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DevilRay v1 Light Strike Drone

The DevilRay is the first vessel created by the Xerxes Corporation for the NSN, after they terminated their contract with their previous military supplier, Albatross Industrial (AI), following the incident with the NSN Wolf Den (archive link below). Although labeled a drone, the DevilRay is in fact a light manned fighter.

When the Syndicate was formed after the collapse of the senate and the beginning of the expansion wars, It's first decree was to create the New Syndicated Navy (NSN). The NSN then entrusted AI with the task of filling the navy with combat ready vessels. It's first move was to take existing police and security craft and modify them for military use. This provided an immediate boost to the number of strike craft the new NSN was fielding. While engineers at AI worked to create new capital ship class and strike craft designs, these older vessels were being modified by the thousands.

After the loss of the NSN Wolf Den, at the time the NSN's only capital ship, and the fruit of years of R&D, and trillions of credits, it was clear that no matter how many of these craft they could field at a time, the NSN's Gen1 strike craft were no match for the Gen2 and Gen3 craft being fielded by the enemy. To make things worse, the new designs that AI produced for the Rapier and Wasp light fighters, and the BroadAxe Heavy Fighter/Bomber, both designed from scratch with the NSN's needs in mind, failed miserably in their first real combat trial at the Wolf Den incident, losing all squadrons while inflicting minimal damage.

It was time for a change. The NSN immediately terminated its contract and began seatching for new arms suppliers amongst the Syndicates rich asset pool. Eventually a contract to create a light, cheap but effective fighter was awarded to a private company that was known for high end sports and luxury craft, the Xerxes Corporation.

Xerxes paid close attention to the failures of AI's previous designs, and wanted to produce a ship that wasn't afraid to sacrifice bulky armor and life support for the alternative advantages of speed and versatility. The weapon pods on the DevilRay are easily located and can be removed and swapped out on deck in minutes. The core of the vessel contains all vital systems in a close bundle, but is only directly protected by a single layer of armor. The DevilRay's wings are basically armored fins, and good strike craft pilots have learned to use these in evasive spin maneuvers as shields from incoming fire. There are also hardpoints on the wings for additional weapons or jet pods if needed.

The DevilRay impressed the NSN, and performed beyond expectations in all categories, eclipsing any previous data recorded by AI's previous Gen1 models. The NSN immediately put them into production, and shipped them off to combat sights on the fringe systems. Here they again proved very capable strike craft, and it seemed the NSN finally had a hit. They immediately asked Xerxes if they were interested in another project, this time a capital class vessel, but one that could perform like no other ship, and the design of the Roland class assault cruiser began, which would prove to be another smashing success for Xerxes.

The DevilRay is currently the standard strike craft assigned to the NSN's newest flagship, The Camalla (archive link below), a Discordia class assault carrier. Both the Discordia and DevilRay class vessels are undergoing combat trials near the LUDD station along with the newly aquired NSN Mastadon.

RELATED INFO

NSN Camalla
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=812602207

NSN Wolf Den
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=812655055