Sergenious

The Sergenious is the very first in the shipkiller class to ever be constructed in all of Earthfleet history. It was a revolutionary starship of its time, faster, more agile and better armed than many ships 20x or more its size. The concept and doctrine of the Sergenious was to create a ship that could go toe to toe with most light to medium battleships within the galaxy, and win single-handedly without outside help. For larger ships, the Sergenious class would join together in a three ship formation and combine their strengths to defeat the battleship or battle cruiser, and in some cases, certain dreadnoughts if larger, more powerful ships weren't available. The Sergenious class went through two primary iterations in its lifetime. The original version was very stocky, boxy and bulky, its core design harking back to the more spartan and utilitarian designs of the Gayik'Von, from which most of Earthfleet's earlier starships took their inspiration.

However, what is known as the "Gen 2", or "Generation Two" refit, was a complete rebuild of the Sergenious class, providing it with newer, better armor, shields, weapons, defensive systems and more. It also took away much of the older, blockier, utilitarian design of the ship and replaced it with lower profile turrets, engine modules and a much sleeker design. Even the FTL drives and Coaxial Power Core were upgraded to make her faster and more agile. The Sergenious class then served out the rest of its life, which included a long and decorated service history, before finally being replaced by the Raven and Wolfpack classes. Over time, Earthfleet built two more shipkiller classes, the Samurai and the Pegasus, with the intention of improving on the original Sergenious design. However, both of them failed to do so as their larger size and heavier design slowed them down, causing them to lose some of what made the Sergenious class so great.

Eventually the Samurai class found a niche of its own, acting as the bigger, heavier companion to the light, swift and powerful Sergenious class, whereas the Pegasus class, which was considerably bigger than either the Samurai or the Sergenious, ended in failure due to the ship's size and weight creating problems with speed, maneuverability and durability, and more or less turning it into an over powered frigate rather than a shipkiller. As a result, the Pegasus class was eventually scrapped, whereas the Sergenious and Samurai classes continued to serve for years afterwards, until eventually replaced by a newer generation of shipkiller. The namesake ship of this class is also unique in fleet history as it's the only Sergenious class vessel to ever undergo a Gen 3, or Generation 3 upgrade. This unique upgrade and refit was performed almost entirely by Eric Rogers after the retirement of Mike Clayton from his position as Grand Admiral.

What made this possible was that, shortly after the Sergenious completed its Gen 2 upgrades, she was given to, and became the flagship of then Admiral Clayton, and remained with him as his personal starship all the way up until he became Grand Admiral. After is retirement, and given the age of the ship at the time, it was decommissioned, retired and stricken from the official record as an Earthfleet military vessel and recommissioned as a private, albeit insanely powerful personal civilian starship. It was during this time that Eric, her chief engineer ever since her Gen 2 refit, stripped the vessel down to its Spaceframe and rebuilt it entirely from the ground up as nearly a brand new ship, and outfitting her with a much newer Linear Hyperdrive, newer shields, fluidic armor and many other improvements. Also, all of her previous raised turrets and gunnery systems were replaced with specialized flush mount gun systems that provided the ship with an even better arc of fire when in the thick of battle, creating a much tighter layer of defense around the ship. The ship's body design also became much sleeker and streamline than before. The bridge was also rebuilt and the crew requirements to operate it dropped from nine to four, although the fourth station was rarely ever manned, except in special circumstances.

Therefore the new stations became helm, command and tactical, auxiliary/operations, and engineering. Due to the ship's newly installed self maintenance systems, the requirement for additional engineering crew was no longer needed, much in the same way it wasn't needed anymore on the Raven and Wolfpack classes. The Sergenious was also the first class to use a fully integrated Artificial Intelligence system complete with avatar, which was later adopted by all the other ships in the fleet. The ship's AI system is designed to assist the crew with tasks that they are otherwise unable to perform, or require assistance in completing. The Sergenious (the original ship, not the class) is unique among all the shipkillers in that it's original AI was replaced by a curious, and inquisitive Benoi scientist by the name of Sarah, who played the roll of ship's AI in order to get close to and study Mike Clayton up close. However, in the end, that decision inadvertently led to her falling in love with him. :)

By the time all production on this class ceased, there were hundreds of vessels in service, all of which served the fleet proudly, and of which most survived long enough to see retirement.

Known Ships in this Class

• Sergenious
• Longbow

Variants

The Sergenious class comes in a normal, combat class just like the Sergenious itself, and it comes in a sub-variant known as the "Scout Class". The Longbow is one of these variant ships. The primary difference between the scout class variant and the primary combat class is that the scout class is designed to fly faster, turn better (ie, be more maneuverable), conceal itself better (ie, better stealth and cloak), and see/hear better as well. The disadvantage of that is that the ship can't fight as well as a standard combat class as its weapons bay is half as large, and it has a third less guns. The reason for this is because the scout class carries both an enlarged, enhanced sensor pack, and a considerably larger power plant to both give the ship more speed to more easily escape its pursuers, as well as power the enlarged sensor array. So, while the scout class can't fight as well as a standard, combat class Sergenious, it can outrun, outmaneuver, outstealth and out-see/hear its cousin in every way. This is what makes it such a perfect scout ship. Later shipkillers eventually replace the Sergenious scout class, but not as a dedicated scout, as scouting becomes one of the many roles the new ships take on rather than being specialized for that task, as in the case of the scout class.