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Description
The Typhon Dynamics Monitor class corvette is one of the oldest starships in the modern Imperial Star Republic's navy, with a long and storied past that stretches back nearly seventy years. The modern Monitor has eight Gungnir turrets four along the dorsal and ventral hull, and four on it's port and starboard hulls. The Monitor also has two dorsal missile bays and a single ventral bay, and a small hangar bay on it's ventral hull. The hangar bay can hold two Jayhawk fighters and a single Aurora shuttle. The prow of the Monitor is heavily reinforced and designed for piercing the hulls of other warships. The two fore engines give the Monitor a higher level of tactical mobility over other Vocian starships and make use of otherwise outdated retro-thrusters to allow the heavily armored corvette to manuever through a battle better than other Imperial ships, though it's main impulse engine is still slower than the Comet's. The Monitor's crew complement rounds out at fifty-five personnel, down from the original one hundred and twenty that were required to fully operate the original Monitors. The Monitor is unique among the Imperial Navy as it sports a defined, reinforced bridge tower.

The Monitor's Rise, Fall and Rebirth as a modern warship started nearly seventy-five years ago at the end of the Colonial Era, when technology, specifically artificial gravity and the Inertial Manipulation Field, were finally perfected. Primarily through these two technologies, starship designers were able to design newer, smaller and more efficient starships and move away from the more classical designs that required rotation sections and numerous thrusters for trajectory correction. After five years of extensive testing, the Monitor-class Destroyer was born and sported four heavy Hrunting cannons and a small payload of anti-ship torpedoes. The then-destroyer outstripped the rest of the IStaR's fleet and orbital shipyards were in full production of the ships with a planned retirement of most of the current Imperial Navy within a few short years. The small, nimble and powerful warship was geared towards a bright future as the cornerstone of a modern starfleet. But fate had other plans.

During the initial survey of the small Larani-Ultyran star system, scientists were drawn towards the peculiar ice world that sat near the edge of the small star's habitable zone. The planet was completely encrusted with layers of ice miles that were several miles thick and contained a significant metallic debris ring in low orbit, as well as evidence that the planet's orbital path was once influenced by at least one celestial object of significant size. While a research colony was established on the planet, the survey ship tracked a much smaller trail of debris towards the system's star, eventually stumbling across a massive metallic structure no less than seven kilometers length and height. The structure was a elaborate tetrahedron, with many free floating secondary structures that were held in place by some unknown power source, and was the origin of the smaller debris trail. After two months of scanning and fruitless exploration of the tetrahedron's exterior, the survey ship's crew attempted to board and explore the structure, the tetrahedron became active and quickly destroyed the Imperial starship through the use of an unknown energy weapon which appeared to deconstruct key points in the survey ship's superstructure at a sub-atomic level and reduced it to a few fragments of free floating metal within seconds. The tetrahedron then set a course for the research colony on the ice world, crossing the vast 2 Astronomical Unit distance in less than an hour. The research facility had just enough time to send a distress signal before the tetrahedron eliminated it and every trace of Imperial presence on the planet through precision orbital bombardment using a second directed energy weapon. The tetrahedron then proceeded to scour the system of survey probes and communication equipment before settling into a close orbit over the ice world.

Imperial Command was stunned by this encounter, and in fear of the alien construct somehow discovering the Imperial Star Republic's worlds, sent it's entire fleet to the Larani-Ultyran system with the intent of disabling or destroying the aggressor. The resulting battle was entirely one sided, as the numerous starships of the Imperial Navy could not manuever swiftly enough to avoid the Construct's energy weapons and were torn apart in short order. In only a few minutes of frantic combat, the majority of the Imperial Fleet had been eliminated, and those that remained were in swift retreat.

Save for the Monitors.

The Monitors, free from having to fully obey the laws Einsteinian science, were able to stay slightly ahead of the Construct's deadly energy weapons and eventually deal enough kinetic damage to the Construct that it eventually was destroyed in a massive explosion that vaporized most of it, leaving only a few fragments left. The battle had been won, but at the cost of 98% of the entire Imperial Navy. Even the Monitors, the saviors of the Imperial Star Republic, had taken massive losses to their deployed numbers, with only five heavily damaged starships surviving the battle intact. From this fateful battle, Imperial Command decided that the Monitors were simply not powerful enough should the IStaR ever face another Construct and pushed their designers to develop far larger, heavier and deadlier starships that could survive firepower of the Construct's magnitude and return fire with equal ferocity. The Monitor, it seemed, had it's fifteen minutes of fame.

