Battlecruiser

The battlecruiser was the principal capital ship of the terran nations of the Koprulu sector, a massive warship armed with laser batteries and protected by neosteel armor. Dating back to the early days of the Terran Confederacy, the battlecruiser served as the backbone of terran space power for the Terran Dominion, the United Earth Directorate and their rivals, functioning as a general-purpose combatant and as a command ship during extended campaigns. The most famous of all was the Hyperion, flagship of Jim Raynor.

Design and capabilities#

Battlecruisers stemmed as far back as the early days of the Terran Confederacy. Although there were many classes, all were armed with lasers and protected by neosteel armor, with multiple twin-cannon laser batteries distributed across the hull for aerial defense and surface bombardment. The air-to-air guns were equipped with advanced optics and sensors to track fast-moving targets, while the more powerful air-to-ground guns used electromagnetic coils to increase the potency of their shots. Battlecruisers were sometimes referred to simply as battleships.

Every battlecruiser carried gravity accelerators and a warp drive for faster-than-light travel, and some mounted a secondary short-range warp drive to reduce wear on the main drive and to serve as a backup in emergencies such as a blind jump out of a hot zone. When operating in atmosphere, a battlecruiser stayed aloft through antigravity technology. The vessels were not unlike self-contained cities, housing crews from roughly four thousand to seven thousand and boasting an assortment of cantinas and rec rooms alongside the standard facilities of a warship. They relied chiefly on their heavy armor, deploying energy shields only when especially vulnerable, such as when leaving warp space or entering an atmosphere, and were outfitted with jump-pods that let the crew abandon ship and survive in deep space for days.

Combat history and doctrine#

Battlecruisers were already in use during the Guild Wars, when space engagements were fought by capital ships and medium gunships. The later development of anti-capital starfighters such as Wraiths did not end the battlecruiser's reign; instead the large warships adapted to carry their own strike craft, so that ship and fighter complemented one another. Battlecruisers remained an integral part of terran space forces as general-purpose warships and as command ships during extended campaigns. After the Great War, battlecruiser research was conducted through fusion cores that harnessed nuclear energy and antimatter to refine their designs.

Classes#

The Leviathan-class was an early type, largely supplanted by the Behemoth by the start of the 26th century; it could travel through warp space, but its auxiliary docking ports sat perilously close to the bridge, leaving it vulnerable to boarding. The Behemoth-class was the most common type during the Great War, a marked improvement that could travel through warp space, operate within atmospheres and land on planetary surfaces. Behemoths were armed with burst laser batteries and nuclear warheads, and the Yamato cannon, a devastating focused energy weapon, entered service aboard the class just before the Great War, accompanied by the Colossus reactor needed to meet its enormous energy requirements. The Behemoth proved an enduring design and served into the Second Great War, its hammerhead profile inspiring later types.

The Hercules-class entered service after the Great War and could be equipped with plasma torpedoes for saturation ground bombardment. The Minotaur-class came into Dominion service in 2502, its cleaner and more efficient fusion reactors lacking the leakage that plagued older Behemoths, and could be upgraded with systems including a Type-V Yamato cannon and energy shields. The Gorgon-class was the most powerful warship the terrans of the sector ever fielded, larger than the Behemoth, crewed by six to eight thousand, and able to withstand multiple Yamato cannon hits; the flagship Bucephalus, outfitted in 2503, carried a crew of around 8,239. The Moirai-class was developed exclusively for the Dominion Special Forces under Valerian Mengsk, and the Sovereign-class served the Dominion Fleet during the End War. Prototype super-battlecruisers such as the Loki and the United Earth Directorate flagship Aleksander represented the extreme upper end of the type.

Notable vessels and commanders#

Many of the era's leading commanders flew their flags from battlecruisers, among them Admiral Gerard DuGalle and Vice-Admiral Alexei Stukov of the United Earth Directorate, General Edmund Duke and General Horace Warfield of the Dominion, and Arcturus Mengsk before his rise to emperor. The most storied battlecruiser of all was the Hyperion, a souped-up Behemoth that became the flagship of Jim Raynor and his Raiders, commanded in the field by Captain Matt Horner. The vessel's history, alongside named ships such as the Norad II and the Bucephalus, ran through nearly every major conflict of the terran sector.