The Imperial Navy is the biggest user
of Couriers in known space. In fact, 78% of all Navy missions are performed
by only one spacecraft, the Courier. This is an unique situation never
before encountered in the history of man's military forces.
The Imperial Navy operates 5,501 Couriers (3298). The Imperial
Courier, along with the Osprey, holds the OFFENSIVE role in the Navy,
while the heavier battlecruisers are used to hold and area and for planetary
bombardments. With many variants in use, virtually every Courier being
unique with respect to the equipments installed, we can distinguish
four basic Navy Courier types:
Mod 0: Basically,
this is the prototype Courier. It doesn't have a hyperdrive, so it needs
to ride with a hyperspace-equipped ship for intersystem travel. It has
no weapons, very basic avionics and an oversized fuel tank. It is light
enough to allow for 21 gees of forward acceleration at full burn. Its
main role in the Navy is fast cargo shipping: moving officers and essential
supplies quickly between ships or to planetary surfaces, dropping special
forces on enemy-held planets using speed to achieve surprise and then
making a quick getaway. It is also sometimes used as C&C ship.
However, since it completely lacks offensive weapons and has almost
no defensive equipment except its hull, it is usually escorted into
dangerous areas by Osprey fighters. When the element of surprise is
imperative it relies on its speed and acceleration for survival.
These ships are not fitted with the more modern magnetic inertial
dampers so they are quite unpopular with Navy crews. Besides that, their
age (last one was built in 3088) and overworked engines (pilots of these
babies tend to go 120% when things get hairy) make them a nightmare
for maintenance crews.
It is not surprising then that these ships see less and less action
in the Navy. Some have been refitted as fast and luxurious personal
yachts and subsequently transferred to the Diplomatic Corps or sold
on the open market. The Navy still owns 150 of these, in two Special
Operations squadrons.
Mod 1: The
most widely used and known version of the Navy Courier, it is the backbone
of the Empire's spaceborne military forces. 2,904 are currently
in use.
They are hyperspace capable, being fitted with a custom class
5 hyperdrive. They are armed with a 20 MW beam laser or a 4 MW beam
laser, depending on their role. Heavy shielding (9 - 25 generators)
and armor plus two automatic turetted 5 MW pulse lasers (ventral and
dorsal) represent the defensive package for this variant.
Their mission is primarily wiping out any ship that isn't small
enough to outmaneouver the reasonably agile Courier, or big enough to
outgun it. They are tasked to escort duty, system sweeps, intercept,
seek & destroy, firepower support of planetary assaults, C&C
and armed transport (the 4 MW beamer equipped version). Multi-role is
THE word here.
Because of the increased weight of the equipment (weapons, shielding,
etc) these ships are only capable of 15-16 gees of forward acceleration.
Their agility is also degraded somewhat compared to the Mod
0.
Mod 2: This
is the reconaissance version of the Courier. Better known as the "Flying
Dutchman" because of its ghostly habits and appearance.
Basically, it is a Mod 1 Courier
fitted with a class 6 hyperdrive for increased range. The engines are
fine tuned so that they offer an 112% increase in thrust without any
reliability loss. This allows the Mod 2
to accelerate at 18 gees under full load conditions without any adverse
effects. A 1 MW beam laser makes a symbolic appearance in its nose,
as its mission is not combat.
Instead, the Mod 2 is a spy ship.
Whatever space is left after installing the huge hyperdrive and accompanying
fuel tanks is used for intelligence equipment. Every conceivable sensor
is installed somewhere on its hull, while enough computing power to
dwarf the Sol GIN routers lies in its belly.
Its main mission is to jump into a non-Empire starsystem and monitor
communicatios, decrypt the encrypted ones or record them for the HQ
computers if the ones on-board are unable to de-scramble them. Its also
checks out all ships transiting the system, looking for anything unusual
(such as a new propulsion system, shield generator, weird power emissions
etc). It shadows Federal battlegroups reporting their whereabouts and
activities. It checks for unusual activities in uninhabited systems.
It looks for wanted criminals and pirates and summons the big dogs once
it has found them. To cut it short, the Mod 2
Couriers are the eyes and ears of the Imperial Navy.
Because of their high-tech contents their price tag is enormous.
It is an extremely valuable Navy asset. And exactly because of that
everybody wants to get their hands on one. So Mod
2 pilots are instructed to run away at the first sign of trouble,
rather than risk the ship and its top secret contents falling into the
wrong paws.
The Navy has 312 of these ships, with one squadron attached to
each fleet and two squadrons held in reserve.
Mod 3: System
Defence variant. This breed of Courier is used by the Imperial Home
Guard to protect Imperial systems against attacks and invasion attempts.