Over next seventy years, Monitors were repeatedly downgraded in their tonnage classification, going from Destroyer to Light Destroyer, Heavy Frigate to Frigate, Frigate to Light Frigate until finally stopping at the lowest tonnage for a capital ship: Corvette class. The Monitor would remain classified as a corvette for decades and eventually only saw use as a utility vessel, hauling low priority cargo and crew between much more important locations in IStaR space. They were far too outdated to ever serve a functioning combat role ever again, their role within the modern Imperial Navy having long since been supplanted by the more modern and much, much faster Comet class corvette. And even as a utility and logistics vessel, the Monitors were seen as nearly the end of their operational service lives. Many were decommissioned and placed into orbital graveyards to await their final scrapping. Within the IStaR core systems, very few remained operational, mainly a handful of Monitors that had undergone extensive civilian refits for corporations or the handful of individuals that could afford a starship. It was along the Twin Eagles Trade Corridor that Monitors were still seeing active use around the numerous Waystations, though still only as fading relics that were simply there until more modern starships arrived, and anyone that was assigned to a Monitor saw it as punishment for failures elsewhere.

It was the battle of Waystation-L419 that changed the fate of the Monitor once again. Waystation-L419 was a small space station that was situated along the central spine of the Twin Eagles Trade Corridor, right within the most heavily Rust afflicted sectors of the struggling Beta Quadrant. Even with the large military push by both the Imperial Star Republic and the Imperial and Federal Union of States to clear the area of raiders, pirates and other threats, attacks were still fairly common, especially during the early days of the Corridor. Waystation-L419 was somewhat out of the way in terms of regular traffic, really only seeing use as a distribution point for a handful of minor nations in the sector. It was small and under-manned and defend by four Comet class corvettes, while it's two Monitors were used largely as excess storage space. It was here that the Blackmoon Syndicate, a band of Vahkirran pirates, struck. Several pirate ships appeared in close proximity to the Waystation and began open firing on the Comet corvettes. The Comets, built largely for speed and quick hit and fade attacks, were unprepared for the attack and all but one were quickly destroyed, the surviving corvette left drifting and disabled as the Blackmoon moved to board the Waystation. In a last ditch attempt to defend the station, the two Monitors lurched forward and manged to hold the line against the two Blackmoon vessels until reinforcements arrived.

Following the battle, Imperial High Command began to re-evaluate the Comet's role in the Imperial Navy, realizing that it was in actuality not suited for a direct, sustained ship to ship combat role. From this re-evaluation, the Warsword Frigate was created and the Monitor class was given new life as a dedicated combat escort vessel within the Imperial Navy. While the existing Monitors were far too old to be rebuilt, the next generation of Monitors would carry the torch. Now sporting eight Gungnir heavy cannons, and three modern missile bays as well as modern armor, a re-designed and reinforced bridge tower and a hangar for light strikecraft support and the newly reinforced prow inspired by the success of the Warsword's ramming tactics, the new Monitors quickly earned their place once more within the Fleet. They now serve as dedicated warships across multiple operational needs, such as patrol ships, escorts, atmospheric combat and support, and direct ship to ship warfare. While still only a corvette and the second smallest combat ship in the Imperial Navy, the Monitor's time has finally come.

Seen here, three Monitor corvettes perform a lunar patrol over a Imperial world.

