ARMAMENT:
5 Twin Mounted, 8 inch Mass Drivers.
4 Capital Ship to Ship Thermonuclear Missiles
Possible Snub Fighters on some Variants.
COMPLIMENT:
Up to 105 Crew and Passengers(96 officers and gunnery personnel operating in 2 shifts).
Though a more combat orient refit of the Freeruner class of ships the crew accommodations can still be considered plush for a warship. The Crew are assigned two in a state room, in bunked billets resembling a college dorm room. The overall layout of the State rooms are like dormitory blocks, with a number of rooms in each block sharing a public restroom and showers. Each block has it's own small kitchenette for the preparation of small meals and snacks, with a larger cafeteria on each deck to serve the entire deck. The officers quarters are larger, with independent, private lavatories. There is also a separate Officers mess, recreation room, and small weight room. The FreeRunner Gunship maintains a small flight bay and launch deck, capable of supporting a handful of small vessels, launches, and snub fighters. The FreeRunner Gunship usually maintains a compliment of 1 shuttle, a half dozen Utility A.P.U.s for repairs, maintenance, and cargo operations, and about two dozen Combat A.P.U.s for close quarters, ship to ship combat and boarding operations. Some FreeRunner Gunships, especially in the later stages of the Corporate Insurrections, sacrificed these combat A.P.U.s in favor of 4-5 snub fighters for interception and defense against the anti-ship bomber squadrons that would often overwhelm them early during in engagements. This trade off, however, only served for a more crowded flight deck and poor maintenance practices, as there was insufficient room for proper full maintenance and refit bay for these fighters.
HISTORY:
The FreeRunner Gunship is a variation built on the basic framework of the FreeRunner Corvette and is in-fact a failed attempt to upgun the Corporate FreeRunner to a true battle ready warship. Despite the redesign, the FreeRunner Gunship is an utter failure as a warship. While significantly up-gunned from the basic Corvette, this armament upgrade did not coincide with an equal upgrade to it's power systems or targeting, tracking, and sensory array. This resulted in power shortages and brown outs on critical systems during battle conditions, inability to track large volumes of targets in a combat theatre, and breakdowns in battle formations. In fact, the combat systems on the FreeRunner gunship are all still linked in to the primary bridge, with no T.I.C. (Tactical Information Center), and linked to banks of monitors meant for intership comms as a makeshift gunnery command console. While several blocks of crew accommodations were scrapped to add additional munitions bays for the 8 inch guns, no thought was put into inter-ship transport to the gunnery batteries and magazines. This resulted in not only the FreeRunner Gunship being able to put out massive volumes of fire for only short periods before needing to reload, but crews transporting live ammunition on handcarts and Micro-Tow motors through the ship on lifts and corridors in living areas. This resulted in many accidents and casualties during combat operations. Perhaps the biggest failing of this design was the refit of several docking locks on the foreward spinal block to house Thermonuclear Inter-System missiles (about the sice of the old Trident). While this gave the FreeRunner Gunship a significant punch, and made it ideal for peacekeeping operations, it also made it a prime target on the battlefield. Lacking the armor of larger vessels that usual carried such W.M.D.s, the FreeRunner Gunships were often the first ships put out of a fight before being able to employ these missiles. Additionally, the outfitting of a civilian combat vessel with such weapons drew the attention of the Earth Oversight Coalition and helped precipitate the Corporate Wars.
The FreeRunner Gunship was first pressed into service just prior to the outbreak of the Corporate Insurrections. While it was slated officially as the corporations response to increased pirate and privateer actions against corporate interests, the Earth Oversight Coalition saw things differently. While many believe the staging and design of this vessel was planned to shore up Corporate fleets for a planned coupe against a central government that was once again flexing it's muscles and retaking control of many aspects of colonial life, there are others who feel it was a poor design choice and that adding the Weapons of Mass Destruction (intended to be used against pirate fortifications and starbases) triggered an overreaction in the E.O.C. The result was a series of standoffs that led to open, armed, hostilities. Initially, in the first exchanges, the Gunships performance was considered exemplary. In the battle at Westgate Colony, a pair of gunships was able to engage a Colonnial Marine troop fleet and deliver sufficient damage to turn them back. At the Tannis IV engagement, groups of Gunships were able to engage and destroy a Light Carrier and it's escorts. These successes, however, did not last. Once War was clearly in full swing, and the Gunship found itself in more direct confrontations and fewer raids and surprise attacks against unsuspecting enemies, it's failings became clear. At Corianis Major, 3 full squadrons of FreeRunners fell before the guns of a single Revenge Class Escort Carrier. Following this, a squadron of Marine Artemis Class Gunships destroyed the Shipyards at Falgraid, which were guarded by FreeRunner Gunships - despite their smaller size, the Artemis could maintain a much more concentrated volume of fire over prolonged periods, and proved to be too small and fast for the archaic tracking on the FreeRunner Gunships. Suffering loss after loss, the FreeRunner Gunships found their roles ever changing - from combat warship, to fleet escort, to convey escort, to planetary defense.
CREDITS: Davorama (a.k.a Davo, Beyondbent, Powerfusion3D, PoserFusion3D), All the great Kitbashers who have posted images of assemblies with Davo's sets that inspired me.
