Drazi Sun-Hawk (Babylon Five):

While the Drazi are not as advanced as the Earth Alliance, their ships are still well constructed and can be very effective combatants withing their limits. The Drazi also do not have the economy for a large fleet or expensive starships so they must built low cost ships. The Drazi Sun-Hawk is a good example of their ships. It is rugged, well armed, and relatively fast. It is capable of hurting true capital ships and is capable of destroying starfighters and in fact is almost as maneuverable as starfighters. The ship has become an export model for the Drazi because several races have expressed an interest in the ship. The Drazi Sunhawk is also referred to as a War Bird.

The ship only has light armor due to the ships size and the ship cannot take as much abuse as true capital ships. This means that many of the heavy weapon such as the Ion Cannons or Pulse Cannons can destroy the Drazi Sun Hawk within half a minute or less. The ship still carries enough armor that it can withstand attacks from fighters quite well.

The ship uses a Modular fusion reactor for power, this allows the reactor to be repaired quickly and it makes it easier to repair in many cases as well. The ships thrust is provided by a relatively simple plasma drive. The ship does not have a jump drive due to cost and uses jump gates for the ships travel.

The Drazi Sun-Hawk is well armed for its size. Its main weapon are four plasma guns. The weapons are either a copy of Narn Systems or a derivative of Centauri system. It is suspect that the first is the case because the Narn have sold their systems to a great many different groups. For point defense, the Drazi has four particle beams. There is a good chance that these weapon are copied from Narn systems as well. The ship has missile launchers that are designed to be used against both capital ships and fighters.

Like most of the ships of the younger races, These ships do not have artificial gravity and crews can only serve in the ships for limited periods of time or crew will suffer from the effects of no gravity.

Listed is the formula to allow player and game masters to calculate the Sun-Hawks velocity and distance traveled:

Model: Drazi Sun-Hawk class Gunboat.
Class: Gun Ship
Crew: 20 (2 Officers and 18 Enlisted)
Vehicles: None

M.D.C. by Location:

	Plasma cannons (4):	500 each
	Particle Guns (4):	225 each
	Long Range Missile Battery:	500
	[1] Plasma Engine:	2,000
	[2] Bridge:	2,200
	[3] Main Body:	8,000
	Wings (2):	1,000 each

Notes:
[1] Destroying the Plasma Engine means that the maximum sublight acceleration is reduced to ten percent of normal (using navigational thrusters).
[2] In reality this is how much damage needs to be done for a weapon to hit the bridge through the ship’s armor. The ship does not have an auxiliary bridge. Even if the ship’s 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.
[3] Depleting the M.D.C. of the main body will put the Gun Ship out of commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support and internal gravity. The ship itself will be an unsalvageable floating wreck.

Speed:
Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.
Space Propulsion: The starship does not have an effective top speed but is limited by acceleration. The Drazi Sun-Hawk can reach a top acceleration of 5 G but due to high fuel consumption and extra strain on the engines, the ship will normally travel at 1 G for any extended trips. Top acceleration is only meant for emergencies and combat maneuvers.
Because the Gunboat is mostly unshielded from the effects of radiation and hypervelocity atomic particles (It is not completely unshielded), the ship is not operated at speeds exceeding 20% of the speed of light.
Atmospheric Propulsion: The Drazi Sun-Hawk can operate within an atmosphere but the ship is normally limited to around Mach 2 except when escaping the planets gravity. The ship can reach escape velocity to do this
Stardrive: The ship does not have a jump drive but can use already formed jump points such as those formed by jump gates. While in hyperspace, the ship to reach a maximum of 6.5 lightyears per hour. This means that the Drazi Sun Hawk can cover the Galaxy in about 18 month (will need to refuel periodically and the Drazi rarely have these ships travel that far).
Maximum Range: Conditionally unlimited, while the fusion reactor gives power for three years of service, the ships propulsion is limited by the ships reaction mass. The ship can be refueled at ground based facilities, space stations, and other star ships as long as they have the special facilities. The ship can also be refueled by fuel shuttles. The Sun Hawk carries six weeks of reaction mass for travel at 1 G of acceleration. Double the consumption of fuel for every 1.0 G of acceleration beyond 1 G. This means the ship will burn the fuel 8 times faster than at maximum speed as it does at 1 G of acceleration. The ship will often accelerate for a period of time and then shut down the engine and travel using the ships velocity. If the ships uses more than half of its reaction mass when accelerating, the ship will be unable to decelerate fully and the ship will normally only use a third or less of its fuel on accelerating so it does not run into a problem.. If the ship runs out of fuel then it must be refueled by another vehicle traveling faster or be lost.

Statistical Data
Height: 216.4 feet (65.9 meters)
Length: 591 feet (180 meters)
Width: 409.8 feet (124.8 meters)
Weight/Mass: 7616 million tons (6,907 metric tons)
Power System: Fusion Reactor (3 year duration). Also, the ship only carries about a six week supply of reaction mass.
Cargo: 400 tons
Cost: 650 million credits to construct

Weapon Systems:

Plasma Cannons (4): As the ships main anti capital ship weapon, the ship has four plasma cannons. For a ship this small, the four plasma cannons weapons make a powerful weapon that is capable of hurting ships much larger than it. These weapons are mounted forward in the ships wings and have a 30 degree arc of fire. These weapons have standard penalties to hit small targets such as fighters and cannons can each fire individually or together. Author Note: The source on this weapon system lists the weapons range as 100,000 km. It has been reduces to fit more with Palladium frameworks
Mega Damage: 1D4x100 per cannon (4D4x100 for all four cannons)
Maximum Effective Range: 6.2 miles (10 km) in an atmosphere and 621.8 miles (10,000 km) in space.
Rate of Fire: Three Times per melee round per cannon.
Payload: Effectively Unlimited.
Particle Guns (4): These guns fire bursts of atomic particles at close to the speed of light. They are very effective against fighters but are not as effective against larger ships. Each mount has a 360 degree rotation and 180 degree arc of fire.
Mega Damage: 3D6x10 per cannon
Maximum Effective Range: 6.2 miles (10 km) in an atmosphere and 621.8 miles (1,000 km) in space.
Rate of Fire: Equal to gunners hand to hand (Usually 4 or 5).
Payload: Effectively Unlimited.
Long Range Missile Batteries: This ship has twenty individual cells to launch long range missiles. These launcher are both used to launch anti-ship strikes and to launch against starfighters. Missile are assumed to accelerate at 2 times normal mach speed in Gs greater than the starships speed when used in space. Missiles can be launched at non moving targets beyond the powered range of the missiles to hit targets without the chance of the launching ship being hit by missiles itself. Each of these launchers can be targeted and fired at multiple targets. The missiles normally used are Smart Missiles.
Mega-Damage: varies with missile type (Go to revised bomb and missile tables for details.)
Maximum Effective Range: varies with missile type, long range missiles (Go to revised bomb and missile tables for details - Powered range is x 8 in space).
Rate of Fire: One at a time, or volleys of 2, 5, 10, or 20.
Payload: 4 reloads per launch tube for a total payload of 100 long range missiles.

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Technical information sourced partially from Babylon 5 Technical Manual!

CGI of Ship by Craig P. Condu . More of his CGI pictures of B-5 Ships at Epsilon Jumpgate.

Writeup by by Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune).

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