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Description
100% made in Blender, no assets utilized. Background is node generated. Materials as well. Mild motion blur is done in compositor, same for "thruster" glare.
H U G E props to the BLENDER discord group who gave me some amazing constructive criticism and advice!

The 'sword' class frigate is, by far, the most common star-ship the Halcyon species (regardless of clan, affiliation or location) possess. It is an ancient, heavily streamlined and optimized design which has seen countless refits and improvements throughout most of the Halcyons and their ancestor species' history.

For all intents and purposes, compared to most species with similar technological levels, the sword class frigate is tiny, and quite easily under estimated. From a casual glance, the ship is small at a mere 150 meters of length from main guns to rear thrusters. While they are able to reduce their heat production significantly for short periods of time, they are not capable of genuine stealth features. The craft still uses seemingly outdated pulsing plasma based vectorial thrusters. Its small size would, logically, greatly reduce its ability to mount large, powerful energy generation or fuel to keep it functioning in long distances or engagements against mightier ships.

Under estimating the Sword class Halcyon frigate is one of the worst mistake a commander can make. Rather than making their most common ship extremely powerful energy and resource guzzlers, the Halcyons' engineers spent generations optimizing everything about this ship. And now, it is a terrible, frightening sight to behold. Do not judge it based on its size. And for the love of god, do not judge the ship on what you can casually see without in depth, laboratory study.

The sword class frigates have pitifully weak mass fission based reactors, which often has people assume that the ship its weak due to a low power supply. This is a terrible mistake. The fission based reactor is not its main energy source, but instead its backup. The primary source of energy this ship possess is that of extremely efficient, advanced capacitor banks. These capacitor banks are capable of stocking unparalleled amounts of energy for their size, allowing the ships to easily release far more energy than ships up to 40 times their size. What's more, these capacitor banks are very quickly charged by Halcyon infrastructure, alongside another novel, rarely seen form of energy source - star plasma. If one of these frigates has 15% of its energy banks left, it is capable of getting past a star's surface for a short while - while the ship sucks and swallows up the star's very plasma, directing the energy straight to the capacitor banks.

This massive amount of energy, in turn, while finite, supplies the ship's equally advanced and sophisticated systems. Its weaponry are all based around the concept of particle projection weaponry, which has the nasty result of being both a kinetic and energy based weapon. Its sensors are extremely powerful - and the least efficient components of the ship's systems.

When it comes to defense, the design theory is also somewhat unusual here as well. Rather than sporting full radius absorbing shields, these ships feature vectorial redirection shields which, rather than spending their energy into absorbing or blocking impacts instead redirect them at an angle, this greatly reducing the energy required by the shields so long as they're facing the right way. This acts as a multiplier in a way, making their shields vehemently more powerful than they have any right to be for their size. And while the shields can be seen on sensors to use a very high amount of energy, it's always confusing when they're deflecting shots calculated to punch through them while only fluctuating in 1% or 2%.

The ship's entire hull infrastructure and armoring is built with a rather similar idea in mind - with the entire armoring and infrastructure build to deflect and resist impacts coming from specific vectors - firstmost being the front, and then being the sides.

These two design choices make these ships near impossible to penetrate from their front, and pretty difficult to penetrate from their sides. Granted, their top and rear are remarkably "squishy", and the optimization of the ship's vectorial defenses leave these extremely weak and fragile.

But then, you need to get into a situation where you can reliably hit at these areas. The sword class frigates sport incredible energy storage, which in turn are sent towards what at first glance look like simple, primitive plasma thrusters. These thrusters are extremely energy efficient and designed to function in powerful, singular "pulses" which propel the ship forward. For short periods of time, the ship can keep these thrusters on at all times, capable of pushing these ships through vectorial thrust to 80% of the speed of light - with the infrastructure capable of sustaining this straining effort for up to 5 whole minutes before the heat and physical stress starts to threaten the hull.

