Reloader Ships

A Reloader Ship is a specialized weapons transport ship employed entirely by Earthfleet to aid them in their defense of Sol Space. The ship is small, compact, versatile, very well armored and defended, and is designed to reload starships with torpedoes, and other expendable munitions, either on the fringes of a battle, or sometimes even in the heart of the fray. The ships are basically highly specialized cargo ships, designed to help Earthfleet to stay in the battle longer, which is very important given the high rate at which they expend torpedoes, and other disposable munitions.

A reloader ship can reload a battleship, shipkiller, or other Earthfleet combat vessel in one of several ways. The two primary was are either by loading individual rails of torpedoes, that are taken into the ship, and automatically stored in the ship's magazine, or by replacing entire weapons racks, as in the case of the Sergenious and Samurai class. This latter reloading method is akin to changing magazines in a rifle. To reload, the shipkillers peal back their Fluidic Armor, open their primary weapons bay, and eject their current weapons rack, regardless if it still has some torpedoes remaining or not. The Reloader Ship then swings in, quickly docks with the shipkiller4, loads a new rack into the weapons bay, and then immediately leaves to retrieve the discarded weapons rack to take back to base for reloading. The shipkiller then closes its weapons bay, closes up its armor, and returns to battle.

The time it takes to reload a shipkiller averages around 30 seconds. Although, there have been recorded cases where a Reloader Ship, and a shipkiller, were able to successfully complete the reloading process in under 12 seconds. For larger battleships, however, the process takes a bit longer, lasting upwards of 2-3 minutes to complete reloading. Even so, the time it takes for a ship to become fully reloaded is small in comparison to having to fly back to base, dock, reload, and then return to battle, saving valuable fighting time in the heat of the struggle.