Poseidon Class
From The Great Machine
The Poseidon-class Carrier is an Earthforce vessel designed to carry large numbers of Starfuries into ship-to-ship combat.
Note: According to wikipedia and elsewhere, the Poseidon class was created solely for the Babylon 5 Wars game. It remains unclear whether this class was ever featured on screen. See talk page for more details.
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Background
The Poseidon is the largest combat vessel in the Earthforce fleet, and carries 24 squadrons of fighters for a total of 288 craft. The sides of the vessel are mounted with eight enormous hangar modules, each holding three full squadrons. It was constructed by Rocketdyne, the same company to produce the Nova-class Dreadnaught and the Omega-class Destroyer.
History
During the Earth-Minbari War, Earthforce capital vessels had difficulty going toe-to-toe against Sharlin-class cruisers due to the far larger fighter-to-carrier ratio than themselves. The Minbari fighters could strike out against Earthforce vessels, soften up its defenses swiftly so that the capital vessel could bring its heavy weapons to bear.
The Poseidon was the answer to this. With heavy forward weapons, including two heavy beam weapons mounted to either side of the launch bay, it could throw dispersal fire out into a cloud of oncoming fighters long enough for its swarm of Starfuries to launch and enter the fray. During combat, it could prevent attacks by enemy fightercraft with the rows of light pulse cannons along its hull. The only thing that could easily take out a Poseidon was a battleship at close range. Once it became necessary for the Poseidon to exit the field, the ship would turn around and discourage any pursuers with four heavy beam weapons mounted to the engine module, a feature that was later used in the design of the Omega-class Destroyer.
With the Poseidon soon to be on the front lines alongside the other heavy guns such as the Nova-class Dreadnaught, the Earth fleet felt as though they had a fighting chance against the Minbari. Unfortunately, the Minbari destroyed the only two prototype Poseidon carriers at Rocketdyne's facilities at Neptune before they could be brought into service.
Specifications
- Type: Carrier
- Length: 2943.9m
- Mass: 127.4 million tonnes
- Crew: 1150
- Fighters: 288 Starfury fighter craft
- Power: 7 Fusion Reactors
- Duration: 12 months
- Weapons:
- 6 Heavy Particle Beams
- 4 Medium Particle Beams (2 front, mounted to the "hammer" / 4 aft, mounted to engine matrix)
- 16 Light Pulse Cannons
- Defense: 10 meter armoured hull - 36 Mk.II Defense Grid Energy Projectors
Status
Though too late to be of use in the Earth-Minbari War, the Poseidon is now widely produced. Its numbers are not as grand as was planned at the time of the war, due to the availability of the Omega-class Destroyer.
