Imperial Courier

Hull: 130 t
Internal Capacity: 350 t
Main Thruster Acceleration: 16.1 g
Retro Thruster Acceleration: 6 g
Crew: 3
Gun Mountings: 1
Missile Pylons: 6
Fuel Scoop: No
Allegiance: Empire
Cost: 611,000 Cr
Hyperspace Ranges: C3 - 5.62, C4 - 10.00, C5 - 15.62, C6 - 22.50
Rating:

Rollo's Thoughts

This is the ultimate battleship. Large, fast and deadly the Imperial Courier can both outmaneuver and outgun most other ships with ease. Some of the Couriers have blue and red stripes on the engines. This is the mark of the Imperial Navy and it shows that this has been an army ship.

The Courier has a very good head-on profile making it very hard to hit for a ship of its size. There are two main reasons why it didn't get 5 stars. One is that, while the Courier can turn pretty fast for a ship of its size, it can have problems hitting fast moving fighters. It would have helped with at least a rear laser mount. Second, with the engine being a integral part of your ship it's impossible to upgrade to another engine in the normal way. However there is a workaround, you can wait until your hyperdrive is destroyed in a fight and then buy a new one. Needless to say this can be very tricky.

Equipment Recommendations

• Since the Courier isn't as maneuverable as the smaller fighters it requires a bigger gun, for that the 20 MW is ideal.
• There is a problem with the missile launching system on the Courier. More often than not the missile will explode when fired. Due to this malfunction I advise you not to use missiles unless you have to (on a bombing mission for example). If you must fire a missile pause the game fire the missile and hit maximum time acceleration - that way the missile will always hit.
• Everything else you can think of...

Interview

As you may have noted there are many diffrent type of couriers for sale. I took my time and interviewed two highly decorated imperial officers about this.

Markings (by Andrew "Bee-Team" Cooper)

As a former vetran of the Imperial Navy, I know quite a bit about their marking scheme. As you know, Red and Blue denotes former military membership, but only in the 1st-21st Protectorates (The March Guards), who, as you may not know, are the main force in the imperial navy.

Because members of the Imperial Provisional Garrison, Imperial Commision, Provisional and Colonial Patrols and the Home Defence Force are not considered to be important enough, their ships only recive a single Blue stripe. While not as noted as their Marcher counterparts, these ships are often better maintained and have a much more efficient system setup.

Markings (by Andrei Tanase)

As a former member of the imperial navy i think i can shed some light on the matter. Currently the imperial navy operates four (4) variants of the courier.

The markings are used for distinguishing rapidly between variants and are as follows:

• Unmarked, plain white ones: Standard Courier, was avaiable for sale with minor modifications to the general public until 3202. these ships perform, or have performed standard deep space patrol, escort, transportation, C&C, battleship and fleet support duties in the imperial navy.
• Long blue and red stripes on the forward section of the engine nacelles: Intelligence version. These ships are kitted with improved sensors and have more powerful engines than the standard courier. Generally they are used for information gathering, reconaissance, exploration, scouting, special forces deployment, and forward observation during battles.
• Blue splotches on the middle section of the engine nacelles, no stripes: Gunship. These are used for planetary bombardments, attacks on enemy space stations, as small ships-of-the-line, and generally wherever heavy firepower is required. Due to their increase in mass, they are slower than standard couriers.
• Both stripes and splotches: "Special" Courier: this means testbeds for new weapons, the Emperor's personal high speed transportation, prototypes, and related.

Engine Booms (by Andrei Tanase)

Many people have noticed that some Couriers have long thin boom sportruding form the front of their engine nacelles. These are a component of the Bussard scramjet fitted on some Navy ships (mainly intelligence and special Couriers). What this does is that it allows Couriers travelling above a certain speed (classified) to collect interstellar hydrogen using a magnetic field and use it as fuel for their fusion engines, thus eliminating the need for vast amounts of fuel on board for long realspace trips and also as a fuel scoop to gather fuel for hyperspace jumps (at a much slower rate than scooping H2 from gas giants). The booms contain superconductor coils that generate the magnetic fields used to harvest interstellar hydrogen. Note, however that this system is removed from the ships prior to their sale to general public and also all ships are brought to civilian standars ( the specs of which are avaiable at any shipyard) before being sold. The only things kept are the markings, the now empty, useless and vaguely aesthetic booms and structural design peculiarities, specific to each variant.