Prudii-class Prowler

Prudii-class Prowler
Inspiration for the class comes from the star of Karen Traviss' Kilo Five series, Port Stanley, and the design is modeled after various Covenant ships (except for those little hangar notches, those are from the Venator-class Star Destroyers).

Files:

Top:

Side:

Rear:

Front:

LXF:

Stats:
Armament:
2x Mk 1 MLS-S
2x Mk 1 MLS

Complement:
10x SOIC (Special Orbital Insertion Craft) deployment modules with 2 pods each
2x hangars with support systems for a total of 4 shuttles
5x deployable radar interference probes
10x deployable scout probes (no design yet for these, I apologise and will begin work on them shortly)

Defenses:
150cm dielectric composite armour (matte black sensor-baffling paint)

20x chaff deployment modules

2x DRFM jammer modules
2x Pulse jammer modules
4x Sweep jammer modules (each module sweeps its jamming from frequency to frequency in such a way that they cover part of each other's non-jammed frequencies at constantly changing speeds)
2x Barrage jammer modules (these try to jam the frequencies that the other jammers don't)

Drives:
1x specialised Alcel Slipspace Drive (2,500 ly/day)
5x Alcel SAS-C (Stealth Arrangement System-Capital) Engines (designed to provide minimum trackable emissions at maximum output)

Dimensions:
740 metres long
220 metres wide
70 metres tall

Description:
The Prudii-class prowler is one of the largest Alcel designs currently in production, but its purpose isn't to duel the even larger superships already out there - it's to slip past them and gather intel on highly-guarded targets, then sabotage them.
A massive jamming suite that covers most known transmission types keeps anyone from spreading word of the ship in-system, and a new, experimental FTL comms system that spreads the length of the ship enables crew to stream the latest Galaxy Sports Sporting Sport Championship in the highest quality instantaneously.
If the ship does happen to be seen, the onboard cyberdefense network will remove any electronic records the ship can get into with its communications system - that is, nearly anything.
Missile lock acquired? Chaff systems and the jammers will take care of that. If the ship is confronted with energy weapons or conventional ammunition, however, the armour will only take a small amount of fire before giving way - shields would detract from the ship's stealth.

Interesting design here, Nikolo.

I most like how you got the same look as the Covenant ships' usual thruster design. I tried to pull that off myself a while ago and failed utterly.

Admittedly, I'm a little unsure of how well the stealth systems would work. You covered a lot of angles, but I'll throw out a few other potential issues for you to consider real fast.

-I don't know whether or not this includes Halo's Slipspace (or yours, if it's a different thing), but many FTL travel methods leave large bursts of easily-detected emissions on either end of the trip. So unless you have a way of masking that, they'll know when you've arrived, and possibly where at. And that'll broadcast your presence just as much as a scout ship spotting you.

-While it's not a huge concern, the ship will still be detectable with some sensor types. Especially at closer ranges. Sensor waves bouncing off the hull (sort of radar- or sonar-style), mass shadow-detecting sensors, and so on will sometimes be able to pick you up, even with a slim hull and masked sublight thrust emissions. Of course, this mostly only applies to shorter ranges (say a few hundred klicks), so it's not necessarily a huge issue, especially with how much room to maneuver there is in open space.

-Also, I personally doubt you should bother too much with methods of disguising the ship visually. It's not necessarily easy to spot a ship in space, especially with a dark paint job and this ship's narrow profile, and I suspect you'd be detected by generic sensors long before someone saw you with their eyes. And the lights wouldn't necessarily do much anyway, unless of course you're in atmosphere, and in that case there's the atmospheric turbulence of a giant starship flying around to detect.
Point being, it might be smart to skip the visual stealth measures and instead focus on a few that hide it better from sensors. A basic sensor-baffling coating (like what some real-world jets use, for example) might just go farther anyway.

-Lastly, be wary of comm signals. Those are probably the absolute easiest way for someone to detect you. In other words, I would strongly advise against streaming the GSSSC Grand Tournament across your entire ship during a particularly critical mission.

Thanks!

Covvie-style thrusters really only work with large, flat surfaces and curvy bits, so they were almost a natural progression from the rest of the design.

