Mythos

The Mythos is the namesake ship of a new class of Earthfleet battleship, one that signaled the fleet's return to the old days of battleship design and deployment, focusing heavily on firepower over speed and maneuverability. It is a big change from the Clayton Doctrine that was set down by Grand Admiral Mike Clayton after The Battle of the Oort Perimeter, which stated that Earthfleet, going forward, would focus exclusively on smaller, more powerful, agile and faster ships that could provide the fleet a high degree of effective defensive firepower it needed, without requiring the corresponding large crew compliments of previous ship generations, thus abandoning the ages old doctrine of using crew heavy battleships and battle cruisers for Sol Sector's primary defense. This doctrine came about after the incredible poor showing by Earthfleet's myriad of available battleships, which were in service at the time of the Battle of the Oort Perimeter, which resulted in the near total loss of all frontline battleships, including the Nova Class, whereas only two, out of all of the shipkillers present at the battle were lost, showing their incredible resilience over their larger battleship counterparts. The existing two classes of Earthfleet shipkillers at the battle also so outperformed their battleship counterparts that they made the older, larger ships redundant, and superfluous just by their mere presence in the battle.

Even so, the building and deployment of the Mythos class isn't a complete return to the old battleship doctrine of times past. Instead, the Mythos applies the same doctrine of overwhelming firepower as its shipkiller counterparts and predecessors, making this new class of battleship more or less an oversized shipkiller itself, rather than an actual battleship. The Mythos class, being overpowered as it is, was designed and built with the purpose of taking on entire fleets of enemy battleships, numbering upwards of 250 ships at a time, and winning in much the same way its smaller cousins, the shipkillers, are designed to take on a battlecruiser in one on one combat, and win. So, as stated before, a Mythos class battleship is little more than a super sized shipkiller. Only instead of killing just one ship at a time, it's designed to kill hundreds of them. The entire class, save only for its namesake ship, takes their names from characters found in Earth mythology, both Roman, Greek, and several others. A Mythos class battleship, however, does not fight alone. It is equipped with 6 landing bays, three each along its port and starboard ventral hull, each of which is capable of landing two shipkillers each, allowing for it to carry 12 support ships, all shipkillers, within those bays.

The typical support ship compliment includes 6 Raven class, and 6 Wolfpack class shipkillers. The reason for this loadout of ships is they act as point and secondary defense for the parent battleship. This allows a Mythos to operate both as a solo vessel, and a small fleet, at the same time. This doesn't mean the Mythos can't defend itself against smaller craft, as its point defense systems are exquisite, and accurate. Instead, the shipkillers that it caries with it act as support and secondary defense for the parent ship, and a screening force, allowing the parent ship to focus on its primary subject of concern and focus. Namely, the capital ships of the enemy fleet. It's primary duty is to kill those first, and leave the screening defense of the parent ship to the 12 included shipkillers. Also, in the event that the six landing bays are full, be that with cargo, shuttles, refugees, equipment, or other things, should the shipkillers need to dock, and their crews be taken aboard the parent ship, there are twelve docking hard points on the exterior of the ship onto which the 12 shipkillers can dock.

While they prefer to dock in the regular landing bays, under special or extenuating circumstances, they can use these if needed to dock with their parent ship. The ship is also designed to operate without these supporting shipkillers if needed, allowing them to be spread out over a region to undertake or execute recon, exploration, resupply, or other missions and duties. Currently, while the total number of ships in this class is not known, there is evidence that up to 12 ships are in operation at the time of Dark Earth, with more being laid down.

Ship Details

Not much is known about the ship overall, but there are some things that were laid out in the novels that can be verified. Each ship, despite its size, only sports a standard crew of 150, with a maximum crew compliment of 250 and a minimum compliment of 20. The reason for this incredibly small crew size, given the size of the ship, is because newer ships in the fleet require much smaller crew compliments than ships of the past due to the huge amount of automation that has been folded into their designs. Between the large number of sentient androids in use aboard all of the modern Earthfleet ships, as well as a wide ranging selection of automation systems, the number of crewmembers required for each ship was greatly reduced. This is especially important given that, despite it being several decades since the devastating Battle of the Oort Perimeter, due to the many hostile engagements that Earthfleet has seen, they still struggle greatly with maintaining fleet personnel numbers. Thus, whatever can be employed to do the same job with fewer people, that is what the fleet does. Thus the Mythos can be operated with a tiny crew of just 150 souls, whereas equally sized ships of the past required crews in the thousands to man a ship of the same size.

While not much is known about the ship's armaments, it is known that it employs a newer, more advanced version of Fludic Armor in its hull design, as well as Linear Hyperdrive for its primary FTL system, a similar system to Coaxial Drive, however, far, far faster, more reliable, and less vulnerable to attack than its older counterpart. Linear Hyperdrive also enjoys the ability to draw energy directly from Inter Dimensional Space, allowing for what amounts to FTL "afterburner", which can be employed by the ship for up to 8 hours without needing to stop for an hour or so to purge the nacelles and reset the system. This is due to the dirty nature of pure ID energy that has a corrupting effect on the FTL fields. If the nacelles do not have this dirty energy residue purged from them, it will slowly rob the nacelles of their FTL capabilities until the ship is no longer able to jump until that energy is purged. For purposes of protection, the ship's bridge is located deep within the superstructure, leaving only a small "conning tower" at the top of the ship in which is located the ship's primary sensor systems. The ship's overall body design is roughly delta wing in design, allowing for a maximum forward spread of firepower, allowing it to cover a wider area of attack in front of itself when engaging enemy fleets.

Known Ships in this Class

• Mythos
• Prometheus
• Apollo