Glaive class patrol cruiser

The Glaive class is a heavily modified form of the Imperial Kinunir class? cruiser. The Kinunir class was not well received, being regarded as trying to fulfil too many roles, and not doing any of them well enough to be useful. Within an organisation the size of the Imperial Navy?, this is a valid criticism, although it was noted that the Kinunirs did find a niche in patrol/policing duties in remote systems far from Imperial naval squadrons. Yard 17?, the most successful of the shipyards that built ships of the Kinunir class decided that there might be a market for a cheaper and lower tech derivative of the basic concept that could be sold to planetary navies within the Imperium? and also to client states outside it.

For these states, a 1,200 dT ship would be a significant asset in their fleets, rather than an escort to much larger ships.

The envisaged roles for the Glaive class were:

• System Patrols - the ship therefore needed to be fast enough to catch most raiders and carry enough firepower to overwhelm them.
• Police or counter-insurgency actions - the ship therefore needed to carry marines for ground or boarding actions.
• Fleet flagship for smaller navies - so capable of reasonable jump performance and with fleet command capabilities.
• Deep-space patrols - so able to operate away from maintained bases for a significant period of time.

The design parameters that were set were:

• Cost no more than 500 Mcr
• Tech level no higher than 12 to allow for local maintenance (this limited jump performance to 3, which has the unfortunate issue of meaning that they can't form part of Imperial taskforces)
• Carry a squad of 30 marines for boarding or ground actions (with pinnace and drop-pods for deployment)
• Sufficient firepower to overwhelm commerce raiders or a typical pirate vessel
• Able to land in normal atmospheres, either as a show of force, or in order to ocean-refuel

To keep the costs within the stringent parameters set, some compromises were made to the base ship, which can be rectified during building but at a significantly increased cost. This includes hardening of key components and replacing the cost-saving dual-turret mounts with triple-turret mounts.

Purchase Cost: MCr 502 Maintenance Cost: Cr 41,835/month

Power Requirements Available Power: 900

Crew: Captain Pilot x 3 Astrogator Engineer x 6 Maintenance x 1 Gunner x 20 Stewards x 1 Administrator x 1 Officer x 3