Army Of The Red Spear

Scale: Fleet (very nominally 1:10000th)

Two starships supplied.

Size (Bounding Box): 23.8mm x 22.0mm x 13.3mm

The Overwhelmer serves as medium-close range attack vessel. Its function is to accompany smaller attack vessels and assist in shield stripping. The Overwhelmer is an early 10th generation vessel, and its 10th generation engine and shield technology give it high speed and manoeuvrability for a vessel of its size.

The Overwhelmer carries a pair of heavy coldbeam cannons fixed-forward. This long-range firepower is supplemented at short to medium range by the lower six-barrelled plasma-pulse cannons.

Plasma-pulse weapons are a relatively new weapon, dating back to the 7th generation, though it was only the 9th generation before they became significantly more powerful. These weapons use railgun technology to hurl tear-drop-shaped bolts of white plasma energy at their targets. The plasma-bolt is built up inside the weapon, and the accelerator, a moving cylinder containing a power magnetic field throws the bolt out of the weapon. They can have their rate of fire as either single shot or fully automatic. A single shot takes more time to build up the plasma bolt, and throws it harder; fully-automatic fire spends less time charging the bolt, and the accelerator moves back and forth faster, and so also cannot pack as much power into each bolt, thus range and power are degraded at the expense of rate of fire. 10th-generation plasma-pulse weaponry typically does not have a mechanical accelerator as found on some earlier versions, relying on more typical magnetic linear accelerator technology; a plasma bolt requires less energy to hurl than a solid slug. While some more advanced races have refined the technology so that an additional accelerator located at the weapon’s tip mechanically accelerates the bolt as well as static electromagnetic acceleration, this requires a level of friction reduction technology that the Aotrs current tech cannot equal.

The Overwhelmer’s arsenal is completed by numerous coldbeam turrets for point-defence.

The plasma-pulse cannons are themselves capable of dealing significant damage to a vessel stripped of shields and armour. Overwhelmers are thus frequently seen operating with Shadowfang Frigates and medium and short ranges (where they deal the killing blow), or supporting Subterfuge scoutships at close ranges (where they aim to strip the shields and armour).