Kilimanjaro-class Dreadnought
The Kilimanjaro-class Dreadnought was the largest and most powerful class of human vessels built prior to the Reaper war. Built using lessons learned during the First Contact war and reverse engineered turian technology, the SSV Kilimanjaro (DN-4) was commissioned in 2161 and was only surpassed in power by Asari Dreadnoughts.
The SSV Kilimanjaro would become the most famous Alliance Dreadnought in 2183 when it led the Fifth Fleet in the defence of the Citadel and defeated Sovereign during the Battle of the Citadel
As the Alliance Fleet expanded between 2161 and 2186, five additional Dreadnoughts were commissioned. Twice as many as the older Everest-class. Bringing the Dreadnought number up to 9 with a 10th under construction.
During the First and Second Battles of Earth in 2186 Reaper war, all Kilimanjaro-class Dreadnought were destroyed barring the Kilimanjaro herself, which would be retired a few years later as advancements in technology would make it outdated.
Hull and Superstructure
The Kilimanjaro-class features a long, thin hull built around it's ain gun, flanked on either side by large, triangular wings that extend down and thrust back beyond the stern at 45 degree angles. These wings act as sloped armour to deflect impact taken by the bow. The thruster nacelles are mounted at the back of these wings, while the secondary gun ports, airlocks, docking tubes and deployment tube doors are all located alone the edge of the wings.
From stem to stern, the Kilimanjaro-class Dreadnought has a length of 1170 meters, a beam of 313 meters and a height of 180 meters. And a mass of 5.42 million metric tonnes.
The main hull has a length of 996 meters, a beam of 45 meters and a height of 108 meters.
The hull is protected by up to 2.2 meters of layered ablative ceramic composite armour plating. This armour serves as the inner layer of ship defenses. The armour is primarily designed to defend against directed energy weapons like lasers by boiling away when heated. The vaporised armour material scatters the DEW beam, rendering it ineffective.
A scaffold was built around the interior pressure hull, with sheets of ablative armor hung from the structure. Ships typically have multiple layers of armor separated by empty baffles, spaces often used for cargo storage.
The exterior hull is also lined with strips of ceramic as part of it's Defused Radiator Array, used to radiate the ship's passive heat build-up from everyday functions such as running thrusters, drives and other internal systems. Under thermographic imaging, this makes the ship appear striped, leading to the nickname "tiger stripes" or "war paint". Though, they are not as efficient as regular radiator panels, they are more durable. If damaged by enemy fire, the ship only loses a small portion of it's radiation capacity. In most cases, a vessels DRA alone allows it to cruise with no difficulty. Operations inside solar systems can cause problems.
During combat, the ship utilizes droplet heat sinks built into the hull itself. Filled with lithium, these sinks capture the titanic amounts of heat generated by weapons and thrusters during combat. Once filled to capacity, the lithium is sprayed out of nossels at the bow in the form of droplets, where they are cooled in the cold vacuum of space before being sucked back in at the stern. Droplet sinks can manage 10 to 100 times more heat than a DRA, but every time they are cycled through, a portion of the lithium coolent is lost to space. Limiting their use to only when necessary.
Shields
The Ships also feature a Dreadnoughts-grade anti-bombardment kinetic barrier array linked to a Model 5 kinetic barrier generator, scaled up from the York-class Cruiser.
Kinetic barriers consist of hundreds of tiny emitters spaced evenly across the outer hull. An object with mass traveling above a certain velocity will trigger the barrier's reflex system, generating a localised repulsive mass effect field around the point of impact, deflecting it.
This is not without risk, however. The emitters themselves can only repel objects up to a limit. Sufficiently massive objects traveling at a high enough velocity can pass through the barriers unimpeded. Additionally, the kinetic barrier generator takes power from the ship's mass effect drive. Even if the projectiles do not penetrate, consistent impacts can put strain on the generator, this strain in turn is carried back to the drive. To prevent potential drive failure, the drive is designed to temporarily shutdown power to the shields until the field stabilises once again. The sudden, abrupt shutdown of the generator causes all emitters to discharge residual energy build-up into the vacuum of space. Triggering the characteristics "shattering" effect.