The ship's plating has several hidden "direction" thrusters which allow the ship to quickly twist itself, but its mobility does not stop there. The side nacelles features an array of particle accelerators which are capable of producing a singularity based, high magnetic and gravitational force. This force is capable of many things - chief among them connecting the ship to a star system's gravitational field to move, twist and spin as if the ship's magnetic and gravitational drives were spider legs over the system's gravity field. While this only works within a star system, it translates to an incredibly agile system of movement within these areas.

The nacelles feature an upper and lower weapons hardpoint which house high speed, high tracking, low to medium range set of particle guns. These are purely for the purpose of destroying large enough projectiles, fighters, missiles and objects - be it firing like a shotgun like spread of particles or an unstable, flak like explosive mass. The side of the nacelles feature ports - generally used to release drones, equipment or be part of the connection of additional components for the ship.

The frontal area of the ship feature an upper and lower set of spherical "cannons". These cannons are pretty powerful, with decent enough aiming to engage at up to long range. These cannons are particle projectors which can fire their accelerated spread of various load types of particles to a single point - which causes an intense, almost shotgun like impact at the point of impact. The 'width' of the shotgun like impact can be widened and narrowed at leisure of the ship's crew, as to focus damage in specific areas.

And finally comes the ship's main, terrifying armaments. Two independent, ship long sets of particle projection artillery guns which are capable of accurately firing at extreme ranges. These cannons are loaded on several sets of hydraulics, servos and reactive fibers which grant the cannons near molecular degrees of angle movement. This, alongside the sheer acceleration length makes for a terrible weapon - which fires "sheets" or extreme velocity particles known to cut ship sections clean in half. The sheer recoil of these cannons are such that the ship will be flung back at 50% its max reverse speed if firing from a stand still.

The ship has access points found at the middle area's sides, the nacelles' sides and at the upper and lower structures' ports. Inside, the ships are remarkably cozy - often being overgrown by vegetation and looking more like personal homes than actual military ships.

When it comes to FTL travel, the sword-ship employ a form of hyper-dimensional sailing - where the ship becomes encased in an ice like, inverted mirror surface before shifting into a lower dimensional plane near 2 dimensional. It is a very closely guarded secret as to how the Halcyons manage to do this, but it leads to extremely shorter travel times (which, granted, requires rest times). In general, these ships can travel up to 10 light years before requiring a rest in normal space of a few days. These 10 light years, however, are traveled in the lapse of a couple of days.

The ships feature short range tactical translation, which are essentially teleportation. This is done by having the ship exert a hyper-dimensional "presence" at an axis, and forcing this "presence" to shift the ship around in real space, very much like you would do a piece on a chess board. The ships can generally do this about 3 to 5 times per 20 hours - with going over this limit posing the potential of one of the nacelles exploding.

The ship's hull is made of a semi organic quantum processing crystalline material that is grown instead of produced. This material serves as data storage and processing mass for the ship where, at its core, lies the ship's consciousness.

Each sword class frigate is unique, due to both the individuality of each crystalline consciousness foundation, the modifications/optimization/specialization and origin. And while they are definitely not invincible, facing them in the type of combat they are designed for is a terrifying experience.

Sword class ships excel at long range sniping/artillery and long to medium range formation attacks, where they can focus on keeping their weaker, softer spots away from the enemy's targeting ability.

These ships have a storing ability of around 10 million liters or 10000 cubic meters in terms of volume. When it comes to people, the ship can comfortably sustain up to 6 people for extremely long periods of time - but can, in a pinch, hold up to two hundred people in stasis for a couple of months. They have on-board labs and workshops with manufacturing facilities designed to make the ships as independent as possible - but more often than not, sword ships can end up in states which requires them years if not centuries to get back to proper function.

When this happens, the ship and its crew can hide themselves away in deep space or deep under sea. Deep undersea is, in fact, one of the Halcyons' favored hibernation spots - where they settle their ship deep in verified stable location and set up reactors and repair facilities.

