XF-13 “RAPTURE”
EXPERIMENTAL FIGHTER CHASSIS
OVERVIEW
Developed in the aftermath of the Musavian schism, the XF-13 is born of the newfound Qunit technology merged together with Modern Dominion tech and Old Imperial technology recently discovered in the Wastes of Imperial worlds left behind in the vast ancient territories of the once giant nation. The only Dominion vessels to be mounted with short range Quantum-Switch drives, called “Bit-Drives.” This unprecedented technology gained from research into Vaiaelon War-Pact Qunits, and provided information from the MURF before the final vires of the schism. It mounts very powerful weapons researched from old Imperial wrecks with improved technology than what normal Dominion vessels and fighters may mount. Not only that, but the information gathered from both sources allow the fighters Vastly improved sublight speeds compared to most spaceborne fighters in service with the dominion. They are extremely expensive, thus very very few of them are fielded as of now.
ARMAMENTS
The XF-13’s main weaponry consists of various sections, including nose-mounted armaments, wing mounted, bay mounted, and other various weapons along the body.
Firstly, the Rapture has dual Particle cannons mounted on the nose, using salvaged particle weaponry from Old Imperial vessels crossed with modern downscaled electromagnetics to form small-scale, fast firing, compact particle lances, firing powerful automatic bursts of particle “Packets”, usually neutrally charged particles of which expell vast amounts of radiation and are apt at piercing thinner armour, giving them a powerful attack against larger vessels or stationary objects such as orbital installations.
Secondly, the Rapture has retractable tri-mounts on each wing for missiles or supportive pods. The most common offensive weapon mounts are Near-relativistic Interception missiles capable of immense speed and distance, called XM2 ‘Osiris’ Interception Missiles. They are best suited to taking out large bombercraft, other fightercraft, or even smaller vessels such as pickets or corvettes. These missiles carry an immense payload of mixed warheads, including Fission, Fusion, and small but expensive Antimatter warheads. They are guided by Dumb AI with various cameras and can be remotely controlled by a Smart-AI if needed. Other payloads of nearly any other kind can also be mounted on these wing mounts.
The third section encompasses the central weapons bay of the Rapture, of which can hold normal weapons such as the ones found on wing mounts, but can additionally hold supportive Drone units, and more powerful dedicated anti-ship payloads, not dissimilar to the Osiris missiles, though much more power and size is put into the payload than the engine systems, resulting in slower medium ranged missiles with FAR higher power. These missiles are called XM3 ‘Isis’ Anti-Ship Missiles. One of the common drone support systems is small deployable platforms mounted with anti-ship automatic particle cannons much like the ones found on the Rapture, though slightly upsized. Variants with other weapons can be found, and some drones can even be mounted with proper engine systems to manouver as distractions.
Finally, the Rapture has various small turret systems mounted along the body, interchangeable, though the stock one is small Auto-Gauss cannons very similar to coilguns but downscaled to fit better as defensive weapons to ward off enemy fightercraft, drones, and missiles, functioning essentially as fighter-mounted APS/CIWS guns. They fire at 20 rounds per second and have dedicated ammo reserves within the large fighter’s internal systems. A common replacement for these weapons are small fusion guns that fire ‘lances’ of superheated plasma, functioning the same way as small APS/CIWS guns, and will draw directly from the Rapture’s fusion core, taking up less space for ammo.
EXTERNAL DEFENSES
The XF-13 Mounts Three Main defensive systems. Firstly is the standard Plasma Shielding used by most Dominion craft, using plasma held in tubing around the craft to set up small, temporary walls of plasma to defend from oncoming fire. Secondly, the craft has a much more powerful electromagnetic field generator than most, which allows far more precise plasma shielding as well as the ability to slightly deflect or throw magnetic projectiles off course with adequate time. The EM field can also be attuned to jam certain sensor systems used by enemies, giving a slight blind spot in sensors, disallowing an accurate reading on the fighter aside from it’s general location. The third layering of defenses is a series of gravitational wave generators within the craft, generating very long range ripples of gravity to throw munitions off course, best used to mitigate the fire from munitions when approaching a target without wasting plasma reserves or APS rounds. Finally, the XF-13 also uses basic Flares chucked from tubes along the craft, burning bright and hot to distract IR sensors and IR guided projectiles.
SUBLIGHT PROPULSION
As for Sublight, the XF-13 uses highly advanced Antimatter rockets, using extremely well protected stores of Antimatter to get extremely high speeds with very good fuel efficiency. These antimatter rockets, with a mix of supporting fusion torches gives the fighter a higher speed cap than anything previously made by the Dominion. Instead of normal RCS systems, the dominion uses secondary sets of gravitational wave generators located on the exterior of the craft to produce powerful bursts of gravitational force, allowing the craft to turn on a dime in any direction without having to waste precious fuel to reorient and turn. This collection of thrusters gives the craft blistering speed and unparalleled manouverability, only further increasing the high costs.
FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL
AND INTERDICTION
The Rapture has two primary forms of Faster than Light Drives. Firstly, the one salvaged from Qunit technologies, is the Quantum Entanglement Drive, also known as Qswitches or “Bit-Drives”. These use quantum entanglement, calculated by powerful quantum computing systems onboard to entangle the vessel with an area of space in the location selected. Due to the powerful processing and energy needed, these drives, while theoretically infinitely ranged, are limited to being shorter ranged drives due to limitations of the craft. The other form of drive for long range travel uses onboard gravitational manipulation devices to rip a small wormhole in spacetime to a given destination long enough for the craft to pass through. This travel method is near instantaneous just like Bit-Drives are, but are much longer ranged and less precise, being mostly used for very distant travel between star clusters. Wormholes take much longer to calculate than short range Bit-pulses do, which once again leads to their main usage only being for out of combat long-distance travel.
