Red October Class

undefinedThe Red October class is the primary flagship of the Soviet Star Union's war fleets.

Characteristics
At over eight kilometers long, the Red October class is the largest warship class currently in service for the Soviet Star Union. It serves the role of flagship for fleet sections, as well as an interdictor/territorial negation platform, due to its immensely powerful gravblade turrets, which require massive machinery and their own, separate reactor to operate and are one of the reasons for this ship's size. However, despite these drawbacks, gravblades are immensely powerful weapons, capable of literally cutting capital ships to pieces, giving the Red October a massive advantage in medium-to-short range engagements.

In addition, Red October-class siege cruisers are also equipped with a multitude of heavy and medium railgun and plasma lance batteries, making them highly competent and versatile warships, although they feature a relatively small number of missile tubes, comparable to their size.

The Red October class also carries an impressive complement of strike craft of up to 120 vessels, which typically consists of two squadrons of Su-47 Lance Interceptor, an additional two squadrons of Tu-150 Bomber and 72 I-3A Lance Fighter, a necessary number to insure adequate strike craft coverage for its size. Its capabilities for ground operations are, however, limited. It only carries a small number of ground assault dropships and its troop complement only stands at 38,000, plus vehicles, which is a small number, considering the ship's massive size, although its gravblades make it a highly effective design for orbital bombardment, as they can cause enormous damage to a planet's crust, resulting in potentially devastating seismic and volcanic activity.

A unique feature amongst Soviet ship designs, is the fact that the Red October class features two matter-antimatter fusion reactors, with one dedicated exclusively to powering the ship's gravblades. For FTL, the Red October features a Type 9 Rift Drive and is outfitted with a Tupolev NS82 Warp Drive as a backup, or for operation in areas where Riftspace infrastructure is unavailable.

The Red October is, perhaps, the most heavily armored ship class in the Soviet fleet, making it a sluggish design, since it is outfitted with only four fusion torch engines for sublight travel, a necessary sacrifice due to the power requirements for such an immense vessel.