Troop Transports
UDCR Battle Fleet Surface Forces are transported in tough, little vessels that can penetrate an atmosphere, land vertically on almost any terrain, then take off and achieve escape velocity quickly. Troop transports are sub-light vehicles with limited range. They are the backbone of the Battle Fleet's ability to deliver armed and armored boots on the ground to a variety of deep space arenas.
Troop transports look vaguely reminiscent of a space shuttle. The silhouette is taller and longer than a classic shuttle's, though a troop transport ship is actually a smaller vehicle at twenty meters long from nose to tail. A human can just barely walk under the wings and cockpit section when a transport is on the ground. The whole ship is about six meters tall, not counting the tail fin. The main delta wing is about nine meters across at its widest. Tthe pilots' cockpit is a small, deltoid-shaped cabin held out ahead of the main body of the ship on a short neck. The section where a classic shuttle would carry cargo and open out to space instead contains the transport chamber, which can hold one unit of 20 soldiers. Also, there is a long under-cabin on the belly of the ship which contains the arming chamber. Finally, there is the additional tail section which extends about five meters behind the rear line of the main delta wing. This area has two sections. Usually, the forward section houses a small land rover and the rearmost section contains the engines, which are flanked by stabilizer wings and a tail fin above. Fuel is contained in long compartments running the length of the ship's body under the armor. Experimental Battle Fleet units have modified land rover chambers that can transport yuvynn mechorganic tanks instead. Each transport is covered in heavy armor plating.
Generally speaking, a troop transport carries enough fuel to get off of a standard- to heavy-gravity planet once. Long range transports are similar looking vehicles that are about twice as large and are designed to carry about 160 troops at time (utilizing the extra space to carry 80 soldiers in 4 rows in both the upper and lower chambers. These are not able to carry alien mechtanks or other alien lifeforms.
UDCR Battle Fleet Surface Forces are transported in tough, little vessels that can penetrate an atmosphere, land vertically on almost any terrain, then take off and achieve escape velocity quickly. Troop transports are sub-light vehicles with limited range. They are the backbone of the Battle Fleet's ability to deliver armed and armored boots on the ground to a variety of deep space arenas.
Troop transports look vaguely reminiscent of a space shuttle. The silhouette is taller and longer than a classic shuttle's, though a troop transport ship is actually a smaller vehicle at twenty meters long from nose to tail. A human can just barely walk under the wings and cockpit section when a transport is on the ground. The whole ship is about six meters tall, not counting the tail fin. The main delta wing is about nine meters across at its widest. Tthe pilots' cockpit is a small, deltoid-shaped cabin held out ahead of the main body of the ship on a short neck. The section where a classic shuttle would carry cargo and open out to space instead contains the transport chamber, which can hold one unit of 20 soldiers. Also, there is a long under-cabin on the belly of the ship which contains the arming chamber. Finally, there is the additional tail section which extends about five meters behind the rear line of the main delta wing. This area has two sections. Usually, the forward section houses a small land rover and the rearmost section contains the engines, which are flanked by stabilizer wings and a tail fin above. Fuel is contained in long compartments running the length of the ship's body under the armor. Experimental Battle Fleet units have modified land rover chambers that can transport yuvynn mechorganic tanks instead. Each transport is covered in heavy armor plating.
Generally speaking, a troop transport carries enough fuel to get off of a standard- to heavy-gravity planet once. Long range transports are similar looking vehicles that are about twice as large and are designed to carry about 160 troops at time (utilizing the extra space to carry 80 soldiers in 4 rows in both the upper and lower chambers. These are not able to carry alien mechtanks or other alien lifeforms.
Carrier Vessels
The UDCR carrier vessel is a large, faster-than-light capable ship designed to house and transport a 24 battle groups and the troop transports necessary to ferry them from further in-system to target planets and back again. They also house 2 squadrons of atmospheric fighter/bombers and their pilots and crew.
The landing bays sections are the long sections port and starboard of the smaller, central core. The troop transport bays are located at the far ends of the landing bay sections, and the fighter/bombers are housed in between them. The center of the carrier vessel is comprised of several can-shaped sections. The smallest, center-most can is the "core" itself. Another, similarly shaped but slightly larger-diameter can resides forward of the core section and rotates steadily to provide "gravity." This is where the crew quarters, training rooms, lounges, and Command and Control are located. Rows of windows ring this constantly spinning section.
