Harmony-class Supercarrier

Introduction

The Harmony-class Supercarrier is the next generation of Coalition spacecraft, building upon battle-tested UNN design philosophies coupled with technological innovations and construction methods pioneered by Coalition partners.

At one kilometer in length, the Harmony-class is the largest class of ship ever produced, being more than twice the length and eight times the internal volume of a UNN Jump Carrier. It even edges out the largest classes of freighters.

A size comparison of common Coalition ship types.

The roles of a Supercarrier are multifaceted. Like the Jump Carriers that came before them, their powerful jump drives can store vast amounts of energy fed from state-of-the-art fusion reactors, creating a superlight manifold large enough to carry an entire strike group in its wake. Passengers can arrive in the area of operations fully charged and prepped to reposition.

The carrying capacity of the Harmony-class is unprecedented, the large size and structural innovations allowing it to transport a contingent of troops, armor, and aircraft that would previously have required multiple CSGs to bring to bear.

Capacity

Crew

The minimum crew complement of the Harmony-class required to ensure smooth operation is 10,000 personnel. These roles range from flight crews, engineers, medical staff, damage control teams, cargo handling, sanitation, reactor maintenance, and even gardening. Being a joint Coalition venture, the Supercarrier is designed to support a wide variety of species, with certain roles and sections of the ship being dedicated to their specific physiologies.

A view of the Harmony’s bridge.

Valbarans might be seen in engineering and data management roles. Jarilans maintain the ship’s biological systems and can access cramped compartments to service machinery. Dedicated teams of Brokers maintain proprietary technology such as the comms array and superlight drive. A mixed crew enables unique skill sets from throughout the Coalition to be leveraged to ensure optimal performance.

Recreation is important on long deployments, and the Harmony-class is equipped with many amenities intended to improve crew morale and mitigate cabin fever. These include a large open garden area with a projected view of space.

The garden section.

Troops

The Harmony-class is capable of carrying a contingent of 40,000 UNN Marines and Coalition auxiliaries, or four divisions, which is quadruple the maximum capacity of a standard Jump Carrier.

UNN Marines disembarking.

Special Forces

The Harmony-class is an ideal platform for the deployment of various Coalition special forces detachments, acting as force multipliers. These include SWAR, Trogs, UNNI, Indigo, Jarilan and Hadean heavy infantry, Grasshoppers, and Hazard Teams.

Broker Hazard Suit

Heavy Infantry

The Harmony-class was designed with recently introduced heavy infantry units in mind. The default configuration includes two specialized modules housing loading bays and launch tubes for Jarilan drop pods, with each module able to deploy up to 56 Warriors per salvo for a total of 112.

Jarilan Heavy Infantry

Armor

The vessel’s garage modules, which are similar to those seen on Assault Carriers, are each capable of fielding and maintaining a full UNN armored battalion of 150 vehicles. The default configuration features four garage modules for a total of 600 vehicles, able to be rapidly deployed through the use of Wombat landing craft.
There is also carrying space in ancillary hangars for the transport of up to four Yagda superheavy repulsor craft.

A diagram of the garage loading elevators.

An interior view of a garage.

Aircraft

The Supercarrier has a large capacity for both fighter craft such as the FS-26 Beewolf, and transports such as the US-82 Leadbeater and the CS-47 Wombat. Expansive hangar bays accommodate 300 assorted aircraft, not including support craft docked in ancillary bays, and four pass-through runways facilitate rapid launch and rearmament.

A cutaway diagram showing the hangars and runways.

Forward view of the runway arrangement.

Engineering

Supercarriers also serve as fleet tenders, capable of supporting their CSG long-term with fuel, supplies, and field repairs. This gives them unparalleled range and sustainment, making them ideal for exploration, long-range patrols, and combat recon missions.
As the main reactor is now fusion-based, dedicated water cracking plants serve to provide hydrogen fuel, drinkable water, and usable oxygen from waste coolant. As long as water ice can be procured, these resources are functionally limitless.

One notable feature of the Supercarrier is the repair gantry. Able to fold flush into the belly of the craft, these massive biomechanical appendages can extend to reveal an expansive engineering bay. Using these appendages, raw resources such as ice and minerals obtained from asteroids can be brought inside the vessel for processing with the help of dedicated mining tools.

The gantries are able to grasp smaller ships such as frigates and hold them in place while repairs are carried out using arrays of tool arms. With the help of this advancement, damage that would previously have resulted in ships being scuttled or abandoned can now be repaired in the field, maintaining the CSG at high readiness.

