Somlia-Class Fleet Tender
| Name: | Somlia-Class |
|---|---|
| Type: | Fleet Support Vessel |
| Builders: | Independent Shipwrights, Inc., Orvieto Naval Shipyards, Various |
| Operators: | Umbrian Republic Navy |
| Completed: | 64 |
| Lost: | 6 |
| Length: | 658 m |
| Width: | 184 m |
| Height: | 120 m |
| Power Supply: | 6 x Orvieto Heavy Industries F6r Fusion Powerplant |
| Sub - Light Propulsion | 2 x Fulmin Propulsion Ba-Series Ion Engines |
| Supra-Light Propulsion: | 5 x SSE 26-b supra-luminal drive cores |
| Endurance: | Fuel for 24 lightspeed jumps, 12 months of provisions for the crew |
| Crew: | 165 officers, 3,260 enlisted |
| Sensors: | 1 x Cianave Systems GXp Active Sensor Arrays, 2 x Cianave Systems 64r Passive Sensor Arrays |
| Armament: | 4 x 76mm dual-purpose rail guns in single turrets |
| Armor | 75 mm titanium plate armor |
| Spacecraft Facilities: | Capacity for 6 maneuvering tugs and 8 shuttles. |
| Cargo Capacity: | 50000 tonnes |
While not as flashy or awe-inspiring as the Republic's capital ships, modern fleet operations would quickly grind to a halt without a network of supply bases and support ships to keep the vessels fueled, stocked with food and water, and in good repair.
The Somlia-class is the backbone of the Navy's Logistics Command. The vessel can be used for underway replenishment of munitions and crew consumables, but it serves primarily as a fleet repair ship. Buried within its lightly armored hull are the machining shops and raw materials stores required to produce almost any replacement part.
If repair proves to be impossible, either due to the amount of damage a ship has sustained or because of the length of time required to fabricate a replacement component, the ship is capable of towing a warship at faster-than-light speeds to a more substantial repair yard.
To achieve this, the Somlias have been equipped with six grasping arms, folded neatly in bulges around the vessels' centerline. These arms can extend outward and articulate around badly damaged warships, and feature electromagnetic locks which form a nearly inseparable bond to the target's hull.
One Somlia is capable of towing two lighter warships or a single cruiser at once. Towing larger capital ships such as the Corsialto-class battleships or Teorza-class battlecruisers requires two vessels working in concert, and while none have yet been immobilized by enemy action, the URN believes that four Somlia's would be able to transport the massive Doramine-class supercarriers.
The power requirements and added SLEs needed to perform these operations are immense, and the space they occupy in the rear of the vessel leaves little room for its own ion engines. This makes the vessel slow to accelerate at sub-light speeds, but this attribute is of little consequence as the vessel is poorly equipped to handle combat conditions.
With only a lightly armored outer sheath and a few dual-purpose point defense cannons, deploying the Somlias in a hot zone is highly inadvisable.
However, the exigencies of war occasionally require such actions. In these circumstances, the archus in command will attempt to form a clean zone around the stricken vessel, and the repair ship will quickly attach itself and attempt to flee. This tactic has minimized the number of tenders destroyed by enemy action, but some losses are inevitable.
As the Republic's shipbuilding industry ramps up, the Somlias continue to play an important role in conserving the URN's scarce resources. While it's true that repairing damaged ships requires resources that would have been deployed to build new warships, it's much more effective to repair a moderately damaged ship than to build a new vessel from the keel up.