Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Potemkin Warship

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The Potemkin Warship is the heavily modified version of the Sovetsky Soyuz battleships that serves as Voshkod's capital ship and answer to the Iowa class battleship. Planned to be voiced by

History
"We sunk Atlantis!"

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In testing of the Dreadnought-class missile cruisers following their refit, something soon became apparent; though the new Dreadnoughts retained all of their survivability, and though they could now level coastal fortifications with ease, the once unstoppable battleships were found to be lacking in anti-ship capability. Their V4 missiles were formidable, but they were not able to track moving targets, and their high explosive warheads were not designed to penetrate ship hulls. Furthermore, all of the Dreadnought's pre-refit weaponry had been removed to make room for the missiles; before, the Dreadnought could have dispatched ships that closed the distance with its ancillary guns and fended off attacking aircraft with its anti-air mounts; now, it had no defense against either.

Attempts to rectify the issue by arming all Dreadnoughts with scaled-up versions of the S-15 anti-ship missile for ship-to-ship combat soon ran into problems, and despite the best efforts of Voshkod engineers, it didn't look like those problems would be sorted out any time soon. Premier Cherdenko ordered Admiralty Shipyard to develop a ship to fill in the niche the pre-refit Dreadnoughts had filled now that all the Dreadnoughts had been converted to missile cruisers and rest of pre-refit Dreadnoughts are sold to Encantadia.

With the issues surrounding anti-ship missiles, they were soon discarded in favor of a more traditional armament; guns. However, with the Union gearing up for war by this time and most steel going into the production of more tanks and airplanes, Admiralty didn't have much to work with. To get around this, they employed the hulls of an existing ship class; the Sovetsky Soyuz-class Battleship. A total of eighty of these ships had been built during the early 1940s, but they were considered obsolete after the GVAW and decommissioned, stripped of their weapons and almost all machinery.

The slowly rusting hulls of the ships still remained, however, and were suitable for Admiralty Shipyard's purposes. The ship would of course have to be able to defeat battleship-grade armor like that found on the Pennsylvania-class and later the Iowa and Montana-class battleships, which would require large, powerful guns. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough steel available for a full complement of battleship caliber guns, and the Sovetsky Soyuz battleships were likely too small to mount all of them anyway. However, smaller guns wouldn't be powerful enough.

A compromise was made; instead of six or nine guns, Admiralty engineers eventually decided on just four. To justify the new ship's worth, however, it was decided that the guns would have to be of massive caliber; to this end, the engineers came up with a design for a thoroughly monstrous 508mm naval gun. Such a large and heavy gun, it was reasoned, would be able to wreck any ship easily with just one or two shots. Inspired by the Apocalypse tanks, a powerful magnetic harpoon was also mounted, a system to allow the Sovetsky Soyuz to pull ships that tried to flee towards it (or it towards them). Three hundred twenty guns were soon made, and the magnetic harpoons were requisitioned from Arkhangelsk. Cherdenko had his warship, and all guns were pointed forwards for maximum firepower.

The newly refitted Sovetsky Soyuz, now known as the Potemkin-class got the chance to prove themselves in naval battle soon enough when the 2004 V.C. invasion of Aquila broke out. It soon made a reputation for itself. As the designers had predicted, the 508mm naval guns could utterly destroy other ships that opposed it, and the magnetic harpoon could pull targets right into the Potemkin's sights. The only real threats it faced were from aircraft and submarines, and with proper escorts, these could be dealt with. While the Potemkin's were ponderously slow due to their new engines being insufficiently powerful, their armor (reinforced by Admiralty to ensure it could survive engagements with battleships) allowed them to go toe to toe with battleships, and their firepower ensured that, once the target was in range of their guns, it was good as sunk.

Trivia

 * The ship itself resembles the real world Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships rather than one from Red Alert Paradox

Guardians of the Tacitus

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