I bet

Description
100% made in Blender, no assets utilized. Background is node generated. Materials as well. Mild motion blur is done in compositor, same for "thruster" glare.
H U G E props to the BLENDER discord group who gave me some amazing constructive criticism and advice!

The 'sword' class frigate is, by far, the most common star-ship the Halcyon species (regardless of clan, affiliation or location) possess. It is an ancient, heavily streamlined and optimized design which has seen countless refits and improvements throughout most of the Halcyons and their ancestor species' history.

For all intents and purposes, compared to most species with similar technological levels, the sword class frigate is tiny, and quite easily under estimated. From a casual glance, the ship is small at a mere 150 meters of length from main guns to rear thrusters. While they are able to reduce their heat production significantly for short periods of time, they are not capable of genuine stealth features. The craft still uses seemingly outdated pulsing plasma based vectorial thrusters. Its small size would, logically, greatly reduce its ability to mount large, powerful energy generation or fuel to keep it functioning in long distances or engagements against mightier ships.

Under estimating the Sword class Halcyon frigate is one of the worst mistake a commander can make. Rather than making their most common ship extremely powerful energy and resource guzzlers, the Halcyons' engineers spent generations optimizing everything about this ship. And now, it is a terrible, frightening sight to behold. Do not judge it based on its size. And for the love of god, do not judge the ship on what you can casually see without in depth, laboratory study.

The sword class frigates have pitifully weak mass fission based reactors, which often has people assume that the ship its weak due to a low power supply. This is a terrible mistake. The fission based reactor is not its main energy source, but instead its backup. The primary source of energy this ship possess is that of extremely efficient, advanced capacitor banks. These capacitor banks are capable of stocking unparalleled amounts of energy for their size, allowing the ships to easily release far more energy than ships up to 40 times their size. What's more, these capacitor banks are very quickly charged by Halcyon infrastructure, alongside another novel, rarely seen form of energy source - star plasma. If one of these frigates has 15% of its energy banks left, it is capable of getting past a star's surface for a short while - while the ship sucks and swallows up the star's very plasma, directing the energy straight to the capacitor banks.

This massive amount of energy, in turn, while finite, supplies the ship's equally advanced and sophisticated systems. Its weaponry are all based around the concept of particle projection weaponry, which has the nasty result of being both a kinetic and energy based weapon. Its sensors are extremely powerful - and the least efficient components of the ship's systems.

When it comes to defense, the design theory is also somewhat unusual here as well. Rather than sporting full radius absorbing shields, these ships feature vectorial redirection shields which, rather than spending their energy into absorbing or blocking impacts instead redirect them at an angle, this greatly reducing the energy required by the shields so long as they're facing the right way. This acts as a multiplier in a way, making their shields vehemently more powerful than they have any right to be for their size. And while the shields can be seen on sensors to use a very high amount of energy, it's always confusing when they're deflecting shots calculated to punch through them while only fluctuating in 1% or 2%.

The ship's entire hull infrastructure and armoring is built with a rather similar idea in mind - with the entire armoring and infrastructure build to deflect and resist impacts coming from specific vectors - firstmost being the front, and then being the sides.

These two design choices make these ships near impossible to penetrate from their front, and pretty difficult to penetrate from their sides. Granted, their top and rear are remarkably "squishy", and the optimization of the ship's vectorial defenses leave these extremely weak and fragile.

But then, you need to get into a situation where you can reliably hit at these areas. The sword class frigates sport incredible energy storage, which in turn are sent towards what at first glance look like simple, primitive plasma thrusters. These thrusters are extremely energy efficient and designed to function in powerful, singular "pulses" which propel the ship forward. For short periods of time, the ship can keep these thrusters on at all times, capable of pushing these ships through vectorial thrust to 80% of the speed of light - with the infrastructure capable of sustaining this straining effort for up to 5 whole minutes before the heat and physical stress starts to threaten the hull.

