Paris-Class Destroyer
The Paris-Class Destroyer serves as one of the mainstay warships of the French Republican Union's Marine Nationale. Medium sized ships, although still rather massive by human size, they serve as individual combatants on the frontiers, escorts for larger battlegroups, fast reaction forces, humanitarian aid vessels, and as diplomatic vessels showing the Tricolor across sentient held space. The relatively small size of the vessels does not preclude them from packing a highly effective punch, and they are vital ships for maintaining territorial sovereignty.

Paris-Class ships were designed in response to a pressing need for a new medium level space ship capable of serving in a variety of roles. The aging Eiffel-Class destroyers were no longer viewed as capable of serving in front line combat roles for much longer in the intended duties of a destroyer, and thus required replacement. The new ship required several capabilities to be added on the previous ship. Superior sensors were viewed as necessary, longer ranged and better weapons, increased capability to operate independently was valued, better protection was called for, and relative ease of production was valued. Most of these were fulfilled, with a reasonably powerful ship armed with a capable armament that could engage a wide variety of targets, long ranged and sensitive sensors, advanced reactors, superior shield generators, and better command facilities.

For the basic shape of the ship, a long octagonal hull section was provided, which then gradually narrows to a frontal ending. It has 16 main edges, a top deck, composed of two sloped sides and a flat upper region, side regions which expand, then form a mid section that is vertical, then diminish, and then a bottom deck shaped the same as the top. These shapes initially are formed with a rear octagonal section that is straight, however at a certain point it begins to narrow along the octagon to the frontal bow. The various factors of the design are shown in a below image:

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/4154/k457.jpg
(The side angles are both some 40 degrees from horizontal)

Various areas on the ship also include some sensor array bulgers, with the top and the bottom having the largest two. However, these were not shown in the image due to a desire to provide for a simple representation. For the actual dimensions of the ship it is approximately 600 meters long, 150 meters in beam, and 120 meters in height.

As a destroyer, a powerful weapons complement was needed. The ship was designed to use a variety of weapons systems for the weapons of the ship. These include missiles, guns, plasma and lasers as the main components. The design of the ship was specifically created so as to effectively use all of these weapons. Many of the areas of the vessel have been specialized so as to serve as weapons platforms for the various onboard ordnance, helping to fulfill their role of causing damage to enemy ships.

The top and bottom main deck of the class is mostly utilized for the missile batteries of the ship. There, large numbers of VLS canisters are utilzied. These are principally V/2-24/47 tubes, which have canisters some 2 meters in width and length and 24 meters long. For each deck 288 of these tubes are used, for a total of 576 onboard missiles tubes. These tubes can be provided with a variety of different weapons, from a wide selection of anti-ship missiles to anti-fighter point defense ordnance. It is even possible for some smaller point defense missiles to be "Stacked" with multiple layers of defensive missiles ready to be fired. All of the missiles incorporate electromagnetic launchers, which help to propel their deadly cargo out of the canisters before the main drive systems kick in. Each deck has the batteries divided into individual groups of 12 missiles.

Laser weapons are designed for two purposes; the defeat of enemy fighters and ordnance, and the destruction of enemy ships. As a result, there are also two main categories of lasers, with small, fast moving turreted lasers, and larger anti-ship lasers, which are often arranged in broadside layouts. The smaller lighter lasers, which are of the type V55-20-3-/AFLM, are found generally along the side sloped armor, although there are also some on the top and bottom. These lasers can rapidly fire lasers to engage enemy units, and are also rather powerful at close range against enemy ships in destroying side weapon emplacements. The larger lasers are V60/-200-ASHLMs and are positioned in the side areas of the ship, where they can target both above and below to destroy enemy ships within a wider range of fire. They have a slower rate of fire, but much higher damage output.

Plasma weaponry is not used onboard the ship as much as on larger vessels, but there do exist a variety of plasma launchers. These fire powerful plasma bolts that can engage enemy ships at up to a light second away. These are superior anti-ship weapons as compared to the lasers, with a higher rate of fire and superior damage. However, they lack the capability to be used against missiles or fighters with the ease of the broadside lasers, nor quite the range, and are quite heavy. Still they are extremely important parts of the ship's armament. The standard weapon is the Type48/1/ASPL.

As a final armament, kinetic weaponry is included. These are mostly railguns, and fall into two main gun systems. The smallest are 100mm point defense guns, which are equipped with long electromagnetic barrels and are mounted in dual turrets. They can easily engage enemy fighters, with either guided rounds, or flak rounds. They can also provide some ability to engage enemy ships at closer range, with 100mm armor piercing rounds. The second however, is much heavier. It is a railgun which runs the length of the ship, and is equipped with a large 800mm barrel. This can effectively impact enemy ships with a slug at a significant percentage of lightspeed weighing many tons. It has a 552 meter long barrel. This results in a length that is 690 times its width.