_____________

WOO. That was a lot of writing, but it felt good. Most of the above has been in my canon for a /very/ long time, circa 2010-11. I've just never fully written it out (though it does exist in RP and a partially written story) all in once place. Though the design of the Monitor wouldn't come into existence until 2014, the concept behind the first 'modern' warships of my navy fighting off a much more advanced alien vessel was something that was at the core of my canon, dictating why all my other ships (when I eventually post them) are the sizes they are and have the firepower they do. The name of the Monitor is a throwback to the old American Civil War Ironclad, the USS Monitor and it being the first Ironclad in the Union navy. The original Monitor design had same basic profile as this model, though I had yet to fully master using DOGA-L3 yet. The original design had no weapons (I had yet to build custom turrets and cannons and despised the default ones that came with DOGA), the fore engines were aligned slightly diagonally and the central hull was less overall symmetrical and clean looking. The bridge also had windows, and we all know that bridge towers with windows attract A-Wings like flies to garbage. It was an ugly ship that also befitted it's namesake, as well as it's purpose for the story I was telling, that of a falling apart civilian freighter. I had the story, I had the ship, I was content just to let it remain at that. But then late last year I decided to take a second look at the model out of boredom, and before I knew it, I had basically rebuilt the entire ship using the skills and style I had developed over the years. In the last week after finishing the Titan Battle Tank, I decided to finalize any changes to the model and finally get it and it's story up. These 'finishing touches' ended up being extensive as well, as I added the extra four cannons to the port and starboard hulls, added the two dorsal missile bay, redesigned the prow to better fit it's sleeker design and finally figured out how to cover up the windows on the bridge.

"At last" I told myself, "I can have a proper Defiant". Defiant, of course, being a reference to that spunky little ship from Star Trek: Deep Space 9. It was just a matter of sitting down, finding a good background, and writing it all out. Originally the scene above was intended to be much more action packed. I wanted to show the Monitor in battle, with the cannons blazing on the central ship and Monitors in the background in various states of missile launch. But that proved to be exceedingly tedious and far too much work (it would have meant resizing the model many times in order to align the beams from the cannons, to shift the cannons, and then create the effects of the missiles firing), so here's a standard 'Overview' shot. But I'm happy with the background and the angle of the ships, aside from the ventral missile bay and the guns on the far side of the ship, you can see everything (including it's sleek profile).

Overall I am /very/ happy with the ship's redesign, and happy to finally get the story behind it (and others) up. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed making and writing about it. And yes, I'm still working on trying to get the engines to llok better than just 'blue'.

__

Imperial Star Republic, Vocians, Monitor Class Corvette, Warsword frigate, Comet class, Larani-Ultyran and Twin Eagles Trade Corridor and all things within this post that belong to me, belong to me.
Blackmoon Syndicate belongs to Vahk. Imperial and Federal Union of States belongs to Lubyak.
Model built in DOGA-L3
Background taken with Space Engine

Do not use without informing me, or without my written, expressed permission.

Description
The Typhon Dynamics Monitor class corvette is one of the oldest starships in the modern Imperial Star Republic's navy, with a long and storied past that stretches back nearly seventy years. The modern Monitor has eight Gungnir turrets four along the dorsal and ventral hull, and four on it's port and starboard hulls. The Monitor also has two dorsal missile bays and a single ventral bay, and a small hangar bay on it's ventral hull. The hangar bay can hold two Jayhawk fighters and a single Aurora shuttle. The prow of the Monitor is heavily reinforced and designed for piercing the hulls of other warships. The two fore engines give the Monitor a higher level of tactical mobility over other Vocian starships and make use of otherwise outdated retro-thrusters to allow the heavily armored corvette to manuever through a battle better than other Imperial ships, though it's main impulse engine is still slower than the Comet's. The Monitor's crew complement rounds out at fifty-five personnel, down from the original one hundred and twenty that were required to fully operate the original Monitors. The Monitor is unique among the Imperial Navy as it sports a defined, reinforced bridge tower.

The Monitor's Rise, Fall and Rebirth as a modern warship started nearly seventy-five years ago at the end of the Colonial Era, when technology, specifically artificial gravity and the Inertial Manipulation Field, were finally perfected. Primarily through these two technologies, starship designers were able to design newer, smaller and more efficient starships and move away from the more classical designs that required rotation sections and numerous thrusters for trajectory correction. After five years of extensive testing, the Monitor-class Destroyer was born and sported four heavy Hrunting cannons and a small payload of anti-ship torpedoes. The then-destroyer outstripped the rest of the IStaR's fleet and orbital shipyards were in full production of the ships with a planned retirement of most of the current Imperial Navy within a few short years. The small, nimble and powerful warship was geared towards a bright future as the cornerstone of a modern starfleet. But fate had other plans.