This allows the ship to withstand impacts from ship-based weapons, but doesn't do anything against Directed Energy Weapons such as lasers.
The strength of the kinetic barrier depends on the size of the mass effect drive, the amount of element zero used and overall design of the drive and generator. The more powerful the mass effect fields the ship generates, the more powerful the shields can be. Kilimanjaro-class Kinetic barriers are rated for the equivalent of 7 kt of kinetic energy per square centimeter. Making them some of the most heavily shielded warships in the galaxy. Capable of shrugging off direct impacts from almost any warship in the galaxy aside from an asari Dreadnought.
Power and Propulsion
The ship's drive core is a Mk IV Orion Mass Effect Drive Core. This massive drive spanned across multiple decks. It's a modification of the older Mk III that incorporates turian design principles. The drive is powered by the ship's on board helium-3 nuclear fusion power plant, which delivers a powerful electrical current to a core of element zero, causing it to radiate large amounts of dark energy, which are captured by the mass effect field generators.
The Orion Drive is used to increase the power of on board weapons, generate kinetic barriers, reduce the mass of the ship, generate gravity, power inertial dampeners and more, but the most significant advantage the drive gives is the ability for faster than light space travel. The mass effect field generator generates a mass reducing field around the ship, lowering it's mass, while simultaneously raising the speed of light around it. Allowing for faster than light travel through conventional thrust without any negative effects. Ships accelerate for half the journey, befor flipping around and decelerating for the other half. This means that there is no consistent speed. A ship's FTL travel time is largely determined by the distance they travel. Longer distances allow for higher average velocities than shorter distances.
The Mk IV Orion Drive allows for a rate of approximately 54,300 km/s of acceleration and deceleration. Allowing for the ship to travel roughly 10.8 lightyears within a 24 hour period. However, due to static build-up of the drive core, the ship can not maintain FTL flight for longer than around 50 hours at a time. Limiting it's maximum FTL speed to around 46 lightyears every 2 days.
One downside however is that as the ship accelerates, the difference in light speed between the interior and exterior of the field causes a doppler shift. Objects outside the ship redshift, eventually only becoming visible to the ship's radio telescope antenna. As the ship goes faster, high-energy electromagnetic source such as x-rays, gamma rays, and eventually cosmic ray sources become visible, replacing stars with pulsars, the accretion disks of black holes, quasars and gamma ray bursts.
To an outside observer, the ship appears to be surrounded in a blue or purple aura as the light within the mass effect field is blueshifted into higher frequencies, making the field itself visible to the naked eye. The ship's radiation emissions are also compressed as a consequence. If within a field that allows light to move twice as fast, the ship produceed twice the emissions. If in a field that allowed for 200 times faster light speed, it's visible light is emitted as x-rays and gamma rays and the infrared heat of the hull is blueshifted up into the visible spectrum or higher.
As a result ship is almost completely blind during FTL flight, requiring a specially trained navigator to plot each FTL jump and instuct the helmsman on course corrections based on calculations provided by the ship's FTL plotter. If an object of significant enough mass is in the path of a planned FTL jump, a safety lock built into the drive core prevents the ship from accelerating above safe speeds. The safety lock was intentionally designed to be integral to the FTL warm-up process. Meaning that removing or tampering with the mechanism could cause critical damage to the drive core.
Ships also can not perform an FTL jump while under fire. Accelerating to FTL necessitates that a ship reduce it's mass to levels unsafe for combat. During large-scale combat, it's common practice for a losing fleet to sacrifice a portion of their forces to draw enemy fire while the rest of the fleet escapes. These ships would then attempt to escape combat at sublight speed, where they would jump to FTL as soon as they were out of range and rendezvous with the rest of the fleet.
