HK5 and HK5X Kestrel Series Heavy War Destroyers
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
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R04: ROMULAN PROPOSALS:
HK5 and HK5X Kestrel Series Heavy War Destroyers
Elsewhere on the BBS, the concept of an all-Kestrel Romulan fleet (a would-be "Shadow of the Kestrel" setup, perhaps?) has been suggested at various points in time.
And of course, even in the "historical" timeline, there has been no shortage of Kestrel-ifications of Klingon unit types added to the game system.
Not least as noted in Captain's Log #40. In Y192, in the face of the Andromedan invasion of the Alpha Octant, the Federation and Klingons agreed to send a shipment of Klingon hulls to the Romulans - which the Feds helped pay for! - in order to help the latter stave off the threat of Andromedan conquest. This, in fact, is how the various "K5W" variants presented in CL40 were brought into being.
So, at the risk of wading into "obvious variant" territory, I was curious as to what a Kestrel take on the Klingon HF5 heavy war destroyer - and/or of the HF5X, its first-generation advanced technology counterpart from Module X1R - might look like in SFB terms.
And, indeed, whether it might be possible to have one or more HF5 and/or HF5X "base hulls" be included in the Y192 shipment, so as to enable the Romulans to field these proposed "HK5" and/or "HK5X" designs historically?
As a self-proclaimed Kestrel-phile, I think I can safely say ... the ship would be underwhelming.
The problem is that you have a cruiser-sized ship that is still technically SC4. That means you are limited to Pl-F and maybe Pl-G. So, its firepower would be horribly underwhelming.
Because of that, there'd be no problem making it. A couple decisions would need to be made, but nothing earth-shattering. So, let's look. We have to replace the security, disruptors, drones, and ADDs. Everything else is unchanged. My first pass, until smacked down by Petrick, would be the following:
- Replace each disruptor with a Pl-G. They use LP/RP arcs.
- Replace the security boxes with hull. All three of them.
- Replace the ADD with a battery. This gives it a total of four batteries to allow for fast-loading the Pl-Gs.
- Replace the 2xdrones with 2xPl-D. They use LS/RS arcs. We'd have to move them around to make things look better. We might put the OPT-RA boxes where the drones are and put the Pl-D where the OPT-RA boxes originally are.
The reason for this arrangement, even though it is a little different, is because the drones don't replace shuttles. As such, they can't be converted to shuttles. The ship is so firepower deficient, though, that it can use the boost from getting two Pl-D instead of one. So, we replace the drones with Pl-D instead of the ADD. We only need one battery, and we want it in the rear hull, so it makes sense to replace the ADD instead of the security with that battery. The security then just become hull.
And ... that's the Romulan KHF5R. (So, the short version is KHR?) You can quibble on my exact exchanges, but it's still gonna be the disruptor, security, ADD, and drones replaced with Pl-G, Pl-D, battery, and hull. Not a big mystery, to be honest.
Now, that all said, I don't know if the Klingons would be willing to send over any rare ships to the Romulans. The ships they sent were either old, obsolete, or something they have in great numbers. These are relatively rare, so I don't know if the Klingons would have one or two to spare. But, it is a "missing" Kestrel and so is always valid to do.
The drones should be replaced with shuttles, just like what was done with the K5W (CL40, page 103).
Normally, I'd agree wholeheartedly with that, Starsabre, and it was something I nearly posted myself.
What stopped me was that the Gorn and Federation HDWs have just two ADMIN each (although the Gorn Shuttle Box DOES say there're two GAS, the ship part of the SSD doesn't show it). Admittedly, I didn't go through ALL the HDW SSDs, but I can't recall off the top of my head if ANY of them have more than two ADMIN.
While I could easily be wrong, methinks that if one particular type of HDW, especially one that's a foreign made hull, had that sort of "Advantage," there'd end up being a push (probably here on The Boards) to have "Improved" versions of other folks HDWs, and that'd just be a headache. 
Of the Alpha empires, only the Jindarian HDW has more than two, with six, of the the HDWs, the Hydran heavy Lancer has three.
The Lyran, and LDR, HDWs show space for four Admins, that is because they do not always have the two fighters.
For completeness, the Jagd Panther only has two admins.
In fairness, the issue of being limited to plasma-F and/or -G warheads is one faced by other Alpha plasma empires when designing or fielding their own HDWs. But, at least these F- and -G mounts are upgraded to L- and S-mounts on their advanced technology counterparts. (Which, granted, is not as good as upgrading a Size Class 3 X1-ship's plasma-S mounts to plasma-Ms, but still...)
For comparison's sake, the SaberHawk-X has two S-torps; the Gorn HBDX has a single S-torp and two L-torps; whereas the ISC HDDX has two "standard" and two "aft-launching" L-torps. While an Orion HDWX would be limited to installing L-torps in the "side" option mounts, but could choose between two L-torps or a single S-torp in the forward pair of centerline adjacent option mounts.
So, in principle, a would-be HK5 with two plasma-Gs and two plasma-Ds would lead to an HK5X with two plasma-Ss and two plasma-DX racks.
But on the other hand, the current HF5X has one less phaser-1X than the SaberHawk-X, so presumably the same would be so here. Plus, the SaberHawk-X has five X-batteries, so it would still have a reserve power advantage even if a would-be HK5X were to be given four X-batteries.
Also, beyond the changes noted above, presumably the boom emergency impulse engines would be swapped out for APRs, in keeping with the "no boom separation" doctrine used by the Romulans for their Kestrel conversions.
For the record, I did check the F5W. In the F5W, the drones and shuttles are arranged like a traditional Klingon ship. Therefore, it is obvious that the drones are just in converted shuttle space. With the HF5, this is not the case. Instead, it is apparent that the shuttle bay was restored and relocated. The drone racks are instead just straight up drone racks unassociated with the shuttle bay. Therefore, they should not be converted to shuttles.
Anyway, I have to construct a new (for me) SSD note and build a new PPT box for the SSD, but once I have those I will submit it for consideration for the newsletter or whatever they want. I will note it was requested by Gary.