Though already decades into its service, the Leonidas Class Battleship remains one of the
newest designs in the United Nations Navy, introduced as part of a poorly funded and
largely unsuccessful attempt to modernise the fleet, before it began to fall into complete
stagnancy.
At a length of 270 Meters, the Leonidas is very compact for a Battleship, presenting
a smaller target for hostile weapons during long-range engagements.
Much of this advantage is lost however, as a result of the ship’s extremely slow rate
of acceleration, this is a product of the vessel’s outmoded S-250 Series Epstein Drives,
a famously unreliable drive unit that was considered outdated even before the Leonidas
was commissioned.
The Leonidas Class carries a standard crew complement of 920, in addition to an unusually
large contingent of United Nations Marines.
On paper, the weapons complement of the Leonidas Class seems incredibly formidable, carrying
a staggering 32 Torpedo Launchers, supported by a pair of Dawson-Pattern Medium Railguns
and a huge grid of 25 PDCs, only ten fewer than the defence grid of the far larger Truman
Class Dreadnought.
In reality, this arsenal is the result of low quality targeting suites, both for the
ship’s torpedoes and PDCs, with the system’s unreliable accuracy demanding a larger number
of weapons to improve torpedo hit probability and point defence.
In regard to the PDC’s at least, this was something of an overcompensation, and the
result is an extremely effective defence grid that makes the ship essentially unassailable
by torpedoes.
The huge number of weapons equipped on the Leonidas drastically increase the ship’s
overall mass, and when combined with the vessel’s low-quality drive units, they result in an
extremely unfavourable thrust-to-weight ratio and manoeuvrability rating.
This lack of agility has inspired certain naval personnel to mockingly nickname the
vessels ‘Brick Buckets’ or ‘Lead Leo’s’.
Like many ships of its era, the Leonidas Class carries turreted railguns that cannot be rotated
or otherwise articulated while the ship is under thrust.
For this reason, the ship is often used to slowly strafe across an engagement zone on
a single vector, before adjusting to perform another run.
Some captains also chose to disregard evasive tactics entirely, and instead bring their
vessels to a relative halt upon entering weapons range, using the ship’s huge point defence
grid to protect themselves as they adjust and fire their railguns.
While the Battleship’s defence grid provides a highly reliable shield against missile weapons,
the ship remains extremely vulnerable to railguns as a result of its poor manoeuvrability, and
is essentially incapable of engaging any railgun-equipped warship without firing from far beyond effective
range.
Though the vessel was not designed as an assault ship, the unusually large cargo and shuttle
bays of the Leonidas Class have resulted in the vessel often being selected to serve as
a troop deployment craft, with a number of additional modular barracks and mission operation
centres being installed on a mission-specific basis.
The 8 M-Type APC Skiffs carried aboard the vessel are substantially larger than conventional
L-Type Dropships, and are able to deploy sizeable boarding parties and ground excursion teams
in short order.
When pushed to maximum capacity, a Leonidas Class Vessel can be loaded to carry hundreds
of marines, often exceeding the troop complement of certain purpose-built assault vessels.
Though certainly an effective and reliable warship, the Leonidas Class Battleship is
perhaps the greatest symbol of the UN Navy’s decline into stagnancy.
When compared to the cutting edge Donnager Class Battleships of the Martian Congressional
Republic, the Leonidas Class is outmatched in almost every measurable sense, and serves
to underline the UN’s desperate need for a drastic modernisation of their entire fleet.