Entomolian Ship Design

Entomolian Empire Navy

After five thousand years of starfaring entomolians have reached a plateau in space technology. Few advances have been made in recent times. Since going to war with two different alien races they have refined some of their weapons systems. However, their ship designs have not changed in decades, possibly centuries. The Empress has stifled most original thought in the shipyards. She wants to see the same ships she has grown to rely on. It does not matter if the ships themselves prove inadequate. Even if nearly half of the Imperial Fleet is destroyed it is no great loss to the Empress. There are always more under construction in the yards, and more eggs to hatch into ships' crews.

Entomolian expertise in genetics plays an important role in ship construction. They have developed means to grow parts of their ships, and construct the rest with inorganic materials. The ships are not truly alive, however. The biological constructs die after the ship is completed. What you see flying are the shells, skeletons, and other remains of a once-living organism, with standard machinery and metallic structure as well.

However, the end result is quite amazing. With a comparable mass to that of a Terran ship their structure is protected by dense layers of armor and carapace (bio-armor), and a very sturdy internal structure, giving more critical hits. This is very important, since Entomolians have no energy shields and no ECM.

As a result, most Entomolian ships can take much more damage, but also get hit more often. This is especially true for capital ships like dreadnoughts. They can survive heavy damage for a while, and don't even get many systems destroyed. But eventually the armor and carapace are cooked off and the remaining systems get destroyed very quickly. Fortunately for the Entomolians, their larger ships have more critical hit points than Terran and Avarian ships of the same size. 

Many Entomolian ships crippled in battle survive, and unlike the TTF Navy, the Imperial Entomolian Fleet rarely has to scrap its ships. It's relatively simple to produce organisms that can regrow damaged parts, and there's no shortage of yard crew to cut and weld the inorganic elements. In fact, some of the ships in the Entomolian Navy are centuries old and have survived dozens of battles.

Entomolian Ship Systems

The carapace is an Entomolian ship's primary defense. It works the exact same as armor, but ships size five and larger can mount three or more layers of carapace.

Entomolian Missiles: after a few battles against the ECM-carrying ships, the Empress ordered her war queens to design Stinger missiles, which carry hundreds of small homing devices which temporarily increase the target's profile. The Terrans and Avarians have discovered tactics to eliminate these devices but it takes time.

The most deadly technology in the Entomolian arsenal is grav weaponry. Each ship mounts only one of each, which is mostly grown into the ship from the beginning. These weapons recreate the gravitational forces of very massive neutron stars, though limited in range and duration. The result is a weapon completely immune to all energy shields. Any time a grav weapon fires on a shielded ship, any hit bypasses shields. Grav weapons are the ideal weapon against Terran and Avarian ships, epecially super galactic dreadnoughts which depend on powerful shields for their primary defense. The grav weapons available are listed below.

All grav guns and blasters are placed on the upper row of systems boxes. The nature of the forces around the weapon when fired would tear the carrying ship apart if they weren't mounted more or less externally.

Entomolian Fighters

Entomolians use fighter hangar launchers for fighter operations, just like Avarians do. This allows the Entomolians to launch all their fighters at once, if they choose to do so. Entomolian Heavy fighters provide the point defense and intercept capability for the fleet, not the light fighters. Each heavy fighter is armed with a grav blaster, which is very effective against enemy ships. They also have needle guns for added firepower against fighters and missiles.  Mother queens sire certain specialized males to pilot light fighters, which they deliberately crash into ships like Kamikaze pilots of World War II. Each of these light fighters can cause a lot of damage from an attack, nearly equal to a railgun.

Source: Entomolian Fleet Book