Artemis-class battlecruiser

"Once our fleets are slaved to their respective flagships, I don't see how anything smaller than that Assault Carrier can survive more than one barrage."

The Artemis-class battlecruiser is a model of heavy cruiser utilised by the in the latter half of the. One of the largest dedicated cruisers of its time, the Artemis was built off the frame of a heavily-modified. As a result, it shared its cousin's emphasis on speed and firepower at the expense of durability. It was also an technologically advanced warship, incorporating the latest in weapons and sensor systems to allow it to destroy almost any opponent that has the misfortune to be designated as targets. This made it uniquely-suited to the role of artillery, staying away from the thick of combat to pick off opposing capital ships. They were also well-suited to the role of heavy patrol, searching remote systems for any signs of Covenant activity.

These ships became the equivalent of living legends during the Human-Covenant War, with each member of this class boasting dozens of kills to their name. While it's true they were very vulnerable to bombers and didn't have the armour to withstand Covenant weaponry, they proved difficult to detect or destroy in practice thanks to their usage and onboard systems. Due to their inability to adapt to other roles and their high cost of replacement, these ships were only given to the most talented and level-headed captains to ensure their survivability.

Role & Tactics
The Artemis-class was usually only used in operations surrounding two main objectives; to search for any Covenant staging areas in remote areas, and to support local forces by coordinating their efforts or offering fire support. In the former, they were required to enter the system they were investigating under stealth conditions, though this meant that they couldn't carry nukes as the radiation they emitted instantly revealed themselves to the Covenant. Standard scouting tactics call for these ships to be deployed in pairs to cover their blind spots and improve mission success; otherwise they must periodically turn sideways and rotate 360o instead. Crews are also encouraged to enter nebulae and asteroid belts to hide themselves from Covenant sensors, though few do so due as the former's radiation makes it difficult to detect anything further than a couple of kilometres while the latter often deals severe damage to their superstructure from collisions.

When operating within fleets, these vessels are often chosen as flagships by admirals, though some junior naval officers often remark they chose this ship so they can retreat as soon as things turn sour. While cowardice did play a role in some choices, the main reason is because of they come with impressive communications and targeting array, only further improved by a command suite so often installed. In most cases, the Artemis can keep in contact with the entire fleet unless the most sophisticated jamming devices are deployed. Since the battlecruiser's sensors are among the best in the UNSC, the battlegroup's firing solutions are slaved to it to improve not only range, but also timing. Of course, none of this could make it more favourable than its more renowned cousin, another Marathon modification; the.

Weaknesses and Counter-tactics
"Rey- Captain! The Destroyer has teleported four hundred metres off our starboard stern. Reading multiple hull breaches across all decks. Severe damage dete-!"

- Black box from the UNSC Iron Throne, showing one way an Artemis can be destroyed.

Despite their high praise, there were numerous weaknesses which could be exploited to quickly turn the tables on the UNSC. As stated before, the main hull was comparatively thin, being comparable to that on a. While already at a disadvantage, the Artemis was in general poorly suited to fighting at anything closer than ten kilometers. Its secondary armaments of eight Archer missile pods were smaller than those on ships several times smaller, making it nearly helpless if its foe was anywhere else except directly in front of it. It also proved to be vulnerable to strafing runs, who could easily evade its anti-fighter defenses and land a damaging hit on its exposed bridge.

Despite their superior agility compared to other cruisers and relatively-fast slipspace drive charge times, they were still far slower than their Covenant equivalents. In most cases, captains volunteered to self-destruct their ships, since they couldn't out-run or out-fight them once they entered range of their plasma torpedoes, and even a suicide charge wasn't variable unless their foe was a couple of kilometres in front of them. Lastly, Energy Projectors proved to be devastatingly effective against these ships, often crippling these battlecruisers with a single well-placed shot.

A number of tactics have been seen used by the Covenant, despite their slowness to adapt to UNSC strategies. Late in the war, Covenant warships began to hide behind sufficiently-large bodies, such as an asteroid or even a space station. While the Artemis tried to move to gain sight of their target, the Covenant could fire guided plasma torpedoes around the obstacle and destroy them. Another tactic, one only seen in the final battles of the War, was when entire Covenant battlegroups could initiate an in-system slipspace jump to close in on the vulnerable UNSC forces, destroying entire fleets before the UNSC captains could even react.