As far as slipspace goes, I follow the same rules as Halo - and they aren't too clear on what happens. Ships in slipspace can only be detected by slipspace probes (from most of the fiction), but when they exit the point of exit can be detected - but not the ship itself, if cloaked quickly enough (this seems to occur more often when a large fleet exits slipspace after probes have given forewarning & directed sensors to the proper point, otherwise ships that used slipspace wakes - I'll discuss them shortly - would be detected). Slipspace wakes are left behind for a time when a ship has made a transition to slipspace. Other, slower ships can be pushed to the speed of the ship that left the wake, but this hasn't really been expanded upon.

Now, radar/sonar style waves are still a problem, but the jamming systems and interference probes help out a little with that (not much, granted, but when there's bound to be some natural interference it helps). As for mass-shadow detectors, I have absolutely no idea how to counter them.

I was going to reply that the Prudii-class would carry out atmospheric operations, then read the bit about the turbulence. *facepalms* Completely forgot about that. Seeing as how the model is already dark coloured, I could just tweak the stats a little, though, so that instead of active visual camo and blinky things it would have better paint.

Yeah, comms are a double-edged sword, but I can assure you that they will be on strict lockdown during missions.

The ship itself, I quite like. It has an impressive, organic, curvy feel to it- obviously, not something easy to accomplish. I like the engines quite a bit, though I do feel the ship itself is rather thin- you could really use thinning it out.

That being said, the stats and description somewhat bug me. Firstly, if you want to gather intel, you why bother with such a large ship in the first place? Why not just use a corvette-sized vessel- or, better yet, a long-range FTL-capable probe? Secondly, for all the ship's impressive list of countermeasures, they seem to only protect against EM/visual detection- and if you're enemies are still stuck with those, than the very act of fighting them would be outright unsportsmanlike. Seriously, though, such countermeasures would do pretty much squat against most faction's space-magic uber-sci-fi sensors. In fact, you'd honestly be better served replacing the whole list with "cloaking device", just to cover all your bases, and then explain it's a super-special ultra cloak that makes it nearly immune to most of the normal cloak-detecting thingies. IDK; just the idea of a 740-meter-long intel-gathering ship with all sorts of fancy radar-jamming stuff doesn't seem that effective when a 200-odd-meter-long cloaked corvette could do the exact same thing as good as, if not better that, it in almost every way.

In summary: very nice ship, but the whole role/description I found somewhat questionable.

(Also, yeah, better keep ESPN off while on active duty )

Well, I can tell you that I'm working on a version more sensible for its size:

Capital Ship:

...and it'll definitely be better suited for that. I was initially planning on having something like this be the Prudii-class:

Proto Prudii A:

Or this:

Proto Prudii B:

...but it just kinda grew. I'll probably refit it later or something.

As far as stats, I kinda wanted it to be based in the real world, and there was barely any Halo tech that explained itself enough for me to want to use it - or, really, barely any Halo tech beyond active camo systems. Cloaking device seemed just too... "handwavium", I guess, which is weird, but oh well.

Nikolo: Oh duhh. I somehow forgot about the jammers. That'll do a bit, sure. Even still, I definitely would recommend a coating of sensor-absorbing (or whatever) material to help it even further.

As to the ship's gravity being detected, it's actually pretty simple. Make yourself lightweight.
First of all, keep artificial gravity to a minimum. Definitely don't bother giving artificial gravity to any non-crewed parts of the ship (which is usually a bit), and minimizing the number of areas where you need it helps some too.
After that is making the ship itself lightweight. Fuel is a big one (assuming your reactors/power sources need fuel), as supercondensing it is common practice so as to increase a ship's operational range. As a result, fuel's usually the heaviest thing on a warship. The only other major concern would be armor plating, but it doesn't sound like this ship is too focused on heavy armor.
And don't be too concerned. The uses of gravity-detecting sensors usually involve planets, stars, black holes, and so on, but not really detecting cloaked ships. So the average enemy ship probably won't have sensors advanced enough to detect a barely-there-by-comparison starship.

Yeah, I figured the turbulence thing out the hard way back on the LMBs. It stinks. Then again, if you've got sensors that can detect a ship from clear across a solar system, you can probably find anything on a planet's surface just as easily a couple miles higher than if you were in atmosphere.

Yupo, stats have been changed to reflect the new stealth coating.

As far as reduced mass, I guess having the ship be thinner might help that? I dunno.

I suppose crazy awesome sensors could do that, yeah...