Brutal is the word that describes it best.
It has no hyperdrive installed and the extra free space is used
to accomodate a 100 MW laser that packs a huge wallop. And its required
high performance cooling systems. It also has room for 64 NN500 and
MV2 missiles, stored in internal bays.
Its mission is to kill anything that moves, period. When everything
has to die NOW, the Mod 3 gets the job
done. Although less maneuverable than any other Navy Couriers and with
a mediocre 13 to 14 gees forward acceleration because of all that lethal
hardware inside, it will dispatch a Falcon or a battlecruiser with the
same ruthless efficiency. It patrols imperial systems, holding close
to the hyperspace exit points and it must be able to intercept and exterminate
any fleet that attempts to invade before it reaches its objective.
Working in packs, these Couriers decimate the ships in an enemy
fleet while the smaller Ospreys mop up whatever survives. Since
their mission is a highly important one, they receive the best maintenace
and the finest pilots. They also have the highest losses of all the
Navy Couriers, since the average Mod 3
Courier sees action about five times per year. At least once every three
years it is involved in stopping a Federation or independent invasion
attempt.
The Navy has 2,135 of these ships in the Home Guard, unevenly
spread across Imperial systems with higher numbers in the more important
ones and the ones tought to be more at risk. The average is about 50
per system. 300 are stationed in Achenar and only 12 in Inionen.
The
Navy doctrine concerning the employment of the Courier in battle: The
most important aspect is the Navy Courier is paired with an Osprey from
a figher squadron. The Osprey's role is to engage those enemy fighters
that are too maneuverable to be efficiently engaged by the Courier itself.
Therefore every Courier squadron has an Osprey "shadow" squadron. The
two squadrons are independent though and can be sent on two different
missions if the situation calls for it. However, the primary mission
for most Osprey squadrons is covering the Courier's ass. This does not
apply to Home Guard (Mod 3)
Couriers: these operate on their own as they can successfully engage
even the smallest and most agile enemy fighters with their missiles.
The Couriers are organised into squadrons: each squadron consists
of one or more sections: each section has 12 Couriers. One or more squadrons
of Couriers can be attached to one of the 24 Imperial battlegroups or
to the local (planet based) Navy HQ. Mod
3 defence birds squadrons fall in the
former category. Ocasionally, squadrons or sections can be transferred
to other agencies such as the police, customs, DSSAR (deep space search
and rescue) or INRA (* unconfirmed but Cdr.
Joni Mitchell, ex-INRA, says so).
The established Navy tactics for the Courier discourage matching
speeds with the target and instead promote fast fly-bys with the objective
of delivering a lethal blow and escaping before the target can initiate
response fire or evasive maneuvers. Imperial training goes as far as
50 km/sec closure rates but select pilots have been known to exceed
that by far. Emphasis is then on one-hit kills, which are challenging
to achieve even with the Courier's impressive firepower. The Mod
3 fellas have it easier though.
Navy Courier registration numbers: #XXnnY where XX represents the squadron's mission (AS = assault, C = cargo, E = escort, HQ = C&C, I = intercept, P = pursuit, R = recon, S = special, SD = system defence, T = test), nn represents the squadron number and Y represents the pilot's rank (C = squadron CO, X = squadron XO, S = section leader and a number ss to designate the section) OR #XXnnssii where XX is the squadron's mission (as above), nn is the squadron's number, ss is the section number and ii is the section index. Ex, #E05C represents the CO of the 5th Escort squadron while #E050307 represents ship no. 7 section 3, 5th Escort squadron and #E05S01 indicates the section leader for section 1, 5th Escort squadron.
The Courier's Navy lifecycle: As a Courier leaves the shipyard it will be shipped to one of the three Navy test squadrons where it will undergo rigorous flight testing to insure it is fully compliant to Navy specs. After satisfactory completion of the tests (2% of all Couriers fail) it will be transferred to one of the many active duty squadrons. Here it will spend most of its Navy life, retiring for two weeks each year for maintenance and refit. After a number of years ranging from 50 to 300 it will be found during maintenance that structural integrity is no longer up to Navy specs (fatigue). It will then be brought to Sharoma shipyards in Facece where it will undergo extensive repairs and reconditioning and after being brought to civilian standards (whatever they are at that time) it will be sold on the open market.
Navy Courier statistics:
Kill ratio: 0 to 73 for Mod 0,
2.7 to 1 for Mod 1, 1 to 1.17 for Mod
2 and 12 to 1 for Mod 3.
Unavaiable vs Ready status (hours): 1 to 240, all versions,
average.
Combat time (% of service time) : 0.1% for Mod
0, 32% for Mod 1, 5% for Mod
2, 19% for Mod 3.