Propulsion
Like nearly all examples of human spacefaring vessels, the Artemis was pushed along by six primary fusion emission engines powered directly by the ship's massive reactor, arranged into two large drives in the centre and four smaller models, two on each side. The propellants, which includes the elements created by the fusion of Deuterium, are heated by the incredible heat of the reactors output, transformed into plasma and transported to the engine nozzles by dedicated pipes with magnetic generators, before being rapidly compressed and flung out at high speeds. Though much of the gas is lost to space, a series of magnets and negatively-charged capacitors mounted outside can recapture some of the plasma to be recycled.

For general turning and maneuvering, a series of large canisters were built under the armour with portholes breaching through it. These canisters were filled with a solid Pascade stored under high pressure. Pascade was a highly flammable and reactive gas with Rubidium at its core, igniting with extreme force when exposed to Oxygen as its molecules were torn apart. While this was several times more powerful than alternative ways to produce thrust, its means of acquisition or creation was jealously guarded by a company called TerraTek, making it extremely expensive and subject to huge rise and falls in price.

Armament
The entire ship's superstructure was built around its two experimental Series-VI Heavy Magnetic Accelerator Cannons, a new model which was featured only on the Artemis-class. The Series-VI was designed to reduce the long cooldown the cannons experienced after firing, something which too often prevented the weapon from firing another round before being destroyed. To resolve this, the Series-VI features redundant electromagnetic rings built away from the primary coils, which can switch out the used rings to allow the cannon to fire twice in quick succession. However, the true problem was not the resting period for the coils themselves, but the fact that the fusion reactor could only barely produce enough electricity to sustain another fire. In light of this, not only do the cannons receive a small reactor of their own to hasten the process, but the individual coils are fitted with heat and stress sensors which are linked up to the cannon's firing mechanism. With this data, the firing crews can determine which ones have completed the cooldown and fire another shell below the recommended power requirements, though the round's reduced velocity and damage potential forces it to be used only in the most desperate situations.

However, whereas the Series-VI MAC still resembled its predecessor weapons, the munition it fires was designed from scratch. Classified as the XM38CSEM and dubbed by naval personnel as the "Cov-Killer", this shell was designed specifically for use against Covenant. The shell is covered by a Nickle-Cobalt alloy which splits off immediately after firing, after which munition would undergo a brief arming period which leaves it at limited effectiveness. It arms itself by electrifying its secondary Hydrogen payload, turning them into positive- or negatively-charged ions. A simple sensor within the shell waits to reach a predetermined distance from its target, after which it would explode into seven main fragments which would collide with its shields. The multiple impacts and the subsequent ionic interference would wreak havoc on the cycling effect of the shields, bringing them down quicker than any other ordnance at the UNSC's disposal. The Artemis was also equipped with the standard 600-tonne Tungsten slug, which fragments using a similar system. The heads of the fragments from both shells are built in a squash-head fashion; the front of them are flat to spread out the impact force, allowing them to dish out greater amounts of damage.

The secondary armaments are inferior to other cruisers, which is acceptable considering its role. The only one which is even moderately effective is its three Shiva-class nuclear munitions. While these nukes are designed for improved explosive power in a vacuum, they are mainly employed because of their EMP effects, which drain power away from enemy ships and make it more likely that their shields would fail. Because of their increasing rarity however, they are used only when a UNSC fleet is significantly outgunned, and when they are deployed they are usually fired with a swarm of Archer missiles to reduce the chance they are hit by anti-air fire. The remaining two weapon systems are far less effective have little value for several reasons. The M910 point-defence gun is a large turret designed to protect against fighter craft, which have proved to be against the Artemis '  lightly-armour. While it has an high amount for a vessel of its size, the low performance of the M910 and their positioning on the hull means that there are several blind spots in their field of fire, increasing the survivability of incoming strikecraft. Lastly, despite its eight pods of M58 Archer missiles being effective against unshielded Covenant ships, their low quantity and the effectiveness of enemy emplacements result in only a small handful ever impacting their targets.

