One of the most well balanced dreadnought battleships of the post-Shanxi Treaty era. The Lord Nelson class is a testatment to the Federation industrial capabilities. The major advantages of these ships over their predecessors are the significant increase in protection, augmented by an improved kinetic barrier system with numerous bow mounted mass accelerators. Though outclassed by other foreign dreadnoughts in terms of physical protection, the ship's powerful main guns combined with their high level of redundancy enabled them to maintain a well robust survivability trait inherited from previous designs.
Armaments[]
- 48cm Hi-Density Laser Cannons
The mainstay shipboard laser weapons for the Terran Federation ships before the introduction of MACs. The Lord Nelson's main battery is subdivided into two 8-guns compartments. Although slated for conversion to a MAC design of similar caliber, many captains preferred the laser cannons for its superb rate of fire and accuracy compared to the newly developed MACs even if it meant less effective against ships with heavier anti-laser ablative coatings
- Triple-linked 203mm Morita Type 99 Dual Purpose Laser Turrets
The secondary weapons of the St. Andrew class are 48 high density laser cannons mounted in 16 triple turrets, these guns are the same types used on many post-Treaty Terran cruisers and possess same level of firepower, but with lighter construction and shortened barrels for weight saving measures.
- Twin-linked 152mm Morita Mark 12 CIWS Autocannons
These 152mm autocannons are used for close-range defense against smaller strike crafts. Because these are shell-firing machine cannons, they do not rely on the generator, thus these guns can achieve a high rate of fire. They also have the shortest range of all the ship's armaments, and due to their lack of penetration against larger warships, they were primarily used for shooting down light armored targets or missiles.
- Micro Missile Launchers
A small type of guided ordnance used on Federation warships and starfighters, these missiles are smaller than their 21st Century counterparts but pack much more powerful High-Explosive Warheads.
The advancements in technology have enabled smaller missiles with less than 25cm diameter which in turn, enabled fighters to carry more missiles for their internal ordnance bay. These missiles use a large variety of payloads, from nuclear weapons to dummy rockets.
- Large Disruptor Torpedo Tubes
A type of mass-effect based ordnance developed after the Third Bugs War by the Alliance. Disruptor torpedo uses mass effect technology to create an intense space-time distortion in or near the target. The gravitational forces produced by the distortion tear the target apart. Some types of disruptor torpedo are fired in pairs, detonating with precise timing to amplify the effects of the space-time distortions.
Disruptor torpedoes commonly use mass effect fields to increase their mass prior to impact, somehow allowing them to defeat a target’s kinetic barriers, but also decreasing the torpedo’s acceleration.
In most cases, Because of the point defense weapons used by most warships, disruptor torpedos must be launched from very close range to be effective. Consequently, they are only installed on starfighters and frigates.
Federation dreadnoughts are exempt from this due to their penchant of using larger ordnances on capital ships in prev. classes to bolster their main battery firepower.
Description[]
The Lord Nelson class was designed to operate in tandem with the two smaller fast battleship designs, St. Andrew and Amagi class. With the assistance of Turian engineers, the Federation were able to produce larger battleships while still be able to retain a low operation expediture. In an effort to design a superior ship compared to the Skinnies and Alliance vessels in service, the ship was armed with up to sixteen 48cm guns with cruising speed faster than contemporary Turian Dreadnoughts to be able to operate in a mobile battle fleet.
Initial plan for the type was to use twelve Elanus 51cm guns (same armaments as the Amagi and St.Andrew), however, the Federation opted to use the smaller 48cm guns as a preferrence for rate of fire and redundancy over firepower and accuracy. Early production vessels were mounted with high density laser cannons, as the 48cm MACs are not yet ready. However these were later upgraded to MACs in an effort to standardize Federation's Naval arsenals. Vessels used as Command Battleships are typically augmented with centralized targeting computers and improved passive sensors.
Despite its larger size, a single Lord Nelson cost less to produce compared to an Amagi-class or a Saint Andrew-class Fast Battleship, this is due to their simpler multi-layered composite armor schemes and the adaptability to use older equipments. Thought faster and superior to older Federation and Petolemaic battleships in service, the type's construction layout is generally regarded as somewhat old-fashioned as Cherenkov shipyards adherently stick with more traditional construction methods when designing these ships.
Unlike contemporary Federation Fast battleships, the engines of the Lord Nelson class is divided into two forward separate nacelles, which four high output thrusters each. While this arrangement is more inefficient than the sleeker Fast Battleship types, the high performance engines enabled these ships, despite their heavier weight and larger size, to be able to operate in a mobile battleship division or escort fleet carriers in carrier division if needed.
Marshal Ney Command Battleship variant and specifications[]
The Marshal Ney variant is a modification of the standard Lord Nelson type. The first ship of the class, Marshal Ney was originally built out of the left-over prototype hulls and surplus materials of the Lord Nelson class, she was intended for the role of squadron command ship and for specialized Linebreaker missions. This requires modifications beyond the mandatory addition of communications and command and control equipment.
For this role she received extensive modifications, most notably in her bow section and superstructure. The standard 48cm cannons were removed and a new 8-guns 53cm hi-density laser battery was instead installed on the ventral section of the hull. However due to the insufficient output of the generators, her guns did not have enough supply and thus resulted in shorter firing range compared to her standard counterparts. Furthermore due to larger energy demand, she required more space for energy reactors to power the main weapons, reducing the storage of propellants onboard, making her endurance shorter than mass production battleships of Lord Nelson and Saint Andrew types.
TFS Marshal Ney and her sisterships Marshal Soult, Almirante Latorre, Almirante Cochrane, Kanuni Sultan Suleiman and Hayreddin Barbarossa are essentially part of an experimental program within the Modernization Plan of the Federation Fleet. Its goal was to create better and stronger variant of already solid standard dreadnought designs intended to be used as squadron command flagships. While Marshal Ney firepower was more powerful than other standard battleship and her frontal shielding equal in strength to that of an Izumo class superdreadnought, her conversion was expensive and rather unfit for long range engagement which typically took place in the two Batarian Wars.
In the end, the Federation cost-benefit analysis of this program of modifying standard dreadnought patterns to function as squadron flagships ultimately conclude that these improvements are only marginally better than the baseline design compared to the cost to convert them so the program was cancelled after only 6 ships were completed.