Conventional thrust was provided by 4 aft and 2 fore antiproton drives witch inject antiprotons into a reaction chamber filled with hydrogen. The resulting matter-antimatter annihilation provides unmatched motive power. The drawback is fuel production. Antiprotons are produced one at a time in massive solar arrays orbiting energetic stars. Making them both expensive to produce and easy targets during wartime. The exhaust of an antiproton drive is measured in millions of degrees Celsius. Any ship caught behind it would melt like wax in a blowtorch.
Maneuvering is performed by an array of liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen reaction control thrusters.
The ship features backup hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells to meet the minimum power requirements for the ship to function for a few hours, even after the fusion plant is taken offline.
Crew and Compliment
The standard crew size of a Kilimanjaro-class was 900 with facilities to accommodate up to 360 marines as required.
Emergency escape vehicles consist of 315 M-78 Hammer emergency evacuation pods, each equiped with their own emergency beacon, thruster module, heat shields, inertial dampeners and at least a week's rations for a crew of 8.
A Kilimanjaro-class Dreadnought includes a flight deck with 2 mass accelerator deployment tubes in each wing that use mass accelerator technology to accelerate and decelerate auxiliary craft with redundant overhead accelerator claws that use an electromagnetic catapult system to "throw" and "catch" auxiliary craft if necessary, a fighter bay with 5 Interceptor squadrons and 1 Attack squadron of 18 to 20 F-61 Trident Fighter/Interceptors, 2 Air Assault squadrons of 8 to 10 A-61 Mantis Gunships and a landing team of 12 UT-47 and later UT-47A Kodiak Drop Shuttles and 8 HT-50 Goliath Heavy Transports.
In addition, the Kilimanjaro-class carried 60 ground vehicles, including the M-29 Grizzly, M-35 Mako, M-44 Hammerhead and M-080 Megalodon.
Sensors and Communications
A Kilimanjaro-class features a variety of active and passive sensors that give it a detailed visual of it's surroundings.
Passive sensors are used for long-range detection and include visual, thermographic and radio detectors that monitor the ship's surroundings at all times.
Active sensors are shorter range, but more accurate. They include ladar and radar that emit a "ping" of energy and "listen" for a return signal. Radar has a wider field of view than ladar, but ladar's higher resolution allows images of detected objects to be assembled.
Due to light-lag, passive sensor accuracy is reduced and active sensors don't work while the ship is traveling at FTL speeds.
Communication is achieved through tight-beam communication, which fires a communications laser at the nearest FTL comm bouy. Acting as mini, primative mass relays, these bouys use mass effect FTL corridors to transmit the data at superluminal speed along the comm bouy network. Depending on the distance between the sender and their nearest comm bouy, this method of communication is almost instantaneous, especially since military communications take high priority when it comes to communication bandwidth.
Armament
The Kilimanjaro-class' primary armament consists of a number of mass accelerator cannons. Mass accelerators reduce the mass of a solid metal slug then accelerate it to high velocities using precisely controlled electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. Mass accelerators are able to achieve such high velocities that slugs had to be designed to deform on impact to increase the amount of energy transferred to the target. Otherwise it would pass right through, doing minimal damage.
The Kilimanjaro-class' primary armament is a single SP-900 Mk III Super Heavy Mass Accelerator Cannon mounted along the spine of the ship. Accelerating a 20 kilograms slug of ferric titanium alloy at a velocity of 4528 km/s every 2 seconds. Impacting with a force of 205.04 terajoules of kinetic energy. Equivalent to 49 kt of TNT or 3 hiroshima bombs. With an effective range from 175 km to 47,200 km. This is one of the largest ship-based guns to ever be put on a pre-Reaper war vessel.