Armour and Superstructural Supports
Lagging behind the standards of other cruisers at the time, the Artemis-class was still outfitted with a hull thick enough to withstand most projectiles. It was outfitted with a modified version of found on its sister warships, which has a mean thickness of 1.5 meters. Designated as TI-A2/C, its actually a hybrid plating with two different substances separated into alternating layers. The first is the newer Titanium-A2 layer, laid in fifteen-centimeter layers. Designed to have improved performance against energy weapons, its actually less pure to its predecessor, being mixed with compounds which display better insulation to keep the plating solid at high temperatures. These are arranged in a crystal atomic lattice, similar to Diamond, which retain any physical strength it would have otherwise lost. The second layer is made up with a 10-centimeter thick cage of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC), with a solid top and bottom and at the very sides. Inside this cage is, somewhat strangely, only the micro-scale RCC poles which were added to make it strong enough to hold the weight of the armour above it. The rest of it was a vacuum, which assisted in halting the spread of heat by stopping it from spreading by convention through it. Unfortunately, this vacuum actually made TI-A2/C less resilient against kinetic weapons - a flaw which was corrected in the later. All this made this variation of Titanium-A2 far more effective against energy weapons.

Below this was a 60-centimeter layer of Vanadium Steel. Being a dark-grey steel alloy with 25% Vanadium within it, Vanadium Steel is much cheaper option to use as plating when compared to both alloys of the Titanium-A line while also being respectively weaker. Despite this, Vanadium still has two significant advantages over the mainline plating; its weight and a higher melting point. Vanadium is much lighter than Titanium-A, allowing warships equipped with this to accelerate quicker and easier to turn at speed. Because of this, certain places of the battlecruiser which were hard to hit or simply not worth protecting, such as the space around the main engines and between the two MACs, featured only Vanadium steel.

Interior supports don't have as much thought put into them, with vastly reduced strength when compared to other ships. Columns of are arranged in columns roughly 40 metres by 1 metre by 1 metre, arranged in cube-like formations going both vertical and horizontal. These columns are thinner and longer than the standard - a measure which helped combat the high price of the ships - but are more susceptible to the stress of combat maneuvers and could not withstand shockwaves from severe impacts. The spaces between the columns are filled in by thin plates of TR steel only where the armour itself needs to be welded on.

Development
The concepts for the Artemis battlecruiser's earliest designs began in 2533 under Ryees-Mclees Shipyards (RMS) contract to construct a replacement to the UNSC's aging fleet of capital ships. Concerned that their previous design doctrine may no longer seem attractive to their customers, RMS' executives agreed to negotiate a partnership with (IDL), a subsidiary company known for their ties to high-quality components. The partnership involved IDL developing or acquiring new technologies while also diverting some of their design staff to assist with designing the new ship. RMS would provide ultimate oversight of the project, adjusting the design brief at times to influence the final model.

Development on the original model was remarkably swift, with Io finalising blueprints quickly enough to enable the construction of a prototype in late 2535. Although downscaled to a mere one and a half kilometers, the first prototype was a brute of a warship which took into account the previous combat data on RMS' earlier ships. It measured more than one kilometer in length protected by a streamlined bracing system and nearly six meters of Titanium-A2.

Human-Covenant War
The UNSC Artemis was launched in the first half of 2537, and participated in several counter-insurgency operations over the course of three months. The results were exceptional; of the seventeen attacks against known Insurrectionist stations and ships, each one with the exception of the last were destroyed without being detected or observed. In the last case, the Artemis was forced to work with an Insurrectionist flotilla of three transports and a frigate after a small battlegroup of Covenant warships arrived. Together they destroyed a and its two escorting, at the cost of the Insurrectionist frigate. Despite it being heavily damaged by the end of the engagement, it's unprecedented victory over an equivalent number of Covenant vessels removed any doubt from the minds of commanders who worried of the battlecruiser's usefulness in combat scenarios and immediately led to the class' approval for production.

In spite of the prototype's success, the class only truly distinguished itself during the Battle above Kingston in 2539. While en route to the front lines, Battle Group Excalibur, led by Captain Lotton on the newly-christened UNSC Excalibur and backed by the UNSC Artemis and some eight other vessels, were called to help defend the planet when a heavy armada led by an arrived. Deactivating his flagship's stealth systems, Lotton planned to draw the Covenant into range of the closest orbital defense platform. While its escorting destroyers gave chase, the flagship itself darted towards the planet. Given no other choice, Lotton divided up his forces between his ship and the Excalibur advising the two battlegroups to focus-fire on one oncoming vessel at a time in coordinated barrages. While this destroyed most Covenant warships before they could fire, the Seraphs.

UNSC Remarks
"The Spook's propaganda doesn't lie - one of the best sights of the war is when you see that gator silhouette against the sunset, then a blinding beam dissecting a Covvie cruiser in half."

Trivia

 * This article is based off the ship of the same name which appears in the mod "Sins of the Prophets".