A view of the Harmony’s repair gantries.

These capabilities extend to the production of new weapons, vehicles, and even the construction of new ships on-site. Battlefield losses can be quickly mitigated using arrays of foundries and printers that can manufacture a wide range of equipment.

A frigate undergoing field repairs.

The Harmony-class features an improved superlight drive, allowing for much greater jump distances, along with an integrated quantum comms array that enables real-time communication with FleetCom from anywhere in the Galaxy. These proprietary technologies were provided by the Broker Board of Directors and are maintained by a dedicated team of Broker engineers.

Armament

The Harmony-class presents a target too large to be equipped with the stealth technology used on lighter craft. To mitigate this vulnerability, the vessel relies on its CSG to provide screening, and is both heavily armed and equipped with state-of-the-art defensive technologies.

These systems include:

48 mixed CIWS turrets and Valbaran TMY-6 laser point defense systems.

40 standard railgun turrets suitable for both ship-to-ship combat and surface bombardment.

4 super railgun turrets commonly seen equipped on battleships.

156 missile launchers capable of firing both offensive warheads and defensive interceptors.

48 torpedo tubes able to accommodate long-range payloads, including MAST, plasma, and nuclear warheads.

Ion beam – a spinal particle accelerator weapon that runs almost the full length of the ship. Prototypes of this system were first field-tested by the Consensus Navy during the battle of Kerguela, where they proved effective against hard targets. The weapon is powered directly by the fusion reactor, feeding plasma from the core into a particle accelerator that projects a deadly beam of excited electrons, stripping away matter from the target and rendering even the heaviest armor functionally useless. This beam of ionized particles can vaporize armor, disrupt electronics, and cause rapid thermal damage.

An ion beam destroying a target.

Reactive shielding systems were first tested on the Yagda superheavy repulsor, and were later adapted for other applications with Jarilan and Broker assistance. Powerful electromagnets housed throughout the outer hull of the vessel project a magnetic field around the ship, which is then pumped with plasma from the reactor. The plasma flows through these fields, forming a barrier as hot as the surface of a star that can neutralize or destroy projectiles and craft that come too close. Energy management requires that the shield be directional and active for only short intervals to avoid a cold shutdown of the reactor.

The reactive plasma shields in use.

The Harmony-class is heavily protected by a new armor system developed using a blend of next-generation composite materials inspired by Jarilan ship carapaces. Ceramics make the heavy-duty plates resistant to thermal weapons, ablative outer layers protect against kinetic projectiles and micrometeorite impacts, while a combination of self-healing organic materials and fire-retardant sealant foam layers ensure that any hull breaches are rapidly mitigated. The unparalleled size of the vessel allows thicker and heavier armor than was previously feasible.

When managed by the Integrated Flight System, this combination of offensive and defensive measures enables the carrier to respond intelligently to incoming threats and ensures maximum survivability even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Integrated Flight System

The Integrated Flight System, or IFS, is a Jarilan innovation that pairs a partially biological electronics suite with a living pilot, allowing for granular real-time monitoring of the vessel’s systems and conscious control of many critical functions. The Princess caste was engineered specifically to fulfill this role, combining the innate advantages of a Jarilan Pilot with the same wetware Betelgeusian Queens use to manage their fleets and plot superlight jumps. In effect, the result is a biological supercomputer that has direct control of a ship’s systems and can interact with the crew on an interpersonal level.

The Princess is confined to a chamber within the CIC, a well-protected area of the vessel, where she connects with a chair via the same neural shunts used by Jarilans to interface with Warriors and other craft. Linking her nervous system directly with the Supercarrier’s network, the Princess can parse its sensory input as if it were her own, and holographic projectors allow her to appear anywhere on the ship as a means of interacting with the crew.

The Princess in her chamber.

A bridge crew and extensive support staff are still required to pilot the vessel and maintain its functions, but this innovation allows the Princess to react to threats with greater speed and efficiency, and take direct control of critical systems when necessary.

The Harmony-class Supercarrier represents a generational leap in capability, enabling the Coalition to project power into unexplored regions of deep space, where its carrying capacity and unique capabilities allow for unprecedented sustainment and military might.

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Featuring artwork by Malvear, who worked on the Supercarrier and Princess concepts, and SickJoe, who worked on the comic book.
Check them out here:
Malvear: https://www.malvear.art/
SickJoe: https://www.deviantart.com/sickjoe