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Thresher Class Heavy Cruiser

Length – 767 Meters
Displacement – 760,000 tons
Crew Complement – 343

Designed during the reign of Gregory Amaris, all-be-it in secret, the design was meant to equal any Hegemony cruiser in existence and during that period, it meant the Aegis class cruiser as well as the common and popular Dart class light cruiser.  But to appear compliant with the Star League’s wishes and not wanting to provoke them during the aftermath of the Reunification War the cruiser was never laid down and instead the design languished until Stefan Amaris came to power.

Laid down in the yards that had once produced the Pinto class corvette the Thresher design was altered quite radically.  In addition to Mech scale weapons being added for anti-fighter defences, the Cruisers armament was completely revised.  Unlike the Republic during the period leading up to the Reunification War, the Rim Worlds Republic now lacked the capacity to build the large number of focusing arrays and lenses needed for the original planned armament of large numbers of naval lasers.  Instead these were replaced with a greater number of hard hitting naval autocannons.  Cheaper to produce and easier to maintain, the autocannons were a natural fit. 
Long range firepower was provided by sixteen Killer Whale missiles, eight on each broadside and these missiles were often armed with nuclear warheads, making a barrage from a Thresher a threat to any vessel or station. 

The Olympus MG-2000 engines were bulky but powerful units, and could propel the Thresher in short sprints of up to 2.5g making them faster than the Aegis the ship was meant to equal.  Unfortunately, these engines were also exceptionally maintenance intensive and consumed fuel at a far higher rate than was expected.  The fuel tanks for the Thresher were also poorly placed making refuelling them a slow and drawn out process.
Like the Aegis class the Thresher had four dropship collars and berths for eighteen fighters as well as half a dozen small craft.
The hangers were placed well towards the stern of the ship, adjoining the engine section but this also made the Threshers exceptionally difficult to land fighters on.  Standard procedure was to bring the cruiser to a complete stop and let craft coming in to land come in backwards onto their waiting launch racks.
This was far from ideal and could not be done in combat and incidences of aerospace fighters crashing or suffering damage on landing were uncommonly high on the Thresher class.  The Threshers usually carried a full group of Vulcan fighters and this had its own problems.  The large amount of ammunition needed to ‘bomb up’ the Vulcan’s was stored in an armoured magazine near the hangar decks, which in turn was adjacent to one of the poorly placed fuel tanks for the thirsty engines and the area around the hangar magazines became a primary target and weak-point for the class.

Over a thousand tons of Ferro-Carbide armour gave the Threshers a sturdy hide equal to many SLDF Battlecruiser designs whilst heavy structural bracing made the hull capable of taking heavy damage, but also limited the grav-decks size and cargo capacity.  But this was not seen as a negative.  The Thresher was ostensibly designed to patrol and protect the Rim Worlds Republic and there was no need for a large cargo capacity for long range missions.  With the growing friendship between Stefan Amaris and First Lord Richard Cameron expanded and the ‘country bumpkin’ from the Periphery got more power and influence within the Terran Hegemony, Amaris used this to allow for a sub-class of the Thresher to be constructed.
With access to the vast industrial strength of the Hegemony and Corporate and Political leaders despairing of the mismanagement by Lord Richard, Amaris called in favours with Krupp’s to allow the purchase, at cost, of enough lasers to arm six Thresher class ships under construction with  enough lasers to complete the class as was originally designed.  Labelled the Tiger Shark class Battlecruiser they were seen as command ships and until the completion of the first Stefan Amaris class battleships, these ships were the pride and joy of the Rim Worlds Navy, acting as flagships despite the addition of several old Monsoon class ships from the Hegemony reserves, courtesy of the First Lord.

Twenty Threshers and four Tiger Sharks were complete by the start of the coup, the two part finished Tiger Shark’s formed part of the orbital defences around Apollo whilst the Threshers helped secure the Hegemony during the coup.  The battles for the Sol System were hard on the class, and four Threshers and one Tiger Shark were destroyed in the space battles for the Hegemony. 
One ship the RWS Perdition’s Flame was captured by the SLDF during the drive on Terra and the ship was repaired and took part in the final battles for the Hegemony, being lost to a nuclear missile strike in the battles over New Earth.  The last ship of the class the Tiger Shark RWS Stefan’s Audacity was in orbit over Terra herself and was thought to be a possible evacuation craft for ‘Emperor’ Amaris, her engines crippled the ship fell into the atmosphere and partially burned up, the ruined hulk splashing down in the Indian Ocean. 

Weapons

24 x Republic Type 42 ‘Thunder’ Medium Naval autocannons
12 x Republic Type 34 ‘Tremor’ Medium Naval Autocannons
16 x RAW-411 ‘Blue Streak’ Killer Whale heavy naval missile launch systems
8 x RAW-250 ‘Swingfire’ Barracuda interceptor naval missile launch systems
6 x Krupp’s Weapon Works Pattern 311 45cm Naval Lasers
32 x RAW ‘Starstreak’ Type 4a LRM-20 missile launch systems
16 x Stolz Harbinger 4a Particle Cannons
32 x Firefly Type 1a Small lasers

Sensors

Roe Systems MG-29-A Long range active and passive Radar/LIDAR array
Roe Systems HX671 Primary fire control systems with TW-100e ‘Bull Snort’ ECCM
Roe Systems Tangerine-004A Long and short range communications array
TW-801a ‘Bull Roar’ Active multi-frequency ECM.

Aerospace Complement.

18 x Fighters
6 x Small Craft
4 x DropShip docking collars.