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 idea behind the creation of the Sergenious was to build a ship that could go toe to toe with most battlecruisers of its era and win single-handedly without outside help. For larger ships, such as battleships and dreadnoughts, the Sergenious class would be required to join together in a multi-ship formation of similar vessels and combine their strengths to defeat whatever battleship or dreadnoughts they were forced to face. The Sergenious class went through two primary iterations in its service lifetime. The original version was very stocky, boxy and bulky, its core design hearkening back to the more spartan and utilitarian designs of the Gayik'Von, from which Earthfleet and the Brayburn Society got most of its earlier technology and starship designs, both of which drew heavily on Gayik'Von designs.

However, what is known as the "Gen2", or "Generation Two" refit, was a complete refit and rebuild of the Sergenious class from the ground up, save only for its spaceframe, providing it with newer, better armor, shields, weapons, defenses, engines (both FTL and sublight), sensors, core systems and more. It also led to the ship taking on a more streamlined appearance, replacing the older, blockier, utilitarian design the ship had begun with, replacing prominent features, such as turrets, engine modules and more with a much more streamline, sleeker profile. Even the FTL drives and Coaxial Power Core were replaced with upgraded units making her faster and more agile than her Gen1 iteration. The Sergenious class then served out the rest of its life, anywhere from twenty to fifty years, before finally being replaced by the Raven and Wolfpack shipkiller classes. Over time, Earthfleet also built two more shipkiller classes that were contemporary with the Sergenious class, each one of which tried to improve on the success of the Sergenious. These were the Samurai and the Pegasus classes. However, both of them failed to do so as their larger size and heavier construction caused them to lose some of the advantages that made the Sergenious class so great.

Eventually the Samurai class found a niche of its own, acting as the bigger, heavier companion to the lighter, swifter 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 considerable problems that were never overcome. As a result, the Pegasus class was eventually scrapped early in its career, whereas the Sergenious and Samurai classes continued to serve for many years afterwards, until they too were eventually replaced. The namesake ship of this class is also unique in fleet history in the fact that it's the only Sergenious class vessel to ever undergo a Gen3, or Generation 3 upgrade. This unique upgrade and refit was performed almost exclusively 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 through the rest of his career. After he retired, given the age of the ship at the time, and its importance to him, it was decommissioned and then given to Mike as a retirement gift, becoming his own private starship as he began his new life as a freshly minted civilian. It was during this time that Eric, who had been his chief engineer for the Sergenious ever since the ship's Gen2 refit, stripped the vessel down to its spaceframe and rebuilt it entirely from the ground up as nearly a brand new ship, outfitting her with a much newer Linear Hyperdrive, newer shields, fluidic armor and many other improvements. Also, all of her previous Gen2 raised turrets and gunnery systems were replaced with newer flush mounted gun systems that provided the ship with more firepower and an even better arc of fire when in the thick of battle, creating a much tighter zone of defense around the ship. The ship's body design became even sleeker and more 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.

The four new stations that came out of the rebuild were: helm, command and tactical, auxiliary/operations, and engineering. Due to the ship's newly installed self maintenance systems, additional engineering and tactical crew were no longer needed. The Sergenious was also the first class to use a fully integrated Artificial Intelligence system complete with avatar, which was later adopted by all other ships in the fleet. The ship's AI system is designed to assist the crew with a wide variety of tasks, including many that they are otherwise unable to perform, or require assistance in completing. The Sergenious (the original ship, not the class) is unique among all other 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 for many decades in order to get close to and study the crew of the Sergenious up close. But most especially Mike Clayton, as he caught her interest the most. 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 many hundreds of Sergenious class starships in service, all of which served the fleet proudly, almost all of which most survived long enough to see retirement.

Known Ships in this Class

• Sergenious
• LongBow

Variants

The Sergenious class comes in two primary forms: The combat class, and its sub-variant, the "Scout Class". The LongBow is one of these "Scout Class" variants. The primary difference between the Scout Class variant and the primary combat class is that the scout class is designed with scouting and recon as its primary mission. Therefor it's specially modified to be faster, more maneuverable, employ better stealth and cloaking, and have better sensors. The disadvantage of this is that the ship can't fight as well as a standard combat class Sergenious as its weapons bay is half as large, and it has a third less guns. The reason for this is because extra room was needed aboard the ship for the new or upgraded equipment that was added. As such, some sacrifices had to be made. So, while the scout class can't fight as well as a standard, combat class Sergenious, it is still invaluable to the fleet in many ways. However, the Scout Class variant of the Sergenious is unique among shipkillers, as later shipkiller classes, those that eventually replaced the Sergenious class, were advanced enough that a scout class was no longer needed, as each class was able to fill both roles, and do so with the same ship, without needing specialized upgrades.