During the initial survey of the small Larani-Ultyran star system, scientists were drawn towards the peculiar ice world that sat near the edge of the small star's habitable zone. The planet was completely encrusted with layers of ice miles that were several miles thick and contained a significant metallic debris ring in low orbit, as well as evidence that the planet's orbital path was once influenced by at least one celestial object of significant size. While a research colony was established on the planet, the survey ship tracked a much smaller trail of debris towards the system's star, eventually stumbling across a massive metallic structure no less than seven kilometers length and height. The structure was a elaborate tetrahedron, with many free floating secondary structures that were held in place by some unknown power source, and was the origin of the smaller debris trail. After two months of scanning and fruitless exploration of the tetrahedron's exterior, the survey ship's crew attempted to board and explore the structure, the tetrahedron became active and quickly destroyed the Imperial starship through the use of an unknown energy weapon which appeared to deconstruct key points in the survey ship's superstructure at a sub-atomic level and reduced it to a few fragments of free floating metal within seconds. The tetrahedron then set a course for the research colony on the ice world, crossing the vast 2 Astronomical Unit distance in less than an hour. The research facility had just enough time to send a distress signal before the tetrahedron eliminated it and every trace of Imperial presence on the planet through precision orbital bombardment using a second directed energy weapon. The tetrahedron then proceeded to scour the system of survey probes and communication equipment before settling into a close orbit over the ice world.

Imperial Command was stunned by this encounter, and in fear of the alien construct somehow discovering the Imperial Star Republic's worlds, sent it's entire fleet to the Larani-Ultyran system with the intent of disabling or destroying the aggressor. The resulting battle was entirely one sided, as the numerous starships of the Imperial Navy could not manuever swiftly enough to avoid the Construct's energy weapons and were torn apart in short order. In only a few minutes of frantic combat, the majority of the Imperial Fleet had been eliminated, and those that remained were in swift retreat.

Save for the Monitors.

The Monitors, free from having to fully obey the laws Einsteinian science, were able to stay slightly ahead of the Construct's deadly energy weapons and eventually deal enough kinetic damage to the Construct that it eventually was destroyed in a massive explosion that vaporized most of it, leaving only a few fragments left. The battle had been won, but at the cost of 98% of the entire Imperial Navy. Even the Monitors, the saviors of the Imperial Star Republic, had taken massive losses to their deployed numbers, with only five heavily damaged starships surviving the battle intact. From this fateful battle, Imperial Command decided that the Monitors were simply not powerful enough should the IStaR ever face another Construct and pushed their designers to develop far larger, heavier and deadlier starships that could survive firepower of the Construct's magnitude and return fire with equal ferocity. The Monitor, it seemed, had it's fifteen minutes of fame.

Over next seventy years, Monitors were repeatedly downgraded in their tonnage classification, going from Destroyer to Light Destroyer, Heavy Frigate to Frigate, Frigate to Light Frigate until finally stopping at the lowest tonnage for a capital ship: Corvette class. The Monitor would remain classified as a corvette for decades and eventually only saw use as a utility vessel, hauling low priority cargo and crew between much more important locations in IStaR space. They were far too outdated to ever serve a functioning combat role ever again, their role within the modern Imperial Navy having long since been supplanted by the more modern and much, much faster Comet class corvette. And even as a utility and logistics vessel, the Monitors were seen as nearly the end of their operational service lives. Many were decommissioned and placed into orbital graveyards to await their final scrapping. Within the IStaR core systems, very few remained operational, mainly a handful of Monitors that had undergone extensive civilian refits for corporations or the handful of individuals that could afford a starship. It was along the Twin Eagles Trade Corridor that Monitors were still seeing active use around the numerous Waystations, though still only as fading relics that were simply there until more modern starships arrived, and anyone that was assigned to a Monitor saw it as punishment for failures elsewhere.

It was the battle of Waystation-L419 that changed the fate of the Monitor once again. Waystation-L419 was a small space station that was situated along the central spine of the Twin Eagles Trade Corridor, right within the most heavily Rust afflicted sectors of the struggling Beta Quadrant. Even with the large military push by both the Imperial Star Republic and the Imperial and Federal Union of States to clear the area of raiders, pirates and other threats, attacks were still fairly common, especially during the early days of the Corridor. Waystation-L419 was somewhat out of the way in terms of regular traffic, really only seeing use as a distribution point for a handful of minor nations in the sector. It was small and under-manned and defend by four Comet class corvettes, while it's two Monitors were used largely as excess storage space. It was here that the Blackmoon Syndicate, a band of Vahkirran pirates, struck. Several pirate ships appeared in close proximity to the Waystation and began open firing on the Comet corvettes. The Comets, built largely for speed and quick hit and fade attacks, were unprepared for the attack and all but one were quickly destroyed, the surviving corvette left drifting and disabled as the Blackmoon moved to board the Waystation. In a last ditch attempt to defend the station, the two Monitors lurched forward and manged to hold the line against the two Blackmoon vessels until reinforcements arrived.

