The '
Dragon Heavy Fighter' is my favourite. But back to designs, back in the MT days I used the modified Durango class destroyer "
Intrepid" from WC4 as a prototype in modular warships. The underslung hangar bay could be swapped out with any module you like - allowing it to be a destroyer one day, light carrier the next, hospital ship the day after.
Thinking on the siege ships - while they can be just rock chuckers, you could possible have them throw things other than planet killers. Wind down the size/speed/shape of the impactors and you could have a mobile version of the 'Rods from God' array for precision cracking of bunkers and weapon sites that are nuke/meson shielded (like deep meson sites). Combine the siege component with troop landers and the siege mothership can act as overwatch/fire support while the transports detatch and land. And if you do need to do a planet scrub - just wind the throwers up to full power and start firing.
I like the the concept of a mobile "Siege Tower" transport/fire base
the second ground defenses saw that thing enter the system they would know it was about to get messy.
One idea I toyed with fr a scenario was having a covert stroke version of siege ship. A disguised Mining vessel, just puttering along cutting up asteroids like a good little worker bee...filling its holds up with ingots of Nickle Iron and other goodies.
A some point a second ship..a freighter comes along docks with the processor, storage ship to pick up a load of ingots....and begins to fire a rapid stream of football sized projectiles insystem...thousand of them moving at 100,000 Kph.
It could be firing 100 rounds a minute for hours before it was destroyed. and how many nickel iron footballs can you fit into a 1000dton cargo box??? a lot of them.
You aim the footballs of death at the orbital bands around a planet, any stations or ships in orbit are going to have to evade or crank up the PD to 11.
If you jump your attack group in at the same time the Siege gun opens up...that's gonna be a mess. Interceptors have to be diverted to stop the stream of fire from the Siege gun, which diverts resources away from the system defense group.
It would be a very tricky bit of deception to get the first stage of the plan up and running, by infiltrating a mining ship into a target system and keeping it from being discovered while it builds up a reserve of ammo...
the plus to that is it wouldn't even have to be crewed by a crew loyal to your cause. It could be owned by a sympathetic agent, and crewed by locals...since it is only a mining ship with nothing to discover such as weapons, or troop bays.
The only time it would become a weapons platform is when the "cargo ship" with the launcher showed up. You cold easily transport a team of marines on that ship to take over and secure the station with loyal personnel and replace or eliminate the local crew.