As my first post on this forum, I have decided to post two versions of a single vessel in a universe I've worked on for a bit.

Helios-class space warship

The Helios, by all conventional wisdom, should never had been built. The early navy of the United Earth forces was dedicated to the exploration of the remaining corners of the Solar system in the early 22nd century, but interplanetary politics prevented such a purely peaceful use for Earth's massive shipyards. The United Earth accords brought the moon and Mars under the direct control of a United Earth government. While the provisional colonial govenrment on Mars acquiesced to the treaty, the moon was not so agreeable.

The Lunar tradition of rebellion was strong. The moon was orginially settled by an amalgam of armchair revolutionaries, "free traders" (smugglers), and other various groups that had lost their political power due to the formation of a United Earth government. While the leadership had mellowed over time, the descendants of those settlers had a lot to lose. The Lunar provisional govenrment was composed almost entirely of the descendants of the original founders of the Lunar cities, and they were not about to give up their near-hereditary positions of government.

The moon attampted to secede from Terran control in the year 2124 in an appropriately dramatic fashion. Lasers and missiles that had been built in case of a possible meteor impact fired on and destroyed a Terran inspection craft as it began its descent towards the Lunar surface. The populace of the moon was aghast at this seemeingly sudden and deliberate act, and the Earth senate was forced into deliberation. It would be necessary to unseat the Provisional Lunar Government by force. To that end, warships would have to be constructed in order to counter the surface defenses.

Compared to contemporary warships, the Helios-class may seem to most as a flint-tipped spear may seem to a modern armored marine, at the time it was a horrifying weapon, and an expression of the power of the Earth government. The ponderous battlewagons were armed with a pair of forward-facing quick-charge laser cannons and a variety of what were then considered precision-strike missiles, as well as self-targeting and firing autocannon for point defense. Their outer shell of armor was a thick sheath of reinforced radiation shilding coated with laser-reflective material, in an attempt to provide some measure of defense. After a number of other incidents in Lunar space, the Helios and her sister ships Salamis and Manila Bay set out for Lunar space in 2130.

The surprise was total and complete. The sensor operators on the moon couldn't initially believe their readings when the warships were first detected, and there was an intital panic as it was thought that aliens were going to try to invade the moon. The vew missile attacks that were made were ill-coordinated, and most of the laser stations were destroyed before the Provisional Lunar Government got a clear idea of what was going on. The warships easily obliterated the ground defenses, and the troops that disembarked by shuttle met no resistance at they placed the lunar government under arrest. The Salamis was the only ship to be damaged, and it was only superficial.

There was no further resistance from the moon.

Warship (58)
Helios (Original)
Tech Levels: Engines -2 Weapons -2 Equipment -2
Hull Size: 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 3 2 1
Shields 0
[a]Quick-charge laser cannon [3/6/9, 4+, 2/1/1]
AB AB
[b ]Missile launchers [3/6/9, 4+, 1/1/1]
ACE ACE BDF BDF
Point Defense system [O] Troops X4 Vehicle Bay x2

Some 20 years Later, the Helios would become the testbed for the first Hyperdrive systems created by Earth scientists. If a single expert from one of the other races of the galaxy had been around to inspect the device, however, they would have noticed a critical flaw in the design: and inadequate amount of shielding around the drive core to protect the crew and other components from the massive energies released in Hyper transit. The Helios jumped out of Saturn orbit, and was never seen again. All hands on board were killed.

However, the mis-jump wasn't the end of the ship itself. It had jumped over 200 light-years of course, into the outer edge of the Callian Imperium, an ancient interstellar nation that had risen to prominence when around the time when Europe had devolved into a number of patchwork states following the fall of the Roman Empire. The wrieck was salvaged by a group of Graduate students from Callia Prime's finest aerospace engineering institute. The students agreed to use the hulk in order to achieve extra credits towards graduation, by transforming it from a primitive battlewagon to a second-line ship for the navy of the Empress.

The engine mounts were stripped of their boosters and replaced with competition-style transit drives, two to each mounting. the efficiency of these engines was more than enough to make up for their size. The Hyperdrive housing, while deverly damaged, provided a home for a commercially available hyper core, giving it a stable FTL system in the stead of the burned out shell that was the old drive. Half of the missile mountings were stripped out in favor of field generators, while the power systems were drastically upgraded.

The weaponry was modest, especially for a vessel of this size. Surplus tachyon cannons were re-engineered to fit the hull of the vessel, which had undergone nanotech reinforcement. The remaining missile mounts were used to mount batteruies of rapid-fire energy torpedoes, which were found to have "floated out of some freighter somewhere." The point defense was changed to a spatial distortion buffer, a system which deflects incoming attacks  by altering gravitational forces along the projected path of the weapons fire. The troop capacity was left the same: there was no way to convert it into other systems.

The students did acquire their desired credits, as well as a nominal post in the Imperium naval reserve. Their ship, however, is commonly used to cruise the Imperium systems to hold parties and pick up "civilian observers."

Engineering Project (157)
Helios (refit)
Tech levels: All +1
Hull Size: 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 6 5 4 3 2 1
Shields 3 2 1
[a]Tachyon cannon [3/6/9, 3+, 1/1/1 No range modifiers, Increased PEN]
AB AB ACE BDF
[b]Energy torpedoes [4/8/12, 4+, 2/1/1 Halves shields]
ACE BDF
Point Defense system [O] Troops X4 Vehicle Bay x2 Hyperdrive [O]