GLF FX-13AR

Summary

The Galactic Liberation Force is a large and varied group of individuals all bound together with the common goal of liberating the downtrodden and elevating them to a place of equality. Relative to most military organizations, they are small and would seem disorganized. The truth is that their forces are always dispersed and only coalesce during operations in order to make attacking them more difficult. While they have limited numbers, they often represent the pinnacle of technology from their respective races.

The FX-13AR is a long range heavy fighter meant for long range operations, assault on heavily fortified positions, and use as anti-fighter cover for larger ships. The model features folding jump nacelles that tuck into the wings to give the dorsal and ventral gunners a clearer shot from their turrets. Armed with two turrets, two torpedo racks that can carry mixed ordnance, and a powerful multi-directional forward beam weapon, the FX-13AR.

Lucky 13, Sometimes called Variant L13 to set it apart from any later liberator class ships, is inhabited by the esper Lucky which gives it her strength and special abilities.

Specifications

Length: 30 m
Height: 11 m
Wingspan:36 m
Engines: High yield, vectored fusion thrust rated to 0.5c. Overdrive With nacelles up and linked can boost to 0.9c.
Lightspeed: 4 Retractable Transwarp Nacelles
Shields:: Six zone particle and energy rejection
Weapons: Two multipurpose launcher bays, dorsal and ventral phased energy turrets, forward multidirectional beam emitter, two ion system disruptors

Crew: 6. Pilot, Copilot, Engineer, Comms/Electronic Warfare/sensors, two gunners. Typical crew is 8-10 to allow for shifts
- The L-13 has a special esper slot built into it that does not appear on other versions of the ship. Lucky occupies this position and augments the navigational station and increases overall defense and speed of the ship.
Passengers: 20 if cargo bay is prepped for habitation

Design Notes

The FX-13AR is a direct replacement to the IX-13a 'Ragnarok' experimental engine fighter.
While not yet officially named such, Landon has called the model the "Liberator" because of how it came to be.
Landon Designed the FX-13AR while he was bed ridden in a hospital after a successful but very costly mission that nearly cost him, Lucky, and Ratatoskr their lives.
Landon attempted to address the vulnerability of the lightspeed nacelles and how much they interfered with clean firing arcs from the turrets when in combat mode.
The FX-13AR was built entirely on Spindizzy after the loss of the IX-13a.

Crew Roles

Pilot: The pilot is in charge of not just flying the ship but must also be skilled with the forward weapon arrays including the MBE and launchers. They must also have sufficient navigational experience to fly without a navigator at times. Finally, the pilot must also be well versed in the technical details of the ship and be able to make repairs, but they are not expected to be as skilled as the engineer. The pilot also handles basic communications.
Co-Pilot: The co pilot must be able to pilot, generally serves as the navigational officer, and must be able to operate the forward weapon arrays if this function is passed by the pilot. The co-pilot is also expected to keep the ship's crew together in and out of combat. They generally hold a rank equal to the pilot. The Co-pilot also often manages communications as needed.
Engineer: The engineer is in charge of all systems, and they must be able to operate them and repair them even during combat. The primary sensor array controllers are also housed in the engineering bay so that the engineer can handle both the ship's systems and relay information from the advanced scanners.
Gunners / Technicians: Gunners must be able to operate their turrets during combat, but they usually serve as technicians and trainees when not in combat. Gunners are usually expected to support any of the other positions while supervised by their superior. They often handle communications and sensor duties especially during scouting missions. During peacetime, they may be able to gain flight time under the supervision of the pilot.
Esper: Lucky 13 is fortunate to have an esper living in it that shares its name. Lucky is a dream-borne spirit referred to commonly as an esper. She lives in the ship and permeates its systems. If the crew believes in its ship and in turn believes in her to get them through, then she is better empowered to fuse supernatural energy into the ship and allow it to greatly exceed its specifications. With Landon as her pilot, she is made exceprionally strong because, as a psion, he has a direct link into the ship as well. This creates what could be a unique interface between esper and pilot that allows both to infuse the ship with their energies.

