Well, it’s been a while since my last post. I followed chuck_starchasers advice and it worked out pretty well, so thank you. I made a few modifications to the model, most notably new warp nacelles and SARFs (more on that later). I took some more pics and thought it would be nice if I actually explained what this ship is. So I hereby proudly present:
Corona class Tactical Interceptor:
The Corona class Tactical Interceptor is a hybrid based on Federation and Kendjarr (don’t bother searching the web, the Kendjarr is a race I came up with during lunch and I’ll be really surprised if they already exist.) technology and was secretly build in a small dock in the middle of the Utopia Planitia Shipyard (no one will look for a state of the art, top secret ship in the middle of the busiest shipyard of the Federation.)
Tactical Interceptor means that it is meant to take out specific targets during large battles. It comes in real fast (warp as a minimum) and stops at point-blank range in a blind spot of the target and lets rip with every gun it has. This can be a real morale buster if it does this to the flagship of an enemy fleet.
The Corona is based around two principles, firepower and speed. Everything else is sacrificed for that. So it’s shields are quite weak, but it isn’t supposed to stay around for very long anyway.
The firepower consists of several small phaser arrays on the saucer, none on the engineering hulls or the neck. The phaser arrays are class X and also equipped with overload capacitors. (This enables the Corona to charge up one huge phaser blast. It looks pretty similar to a normal phaser shot, but the two points of light are being followed by more points of lights like the wagons of a train and they converge in the middle as a really big ball of light before firing. This takes a while. Rather useless but sounds cool.)
It also carries two quantum torpedo launchers underneath the saucer. (hey, if the Defiant can have those, then why not a top secret super ship?)
The last two guns are the two Solid Beam Cannons placed on the inside of the two *teeth* at the front of the saucer. (Solid Beams are a Kendjarr technology and are basically the same as phasers, disruptors and all those other nice energy weapons, but the beams are more powerful, purple and also provide a PHYSICAL force against the target. Not just hot cutting beam of death, no this is hot sledgehammer cutting beam of death.
)
It also has an indirect offensive weapon, the SARFs (Sublight Automated Replicated Fighter)
These are placed on the saucer and are the main reason why the Corona carries several small phaser arrays instead of one large. (the real reason is that my attempts at one large didn’t work out, but this sounds cooler). While incapable of warp flight, they are very dangerous during battles fought at slower than light speeds. They are the size of a big shuttle but, since they don’t need all those fancy systems that keep an organic pilot in one piece, they have better armour, better weapons and are generally more manoeuvrable. (higher reaction speed) And the biggest advantage is that they can be replicated.
Now defense. The Corona has the usual Federation bubble shield and something called adaptive armour. (This is NOT like the Borg. You can adapt to a phaser nicely, but that Klingon disruptor is going to cut through it like paper. In short, you can adapt to one thing or several things if you are lucky, but not everything at once.) The shields are pretty weak though, but as I said, it is supposed to warp in, blow things up and warp out.
Now, engines. The Corona has got four fancy green impulse engines (two on the saucer’s neck, two on the engineering hulls) It also has got two warp cores and four warp nacelles. The Corona is capable of achieving slightly above average speeds but can maintain maximum warp longer than most ships because it can use one pair of nacelles and switch over to the other pair when the stress gets too high. The real use of the Warp nacelles is the Starglide system. (The upper nacelles will work together with the lower nacelles to create two vertical waves on which the ship will *surf*. Not as fast as Borg transwarp, but it comes pretty close and can be maintained for ten hours.)
That’s just about it for the exterior. Now the Interior. The Corona has got five crewmembers including the captain and is highly automated. The seats on the bridge have got seatbelts and something I call a psylink which allows the crew to control the ship with their minds. It has nice facilities for the crew, no room for passengers, a small cargo bay, one hangar that can replicate shuttles and no personal transporters (Kendjarr have got this religious fear for being taken apart and reassembled somewhere else).
And since a ship isn’t complete without a cloak and I think I read somewhere that the Federation isn’t allowed to have a cloak I came up with a not so sneaky solution. Instead of the gravity bubble used by the Romulans, the Corona makes use of tons of different systems which includes some hologram emitters on the hull to become invisible or pretend to be another ship (such as an Intrepid). While not as effective against high power scans as a Romulan cloak, it is pretty decent.
Well that wraps it up I guess, time for the pictures.
Here’s a view of the Corona in all its glory, notice the two SARFs on the saucer, there are two more on the bottom.
A pic of the front. This shows the three navigational deflectors.
The side, not much to say about this one.
And a view from the rear, giving you a nice view of its unconventional impulse placement.
And here’s a close-up of one of the SARFs. I have to admit the colouring went a bit wrong, but you won’t see that if you look from further away.