Nice to see you posting here Brady! XD
I guess I haven't really been fair about the Miharu, considering there isn't much info on it. I'll tell you what I can manage at the moment.
The YSS Miharu began it's development as a revision of the Sakura-class gunship but became a project of its own. It started around November 2005 and has seen several conceptual tweaks, sketches, internal layout plans, etc... I'm sort of a perfectionist when it comes to detailing my own things.
Lately, I had to do a 3d project at school and I ended up deciding to make the ship itself as a model, to which I could refer to make internal plans and give generally very good information on a specifications sheet. However, how the ship itself is tends to be purely dependant on the model itself for information relating to scale and accurate interior arrangements, which would lead to how it's systems are, etc...
Here's how it looks at the moment:
https://stararmy.com/starchan/starships/ ... 976410.jpg
I've been posting samples regularly in StarChan, so, you can have a look there to see how it evolved. This one is my third try at a model and it's nearly complete (I'm hoping a few days more will do the trick for the mesh... but it's not that first time that I think the end is in sight and that I bust my deadline. So sorry about that... ).
While I'm working on the model, Wes and I have been having discussions over the kind of scenario the ship's first mission would be like. I'm hoping to plan for something solid which would, from a dramaturgy angle, make for the equivalent of a good pilot episode for a teleseries... so the extra time doesn't hurt that much. Besides, at the moment, the Miharu's commanding officer hasn't left the other ship she currently serves on.
Anyhow, on to info about the ship itself. Even though I'm not entirely done with it, I do have an idea of what it's supposed to be like. ~_^
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The cruiser-class of vessel usually goes unused by the Star Army: the only type of cruiser it fields is the Ayame-class command cruiser, which aptly serves more as a very mobile command center which can deliver a small force of attack corvettes and scout destroyers along with many power armors.
The Himiko-class, in comparison, qualifies as a light cruiser. It's a comparatively much smaller hull that isn't quite a capital ship and more in the size range of the Nozomi-class scoutships and Sakura-class gunships. Instead of being a pocket battleship like the similarly-sized Sakura-class, the Himiko focuses on being very tough, fairly fast and having enough offensive punch to excel at ship-to-ship combat while not going overboard by packing the sort of anti-fleet weapons many other Star Army of Yamatai warship boast.
The Type 29 Nekovalkyrja Light Cruiser should serve better in Expeditionary Fleets than in Standard (War) Fleets: the ship is a decent skirmisher quite capable of handling patrol duties but it's mix of endurance, mobility, balanced array of weapons spacious crew accomodation makes it well suited to standalone long-range exploration missions (including diplomacy).
Enough about the sales' pitch though ^_^;
The Himiko-class is made to support 17 people instead of around 40 like other like-sized ships - that leaves more space for rooms and interior accomodation like recreation rooms, lounge and an observation deck/arboredum (the Himiko has room to house more, but works best at 17). Smaller crew means a relatively small power armor complement though.
https://stararmy.com/starchan/starships/ ... 350157.jpg
A large part of the Himiko's stern is actually an integrated auxiliary vessel (currently refered to as the Kansashi-class auxiliary ship). Drawing some of it's design lines from the similar Nozomi-class scoutship, the Kansashi is meant as a landing ship (to make for a better planetary base than a T4 Fox shuttle) and also serves as a mean to escape should the ship's main hull be critically compromised. If there is a major system failure in the main Himiko hull, the Kansashi's systems are designed to be able to serve as a backup for the entire ship, though it's capabilities will be more limited (but certainly better than just drifting there helplessly!). The Himiko focuses on carrying more land armors than spacy armors since it's auxiliary ship can help deploy them with ease, making it much better at planetary operation than most other vessels of it's size.
Thus far, the Himiko's STL speed is around 0.9c. It's Faster-Than-Light performance are split between it's Combined Field System ( 195 000c ) and it's Hyperspace Fold system ( 9 LY/m ). The ship is capable of atmospheric entry, though the Kansashi maneuvers far better than the entire ship. Both main hull and auxiliary ship have inertia control, are VTOL capable and have landing gear as well as elevator platform to offload cargo.
As the Himiko-class light cruiser is meant to last, it has very impressive battleship-grade armor, 3 times as thick as the Sakura gunship; it's distorsion field serves to shield it as well, though the decentralized (somewhat redundant) nature of the ship's power grid fails to have it's protective barrier be as impregnable as the Sakura gunship's - the shield does cope with abuse and recup from it very well though.
The ship's armament consist in an aether beam cannon which fires fast ship-killing pulses or a continuous beam to cut a swath even through potent protection or to quickly eliminate mecha - the aether beam cannon serves as the ship's primary weapon and is mounted slightly under it's nose. Two torpedo tubes rest in a pod mounted on a rollbar at the ship's midline, packing sixteen ship killing FTL torpedoes whom can be fired either to the front of back. The ship's secondary anti-vessel weapons rest in it six (to ten, it depends on how it looks on the 3d model) particle beam cannons whom are arranged to have (all together) a 720 degree firing arcs with at least 3 turrets able to hit one target at any given time (no blind spots). Finally, the light cruiser can produce 36 variable pods whom serve as point defense and anti-ship weapons as well; though the number of pods is low for a cruiser, the Himiko compensates by being able to produce a wider selection of pods and can deploy them in around 30 seconds (instead of 120).
The Himiko-class should pack around 12 to 20 power armors. Most of them are actually stored in the auxiliary ship and will be carried along with them in it detaches. The ship has two multi-function chambers whom can typically serve as cargo bays, but can be adapted to house and launch a shuttle (and perhaps even an Uriko torpedo bomber!), carry extra power armors or serve as a bunk room.