Subsystems

Engines

Sublight: At sublight, Lucky operates using vectored fusion thrust. The specifications of the engine rate them as having enough output to accelerate to half the speed of light, but because of Lucky, the ship routinely reaches 0.8 c. In addition to the main engines, Lucky has very large RCS thrusters that greatly increase the ability of the ship to turn and twist in flight. Between acceleration on the main engine and the RCS output, Lucky is also often known as "The Vomit Comet"

Lightspeed: The light speed engines are normally kept folded into the wings when not in use to give the gunners a clearer shot over the wings, and it also reduces her sensor profile. When active, the four pods fan out in an X configuration, charge, and open a stable subspace tunnel likened to an artificial wormhole. The pods provide a protective barrier around the ship during transit through the tunnel.

Shields

Lucky is equipped with standard particle and energy shielding. The system is divided into six zones. There are ventral and dorsal arrays for each of left wing, right wing, and central body. They offer reasonable protection against incoming weapon fire without compromising the size of the ship or the power demands of heavy shielding and armor.

As an esper, Lucky provides more protection that the shields do when she is active. When boosting most systems with a full crew on board, the esper effect increases the performance of most systems by ten fold including shields.

Weapons

Multi-Function Bays

The MFB are a series of nine modular units on each wing. They can be used for a number of purposes that include missile and bomb loads of varying size. However, they can also be mounted with other systems including experimental units such as a device that consumes all the bay but can potentially absorb energy attacks and return them to the Liberator's weapons. Most of the time, these bats are divided by an assortment of high speed missiles, long range probes, and an occasion heavy missile.

Experimental payloads have included the Buffered Energy Redirection Shield, long range sensor arrays, the 'drunken' multi-projectile swarm missile, sensor jammers, and a very popular tractor beam disruptor.

Turrets: The ship carries a dorsal and a ventral high speed, dual barrel, pulsed turret. Typically meant for anti-projectile and anti-fighter, the turrets provide coverage above, alongside, and behind the ship to reduce the chance of being flanked or blind sided.

Multi-directional Beam Emitter (MBE): Because a single massive emitter would have required a prohibitively large housing to handle the thermal venting needs, a four beam, coalescing emitters is used instead. The four beams fire from the wing to the nose assembly which can then redirect the combined beam in a large conic section in front of the craft. Targeting is computer assisted to allow for focused firing of a target through maneuvers.

L13 Variant Special Systems

Dreamweave esper housing and armor: The dreamweave is a special material engineered with the collaboration of engineers and enchanters from Spindizzy and St. Marin. The weave layer is a thin mesh of material under the armor that covers the full upper surface of the ship, and it serves as a comfortable place for Lucky to rest when she is in the ship, and it has been made to mimic her wing blades in overall shape. It also serves as an armor layer to protect the esper from external attacks such as weaponized dreamcatchers or metaphysical attacks.

Dreamweave Manifest Engine: In addition to serving as armor, the dreamweave can also allow Lucky to push herself deeper into reality for a time. Her wings will manifest visibly as extensions of the ship's wings, and she can use the weapon systems to add misfortune to the warheads and beam weapons as extensions other bite.

Psi-Link Accelerated System Controls: Landon developed the psi-link systems on the L13 to take advantage of his native ability to link to machines with a variant of telepathy. The system is located just under the dreamweave later, and it mediates some of the connections from the esper to the ship with him as a medium for the interaction. It also means he is in much better contact with Lucky as they can both reach all ship systems cooperatively. It also is a means to control other systems such as as the leading edge Thread Shear system detailed below.

Thread Shear at Wing Forward V: The L13 version of the Liberator has a shearing device made to shuttle threads like those of dreamcatchers to a single point where they can be cut. This reinforced position also adds additional safety for Lucky when she is in the ship because it prevents wing damage to Lucky's dream essence. Because the wings are swept forward on the outside and the root of the wing is angled back, the point of inflection, called the Forward V, will accumulate any chord like weapons at the point where they can be cut using psionic cutting surface located at the V.

The Thread Shear system was developed in response to a tuned dreamcatcher being used to cut the wings off the earlier Ragnarok class fighter in addition to cutting Lucky's wing blades and crushing Ratatoskr's wing because both espers were tied into the hull at the time of impact.