H.A.F.S. Button class Tender / Repair Ship:

The navy personnel that serve on fleet tenders are much maligned but are as important to the military effort as the crew of a cruiser. Without tenders, fleets would not be able to operate efficiently and ships would always be having to go back to repair yards even for relatively minor repairs. While tenders are not really designed to do everything, they can effect very extensive repairs and many times are expected to repair ships that otherwise would have been dropped into the nearest star to prevent capture. Mobile Spacedocks are used for larger ships and some can even dock internal ships as large as battleships.

The Button class Tender was the main design from the Human Alliance Forces Navy and served them for most of their existence. In fact even with the current upgrades of the fleet, there are no plans to retired these repair ships. Plans are to reduce the number in the inactive reserve, otherwise known as the “mothball fleet”, however.

Many Button class tenders entered service with the Consortium Armed Forces Navy and the last of them were retired only about twenty years prior to the present from Consortium service. Many of them still in the mothball fleets waiting for the day that they are needed again. Still, while the Human Alliance has retained most of these older tenders, the Consortium has sold a number off.

Because of the larger number produced and how many the Consortium has discarded, the Button class is the most common tender found in Independent Forces and several even serve in the New Coventry Navy, who generally prefers to construct their own ship class.

As far as naming conventions, for those tenders serving in the Human Alliance and Consortium navies, these vessels are named after famous and significant individuals in the repair, logistics, and support branches of the military. While most are named after serving officers and enlisted, a few of the vessels were named after civilians. Of course those serving in other navies may be renamed virtually anything.

The basic ship is constructed from a civilian merchant ship hull and are not design for combat. Their design is simply to carry the equipment and supplies needed to repair other ships. While the hull of these ships is not equal to combat designs, the ships do have military style variable shields, eight point defense lasers, two long range missile launchers, and six mini-missile launchers. All weaponry is meant to be defensive in nature.

With a top speed of only three light years an hour, one major concern in the future is that the tenders may simply be too slow to support fast task forces. Most refitted warships being operated by the Human Alliance are only slightly faster than the Botton class however. Unlike most civilian vessels however, the Button does have an anti-matter power plant.

Even though the Human Alliance is doing a massive upgrade to their fleets, there are no plans to upgrade the weaponry on the tenders. In situations in which there may be enemy ships around, the tenders are expected to escorted by multiple warships, usually at least one cruiser and four destroyers. Early in design process, there was some consideration given towards these ships being unarmed. This has saved a number of tenders over the years.

Some smaller fleets are exceptions as far as upgrades however and have upgraded their defenses to at least a limited extent. For example, New Coventry replaces the mini-missile launchers with two medium range missile launchers with three hundred and twenty missile each and four tachyon scatter beams. Otherwise, New Coventry does not modify the ship’s design are retain the original shields and long range missile batteries.

The ships have one hundred work shops and two heavy material fabrication areas. Numerous repair drones are also carried onboard. These give the ships the ability to repair virtually any system on the ship and have the ability to repair structural damage on ships. On cruisers and larger ships, this is restricted to medium damage but on smaller ships, virtually any and all structural damage can be repaired. The ships can even totally replace engineering systems on ships smaller than cruisers.

It is interesting that a few destroyers have actually been constructed by repair ships. One was a case where a repair ship in the Human Alliance Navy was trapped and the ship actually constructed a Ferret class Corvette to protect the ship when it was trying to get out of the trap. It is also fairly common for these ships to be used by smaller navies to construct smaller ships.

The ship has a large landing bay but this is meant to repair or upgrade fighters and if the ship carries fighters for itself, it will normally only carry four fighters. Originally these were Vixen light fighters but have mostly been replaced by Scorpion light fighters. These ships do carry a lot of cargo although most of this cargo is raw material, components, and extra missiles for ships that need to be supplied after being repaired.

Often, these ships will need to also deal with medical casualties along with repairing the ship. For this reason, the Button class Tender has four state of the art operation rooms, advanced regeneration equipment, cloning banks for replacement limbs and organs, five hundred medical beds, and one hundred stasis chambers. The ship has a total of one hundred and fifty medical personnel to support the medical facilities. While not equal to hospital ships, they can do the job in an emergency and often end up doing the job.

This starship design uses modified starship speed and weapon range rules. See Revised Starship Rules for Phase World / Three Galaxies for more details.

Model Type: AR-866.

Vehicle Type: Tender / Repair Ships.

Crew: 1330 total [220 (25 Officers and 195 Ordinary Crew) for ships operation, 960 repair personnel, and 150 medical personnel].

Vehicles:

Fighter Compliment:

	16	Mini-Tugs
	20	Transient Fighters (Normally to be repaired)
	4	SF-69 CAF Scorpion Star Interceptor (Provisions for, Not always carried)

Shuttles:

	4	Passenger Shuttles (usually used for medical emergencies)
	6	Cargo Shuttles

Other:

500

Repair Drones

M.D.C. By Location:

	Double Barrel Point Defense Laser Turrets (8):	150 each
	Long Range Missile Batteries (2):	500 each
	Mini-Missile Launchers (6):	100 each
	Outer Hull (40 x 40 ft/ 12.2 m x 12.2 Area):	110
	Inner Hull (40 x 20 ft/ 12.2 m x 12.2 Area):	90
	[1] Bridge:	5,000
	[2] Main Engines (2):	6,000 each
	[3] Main Body:	30,000
	[4] Variable Force Field:	2,000 a side (12,000 Total)

Notes:

[1] In reality this is how much damage needs to be done for a weapon to hit the bridge through the ship’s hull. This ship does not have an auxiliary bridge. Even if the bridge is destroyed, the ship can still be piloted from engineering but ship is -3 to dodge and all weapon systems will be at local control. Weapon hits near the bridge that do not penetrate the ships integrity can injure crew members on or near the bridge.

