Nemesis-class Deep Space Fleet Engagement Vessel

The Nemesis-class was a class of nine Deep Space Fleet Engagement Vessels ordered by the United Earth Confederacy in the late 2780s CE. They were designed to intercept and destroy the dreadnaught Chariots of the Compact of Species. One vessel, UECNS Nemesis, was completed, while two others were laid down following the successful fleet trials of Nemesis; however, construction would never be finished on these vessels, with one, UECNS Athena, being destroyed during the first Battle of Sol by scuttling charges, and the other, UECNS Hekate, being destroyed during testing after capture by the Compact. Six more were planned, but due to a shortage of titan-scale military shipyards, never left the drawing board before the end of the Compact-Confederacy War.

The Nemesis-class were the first true dreadnaughts designed and built by the Confederacy, and were remarkable for their use of a stable artificial intelligence, breach core and displacement engine in their design; these innovations have not yet been replicated by any other naval force in the known galaxy.

Design
The technological gap between the Compact and Confederacy's armaments technology was evident during the early stages of the Compact-Confederacy War, but as larger and more powerful vessels of the Compact continued to arrive to reinforce the Expansion Fleets, it became obvious to the Confederate Admiralty that, without a paradigm shift in naval combat, human technology would not catch up to that of the Compact before the entire Confederacy was overrun.

Their solution was a new class of warships, of the same scale as the Compact's Chariots, but incorporating an artificial intelligence, with weapons and power systems only it could control. Using an AI by itself provided a massive advantage in electronic warfare, with it being able to take over command of enemy ships within real-time communications range, and also provided a large tactical advantage, as an AI could process battlefield information and predictively model enemy movements far faster than an unaugmented organic captain could. However, it was three other major systems that necessitated the use of an AI in the class: the breach core, displacement engine, and guided mass drivers.

The breach core and displacement engine required an AI to oversee their function, as even the best Confederate expert computer systems were unable to react fast enough to prevent the systems from losing control of the ongoing shockspace breach. The result of one of these systems going out of control is best described as "apocalyptic," as the Compact would find out when the displacement engine aboard UECNS Hekate misfired, destroying the hulk and "unravelling" the moon it was orbiting around.

The meteor cannons mostly made use of the AI's increased processing power over previous computers, as its AI-assisted guidance systems were far beyond anything else the Confederacy had access to (and even exceeded those of the Compact). The missile systems aboard the Nemesis class were also far more numerous and of the largest size ever built by the Confederacy, to make further use of the AI guidance.

The class also included energy and projectile weapons on par with those of the Compact's best, though this was not through any particular technological advances. Rather, the best the Confederacy had was simply scaled up, resulting in a lower number of weapons than its Compact equivalent. This technique was also used on the Ifrit-class battleships, but was even more prevalent on the Nemesis-class as the breach core's power output so massively exceeded every other type of shipborne power system, allowing for truly monstrous power allocation to weapon systems.

It was hoped that these innovations would provide the Nemesis-class (and future classes of capital ship) enough of an edge over equivalent-sized Compact vessels that the inferiority of Confederate armour, shields and conventional weapons would be essentially nullified.

It is likely that the Confederacy would have mounted AI, breach cores and meteor cannon to a large variety of ship classes, much as Red One would do almost two millennia later in her own designs. While this would not have prevented the Confederacy's fall against the Compact's superior numbers, it may have slowed it down and allowed the exodus ships to escape from the Compact much more easily. In any case, the war ended in a Compact victory before any further classes could be put into production.

General characteristics
The placement of the primary armament necessitated a long, drawn out hull plan, resembling a broadsword in profile, which has a cross section of an irregular octagon. Three "jaws" cover the exit point of the displacement engine's beam, and open up to reveal it. These prevent damage to the displacement engine's inner workings and the breach core, much further down the ship, when it is not in use. Each meteor cannon is positioned in between each of the jaws, with other smaller weapons clustered around them, as well as within each jaw in small numbers. Other weaponry is either mounted within turrets, fires through ports in the hull or in the case of the missiles, held within silos.

Ukonvasara Mass Drivers
These three meteor cannons fired antimatter rounds roughly the size of a corvette at .72c, and also include their own distortion drive, allowing the round to loop back on a target after a wide miss. The antimatter charge doubles as fuel for the reactor powering this drive. In the event of a near-miss, the reactor is deliberately overloaded, causing the containment of the antimatter to be lost. The resulting explosion is enough to fry every sensor looking in its direction and break the shields of nearby vessels. The weapon is also capable of firing at extreme ranges; in the opening of its engagement with Expansion Fleet Bankala, Nemesis fired upon the hostile vessels at a distance of 97 million kilometers, far outside the ranges for even the best Compact weaponry.

