Marantz Class Battleship

Marantz Class Battleship

The Marantz Class Battleship is a Seenian design initially proposed about twenty-five years prior to the Celtest-Dark Ones War.

Description
The proposed design was a single ship that could split into 5 component parts: four designed to charge into battle comprising the forward two thirds of the ship and what was termed an "Engineering Hull" which contained the primary engines. Each of the four "Forward sections" would contain three turrets which could detach and increase the potential firepower even more.

History
Due to the complexity of the design, the decision was made to fist build some prototypes to try to find and correct any problems before it was placed into production. The first prototype was completed about ten years prior to the start of the Celtest-Dark Ones war.

So many problems were found in the prototype that the Warship Design Council decided to go ahead with the design of two more conventional designs until the design defects were corrected. Funding on the Marantz Class prototype was cut to less than 1% of it's previous budget, which led to the reduction in the number of troubleshooters and the cancellation of the other prototypes. This slowed down the process of making the needed corrections so that it would be a viable warship.

Nearly all the problems that arose were due to the fact that the ship was designed to separate, and as a consequence when functioning as a single ship almost half the weapons would point to other sections in the ship. That there was no safeguard to prevent those weapons from firing was discovered while doing the first (simulated) "all weapons fire after acquiring a target." The lack of actual weapons on the prototype prevented the ship from self-destructing at that point.

When the Celtest-Dark Ones War broke out, the Marantz was one of the first Seenian ships almost completely destroyed.

Recovery
In 5045, during a routine exploration mission, three energy sources were discovered. Upon further analysis, these energy sources were determined to be coming from three identical ships. After gaining entry with the aid of Tyron Suit, and examining the Computronic records, it was determined that the destruction was so sudden that only three of the five self repair centers survived, each containing a partial copy of the Computronic's core memory. These modules, each a sphere 10m in diameter eventually rebuilt a complete Marantz class ship around themselves.

Destiny
After the discovery that there still was at least one serious problem with the design - If separation was attempted at full shields, the shields would short each other out - it was decided as part of the refurbishment to remove everything related to the ability to split into five ships. It also was decided to make the still unarmed copies of the Marantz prototype into an "Extreme range exploration ship" The twelve spherical "turrets" as part of their refit were armed with a number of weapons and designated as "escorts" for the Marantz class Exploration Ships.