[2] Destroying the main engines means that the ship’s faster than light systems are destroyed and maximum sublight speed is reduced by half.

[3] Depleting the M.D.C. of the main body will put the liner out of commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support and internal gravity. The ship itself will be an unsalvageable floating wreck.

[4] Shields positions can be varied and all could be combined in one shield. Shields regenerate at the rate of 5% (600 M.D.C.) per melee round.

Speed:

Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.

Sublight: Has a special sublight engine that allows the ship to travel up to 60 percent of the speed of light maximum due to military shields. Star Ship can accelerate/decelerate at the rate of 0.75 percent of light per melee.

Atmospheric Propulsion: Maximum speed is 250 mph (402 kph), can enter an atmosphere and can leave but is not designed for atmospheric flight.

Stardrive: Uses a Gravitonic Drive system that allows the ship to reach a maximum of 3 light years per hour.

Maximum Range: Effectively Unlimited by either drive system. Carries about two years worth of supplies on board for the small crew but normally does not operate for that long without resupply.

Statistical Data:

Length: 980 feet (298.7 meters).

Height: 300 feet (91.4 meters).

Width: 340 feet (102.6 meters).

Mass/Weight: 496,000 Tons (450,000 metric tons).

Power System: Anti-Matter with a 25 year life span. The ship normally only goes 7 years between refueling and refitting. Backed up with emergency fusion plants.

Cargo: Can carry up to 100,000 tons (90,700 metric tons) of cargo in addition to crew’s supplies. Each enlisted crew member has a small locker for personal items and uniforms. Ship’s officers have more space for personal items. Most of the ship’s spaces are taken up by extra ammunition, armor, troops, weapons, engine, and other equipment.

Market Cost: Ship would cost about 6 billion credits to manufacture in present time in the Three Galaxies. Ships are no longer being produced. When available, these ships sell for 7 to 8.5 billion credits.

WEAPON SYSTEMS:

Eight (8) Point Defense 2 cm Lasers in Double Mounts: used as an anti-starfighter and missile weapon. Each laser turret can rotate 360 and has a 180 arc of fire. The weapon system cannot be used to engage targets while traveling at faster than light velocities.

Maximum Effective Range: 2.5 miles (4 km) miles through atmosphere and 250 miles (402.3 km) in space.

Mega-Damage: 2D6x10 M.D.

Rate of Fire: Equal to the combined hand to hand attacks of the gunner (usually 4 or 5).

Payload: Effectively Unlimited
Two (2) Long Range Missile Batteries: Missile has a top speed of Mach 20 in an atmosphere and in space has an acceleration of 8% of light per turn (faster than any starship.) Whether weapons can be shot down is calculated from the speed of target, launcher, and missile. When drive goes dead, missile will continue to travel in a straight line unless set to self destruct but has very low odds of hitting star ships (Great for hitting bases and planets because target does not move and missile, when unpowered, is at -25% to be detected.) Long range missiles do not have penalties to hit small targets unlike cruise missiles and are all considered smart missiles. Batteries can launch on multiple targets each at the same time. Batteries have a lower number of actual launchers than the modern CAF long range missile batteries and each individual launcher is slightly larger in size.

Maximum Effective Range: Long Range Missile range is 3,400 miles (5,470 km) in an atmosphere and 1,800,000 miles (2,897,000 km/9.7 light seconds) in space.

Mega-Damage & Properties: See revised Phase World / Three Galaxies missile tables for details (Fusion warheads inflict 2D4x100 M.D.C. each.)

Rate of Fire: Can fire missiles one at a time or in volleys of two (2), eight (8), sixteen (16), or twenty-four (24) per launcher, per melee attack.

Payload: 480 total, 240 long range missiles per launcher.
Six (6) Mini-Missile Launchers: These are missile turrets used for point defense against enemy fighters and missiles. Missile has a top speed of Mach 10 in an atmosphere and in space has an acceleration of 2% of light per turn (slightly faster than any starship except if it is exceeding it maximum safe acceleration.) Batteries can launch on multiple targets each at the same time.

Maximum Effective Range:: Mini-Missile range is 2 miles (3.2 km) in an atmosphere and 100 miles (161 km) in space.

Mega-Damage: Varies with mini-missile type (See revised Phase World / Three Galaxies missile tables for details.)

Rate of Fire: Can fire mini-missiles one at a time or in volleys of four (4) or eight (8) mini-missiles.

Payload: 128 per launcher for a total of 1,024 mini-missiles. Cargo hold has an additional 3,072 mini-missile. Reloading launchers from cargo hold takes 1D6 minutes.

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Writeup by Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune).

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