Protection of course, was highly important as well. In addition to the active capabilities of the weapon system, the design of the ship is also such that enemy radar waves will be deflected harmlessly into space rather than being sent back to their ship. The hull is painted black, so that it blends in with the stars. Onboard shield projectors are provided, which are capable of providing for defense against enemy kinetic, and to a lesser extent energy weaponry. Armor for the design is not so impressive. It is equipped with light low-weight armor plating around the exterior, while as much as possible was done to ensure redundancy in the interior. Meanwhile, there were also exterior mounts for D-200/1/EW systems. These are 180mm systems which deploy a variety of electronic decoys, flares, chaff, so on and so forth. Towed decoy systems are provided for as well, deployed from onboard hangar bays with electronic warfare drones that serve to mimic the signal of the ship.

Power generation is located at the central core of the vessel. These power cores use extremely advanced fusion reactions to produce the necessary power for the ship, with hugely powerful fields serving to combine various elements to produce the necessary power. The reactors were designed so that if necessary, they can be "scrammed" and instantly shut down, or, if worst comes to worst, ejected into space via specialized catapult systems. Although this will result in the ship losing a significant portion of its power generation capabilities, it could prove to be the only thing that would effectively ensure its survival. Each ship is equipped with three reactors, which ensures appropriate redundancy.

Highly advanced sensor systems are provided. The largest of these are highly advanced active sensors, V65/AESA systems, with two onboard. There are also sensors for monitoring FTL travel, passive gravity detection systems, passive thermal detection systems, electronic countermeasures, and passive radar systems. All of these are highly sensitive and are used to pick up enemy emissions, or to actively seek them out. The V65/AESA also serves in important roles as a fire control system. A final system is a deployable one, with the standard Schulmeister-type Recon Drones being deployed onboard with four of them.

The computing systems for the ship were created in response to various necessary considerations. Enemy hacking and infiltration was a significant concern for the computing system, and thus a variety of different systems are provided, carefully separated from each other. However, information around the ship is still provided via a highly effective unified datalink system, which serves to increase efficiency. The sophisicated onboard AIs also have the capability to effectively engage enemy ships in offensive electronic warfare capability, with the vast computing capabilities of the large onboard systems serving to provide the necessary power to potentially disable enemy ships.

The hangars for the vessel are located on the bottom deck. These provide for a steady transfer of men and material on and off the ship with small shuttles. It can also be equipped with planetary invasion shuttles and dropships, with carry with them a complement of troops with which to capture enemy worlds. Some onboard droid or human fighters are provided as well, with the human fighters being designed as long range reconnaissance, attacks on enemy ships, and if necessary dogfighting. The droid fighters on the other hand, are specialized for dogfighting, to provide additional protection for the ship against enemy fighter swarms. However, as a rule the total number of onboard fighters is rather low, as the ship is specialized for active combat duties. Around 24 Voltigeur-Class Medium Fighters are deployed onboard, alongside 60 Mirage-Class droid fighters.

For propulsion, the ship uses sub-space reaction drives, and FTL drives. The reaction drives use highly advanced thrusters to propel the ship forward, while smaller thrusters are deployed on the side of the ship. The rear thrusters can be vectored to provide for additional mobility, however the side thrusters also play an important role in this as well as precise adjustments. The ship can sustain higher accelerations than the human body would be even remotely comfortable wtih (Deadly accelerations in fact, crushing the crew), and as a result onboard artificial gravity is used to counter-act the problems associated with the acceleration of the ship. This artificial gravity also means that the ship's decks can be arranged along the length of the ship rather than in a circular or lengthwise faction.

The command facilities for the ship are buried deep within the design in a central command bridge. This uses a variety of displays, holo projectors, personal, computers, and ship status information units to provide the commander of the vessel with an excellent depiction of the tactical situation. There is also a secondary bridge, used to provide a back up for the first. Thus, it is not easy for the ship to lose command and control, unless if both bridges are destroyed.
Perhaps the most important aspect for any ship is the crew. Paris-Class ships incorporate heavy automation, usage of computers, robotic controls, and manpower reduction to reduce their crew to a mere 800 personal. This helps to enable more to be deployed, as training the crew to operate the systems of a ship is always an extremely difficult task. These crew members are backed up by a company of marines, which also operated many different systems and serve in support roles, taking the burden off the crew to a certain extent.

Length: 600 meters

Width: 150 meters

Height: 120 meters

Power Generation:
3 fusion reactors

Armor:
120mm armor plating external
180mm armor over magazines and fusion reactors

Command Facilities:
1 main command bridge, 1 secondary command bridge

Shields:
Heavy shielding

Sensors:
2 V65/AESA
Passive thermal sensors
FTL sensors
Passive radar systems
Mk55/3D Fire Control
Electronic Countermeasures
4 Schulmeister-type Recon Drones

Electronic Warfare:
18 D-200/1/EW
12 Mk54 Towed Electronic Warfare Drones

Armament:

Missiles:
576 V/2-24/47 Missile Canisters

Lasers:
72 V55-20-3-/AFLM
32 V60/-200-ASHLM

Guns:
96 dual 100mm/96 point defense guns
1 800mm/690 railgun

Plasma:
12 Type48/1/ASPL

Complement:
800 personal
1 Marine company

Acceleration:
Several hundred gravities

Endurance:
4 months

Complement of Space Vehicles:
24 Voltigeur-Class Fighters
60 Mirage-Class Fighters
4 Berthier-Class shuttles