Another segment, aft of the central core, has the look of three more great "cans," one lying atop two underneath, though all three are merged into one shape, as the three "cans" are wrapped around with a mammoth layer of armor plating. These sections contain the fuel tanks and main engines of a carrier vessel. The bottom two cans are huge fuel tanks that terminate in the rear with giant engine nozzles. This fuel is used for conventional travel and maneuvering while in-system as well as for powering the rest of the ship's systems and the faster-than-light drive itself. The top "can" houses the necessary machinery for faster-than-light travel: a Modified Alcubierre Drive.
Transport ships are always coming and going from the ends of a carrier during a campaign. The fighter/bombers can take part in planetary missions or be discharged from the mid-bays if the carrier itself comes under attack.. A carrier vessel's other offensive capabilities include missile batteries and beam weapons placed along the top and bottom lengths of the landing bay sections.
The only thing in the UDCR Battle Fleet larger than a carrier vessel is a battle platform.
The UDCR carrier vessel is a large, faster-than-light capable ship designed to house and transport a 24 battle groups and the troop transports necessary to ferry them from further in-system to target planets and back again. They also house 2 squadrons of atmospheric fighter/bombers and their pilots and crew.
The landing bays sections are the long sections port and starboard of the smaller, central core. The troop transport bays are located at the far ends of the landing bay sections, and the fighter/bombers are housed in between them. The center of the carrier vessel is comprised of several can-shaped sections. The smallest, center-most can is the "core" itself. Another, similarly shaped but slightly larger-diameter can resides forward of the core section and rotates steadily to provide "gravity." This is where the crew quarters, training rooms, lounges, and Command and Control are located. Rows of windows ring this constantly spinning section.
Another segment, aft of the central core, has the look of three more great "cans," one lying atop two underneath, though all three are merged into one shape, as the three "cans" are wrapped around with a mammoth layer of armor plating. These sections contain the fuel tanks and main engines of a carrier vessel. The bottom two cans are huge fuel tanks that terminate in the rear with giant engine nozzles. This fuel is used for conventional travel and maneuvering while in-system as well as for powering the rest of the ship's systems and the faster-than-light drive itself. The top "can" houses the necessary machinery for faster-than-light travel: a Modified Alcubierre Drive.
Transport ships are always coming and going from the ends of a carrier during a campaign. The fighter/bombers can take part in planetary missions or be discharged from the mid-bays if the carrier itself comes under attack.. A carrier vessel's other offensive capabilities include missile batteries and beam weapons placed along the top and bottom lengths of the landing bay sections.
The only thing in the UDCR Battle Fleet larger than a carrier vessel is a battle platform.
Battle Platforms
The battle platform is an enormous military construction meant to be used as a mobile staging ground in space from which to launch missions into other arenas. In design, a battle platform resembles an earth-bound military ground base built upon a tremendous, flat rock. This is usually an immense hunk of stone harvested from an asteroid belt. No rock base for a battle platform is quite like the rock base of another, even though a rough disc shape is what is desired and attained one way or another. It is basically a chunk of a small city floating in space.
Twelve to sixteen buildings rise from the terrain. These interconnected buildings are embedded below the surface and then extend upwards through the rock face. They are placed on and are shaped to follow several concentric circles on the face of the rock disc. In the center is a runway complex. Spiraling out from the center, threaded between building complexes, are what look like curving roadways which dive into the rock and are angled much like the corners on a race track. These are the return runways which provide pathways for troop transports, long range transports or fighter/bombers to get back to the hangar bays. The four huge, rectangular buildings deeply embedded in the outer edges of the platform are these bays.
The entire thing rotates so as to create artificial gravity, not quite one G in the outer ring of buildings. This gravity pulls occupants to the wall that is farthest from the center of the great rock. What might be mistaken for an outer wall (a wall on the side of a building that faces the outer edge of the rock disc) is really the "bottom" floor of a given building. Tubes connecting buildings located farther in toward the center of the platform contain elevators, and connect outer buildings by their top floors up through the bottom floor of an inner building. Egress tubes connecting buildings left or right around the platform may be traversed by simply walking or riding in a tram.
All of this architecture is mirrored on the 'bottom' side of these stone and metal war machines.
The battle platform contains quarters for two Divisions (one housed on the 'up' side and one on the 'down' side). A Division contains about 1600 soldiers. That's lodging, feeding, and training facilities for roughly 3200 Surface Forces soldiers. Soldiers on board are focused on training other soldiers and on keeping in peak physical condition. The battle platform has docking and maintenance facilities for roughly one thousand vehicles. Tanks, atmospheric and space fighters, troop landers, and various assorted planet-side transports are the normal contingent of war machines ferried by the battle platform. These are housed and maintained in the platform's hangar bays.