Displacement Engine
The displacement engine utilizes an elongated shockspace breach, extended from the prow of the vessel as a weapon. The resulting beam is several meters wide, and is controlled through emitters on the inside of the trifurcations of the vessel, which open like the petals of a flower when the weapon is in operation. The nature of shockspace as a higher-dimensional plane means that there is no armour or protection system in the galaxy capable of blocking the beam, as targets that pass through the centre of it are simply erased from existence. Those further towards its edge face the arguably worse fate of being attemptedly re-formed into shapes that cannot physically exist in our dimension. The massive amount of energy released from the beam's edges is also powerful enough to destroy smaller vessels all by itself, and on larger vessels practically cores them from end to end as a result of its release all along the penetrating beam.

In its original form, the displacement engine was more of a last-ditch weapon than a primary weapon. The formation of the shockpoint is performed using the vessel's breach core, meaning that to use the displacement engine, the breach core cannot function as a power source. This leaves the vessel's remaining systems to run entirely on secondary reactors. There was also an amount of collateral damage to the vessel's systems as a result of firing.

Breach core
The primary power system aboard the Nemesis-class is the breach core. This uses a device based on a shock core to create a shockpoint inside the vessel, encased within multi-layered forcefields and held by emitters similar to that used by the displacement engine. The chained down shockpoint's energy is absorbed by the fields and used to power the ship. The shockpoint is essentially a limitless power source, with the actual main limit on power generation being the rate it can be absorbed and transferred.

Propulsion
Nemesis-class vessels use distortion drives as their main method of propulsion.

Production
The ships of the Nemesis-class were constructed at the Lunar Prime Naval Shipyard, with estimated time to completion being approximately seven months each. Nemesis herself was produced as the prototype for the class, with Hekate and Athena laid down approximately four months after Nemesis ' launch. Production speed was limited by the available berth space and rate of production of raw resources due to the sheer size of the class, but was primarily bottlenecked by the construction of the advanced systems that the ships were built around.

Had the Confederacy survived, it is likely it would have seen an economic collapse soon after the launch of further dreadnaught-scale ships, as the massive amount of material required to produce even one ship of this scale was enough to do the same to nations of similar sizes. However, the Admiralty judged this to be preferable to capitulation (and the likely retribution that would follow for standing up against the Compact), and so the construction of three Nemesis-class ships was authorised, followed by an order for another six, with designs being drawn up for further classes to accompany them.

Hekate and Athena, due to the limits on production speed, would never see combat; both would still be in their berths at Lunar Prime when the Compact arrived in Sol. It is known that their AI, breach cores, and displacement engines were fitted at their time of capture, but without primary or maneuvering thrusters and lacking secondary weapons, they were unable to leave the shipyard under their own power or take part in the fighting.

Nemesis (Active)
Ship-self of Red One. Destroyed Compact Chariot CSFWV Bringer of Light in an engagement between Task Force 97 and Expansion Fleet Bankala. Survived the destruction of the Confederacy. Prevented destruction of the exodus fleet that would go on to form Rally. Solely under the control of Red One, fought a guerilla war against the Compact for almost 2000 years. Refitted and rebuilt extensively over this period, to the point of being effectively a different class with the same hull plan and primary systems layout. Prevented major attack against the Askanj Principality by destroying the core vessels assigned to the Compact's Operation Sundial.

Hekate (Destroyed)
Ship-self of Red Two, assigned Captain Carl Holden. Captured by Compact Janissary teams after Red Two was hit by a mindkiller device, severing command links to scuttling charges. The AI was removed for reprogramming (eventually becoming Echo), with the hulk being used for testing and reverse-engineering of the breach core and displacement engine. During a displacement engine test without an AI overseeing its function, the hulk destroyed both itself, the research station assigned to it and the moon it was orbiting, preventing useful information on any of its most advanced components from being learned by the Compact.

Athena (Destroyed)
Ship-self of Red Three, assigned Captain Jolene Archer. Destroyed by scuttling charges to prevent its capture during the first Battle of Sol after being boarded by Compact Janissary teams.

Oya, Andarta, Andraste, Bastet, Pele, and Menhit
The planned final six ships of the class. None left the planning stages before the end of the war, as the construction of further ships would have to wait until either Hekate and Athena were launched or more titan-scale yards were built at Lunar Prime, both of which were precluded by the Compact's arrival in Sol.

NOTE - ship specs are derived from rough specifications given during the original TLA thread and may not be entirely accurate (either due to retconning or mistaking of information) e.g some weapons or systems listed there have never been mentioned since, and the original sextuple meteor cannon arrangement has been reduced to triple.