Frigates as a class stand between destroyers and corvettes and designated as ‘semi-capital ships’,
because this is the last class, that isn't deemed to be able to stand on its own as a ‘ship of the wall’.
With the colonial wars expanding and battleships becoming the main battle unit, the Empire tacticians found themselves going back to an old doctrine called ‘line of battle’, which meant that surface naval vessels formed a line end to end which allowed each ship in the line to fire its broadside without fear of hitting a friendly ship on a two-dimensional plane, like that of an ocean.
They expanded the idea into 3 dimensions, finding that ships should be organized as a wall, each ship delivering its broadside outside of the plain of the wall, optimally providing fire from many angles to a single target. Every ship that had enough firepower to participate and enough armour to stand and not allow an enemy ship to punch through the wall is designated as ‘ship of the wall’ or capital ship; hence frigates are designated as semi-capital ships because they can substitute a capital ship in the wall at extreme need but still not be able to stand for long due to its weaker armour.
Description and design[]
The origin of the class lies in the dire need for a ship that can provide covering fire for its larger sisters against incoming bomber craft fire, as the carrier class begun to emerge on the colonies, so the Empire actively sought for a solution against the new threat.
The Colonial Escort Force asked Sir Edward King at the Mars Shipping Dock Company to redesign his blueprint of the Explorer, the first ship ever to venture outside known space to fit for the new purpose. The derivatives of this ship were the first ones, which ventured far outside of the Solar System in real-space using Einsteinian relativistic reaction engines and proved to be a useful design for a vessel operating as a long range escort for merchant convoys. The Empire set its shipyards to produce frigates in large numbers as it visioned the class as the all-round multi-purpose ship, and so the class quickly became a common sight in human space.
Many have been captured, lost or destroyed and so found itself as the main operational vessel of pirate organisations. Its speed, armour, cargo hold, trooper bunker, armament and flexibility proved to be useful as the centre of hit and run operations, and with ample modifications the pirates literally became the overlords of outer systems by their dreaded frigates.
Click here to view all frigates.
Click here to go back to the list of all ship classes.