Background
The Admiral Class was the first Jump capable cruiser designed by the European Space Navy, and, as it turned out, the only class, as the ESN merged into the fledgling Terran Confederation Navy before a successor design was created.
At the time the class was designed, in the build up to the First Interstellar War, their had been extensive discussion about the theory of interstellar warfare, fueled by the discovery of the Vlani Imperium in 2098 A.D. (-2124 Imperial), but no practical experience on which to draw conclusions on. Their were several schools of thought, falling along roughly national lines: the Americans favored spinal mounts and fuel for 2 jumps, to allow the warship to reach other star systems without relying on tankers. The Chinese favored very heavily armored, buffered planetoids armed with railguns, sacrificing payload and range in favor of durability and short range firepower. The Russians preferred lightly armored carriers with only a light defensive armament, and relied on massed bomber strikes for offense. It was this heterogeneous mix of ship building doctrines, combined with the diverse cultures of the crews, that helped convince the Vlani that they were dealing with an alliance of weak planets rather than a single world.
The European Space Navy
The ESN did not have many warships in the first decade of the 22nd century, instead concentrating on building a trade fleet and supporting their colony of Prometheus in Alpha Centauri, with only a few light escorts in service, backed up by squadrons of strike craft. However, the increasing tension between the colonists at Bernard and the unfailingly arrogant Vlani led to the ESN deciding to creating a proper capital ship fleet to protect itself.
They undertook a close analysis of the various ships in service with the other terran nations, taking notes about their apparent performance, but paid a great deal of attention to the visit of Vlani destroyer Kagamira, the largest Vlani warship seen before the war, to Bernard in 2107, on the not unreasonable basis that the Ziru Sirka had, quite literally, centuries of space combat experience to inform their designs. No terran ships got close enough for a detailed scan, after the first attempt to do so was met with a blunt order to stand off or be destroyed, backed up by targeting locks. However, long range scans showed some interesting features. They show it carried no spinal mount, and what appeared to be large bay doors, whose purpose was unknown but assumed to be for small craft hangers.
Design of the Admiral Class, and entry into service
All this was fed into the new warship design, along with a few tweaks. The Admiral class was to be a “flight deck cruiser”, and 10,000 tons, which was the upper limit for terran jump dives at the time. It was to be as heavily armoured as was possible, to allow it to survive heavy fire. The primary armament was to be a large battery of high energy particle beam projectors, to grind a target away by sustained barrage fire, backed up by a mix of lasers and sandcastesr for point defense.
Along the keel of the ship was a magnetic assist launch tube, able to launch a fighter every 35-40 seconds. The ships normal complement of smallcraft was 12 torpedo bombers and 16 fighters, and it could sortee the whole wing in less than 20 minutes form the scramble being ordered to last craft leaving the tube. She also carried a quartet of pinnances and complement of marines, to round out the ships multi role abilities.
The first cruiser, the Francois Joseph Paul, entered service in 2110, and 5 were in service by the outbreak of the First Interstellar War: the Francois Joseph Paul, the Horatio Nelson, the Blas de Lezo, the Reinhard Scheer, and the John Jellicoe. The crews first impressions were mostly positive, once the teething troubles on the launch tube were sorted out.
First Interstellar war: First Battle of Bernard
When word of the attack on the Vlani convoy at Bernard’s star reached earth, the ESN, fearful of a retaliation strike, moved most of their jump fleet, including 3 of the admirals, to protect the European colony on Prometheus, while keeping a strong reserve around Terra. Public opinion was split, with a large number of Europeans believing that the Americans were going to get what they deserved for their trigger happiness. In the wait for the counterattack, a sixth Admiral, the Sebastiano Veniero, was completed and rushed though builders trials.
The Vlani reprisal attack finally stuck in mid-2115, with a task force jumping into Bernard s star, formed of a dozen destroyers and 3 immense battleships that dwarfed anything the terrans could build. The only ESN ship present at the First Battle of Bernard was a single Admiral class, the Sebastiano Veniero. The Veniero pointedly moved to a new orbit to distance the ESN from the defending American and Chinese fleets, which were forming up seperatly according to thier own contingency plans. The Venerio's captian hoped to sit out the looming battle and then help with the post-battle rescue efforts once the dust settled. It was only when the Vlani destroyed a fleeing Middle Eastern trade ship that the ESN captain realized the Vlani were not distinguishing between the different terran forces and considered them all equally guilty. With the Vlani between them and the jump limit, the only option was to fight. The Venerio tried to rejoin the defending fleets, but wasn’t able to before the fighting started.
Watching the battle unfold, the weakness of the different terran fleets was brutally exposed. The terrans did not have a unified battle plan, and the Americans and Chinese made almost no effort to coordinate their attacks, or even their fleets, so that the vlani were able to deal with the two forces seperately. The American spinal mounts weren’t able to reliably hit the incoming vlani, thought the few hits that did land caused serious damage. The vlani response was missle salvos of immense scale, with the battleships each firing over a thousand missiles every salvo. The Chinese planetoid hulls we impressively resilient, taking blow after blow and carrying on, but lacked the firepower to cause much damage at range. They did mange to close on a few vlani destroyers, and were able to cause heavy damage to them. Dispite taking hits form many hundreds of missles, the Chinese planetoid cruisers kept fighting until their surfaces were literally scoured clean of turrets and their M dries were shot off, and the vlani were forced to board them to put them permanently out of action.
The Venerio was isolated and set upon by, somewhat ironically, the destroyer Kagamira, the very ship which had the Venerio to be bulit. The Vernerio attempted a bomber strike, but the torpedos were mostly shot down and the strike craft suffered heavy loosses. Once into weapons range, however, she gave a good account of herself, holding her fighters back to act as additional point defence, and inflicting serious damage to the Kagamira, and even forcing it to fall back, but when three additiona vlani destroyers joined the fight, the outcome was never in doubt, and she was lost with almost all hands. However, before she was destroyed, the Vernerio transmitted it’s sensor logs to the colony, which was able to store them in a hidden computer system that surived the attack.
Every terran ship in the Bernard system was destroyed, and the colonies were razed by ground attack. The large smallcraft hangers on Vlani destroyers that had puzzled the designers of the admirial were revealed to hold assault shuttles for a large marine complement, as well as close support fighters.
