FireWing - GreyWing's Ship

The FireWing was built by the 3-alpha engineering group. This same company also build the Venom and Cataclysm prototypes as well as the modified Nagato mark III and the stealth bomber version of the Dragon class ship. Just like the Venom and Cataclysm this ship is a prototype of the new generation of heavy fighters and combines several new and experimental ship-building techniques and ship-systems.



FireWing's hull is a combination of the double-hull and tank-hull principles, which resulted in a ship with 3 hulls.
The double-hull principle simply added an extra layer of armor around the fighter. Before this principle was invented, a hull-breach in a combat situation could leave the more fragile inner ship systems defenseless, one well-aimed shot by an enemy could thus render the entire ship useless. The second and outer hull increases a fighter's lifespan in extreme combat situations, since it's coated with a hybrid of semi-organic metals with regenerative capabilities, the Liquid Armor Mesh. A hull breach in the outer hull could easily be repaired by the ship itself or by a support ship. The material of the outer hull will try to fill holes made by lasers or missiles, almost like a liquid, so that the inner hull can't be hit. The Liquid-AM will eventually grow thinner as the damage done to it increases, since the regenerative capabilities are limited to filling holes in the hull. With the recently designed Engineering class ships, the material of which the hull is made can be re-added to the ship, even in combat situations, seriously increasing the lifespan of the fighter - but even without the support of a Engineering Frigate, the double-hull system has made the heavy fighters a lot more effective.

The ship class known as the Tank also use 2 hulls, but here the outer hull is not made of the regenerative Liquid-AM, but of thick and heavy steel. The Tank was invented by the Eastern Citadel Shipyards and is a very fast ship with only basic weapon systems, but the ship itself can be used as weapon or as shield. The Tank has a huge armored slab of armor attached to its front, made out of thick, layered steel. When operating as part of a large fleet, these ships are usually located in front of the armada, to protect the fleet from any incoming fire with their basically indestructible armor. When they operate solo or as part of a small group, usually supported by several fighters, the Tank will use its front armor to scatter enemy fighters as it will fly towards them with great speed, forcing the enemy ships to avoid collision or seriously damaging them upon impact. The inner hull serves to protect the crew and the more delicate systems of the Tank, as it will absorb the impact of a collision with other ships.

On the FireWing, the outer hull is coated with Liquid-AM, the second hull absorbs the shocks of the extreme velocity changes the ship is capable off and the inner hull is the 'normal' ship hull. These 3 hulls and the ship's size requires it to be equipped with powerful engines, the FireWing has 2 Warbird MK III engines, allowing it to travel at amazing speeds, the newest generation of MK III engines allow even greater speeds than ever before with minimal fuel use, almost all heavy fighters have been equipped with these engines to make deep space missions more effective. With 2 standard MK III engines, 4 additional MK IIs, and the new hyper fuel, speeds of up to 1/500th of the speed of light can be reached ( = 2.160.000 kph). An additional prototype of the dual Pulse-Warp engine has been added as well, which allows the FireWing to reach amazing speeds for a short amount of time.



The Firewing is shaped as an arrow. In flight mode, the ship doesn't seem to have any weapons, but in full combat mode it can deploy 2 fire bays, each with 3 heavy pulse-plasma guns, 2 lance-laser turrets and a missile launcher. The most unique feature of the Firewing is it's Nova Cannon. Located in a small strip on the front of the ship, this weapon actually consists out of a large amount of small plasma pulse guns which be fired simultainuously if needed, allowing the Firewing to have a large area of effect with this weapon alone.
As with all recently build fighters, there are no windows in the hull, no matter what material was used to make these windows, it still remained one of the most fragile parts of the outer hull. One well-aimed shot could destroy any windows and severely damage the ship's bridge, making it useless. Many Vectors and Nagatos have been destroyed this way in past battles with alien species. On the more recent fighters, the windows have been removed and replaced by optical sensors, placed between the inner and outer hull, the multiple hulls made it very hard to place windows in the ship in the first place. These sensors can display an exact view of the outside on the inner walls of the bridge, as if they were made of glass. The advanced sensors used on the FireWing can easily and accurately 'pitch-shift' electro-magnetic waves and make frequencies below infra red and above ultra-violet, normally invisible to the human eye, visible in real-time, making the FireWing also a very suitable ship for scouting and intel-gathering missions.




