Sketches – Ibizan Heavy Cruiser

Built as a replacement for the Canne-Class Heavy Cruiser, the Seraphaid-Class was a recognition of the changing nature of combat. The era of the heavy cruiser being the standard combatant of the fleet was rapidly coming to a close, as larger weapons and more robust defenses demanded more space than the hull could provide. While the Alhambra and King Phillip classes of battlecruiser took the front line, it was decided to redesign the Canne into a more general combatant (and thus replace the now completely obsolescent Ferdinand-Class destroyer, which found its way to reclamation yards in short order).

The the new design, named “Seraphaid” was a fairly light rebuild. All of her original kinetic coilguns were removed; three of them were replaced with more compact and advanced models, while a trio of charged energy projectors were mounted in place of the other three. The design retained a pair of point defense mounts; the designers pointed out that combat data indicated that more was required, but extra space could not be found in the hull. Instead, the armor belt was doubled, giving a slight improvement in combat survivability.

The Royal Ibizan Admiralty wasn’t pleased with the design. They had been promised a more powerful combat ship, one that enough point defenses to be a credible threat to the growing numbers of small craft. Unfortunately, the Admiralty had demanded a design that was on par with a modern deWulf cruiser, and those were both more advanced technologically and featured a slightly larger hull. Both of these factors combined ensured that the Seraphid would not be an equivalent unit. Still, the Kingdom of Ibiza was growing closer and closer to the deWulf Corporate council, and that opened the doors to more and more technology transfers. It is expected that a new “Seraphaid II” design will correct at least some of its shortcomings.

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The Seraphaid is one of those intermediary designs. As the Ibizans move their large combat platform to the battlecruiser hull (and start equipping those with capital kinetics), the role of general combatant and flanking unit has devolved to the heavy cruiser. Unfortunately Ibizan tech just can’t quite get a hull that does everything the want (and the weapons mix of energy beams and kinetics don’t make it any easier). Drawing this was pretty simple as you’d imagine. It is just a rebuild of the standard Canne heavy cruiser, and it was more or less just a quick design check to make sure that spacing everything out would look alright.