Secondary weapons consist of a battery of 2 CS-260 Mk III Light Mass Accelerator chaser guns that support the main guns. The battery fires a two-round burst of 20 kg ferric titanium alloy at a velocity of 1,308 km/s every 2 seconds. Impacting with 17.11 terajoules. Equivalent to 4.09 kt of TNT. With an effective range from 175 km to 12,200 km.
And 39 BS-105 Mk III Mass Accelerator broadside batteries per side. Mounted in three decks of 13 and consisting of two guns each, each battery fires a two-round burst of 20 kg of ferric titanium alloy at a velocity of 528.28 km/s every 2 seconds. Impacting with 2.79 terajoules of kinetic energy. Equivalent to 667 tonnes of TNT. With an effective range from 52 km to 4,900 km.
As of 2182, Kilimanjaro-class Dreadnoughts included 26 M-83 Javelin torpedo tubes as a tertiary short-range weapon to compliment their point-defence network. Javelin torpedo are scaled up variants of the Fighter-launched disruptor torpedo. Like Disruptor torpedos, Javelins are equipped with element zero warheads that create random, unstable mass effect fields that warp space-time around them. In flight, they use mass increasing fields making them too massive to be blocked by kinetic barriers, but also making them sluggish and easy prey for point-defence systems. Javelins are fired in large numbers and in pairs, on converging trajectories, programmed to collide, just before impact, allowing the dark energy field emitted by the impact to resonate, magnifying the resulting warp effect.
Close-in defense against enemy missiles and fighters is the primary mission of the ship's General ARea Defense Integration Inti-Spacecraft Network (GARDIAN). Consisting of 192 anti-missile and anti-fighter laser turrets on the exterior hull. Since lasers move at the speed of light, they can not be dodged by anything traveling at superluminal speeds. At the start of combat, GARDIAN is 100% accurate. It's not necessarily 100% lethal, but it doesn't have to be. Damaged fighters have to break off attack for repairs. Defraction restricts GARDIAN's effective range to only a few kilometers. Fighters attack in swarms in an attempt to overwhelm the ship's GARDIAN defenses, the first few will be shot down, but as a battle progresses, overheating deteriorates both the accuracy and strength of the laser turrets.
Layout
An Everest-class Dreadnought has 21 decks.
The main gun ran through decks 4
The Combat Deck was on Deck 6 and included a completely sealable Bridge, CIC and War Room. As well as the Captain's Cabin.
Deck 8, 9 and 10 were reserved almost exclusively for crew accommodations. Personnel facilities, R and R facilities, mess halls, barracks, training areas, medical bays, locker rooms, gyms.
The the broadsides guns and all the ship's ammunition stores were on Deck 17, 18 and 19.
Deck 20 was the flight deck with two deployment tubes per side, a hanger bay, shuttle bay and an armoury. The deployment tubes are sealed by heavy duty blast doors as well as enviroenvironmentals made up of gas membranes held in place by mass effect fields that can be activated when the doors are open to prevent the atmosphere from escaping, while still allowing vehicles to pass through unimpeded.
Deck 21 contained the cargo hold. connected to a cargo docking port on both the port and starboard side for loading freight.
The aft section of the ship plays hosts to the power plant and mass effect drive. All all available and serviceable by qualified engineers and technicians via a maze of gantries, platforms and interconnecting corridors and maintenance access ways.
Ships of the Line
- SSV Kilimanjaro DN-4: Active 2161 - 2186 / First Fleet Flagship 2161 - 2186
- SSV Tai Shan DN-5: Active 2174 - 2186
- SSV Shasta DN-6: Active 2182 - 2186 / Fifth Fleet Flagship 2182 - 2184
- SSV Aconcagua DN-7: Active 2183 - 2186
- SSV Orizaba DN-8: Active 2184 - 2203 / Fifth Fleet Flagship 2184 - 2186
- SSV Logan DN-9: Active 2185 - 2186
- SSV Etna DN-10: Never completed