Next to the standard energy shields, which can absorb a certain amount of energy-based attacks, the FireWing is equipped with the experimental prototype Deflector shields. These shields can absorb up to 75% of all incoming pulse and normal lasers and up 55% of all incoming lance and lightning lasers, so the damage done to the outer hull is minimal (compared to 50% and 20% absorb rates with normal shields). Deflector shields are temporal and only cover a small area of the ship's hull at a time, having an entire ship covered with Deflector shields will transfer too much power back to the shield generator and eventually the engines and might cause overloads and worse. These shields will absorb the energy from the attack and, just like normal shields, transfer this energy to the shield generator, slowly charging it to the point where it gets overloaded, the closer to the point of overloading the less effective the shields become and eventually have to be shut down completely to avoid the extra amount of energy that's beyond the storage capabilities of the shield generator to flow into the engines circuit. Overloading engines in combat situations is not recommended as it will seriously affect ship maneuverability. In very hectic combat situations where a lot of incoming fire is to be absorbed, shields will wear out quickly, but the absorbed energy will be transferred to the weapon systems to shoot it back to the enemy, so it's not uncommon to see shields lowering and raising again and again in long battles. The danger of one very high energy attack completely overloading the shield generator and disabling the engines exists, that's why some front-line fighters decide to lower the absorb rates of their shields and rather sustain some extra hull damage while keeping the engines online all the time. This problem does not exist with Deflector shields as they are capable of channeling the absorbed energy away from the ship and dissipate it into space, this allows for another 20% damage being absorbed and not being able to reach the hull, this leads to a total damage absorb rate of 95% against pulse and normal lasers and 75% against lightning and lance lasers.


All the ship's capabilities and systems make it very complex to pilot, as it's still a heavy fighter, it's supposed to be flown by one or two pilots. As there's simply to much going on in such a complex ship it's an impossible task for 2 (or even 3, as the ship's bridge can support 3 crew members) pilots to navigate it or even use it in battle, that's why the FireWing has been equipped with Startech's T9 advanced ship mainframe computer. Actually the T9 is still a prototype and unavailable, since the T9 project is funded by the Miner Guild and only intended to be used on the biggest freighters, but the Pirates stole the cargo ship with the only 3 models of the T9 in existence and used it's technology in combination with their own ship computers to create an even more advanced central computer with superior AI.
The unaltered version of the T9 belongs in the third generation of ship control systems, as all other computers in this class, they need to be taught everything and develop their own personality, depending on how the pilot flies his/her ship and how he/she fights against various opponents. In the first few months after the FireWing was created it had 3 crew members on board, the captain and 2 additional skilled pilots. The T9 listened as the captain gave commands and learned how the 2 other pilots executed the commands. The T9 was already capable of performing basic functions, such as powering up engines and weapons and using them in basic situations, the more complex maneuvers and tactics as well as the different ways to fly a ship depending on the area and the situation the ship is in, had to be learned by experiencing the ship in action. Once the T9 could control every aspect of the ship's engines and weapons on it's own, the FireWing had to learn how to fight, the more enemy ships and aliens the FireWing encountered, the ship gained more experience and became more capable of executing the captains commands and eventually performing several tasks independently. Not only did the ship learn how to attack in the most effective ways but it also learned what tactics certain alien ships used most, and eventually the ship will become able to counter enemy tactics and combat maneuvers.
To allow the ship to react immediately to the captains commands, part of the computer was directly connected to the pilots through telepathic channels that allowed the most effective communication between ship and pilots. The captain only had to 'think' a command or imagine it and the ship would execute it.



Dimensions : length = 122,9 meters, width = 64,5 meters, height = 17,3 meters. With deployed fire bays and turrent, height and width become 21,5 meters and 92,4 meters.
Mass = 725 tons, max mass (full cargo and fuel) = 2.375 tons, maximum cargo space = 3.200 cubic meters.
Max combat speed = 1500 km per hour. Cruise speed = 1.150.000 km per hour, max range = 1.700.000.000 km (15.25 lightday).
Max cruise speed (with Pulse-Warp) = 2.350.000 km per hour (1/460 lightspeed), max range = 4.500.000.000 km.