by Christopher Deck
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(Original 1st Edition design by Stewart Warley: The Iskallon Factor, West End Games; Art by John Paul Lona)
Capsule: The Iskallon Light Frigate is quite common in the Iskallon System. The Iskalloni use these ships to intercept ships from other races in order to steal their technology. But as the Iskalloni were unable to make many advances in the past few centuries, their ships are totally outgunned in a fight with capital ships or heavily modified smuggler vessels. To compensate for the lack of weapons, the light frigate has heavy hull plating and heavy shields.
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(Original 1st Edition design by Christopher Kubasik: The Isis Coordinates, West End Games)
Capsule: The Loronar Far Reach Survey Vessel is an exploration ship used by the Imperial Survey Corps (ISC), a division of the Imperial Navy. An upgraded version of the Loronar Far Reach Survey Vessel is the Far Reach IV PQR. Usually these ships are on exploration tours in the outer clusters. Their function is to track down and cataloguise new worlds. Therefore the ship is equipped with highly sensitive sensors. Although the ship's shields are weak, it has enough firepower to deal with patrols and other small ships.
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(Original 1st Edition design by Joane E. Wyrick: Mission to Lianna, West End Games)
The Audacious
Capsule: The Lianna-class corvette was developed by Santhe/Sienar Fleet Technologies. It was designed as a multi-purpose ship, easy to be modified for a number of different functions. These ship are generally used for picket duties in the Lianna defense fleet. They are stationed above Lianna to interdict smugglers or to deal with pirates. The corvette has enough heavy weaponry to get at least troublesome to a light cruiser and to threaten most smaller ships.
The Reliant
Capsule: The Reliant is a modified type of the Lianna-class corvette. The sensors as well as the speed of the vessel were upgraded to better detect smuggler activities. Therefore the weaponry had to be reduced. Contrary to the weaponry the shielding and the hull plating have been upgraded for a better performance in battle.
Tactics: (from Mission to Lianna) Usually one ship, the Audacious, remains in close orbit around Lianna, while the Reliant waits some distance away. The Audacious is the slower of the two ships. She herds the escaping vessels into the Reliant, who attempts to cut off any escape to hyperspace and shoot out the vessel's drives.
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(Original 1st Edition design by Paul Murphy and Bill Slavicsek: Black Ice, West End Games; Art by Bob Dvorak)
Capsule: (from the Black Ice supplement) The Spiral-class
is a single-use, small unit boarding craft designed for the rapid
insertion of special forces into non-military vessels or space
stations. The ship is equipped with no ranged weapons at all, instead
relying on stealth technology to keep targets from spotting it until it
is too late.
When the Spiral hits the target's particle shielding, the shaped proton
charge detonates, disrupting the shields for fraction of a second -
long enough for the Spiral to burn through and bury itself into the
target's side.
The Spiral's nose cone is composed entirely of sublimating tekonite,
which vaporizes upon collision, absorbing nearly 92 percent of the
kinetic energy of the impact, insuring that the ship's cabin survives
the collision virtually intact. Additional protection to the passengers
and crew is provided by inertial-damping grav couches.
Once inside the target, the vac-suited passengers exit and overwhelm
the stunned crew of the boarded vessel.
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Black Ice
About Black Ice: (from the Black Ice supplement)
Black Ice is a container train, designed and built by Rendili StarDrive, builders of the Victory-class Star Destroyers. At full size, with all force containers active, the Ice is 7,800 meters long, with a weight of 1,210,000,000 metric tons.
Cargo Holds: Most of the Ice is cargo space. The nine black balls, 600 meters in diameter, are force fields, each contained beween field projectors. The balls are filled with refined fuel for power cells. A large conduit runs down the center of each hold, carrying power from the engine units to the force fields and connecting the engine units with each other. Balls can be added or removed to change the size of the train.
Engine Pods: The two engine pods are huge, dwarfing even the engines on Star Destroyers and rivaling those on the Death Star. The fore and aft engine pods are identical (as the ship moves in eighter direction with ease, the terms "fore" and "aft" change from trip to trip, depending upon which way the vessel is moving).
Command Capsules: The crew spends most of its time in the command capsules which sit atop the engine pods. These are 330 meters in lenght and 75 meters in wide, about the size of a frigate. The entire ship is controlled from these capsules, and the crew is rarely required to enter the engine pods, and almost never visits the cargo balls.
Crew: Despite its huge size, Black Ice virtually runs itself, requiring a standart crew of only 200 - 100 in each capsule. As half of the Ice's crew is on shore leave, there are only 50 crew members currently in each, the highest ranking being secod lieutenants.
Droids: The engine pods are maintained by a
diverse population of maintenance and repair Droids, ranging in size
from the EB-89 Engine Maintenance Droid, fully as big as a stock light
freighter and armored to withstand the backblast from a firing sublight
engine, to the mouselike SW1-04 Computer Repair Droid.
The Droids function completely on their own; when human supervision is
required, humans communicate with Droids via personal Droid/Human
interfaces (comlinks with data pads), or through the Droid Control
Stations in Secondary Engineering and the Maintenance Section.
Transport: The ship is crisscrossed by a complex system of walkways, repulsortubes, and crawlspaces. In addition, each engine pod contains a low-powered shuttle for longer journeys and for carrying heavy loads. The shuttle travels through the cargo balls, connecting the fore and aft pods.