On the other end of FTL, is interdiction. The Rapture mounts only one form of interdiction, taking the shape of small interdiction ‘mines’ in it’s main weapons bay, which launch out towards enemy fleets and set into their second stage letting out small interdiction satellites that create small bubble interdiction zones. These are best used offensively due to their relatively small size compared to most bubble interdictions, and the relative weakness of the satellites which could be destroyed from range by an attacking fleet in mere moments in spite of it’s limited defensive systems
POWER GENERATION
The Rapture has 3 forms of passive ‘backup’ energy production which slowly refill batteries and supercapacitors, taking up very little space overall on the craft, and 2 forms of active primary energy production which fuels the overall craft’s main drives and functions.
Firstly, for passive energy production, the craft mounts Various solar cells and Gravitational collectors, using passive solar and gravitational energy to collect energy over time and fuel up batteries. These take up little space on the craft’s surface and can be mounted anywhere that external systems arent. The third form is a small central zero-point reactor that not only brings in passive energy for the craft but can function as dedicated backup or emergency power, and can function as a primary source if the craft is running a stealth operation. These three overall take little space and leave lots of room for other things.
As of active power generation, there are two primary generation methods. Firstly is the main fusion core, which generates all the necessary plasma for the ship’s function, and power as well to keep it running. Secondly is a very small but powerful antimatter reactor that is fired up during combat, giving the ship an extra edge on power when needed so the fusion core can focus on providing plasma for the craft’s functions. These take up a decent amount of space, thus leaving no room for smaller reactors of the same type, only allowing for the two main, but small reactors.
With all the extra heat generated from these, the craft has very powerful radiator systems, not only in the form of normal radiation, but also stores of liquid oxygen running around the craft in small tubing systems around a central coolant system, keeping internal systems cool as possible with the high-heat running of stressful combat.
As well as the main power sources, the Craft mounts a pair of supercapacitors with supporting superbatteries, allowing the storage and rapid distribution of power when jumping into combat or for on the dot FTL travel. These take time to charge and do not generate their own power.
SENSOR AND STEALTH SYSTEMS
The XF-13 mounts an extremely wide range of sensor systems. Various visual sensors like UV, IR, Visible Light, and X-rays are used alongside LIDAR systems. It has active radar systems onboard for hunting down targets, as well as passive listening systems to try and tap into comms systems and listen for radiowaves. The craft can use it’s Electromagnetic field to detect enemy vessels or projectiles within its range. Finally, the craft utilizes very rudimentary FTL sensors that can alert the craft to FTL travel nearby, allowing it to begin searching on other sensor systems for enemy vessels to intercept.
The XF-13 has an Even wider range of stealth systems onboard, utilizing onboard gravitational fields to bend light around it, making it invisible to visual sensors but also making it’s own visual sensors totally blind while active. The ship’s dark colour and angular shape helps absorb some LIDAR and RADAR returns, though not always 100% effective, and simply dampening the sensors effects. The craft can use its own gravitational generators to temporarily jam enemy gravimetric sensors to differing degrees of success.
ARMOUR
The armour of the XF-13 is not much different from that of a proper starship, aside from casting away some layers to save on space and weight. The first layer of the armour is Ceramic NERA applique armour, used as little defensive blocks on the outside of the spaceborn craft. Next up is a whipple shield unit used to break up and defend against micrometeorite impacts, keeping the precious internal systems safe. The next layers are a thick lining of lead metal to protect from radiation, then some Carbon-Ceramic Tiling and Carbon-based aerogels to protect from thermal heat, making some energy weapons less effective and defending from passive heat in the void of space. There are internal layers of liquid oxygen as mentioned before in pipes that collect and disperse the heat, helping reduce the overall thermal temperature of the inside of the craft. Oxygen that evaporates from liquid into gas travels up the pipes into the central coolant unit that condenses it back into liquid oxygen where it will then re-circulate. Nextly is the Strikeplate and structural layer, made of a Titanium-Steel alloy for proper defense, with a planted metallic crystal structure designed to harden the plating further, allowing it’s strength. The structural layer is steel beams and bars that provide more structure to the overall armour and give a slight air gap. The spall liner consists of kevlar to defend from shrapnel pieces from the more external layers of armour. Lastly is a thick layer of rubber that protects the delicate internals from electromagnetics that would ruin them.
COMPUTING
AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The vast majority of onboard computing systems for the XF-13 are quantum-based computing systems, using quantum probability and particle physics to calculate far more data than standard computers. These are used for any and all calculations and complex manouvers in the craft’s processing power. This is supplemented by normal computer systems using bits of data and binary to handle things that quantum computers cannot do, such as real-time control and active computing that requires quick reaction speeds. When combined these systems have immense processing power and quick reaction speeds, as well as good connections to wider databases.
The Craft itself is mounted with an extremely powerful Smart-AI system, powerful enough to be considered fully sapient, and the AI found on these craft are some of the extremely few in the Dominion given rights (though with many, many technicalities, hindrances, and restrictions). They act as the copilot for the craft, controlling weapons such as missiles and CIWS, sensors, communications, and even Shielding, while the Pilot themself controls flight, main weapons, and the Non-calculatory parts of FTL such as when to actually engage the jump.