Battlecruiser (Altak Union)

The Tereshkova-class battlecruiser is the newest ship revision in the navy of the Altak Union. It was devised to replace the aging and outdated Pyra-class battlecruiser over a period of three years, from 2600 to 2603. They are currently in the process of replacing the Pyra-class, although there are still a few operational models of the old ship in service.

History
In 2600, just after the revision of the then-older Carriers, the Pyra-class Battlecruiser was the oldest model of ship int he entire navy. After a three-month holiday, the Union's internal design committee set about reshaping the ship class. The result was a larger ship with more firepower, slimmed-down armour, better countermeasures, and an entirely redesigned interior. The new design was unveiled at a War Council meeting in 2603, and production immediately began on the new ships.

Design
The Tereshkova-class battlecruiser is a slow, heavily armoured behemoth with immense firepower. While easily outpaced by smaller vessels, it makes up for it with extreme firepower and heavy armour.

Exterior
The ship is 625m long, and 150m wide in a roughly circular shape. The main Mass Driver cannon protrudes from the front of the ship, offering the smallest profile to return fire when aimed properly. The thrusters are shielded from the sides by large sail-like coverings of metal that can swivel slightly.

Armour
The ship is plated in two metres of Vanadium-steel alloy with a semi-reflective coating, with another two metres of space in between the armour and the inner hull, held in place by many, many trusses and beams. The space in between contains most of the heat dispensers of the ship, as there are many vents to the outside space in it. The weaponry of the ship is located on the outside of the armour plating, although most of the targeting computers and power relays are located on the inside. This also helps prevent boarding.

Weapons
The ship is outfitted with a massive Mass Driver cannon that spans the lenght of the ship, that, while hard to aim right, has immense punching power (it fires purely kinetic rounds, and so missing is fairly easy to do). Its secondary armaments are six 150mm howitzers, each mounted towards the bottom of the ship, and capable of swivveling a full 180 degrees for both planetary bombardment, as well as ship-ship combat (in the case of planetary bombardment, as most of the shell burns up in atmospheric entry, the effect is more like that of a 75mm gun). It is also fitted with 18 railgun turrets, each 7m in length that fire iron-coated tungsten rounds at other ships and boarding craft. Finally, there are 20 pods of 20 non-nuclear, guided SPARROW missiles located around the ship, five of which can be reloaded from the inside of the ship.

Countermeasures
There are 64 small laser turrets scattered across the hull, for destroying incoming missiles (and other large projectiles). They can fire roughly once every three seconds, with high levels of accuracy. This means that while it is initially difficult to land a hit on the ship, with either more than 20 missiles directed at any given point on the ship, or small enough projectiles, it is easily powwible to damage it.

Most of the ships internal electronics are made with space-grade Silicon on Sapphire wafers, giving a fair amount of EMP resisance. For redundancy, the AI core, radio systems and life-support systems are also Faraday-caged agains EMP attacks.

Interior
At the very heart of the ship is the Bridge. In it, there are seven hi-resolution video screens, the controls for the ship, the radios, etc. The ship's AI is usually responsible for choosing the seven of 100 possible feeds to display at any given moment, although it can be decided manually. The ship has room for its 600 crewmembers, as well as an extra 500 marines (for ground operations).

Misc.
The ship has two dropship bays, and sixty 25-man escape pods.