Topic: Klingon W4 War Beast Very Early Battlecruiser For SFC 1.

[Panzergranate]

The War Beast was the Klingon Empire's first battlecruiser and entered service in the middle of the Terran 21st century.

The designation W4 denotes that it was the 4th warship produced by the Klingons. At that time all warship prooduction was undertaken on Q'uonos. Many of the familiar shipyards, such as the D'rel shipyards, didn't exist.

The War Beast was an over ambitious project for the level of Warp Drive technology possessed by the Klingons at that time. It was both underpowered and over gunned with poor sublight and Warp speed characteristics. However it satisfied the Klingon's naturally over inflated ego to be able to field a very big warship at that time in their history, and this seems to have been the primary goal.

Warp drive was provided by a pair of Fusion powered Warp Drive nachelles which gave a maximum speed of just over Warp 2. Impulse power was provided by command section and secondary hull mounted engines.

The forward command hull contained the crew accommodation, shuttle bay, two short ranged Disrupter barbettes and missile launcher tubes. It could seperate from the secondary hull and move at 1/30th of light speed under its own power during an emergency.

The secondary hull contains the massive Fusion powerplant for the Warp Drive, the medium range Disrupter turrets and the fuel tanks which were housed in the wings.

In total the War Beast carried eight Disrupters, four short ranged in barbettes and four medium ranged in turrets. Four missile launcher tubes were also carried to provide long range bombardment capability.

During the expansion years of the Klingon Empire, the War Beast and its four sister ships, helped in the conquest of several star systems. Against races that did not possess Warp Drive or those at a similar technological level as the Klingons, the War Beast proved decisive.

Approximately 20 years after launch, all of the War Beast class received upgrades in propulsion. All were refitted with new twin coil Fusion powered Warp nachelles in the hope of increasing performance. However this only increased the maximum speed to warp 2.4 though it did increase the available power levels for combat.

All five War Beasts were lost in futile actions against the Romulans when the Klingons attempted to annex territory from a falsely perceived weakened Romulan Star Empire directly after the Earth - Romulan War.

[Starfox1701]

Nice, almost cuite by Klingon standards

[FoaS_XC]

Okay that is a design that I'm going to have to play with

[Panzergranate]

I was aiming for a design of battlecruiser that reflected a more crude and primitive yet still recognisable as a Klingon warship from the 21st century or SFB year -50 or more.

The Klingons had already conquered many races before even the SFB early years starts, judging by the subject races within the Klingon Empire. Something tells me that they didn't become subjects out of choice....

All the D'rel design Klingon warships carry their fuel for the Impulse engines in the wings so I figured that this would be more of a traditional standard design feature of Klingon shipwrights than just unique to the D'rel shipyard or a recent practice. In other words, it had to have origins way back in early Klingon Warp Drive and pre-Warp Drive space flight.

This pretty much determined how the layout of the secondary hull would be.... a very large Fusion warp reactor with attached large wing fuel tanks with some sort of Warp nachelle on either extremity.

The medium ranged Disrupters would need a direct plasma feed from the Fusion Warp reactor so that is why I placed them where they are on top and below it.

The boom acts as the fuel tank for the Impulse engines on the command section should it need to seperate from the secondary hull.

I only bothered to factor in one upgrade and only to Warp Drive nachelles somewhere in the 2070's.

FoaS, if see potential for more upgrades and upgrades throughout it service life then I'm curious to see what you come up with.

The very early Klingon navy during the expansion and conquest of the star systems surrounding Q'uonos is an interesting area to explore.