Drahk Raider (Babylon Five):
The Drahk were a minion race of the Shadows. Since the Shadows have left the Galaxy, the Drahk are homeless. The Drahk received a large amount of technology from the Shadows and are very dangerous. As a result, one of the most powerful ships in the Galaxy is the Drahk Raider. The ship has a similar performance to the Minbari / Ranger White Star class gunboats and two Drahk Raiders are the equal of a White Star in combat.
The ship is long and slender with five wings radiating out of the body of the ship in a star shape. The ship has a large engine at the rear.
The ship is built small enough to fight against fighters and in fact the skill Pilot Starfighter is used to pilot the Drahk Raider yet the ship is powerful enough to fight powerful capital ships.
A Single Drahk Raider has comparable firepower with the capital ships of most of the younger race and is more powerful than an Earth Destroyer or a Centauri Cruiser. In phase world, the ship is very powerful and while very small has more firepower than a CAF Warshield cruiser not including the cruisers missile launchers. The ships primary weapon is a Shadow Quantum Gravitic Discharge Beam for its primary weapon. This weapon is capable of destroying an Earth Force Cruiser with two shots. To support this, the ship has four fusion guns. These give the ship the ability to engage smaller targets and are quite power in their own right.
The hull of the Drahk Raider is a special Shadow organic material and can both repair itself and can adapt to attacks to reduce damage. No attack does full effect on the hull more than once. The Drahk Raider also has shields that consist of alternating gravimetric distortion waves and complex field of energy fields. These shields disburse any and all energy (including Kinetic) fired upon the Raider Star leaving only a fraction of the blast. These shields can be dropped by being hit by powerful weapons or can be dropped by multiple volleys from less powerful weapons. These shields are a product of shadow technology and are more powerful than shields would be if they were constructed by the Centauri or the Minbari before the introduction of Vorlon Technology.
The ships subspace propulsion is by Shadow Gravitic propulsion with Ion/Fusion Engines as well. The ship can use the Gravitic propusion to act as a tractor beam. While the ship does not have a jump engine, the ship can use jump gates to travel long distances. The Druak Raiders are also often supported from a much larger mothership that does have Jump Engines. This ship also acts as the Raiders support ship.
This ship also has special ECM copied from the Shadows as well that makes it very hard to detect and as a result also makes the ship a very hard target to strike.
Notes of game conversion:
For purposes of game balance, there are two different versions of the starship. One is designed with accelerations in terms of gravities (G) which can better interact better with other Babylon 5 ships such as Earth Force and the Narn military. The other is written to operate within the Three Galaxies and operated with Consortium and Kreeghor vessels.
Phase world version uses my revised phase world starship rules and can hold their own against most C.A.F and Kreeghor fighters. This version is recommended if you with to put them into Phase World as among equals. See Revised Starship Rules for Phase World / Three Galaxies for more details.
Moderate version uses Gs of acceleration but does not have reduced weapon ranges except for missiles. This version is useful for Mutants In Orbit, Phase World if used as a lower tech race, used with my Earth Force ships conversions for B-5, and as a possible crash on Rifts Earth. Listed is the formula to allow player and game masters to calculate the fighters velocity and distance traveled.
Velocity = Acceleration x Time + Initial Velocity
Distance Traveled = Acceleration x ½ x Time ² + Initial Velocity x Time
1 G = 32 feet (9.8 m) per second ²
Model: Drahk / Shadow Gun Ship
Crew: 20 (approximately)
Vehicles: None
M.D.C. by Location:
Shadow Quantum Gravitic Discharge Beam (1): |
3,000 |
|
Fusion Guns (4): |
600 each |
|
[1] Bridge: |
5,000 |
|
[2] Engines: |
6,000 |
|
[3] Main Body: |
30,000 |
|
[4] Variable Force Field: |
6,000 a side (36,000 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 armor. This ship does not has also has an auxiliary bridge. Even if the ship’s bridge is taken out, 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 ship FTL systems are destroyed and maximum sublight speed is reduced to one quarter of normal..
[3] Depleting the M.D.C. of the main body will put the Drahk Raider out of commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support and internal gravity. The ship itself will be an unsalvageable floating wreck. Both the hull and the ships systems have the ability to repair themselves. The ships hull and ships systems regenerate damage at the rate of 1D6x10 M.D.C. per minute. The ship can only repair up to half the total M.D.C. of a system or the main body.
[4] Shields positions can be varied and all could be combined in one shield. Shields regenerate at the rate of 5% (1,800 M.D.C.) per melee round
Speed:
Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.
Sublight:
Phase World Version: Has a special sublight engine that allows the ship to travel up to 60 percent of the speed of light. Star Ship can accelerate/decelerate at the rate of 1.4 percent of light per melee round.
Moderate Version: The Raider does not have an effective top speed but is limited by acceleration. The Raider can reach a top acceleration of 14 G but standard is 7 G to reduce stress on engines.
Atmospheric Propulsion: The Drahk Raider is an excellent atmospheric starship and can reach up to Mach 10 in an atmosphere.
Stardrive: The Drahk Raider does not have a jump drive but can use already formed jump points. If in Hyperspace, The Drahk Raider can reach a maximum of 85 lightyears per hour. This means that a Drahk Raider can cover the Galaxy in about 7 weeks. The ship enters hyperspace by means of a jumpgate.
