | Thicknesss | Energy to rupture | Laser Resistance | Energy to melt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CANT-TI Alloy | 24.0 m | 28.8 GJ/m^2 | 30 % reflectivity | 141.9 GJ/m^2 |
| Reflective Plating | 0.5 m | 2.5 MJ/m^2 | 98 % | 7.2 GJ/m^2 |
Shields[]
| Shield | Backups | Energy rating | Resistances | Vulnerabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mk. 10 Quantum Chromodynamic Shield | 8 | 15 TJ/mol quarks maximum rating | Most plasma and kinetic weapons | Lasers, electron beams, things with a whole lot of momentum |
Affiliation[]
| Empire name | Number of Dragon-class titans in service | Production capacity per month (number currently in production per month) |
|---|---|---|
| Nivenian Empire | 4,000,000 | 120,000 (40,000) |