Herreshoff-class battleship

"'There are vessels larger than the Herreshoff; yet, never as efficient. There are vessels smaller than this king of the stars; yet, never matching its brevity and endurance. It sits in the perfect niche, the ultimate position of both power and elegance. It truly deserves the name 'Herreshoff', for it shares its own father's surprises and mastery of war.' — Sternenkaiser Laurenz I"The Herreshoff class battleship is a type of intercapital warship in the Weltraummarine, or the navy of the Menschlicher Sternenstaat, in addition to the naval contingent of the ''Staatsschutz. ''Named after the late Admiral Jannick von Herreshoff. Planned in the 750s and being put into service in 756 SA, the vessel and its variants have been integral in strengthening the navy's influence over the Nauticus Sector and wider Gamma Quadrant through offering an enormous amount of firepower and area denial that can rival even the best of foreign battleships. When combined with larger fleets and formations, the Herreshoff class act as the punching force in spatial spearheads and breakthroughs in addition to providing operational vector and flank defense.

Work in progress.

Design history
A new, definitive design of a Sternenstaat warship was commissioned in the 750s by the ruling Sternenkaiser, Laurenz I, as a means to replace the aging Langengraß-class battleship and the various alternative designs that spawned from such. With an increase of attention to defensive measures and operational longevity, the ideal new warship was desire to be at least two kilometers in length with significant dedications to self-preservation defenses and the protection of proximal vessels, such as command or transport ships. This necessitated both extensive point defense emplacements and mid- to long-range offensive capabilities to deny enemy vessels optimal opportunities for ambushes and direct assaults alike into weakpoints of Staat naval formations.

The schematics for the Herreshoff class battleship were created in a partnership between the private Blocher Schiffbauunternehmen shipbuilding corporation and the state-owned Staatliches Raumschiffdesignbüro naval company, with the joint contract being announced by the BSB and Staatswehr after the passage of the Military Investiture Bill of 752 within that same year. Construction began on three vessels to spearhead further innovations within the project - that being the later-named Herreshoff, Ehrgeiz, and Nordstern.

Work in progress.

General characteristics
Herreshoff-class battleships are 2.27 kilometer long spatial warships with a height of 338.2 meters (from inferior communications tower directly below the internally suspended bridge to superior communications tower above the auxiliary bridge) and width of 226 meters, with said measurements including armor thicknesses.

Work in progress.

Power and propulsion
The battleship is normally powered by four advanced Npe-SgR 5 zero point energy generators that are hoisted within the innermost compartments of the vessel, which provide power to the ship through the intense exploitation of cloistered quantum systems and their zero-point fields for their constant flux of energy. Calibrations of such generators at a consistent rate allows for power output similar to reactors that utilize exotic matter, but in the case of emergency and/or damage to such drives, there exists four AMSGR-7 antimatter power micro-cores that can supplement or entirely supplant the output of the NPESGR-5 generators.

Work in progress.

Hyperdrive
Work in progress.

Armaments
Work in progress.

Torpedo bays
Work in progress.

Missile bus launchers
Work in progress.

Pellet coilgun
One of the most feared armaments of the Herreshoff-class battleships is the Höchstgeschwindigkeit Gaußgewehr 2mm, which refers to a spinal electromagnetically-accelerated pellet gun with the capacity for its 2 millimeter-long osmium projectiles to reach up to a fraction of the speed of light. These massive guns, which run nearly the entire length of the ship within its axis, are supplied by their own independent power systems that compose of antimatter micro-cores which electrify 2-kilometer coils. This weapon system can sustain automatic fire for a time before these systems are depleted or the coils become damaged, and are employed to engage mid-range targets with devastating firepower. They are put to the most use against similar-sized enemy warships, such as battleships, but can be used on theoretically any sized vessel.

Laser batteries
Work in progress.

Autonomous cluster-missile batteries
Work in progress.

Defenses
Work in progress.

Coil-based PDCs
Work in progress.

Laser-based PDCs
Work in progress.

Shielding
Work in progress.

Armor and hull
Work in progress.

Construction
All current vessels of the Herreshoff class have been constructed in the orbital shipyards owned by the Weltraummarinewerft Korschlan, a state-owned military manufacturing corporation with assets held around the orbit of the planet of Korschlan. The first ship of the series, the Herreshoff, was laid down in 756 SA and launched in 757 SA alongside the Ehrgeiz and Nordstern.

The three ships were tested by naval experimental divisions of the Weltraummarine  in the Kufheim Reach prior to official incorporation within the armed forces. Results of the diagnostics for each ship yielded projections that exceeded the previously estimated efficiency of the warships, with their defensive capacities in particular being able to contend in entirety with the simulated composition of an average star-states scout fleet.

Work in progress.

Future replacement
A research project has commenced under joint Staatswehr-Staatsschutz supervision, codenamed Project Gänsegeier, which is investigating a new design to replace the nearly forty-year old Herreshoff-class battleship.

Work in progress.

Operational history
Work in progress.

Major incidents and actions
Work in progress.

Modifications
Work in progress.

List of vessels
The following lists all Herreshoff-class vessels that were once (or are) utilized by the Sternenstaat, including statuses. This list does not include variants of the hull, such as the Rán-class stealth battleship.