Maximum Range: Effectively Unlimited by either drive system. Carries about one years worth of supplies on board
Statistical Data
Height: 197 feet (60 meters)
Length: 328.3 feet (100 meters)
Width:197 feet (60 meters)
Weight: 8,270 tons (7,500 metric tons)
Cargo: 400 tons
Power System: Shadow based Hyperspace Tap.
Cost: Unknown, any culture in the Three Galaxies would pay hundreds of billions of credits for an undamage working model of this ship.
Weapon Systems:
One (1) Shadow Quantum Gravitic Discharge Cannon: This weapon fires directly forward of the ship and is mounted in the nose of the starship. This weapon system functions by firing a beam of coherent gravity waves at a target, which disrupts the very molecules of the target at a quantum level. Any target area hit by the beam is literally torn apart at the subatomic level, reducing the affected area to a very hot cloud of quarks and mesons. This creates a beam that is extremely destructive and has the ability to destroy almost any target within one or two shots. This weapon does have standard penalties to use against small targets such as fighters. The ships engines cannot produce as much power as a White Star. This means the cannon cannot fire the full power shots that a White Star can fire. Due to the weapons nature, it does full damage to targets protected by the spell “Invulnerable to energy.” Author Note: The source on this weapon system lists the revised weapons range as 3 million km. It has been reduces to fit more with Palladium frameworks
Maximum Effective Range: 187 miles (300 km) in an atmosphere and 187,000 miles (300,000 km) in space.
Mega Damage: 6D6x1,000.
Rate of Fire: Once per melee (beam last for full melee)
Payload: Effectively Unlimited.
Four (2) Fusion Guns: The guns take high mass particles and compress them until they reach fusion. These particles are then fired in a beam. The weapons are mounted in the nose of the starship around the Shadow Hyperspace Fission Cannon and fire directly forward. The weapons do not have penalties to hit fighters and small targets. Author Note: The source on this weapon system lists the revised weapons range as 900,000 km. It has been reduces to fit more with Palladium frameworks. These weapons are not listed in the authors sources but were added to give the ship more firepower and the ability to engage small targets.
Maximum Effective Range: 56 miles (90 km) in an atmosphere and miles 56,000 miles (90,000 km) in space.
Mega Damage: 2D4x100 per fusion gun blast. All four fusion guns can fire together for a total of 8D4x100 and costs one attack.
Rate of fire: Equal to gunners hand to hand (Usually 4 or 5).
Payload: Effectively Unlimited.
Special Equipment:
Adaptive Hull: The hull of the Drahk Raider uses Shadow Bio-Armor and can adapt to attacks on it. Once a specific attack has been used against the ship, it will adapt to that attack and any such attack will only be at twenty percent effectiveness afterwards. Variable frequency weapons such as variable frequency lasers can be reset to do full damage once the attacker finds out about it. The adaptation takes about ten hours to be completed.
Advanced Sensors: The Drahk Raider has sensors that are derived from Shadow technology. They are capable of detecting and targeting both Shadow and Vorlon ships without any penalties. The sensors can also detect any ship using any non magical cloaking or ECM without penalties. This included the most advanced Earth or Centauri ECM. It includes all ECM systems used in the Three Galaxies, Rifts Earth, and other alternate universes.
ECM: The Drahk Raider is fitted with advanced ECM. While the ECM is copied from the shadows, the ECM is at about the technology level of the Minbari. This ECM is similar to the Minbari systems that prevented targeting systems from Earth Alliance ships from being able to lock on during the Minbari war against the Humans. This ECM prevents targeting systems from ships of the younger races with the exception of the Centauri and Minbari from being able to lock on. An attacker would be at -10 to strike the ship and only if within visual range (approximately 500 miles). Missiles would have a 90% chance of being unable to achieve a lock on target as well. Rifts Earth and Mutants in Orbit would be treated to be at the level of technology of most of the younger races. While not as advanced as the Minbari, the Centauri are more advance than other younger races. The Drahk Raider would have a very small signature but could be detected on sensors. The Centauri and Minbari would have penalties of -4 to strike beyond visual range. Missiles would also be more effective, at first engagement missiles would have a 60% chance of being unable to achieve a lock, the jamming could be fully adjusted for and the missile could achieve lock normally. Phase World, Macross 2, and Robotech sensors would be treated to be at the level of technology of the Minbari and Centauri. Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and Star Wars would also be treated to be at this level of technology. The sensors of the races of the First Ones would not suffer any penalties and would be able to strike normally. This included the Minbari / Ranger White Star as well.
Combat Bonuses: The Drahk Raider is very maneuverable and very accurate. For piloting, use the Phase World Starfighter combat (Elite or Basic) skill. These bonuses are in addition to those from the piloting skill.
+2 to initiative
+2 to strike.
+4 to dodge
+10% to all piloting skills
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Technical information sourced partially from Babylon 5 Technical Manual!
CGI of Ship by Mark Kane. More of his CGI pictures of B-5 Ships at G'Kane at Babylon 5.
Writeup by Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune).
Rifts Conversion Copyright © 1998, 1999, & 2013, Kitsune. All rights reserved.