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HMAS The Blade

Meet 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑩𝒍𝒂𝒅𝒆, a dedicated ramming airship that should make any melee enthusiast explode with glee. One problem experienced by the previous class of ramming assault ship (HMAS Resolution) was that it is hard to connect with an enemy when you only have a point ram. The Blade fixes this problem by having, well, a blade, coated in rams (deco hid for aesthetics, but still visible as smaller barbs). I gave the airship a custom breadboard AI that includes altitude matching and seeking. It will prefer to stay at ~100m but will gradually close to match its target altitude, going low enough to dip its ram into the water for taking on surface ships.

For armament, The Blade features a double ended 7x7x7 400mm x 2m HE APS, same as on the Resolution, two 50mm AP guns on each side (miniaturized from Conqueror), and two 200mm timed flak guns for AA, plus a pair of octuple 40mm Pom-Poms for the same. Armor is mostly 2-3m metal plus HA as needed.

The Blade has a lot of empty internal room which will be filled by a pair of bomb bays in the next class, a refitted version likely to be called the Indefinite Wrath, so keep an eye out for that one. She also has a pair of catapults and a crane, making her able to accommodate recon aircraft, should I ever get to outfitting them.

Please provide any feedback you've got, I'll keep it in mind as I work on the next set of airships. Also please let me know if you'd like me to release these in large batches like before or just drop them as I finish.

General Stats:
~200k materials, ~5.7k blocks
Two 400mm x 2m HE at 30rpm, four 50mm x 1m kinetic at 170rpm (DP CIWS), two 200mm x 1m flak at 120rpm, two octuple 40mm simple weapons, twelve aesthetic machine guns around the smokestacks amidships.
Motto: Messores Sanguinis Dei (Reapers of the Blood God)

By default she flies at 28m altitude minimum, but I encourage you to vary it somewhere between 25 and 30 based on your enemies. Fly too low and you'll take a lot of hull damage when overflying tall targets, but raise it too high and you'll just barely nick low targets rather than getting several impacts.

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https://discord.gg/QkpkvKXsEA

It's where I hang out and post WIPs and we've got an incredible community!