The ship's plating has several hidden "direction" thrusters which allow the ship to quickly twist itself, but its mobility does not stop there. The side nacelles features an array of particle accelerators which are capable of producing a singularity based, high magnetic and gravitational force. This force is capable of many things - chief among them connecting the ship to a star system's gravitational field to move, twist and spin as if the ship's magnetic and gravitational drives were spider legs over the system's gravity field. While this only works within a star system, it translates to an incredibly agile system of movement within these areas.

The nacelles feature an upper and lower weapons hardpoint which house high speed, high tracking, low to medium range set of particle guns. These are purely for the purpose of destroying large enough projectiles, fighters, missiles and objects - be it firing like a shotgun like spread of particles or an unstable, flak like explosive mass. The side of the nacelles feature ports - generally used to release drones, equipment or be part of the connection of additional components for the ship.

The frontal area of the ship feature an upper and lower set of spherical "cannons". These cannons are pretty powerful, with decent enough aiming to engage at up to long range. These cannons are particle projectors which can fire their accelerated spread of various load types of particles to a single point - which causes an intense, almost shotgun like impact at the point of impact. The 'width' of the shotgun like impact can be widened and narrowed at leisure of the ship's crew, as to focus damage in specific areas.

And finally comes the ship's main, terrifying armaments. Two independent, ship long sets of particle projection artillery guns which are capable of accurately firing at extreme ranges. These cannons are loaded on several sets of hydraulics, servos and reactive fibers which grant the cannons near molecular degrees of angle movement. This, alongside the sheer acceleration length makes for a terrible weapon - which fires "sheets" or extreme velocity particles known to cut ship sections clean in half. The sheer recoil of these cannons are such that the ship will be flung back at 50% its max reverse speed if firing from a stand still.

The ship has access points found at the middle area's sides, the nacelles' sides and at the upper and lower structures' ports. Inside, the ships are remarkably cozy - often being overgrown by vegetation and looking more like personal homes than actual military ships.

When it comes to FTL travel, the sword-ship employ a form of hyper-dimensional sailing - where the ship becomes encased in an ice like, inverted mirror surface before shifting into a lower dimensional plane near 2 dimensional. It is a very closely guarded secret as to how the Halcyons manage to do this, but it leads to extremely shorter travel times (which, granted, requires rest times). In general, these ships can travel up to 10 light years before requiring a rest in normal space of a few days. These 10 light years, however, are traveled in the lapse of a couple of days.

The ships feature short range tactical translation, which are essentially teleportation. This is done by having the ship exert a hyper-dimensional "presence" at an axis, and forcing this "presence" to shift the ship around in real space, very much like you would do a piece on a chess board. The ships can generally do this about 3 to 5 times per 20 hours - with going over this limit posing the potential of one of the nacelles exploding.

The ship's hull is made of a semi organic quantum processing crystalline material that is grown instead of produced. This material serves as data storage and processing mass for the ship where, at its core, lies the ship's consciousness.

Each sword class frigate is unique, due to both the individuality of each crystalline consciousness foundation, the modifications/optimization/specialization and origin. And while they are definitely not invincible, facing them in the type of combat they are designed for is a terrifying experience.

Sword class ships excel at long range sniping/artillery and long to medium range formation attacks, where they can focus on keeping their weaker, softer spots away from the enemy's targeting ability.

These ships have a storing ability of around 10 million liters or 10000 cubic meters in terms of volume. When it comes to people, the ship can comfortably sustain up to 6 people for extremely long periods of time - but can, in a pinch, hold up to two hundred people in stasis for a couple of months. They have on-board labs and workshops with manufacturing facilities designed to make the ships as independent as possible - but more often than not, sword ships can end up in states which requires them years if not centuries to get back to proper function.

When this happens, the ship and its crew can hide themselves away in deep space or deep under sea. Deep undersea is, in fact, one of the Halcyons' favored hibernation spots - where they settle their ship deep in verified stable location and set up reactors and repair facilities.

I bet