The Support Crew of a battle platform does not overlap with the fighting forces, so that, if need be, all fighting forces can be deployed from the battle platform, and it can still be left manned. The crew of the battle platform is military as well, so the platform itself may be called into battle as a fighting vessel itself, though usually this occurs only in dire situations. Missile silos are implanted along the outside edge of the great rock, ringing all 360 degrees around it. Others are located at the center. Large rail gun batteries, usually used to launch chunks of debris, are located in a ring outside the buildings on the 'up' and 'down' sides of the platform. Ammo for these can be rock harvested from asteroid belts or junk salvaged from battle sites.
The largest engine drives in the Fleet are found embedded deep within the heart of these rocks. Huge thruster nozzles are embedded around the perimeter of the rock disc's outer edge and in strategic locations on the 'up' and 'down' sides of a platform so as to facilitate attitude control and other necessary maneuvering. The same technology that is used for interstellar travel (the Modified Alcubierre Drive) utilized, though on a larger scale, to move a battle platform over great distances at faster-than-light speeds.
The battle platform is an enormous military construction meant to be used as a mobile staging ground in space from which to launch missions into other arenas. In design, a battle platform resembles an earth-bound military ground base built upon a tremendous, flat rock. This is usually an immense hunk of stone harvested from an asteroid belt. No rock base for a battle platform is quite like the rock base of another, even though a rough disc shape is what is desired and attained one way or another. It is basically a chunk of a small city floating in space.
Twelve to sixteen buildings rise from the terrain. These interconnected buildings are embedded below the surface and then extend upwards through the rock face. They are placed on and are shaped to follow several concentric circles on the face of the rock disc. In the center is a runway complex. Spiraling out from the center, threaded between building complexes, are what look like curving roadways which dive into the rock and are angled much like the corners on a race track. These are the return runways which provide pathways for troop transports, long range transports or fighter/bombers to get back to the hangar bays. The four huge, rectangular buildings deeply embedded in the outer edges of the platform are these bays.
The entire thing rotates so as to create artificial gravity, not quite one G in the outer ring of buildings. This gravity pulls occupants to the wall that is farthest from the center of the great rock. What might be mistaken for an outer wall (a wall on the side of a building that faces the outer edge of the rock disc) is really the "bottom" floor of a given building. Tubes connecting buildings located farther in toward the center of the platform contain elevators, and connect outer buildings by their top floors up through the bottom floor of an inner building. Egress tubes connecting buildings left or right around the platform may be traversed by simply walking or riding in a tram.
All of this architecture is mirrored on the 'bottom' side of these stone and metal war machines.
The battle platform contains quarters for two Divisions (one housed on the 'up' side and one on the 'down' side). A Division contains about 1600 soldiers. That's lodging, feeding, and training facilities for roughly 3200 Surface Forces soldiers. Soldiers on board are focused on training other soldiers and on keeping in peak physical condition. The battle platform has docking and maintenance facilities for roughly one thousand vehicles. Tanks, atmospheric and space fighters, troop landers, and various assorted planet-side transports are the normal contingent of war machines ferried by the battle platform. These are housed and maintained in the platform's hangar bays.
The Support Crew of a battle platform does not overlap with the fighting forces, so that, if need be, all fighting forces can be deployed from the battle platform, and it can still be left manned. The crew of the battle platform is military as well, so the platform itself may be called into battle as a fighting vessel itself, though usually this occurs only in dire situations. Missile silos are implanted along the outside edge of the great rock, ringing all 360 degrees around it. Others are located at the center. Large rail gun batteries, usually used to launch chunks of debris, are located in a ring outside the buildings on the 'up' and 'down' sides of the platform. Ammo for these can be rock harvested from asteroid belts or junk salvaged from battle sites.
The largest engine drives in the Fleet are found embedded deep within the heart of these rocks. Huge thruster nozzles are embedded around the perimeter of the rock disc's outer edge and in strategic locations on the 'up' and 'down' sides of a platform so as to facilitate attitude control and other necessary maneuvering. The same technology that is used for interstellar travel (the Modified Alcubierre Drive) utilized, though on a larger scale, to move a battle platform over great distances at faster-than-light speeds.