Layout
Going back to the traditional design philosophy for the layout, the decks of the Speaker are oriented perpendicular to the direction of thrust, unlike the Statesman, partly due to the removal of the artificial gravity system to save on cost.
Armor
Taking notes from the destruction of numerous Statesman ships from laser and missile attacks, the Speaker was designed to put as much armor in between the crew and incoming fire.
The Speaker is a well armored ship, it's armored layered to protect, first, the missile bay and second, the living quarters. This is done by layering the armor 'vertically', from bow to stern. This is due to the ship being designed to always be pointing its bow at the enemy. There are some compromises made, due to the Speaker's need to go long distances, holes for weapons, hangars, and windows, and it's overall large surface area. Armor is added around missile storage and firing areas, as well as the living areas.
Anti-Flash layer
Coating nearly every surface is an extremely thin anti-flash layer made up of a highly heat resistant layer of tungsten carbide and an undercoating of industrial diamond. This is intended to provide a high amount of protection against high instantaneous heat flashes from
nuclear weapons.
Anti-Laser Layer
A two meter layer of graphite impregnated aerogel is used throughout the ship for protection against laser attacks, with an extra deep layer added to the bow of the ship, reaching four meters on the prow. 4 cm layers are added internally in between sections of the missile storage sections.
Spaced Armor
Spaced armor is built throughout the Speaker, with emphasis in the bow, missile storage bays, and the outer layer of the living area. Additional armor and armored shutters were added on the interior facing sides of these areas. This would allow the ships to evacuate the rooms and seal them off during combat to use them as extra spaced armor.
Osmium and Amorphous Carbon internal layers with spall lining.
Much of the interior of the ship’s structural components and interior walls are made with layers of sandwiched Osmium, Amorphous Carbon, and internal spall liners to provide a level of protection in depth when the ship is struck by incoming attacks that get through the exterior.
CIC/Auxiliary Bridge
The ship’s CIC is located at the front of the living area, underneath the second ring of PDCs, with the auxiliary bridge located at the back, under the third ring of PDCs. Each area has enough workstations to support 20 people, a central Ops table to track weapon usage and deployment. Behind the Ops table are 3d displays and plotting tools for Navigation across from a table with 3d displays pertaining to ship readiness and repair status.
The rather spacious bridge is designed to allow for operation of the starship as well as conducting operations with a task force spread across multiple
star systems.
Living Areas
Due to having a smaller total crew complement than the Statesman, the crew has private, similarly sized accommodations, though not too much larger, due to a lot more of the systems of the ship being moved to the same drum as the living areas.
The ship has everything it needs to support a small city including ample supply stores, eating areas, a commissary, mail room, gyms, and lounges.
UG-301 2.5mm 'Sandblaster' Point Defense Coilguns
The Primary weapon system for dealing with threats close to the ship is the
UG-301 coilgun. The circular bank of coil guns near the front of the ship fire unguided, relatively fast, metal slugs with a high rate of fire.The small projectiles are well suited for destroying targets such as missiles and can chew through even heavy starship armor at close range very quickly. Due to the unguided nature of the weapons they are not very suitable for attacking targets on long range.
For more see:
UG-301
Missile Launch Ports
After two years of war between the Union and Magnetic Assembly, fleet commanders were tired of running out of missiles before their enemies. Not wanting to put too many holes in the ship's armor with launch cells, the designers instead created a magazine system to launch the standard 9m
ULA Anti-Ship Missile out of four ports placed on the Speaker's ventral, dorsal, and side armor at the rate of 2 missiles per second. With this system, the only limiting factor was the internal volume of the ship, with the Speaker standardizing at 512 missiles in the ready magazine, with further space for 1536 missiles being possible to fill forward of the magazine system, though at the expense of spacing armor.
The Union’s standard missile is padded heavily with a laser-resistant carbon material to make it reasonably protected against laser strikes. It is also equipped for remote guidance as well as a radar-based seeker for tracking a target on its own. These missiles are middle-sized when compared to the spectrum of anti-ship missiles, and have a decent combination of numbers, armor, and speed. Each missile could be equipped with a conventional or nuclear warhead. Typically they only use conventional warheads so as not to break the nuclear taboo.
Mk 23 Naval Bastille Frequency Generator
The Mk 23 Naval Bastille Frequency Generator is an Electronic Warfare Support system originally designed for naval ships that operated in and around civilian shipping lanes on
Earth. It was hardened for use in space after the loss of the
AUS Lord Palmerson in 2320 to Cyber-Attack so that
Statesmen class ships could be refit with new Electronic Warfare systems as fast as possible.
The system itself was originally designed for short range electronic attack, primarily to jam short range communication systems such as civilian wifi, cellular, and other data networks. The original intended use was for frigates near the coast to be able to safely overtake commercial shipping. While this makes the system somewhat useless in the extreme range combat of space, it does make the system suitable for suppressing communications on
starships that are about to be boarded. More importantly, it allows a ship to suppress and control the civilian grade equipment that might be brought onboard by the ship’s own crew. This helps maintain electronic security inside of the ship during operations.
The various sensor panels and wide-band emitters are installed near the ship's second ring of PDCs.
Small-Aperture Laser Optics
Laser Weaponry has normally not been a major focus for AU starships. While large laser weapons can dominate a battlefield, they tend to be large, easy to damage, need massive radiator systems, and need to remain far enough away from their targets to avoid return fire. This conflicts with the interdiction and protection role of the old Statesmen and Speaker starships, so its primary anti-starship weapons are more kinetic and missile based.
There is still a role for smaller laser weapons and the Speaker mounts 4 pairs of 4 meter laser optics on the front of the ship. These heat-ray style lasers are suitable for damaging optics and destroying small, fast, targets at range. Typically this means shooting down missiles, or destroying vulnerable equipment on enemy ships like optics, communication masts, and other sensors.
Medium-Aperture Laser Optics
Wanting a larger laser to give more time to kill on incoming missiles, but not be too large of a target to be easily destroyed by enemy lasers, the 8m aperture optic was a compromise made by the AU engineers. To lower the power draw and thus heat generation, the laser is a pulse design. Instead of continuously heating its target like the smaller lasers, the laser pulses effectively heat and cool their target. This leads to a variety of damaging effects, depending on the focus and duration of the pulses. Standard settings lead to the spalling and tearing the missile-sized targets' skin surface, rather than the relatively gradual ablation of smaller continuous lasers.
