GTSR101 Abronia Aurita Corvette

 Grand Terran Sovereign Republic (GTSR)

     When the Grand Terran Sovereign Republic took over, it was presented with a problem. Its new fleet consists of a wide range of vessels from the powers it had absorbed, across disparate technology bases, not of all of which it could sustain. In the short term, it implemented a policy of keeping fleets to their own former compositions, but moving them away from their home territories. This served the purpose of underlining the new unity of purpose and conveniently ensuring that no fleet would be facing off against former comrades. It was not a move without risk, as it substantially increased the supply lines for parts and spares particularly. But the abrupt and surprise nature of the transition of power cut off the former power’s peripheries from their own supply bases, which were largely more centralised. This more-or-less ensured there little punitive military action could be taken in the first few years.

      Nevertheless, from the outset, it was clear that the GTSR would need its own fleet, one standardised to its own new vessels. Almost immediately, all new hull construction for vessels of the absorbed powers was cancelled, and only replacements for the current standing fleets were maintained.

      That is it has only been three years between the GTSR’s emergence and the deployment of its first new vessels suggests that at least part of the design work was undertaken before the emergence itself.

      The GTSR appears to be taking a semi-modular approach to its ship design, building hulls and variants for different roles. This makes sense in light of the move to standardisation and unification of its forces and will allow fewer base hull designs to cover a wider range of roles. In general, this approach has some cost in generalisation over specialisation and is more often seen employed by powers with a more limited budget. But for a navy as potentially large as the GTSR’s, on many levels, quantity can somewhat substitute for quality, and moreover, the speed at which the various roles can be broadly covered is more important. We could thus expect to see more specialised designs some years or decades down the line.

      The Abronia is fairly large corvette and over three hundred meters, though perhaps a third of its length is the distinctive “tail-fluke.” The flukes appear modelled on those seem in fossil marine reptiles. Their function is obvious when looked at outside the visual spectrum: heat sinks, not unlike those used made by the various elenthnar powers, in a case of technological convergence.

      The GTSR fleet appears to be created from the sustainable elements of the composite technology base. Mating these somewhat disparate technologies to work together is no mean feat, though considerably easier with them all stemming from human technology, rather than alien. We can infer from the presence of these heat sinks that GTSR technology is probably being factory-overclocked to compensate for the conflicts, retaining performance at the cost a significant amount of waste heat and radiation. There is a further evidence that the “tail-flukes” also serve as communication masts, somewhat extending the range of GTSR communications systems.

      The Abronia has been seen in two variants – the Abronia Aurita and Abronia Graminea. Both are largely identical except for weapon load out.

                The Aurita is armed entirely with particle beams. Analysis of the weapons blister size, power emissions and substantiated by intercepted transmissions indicates that the primary weapons blisters (the dorsal blister and forward side blisters) consist of Soviet Remnant particle beams, which would suggest the battery has an output of 312TXq, and an estimated accuracy envelope of around 300 000km. The secondary weapons blisters appear to contain British Stellar Empire light particle beams, which indicates that these are still being produced by the GTSR. These grant a combined output of around 480Txq over an engagement sphere of 0.9Ym³.