Ship Designation: Arcturus-class

Ship Class: Fire Support Ship

Model Number: Mark 4

Full Designation: Arcturus 4-class Fire Support Ship

Armament: 6 Quad 75mm Fire-Linked Gatling Cannon Turrets (three top mounted and three bottom mounted), 4 Hailfire Rocket Launcher Turrets (two top, two bottom), 2 Dual-Linked Double Beam Machine Gun Turrets (one top, one bottom)

Description: When something absolutely, certainly and most definitely must die in a shower of overwhelming firepower, the Arcturus 4- class Fire Suppression Ship fills the role just fine. Armed with an absurd amount of weaponry for a ship of its size, this machine has an unsurprisingly slow movement speed. As a result, the Arcturus 4 mainly tends to act as a mobile defense platform designed to absolutely annihilate anything that gets a full broadside from it. Long, slender and having no defining features aside from its weaponry, this ship won’t be winning any beauty contests.

There is something to be said, however, for a machine built with a single purpose in mind. The main armament of this ship is its 6 Quad 75mm Fire-Linked Gatling Cannon turrets made from the ones stripped from the shield of the Gouf Custom. These have been repeatedly upgraded over the course of Arcadia’s history and fire the standard DEAP (Delayed Explosive, Armor Penetrating) shells covered in ‘Shield-Breaker Blue’ that all Arcadian kinetic weapons fire or the rare ‘Tremor’ shells when used to bombard from orbit.

Its other weapons include 4 Hailfire Rocket Launcher turrets that are capable of spewing an absolute crap-ton of dumb-fire rockets in the general direction of the enemy and 2 Dual Linked Double Beam Machine Gun turrets for extra firepower in those special moments. The engines of the Arcturus 4 are an improvement over the prior models and actually manage to put it up to speed with cruisers despite it effectively being a highly specialized battleship. Still, its ‘Achilles Heel’ is that it can only use its full power when issuing a broadside but, seeing as it is not supposed to enter an up-close slugging match with other ships, it isn’t much of a weakness.

Generally viewed as a solid machine that is a vast improvement over the Arcturus 3, a ship with no missile or energy weapons and only eight 175mm autocannon, the Arcturus 4 is used in the same way its predecessor was; it is towed into position or is stationed in precise areas and saturates anything that gets too close with absurd amounts of firepower.. This means that, while the newer model is indeed slower and arguably has less firepower, it fits its designated role more clearly. When facing numerically superior opponents (what are the odds of that?) or those with large amounts of strike craft, the Arcturus 4 can be either a flyswatter or a potent artillery platform, depending on the force it is facing. Remarkably, even the “small” 75mm shells can be a threat to much larger forces. Enough ant bites can slay a dragon, after all.

If the ship needs to bombard from orbit, its rocket launchers and beam machine guns are effectively useless, but the quad Gatling cannons can switch to the far denser ‘Tremor’ rounds to hit a foe not with a bunch of artillery explosions, but a rain of massive bullets.

The long and short of it is that this ship has a special role and it really shines in it. Just make sure to give it protection from things with longer range than itself and put it in situations where overwhelming short-medium range discriminate firepower or long-extreme range indiscriminate firepower is all that is needed.

Now, go drown the enemy in an ocean of shells, slugs, rockets and particle beams!