Following the battle, Imperial High Command began to re-evaluate the Comet's role in the Imperial Navy, realizing that it was in actuality not suited for a direct, sustained ship to ship combat role. From this re-evaluation, the Warsword Frigate was created and the Monitor class was given new life as a dedicated combat escort vessel within the Imperial Navy. While the existing Monitors were far too old to be rebuilt, the next generation of Monitors would carry the torch. Now sporting eight Gungnir heavy cannons, and three modern missile bays as well as modern armor, a re-designed and reinforced bridge tower and a hangar for light strikecraft support and the newly reinforced prow inspired by the success of the Warsword's ramming tactics, the new Monitors quickly earned their place once more within the Fleet. They now serve as dedicated warships across multiple operational needs, such as patrol ships, escorts, atmospheric combat and support, and direct ship to ship warfare. While still only a corvette and the second smallest combat ship in the Imperial Navy, the Monitor's time has finally come.

Seen here, three Monitor corvettes perform a lunar patrol over a Imperial world.

_____________

WOO. That was a lot of writing, but it felt good. Most of the above has been in my canon for a /very/ long time, circa 2010-11. I've just never fully written it out (though it does exist in RP and a partially written story) all in once place. Though the design of the Monitor wouldn't come into existence until 2014, the concept behind the first 'modern' warships of my navy fighting off a much more advanced alien vessel was something that was at the core of my canon, dictating why all my other ships (when I eventually post them) are the sizes they are and have the firepower they do. The name of the Monitor is a throwback to the old American Civil War Ironclad, the USS Monitor and it being the first Ironclad in the Union navy. The original Monitor design had same basic profile as this model, though I had yet to fully master using DOGA-L3 yet. The original design had no weapons (I had yet to build custom turrets and cannons and despised the default ones that came with DOGA), the fore engines were aligned slightly diagonally and the central hull was less overall symmetrical and clean looking. The bridge also had windows, and we all know that bridge towers with windows attract A-Wings like flies to garbage. It was an ugly ship that also befitted it's namesake, as well as it's purpose for the story I was telling, that of a falling apart civilian freighter. I had the story, I had the ship, I was content just to let it remain at that. But then late last year I decided to take a second look at the model out of boredom, and before I knew it, I had basically rebuilt the entire ship using the skills and style I had developed over the years. In the last week after finishing the Titan Battle Tank, I decided to finalize any changes to the model and finally get it and it's story up. These 'finishing touches' ended up being extensive as well, as I added the extra four cannons to the port and starboard hulls, added the two dorsal missile bay, redesigned the prow to better fit it's sleeker design and finally figured out how to cover up the windows on the bridge.

"At last" I told myself, "I can have a proper Defiant". Defiant, of course, being a reference to that spunky little ship from Star Trek: Deep Space 9. It was just a matter of sitting down, finding a good background, and writing it all out. Originally the scene above was intended to be much more action packed. I wanted to show the Monitor in battle, with the cannons blazing on the central ship and Monitors in the background in various states of missile launch. But that proved to be exceedingly tedious and far too much work (it would have meant resizing the model many times in order to align the beams from the cannons, to shift the cannons, and then create the effects of the missiles firing), so here's a standard 'Overview' shot. But I'm happy with the background and the angle of the ships, aside from the ventral missile bay and the guns on the far side of the ship, you can see everything (including it's sleek profile).

Overall I am /very/ happy with the ship's redesign, and happy to finally get the story behind it (and others) up. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed making and writing about it. And yes, I'm still working on trying to get the engines to llok better than just 'blue'.

__

Imperial Star Republic, Vocians, Monitor Class Corvette, Warsword frigate, Comet class, Larani-Ultyran and Twin Eagles Trade Corridor and all things within this post that belong to me, belong to me.
Blackmoon Syndicate belongs to Vahk. Imperial and Federal Union of States belongs to Lubyak.
Model built in DOGA-L3
Background taken with Space Engine

Do not use without informing me, or without my written, expressed permission.