Arvonian Destroyer

WARNING: The Arvonians are bugged. Their firing arcs are backwards, and Engineering will display the ship silhouette upside down. The Arvonian Destroyer is a small frigate, most commonly encountered as a patrol vessel in Arvonian space.  It is well armed for such a small ship, but unlike most Arvonian warships, does not carry any fighters. It is often seen accompanying Arvonian Carriers as support ships, particularly when the Arvonians are not grouped with Kraliens. 

The Destroyer mounts the same beams as an Arvonlan Light Carrier, 2 to the front, and 2 flanking beams to the sides. Unlike the Light Carrier, all four beams have the same range. There is an arc of about 40 degrees to each side where three of the four beams can hit the same target, but only the two forward beams can fire straight ahead. The Destroyer's speed and turn rate are about the same as a TSN Light Cruiser, and its shields are the equivalent of a TSN Escort. 

As a playable ship, the Arvonian Destroyer has the usual helm systems, power allocation systems, science equipment, and communications. Like the TSN Destroyer and Escort, it has limited space on its Engineering Grid, although it has the usual three DamCon teams for system repairs. Also like the TSN Destroyer, it has no Warp Drive and no Warp button will appear on the Helm console. Engineering may want to divert power to Impulse to triple the speed of the ship for long range travel, although only 250% speed can be maintained for long without overheating the Engines. Also, Warp power should be set to 0% since that system does nothing. 

The Arvonan Destroyer does have a Flight Hangar, despite its small size, and carries the usual single TSN Shuttle and TSN Fighter. In an emergency, it can handle more, although the space will be cramped. A TSN Bomber can supply the Destroyer with a few Nukes and Mines, evening out the odds a bit in a combat scenario. Note that Arvonian ships can't carry Arvonian Fighters at this time. Hopefully this will be added in the future, but for now an Arvonian crew will have to make do with TSN fighters. 

Finally, the weapons systems allow for the weapons officer to lock onto enemy ships and fire the ship's beams. Although it has four beams and not two, they are not rapid-fire beams, so it does just as much damage as the TSN Destroyer. The only advantage to playing an Arvonian Destroyer is that you have much wider firing arcs, covering the ship's flanks. The Destroyer is also able to fire beams in Manual mode and set beams to the frequency provided by the Science officer to receive a boost to beam damage against enemy ships. However, without any supply of torpedoes or a torpedo tube, the Weapons officer will not have quite as much to do. Note that since Arvonians consider launching a torpedo to be the sacrifice of a computer "life", no Arvonian ships would ever use Homing Torpedoes or any other kind of guided munitions.   

The Arvonian Destroyer is an interesting change of pace for an experienced crew. Its small size and limited shields make it an extremely hard challenge. And that is on top of its lack of Warp or Jump Drive. If you are looking to play an Arvonian ship, the Light Carrier is probably a better choice. As noted above, the Arvonian ships are currently bugged, but this doesn't make them unplayable. Just be aware that the firing arcs are not correct and ignore the silhouette on the Engineering display. 

Quick Stats

The Arvonian Destroyer is new to Artemis Cosmos, and the Arvonians have never been playable before. I assume that like the Torgoth Barbarian, the Arvonian Destroyer was introduced in anticipation of making the other races playable. If the Arvonians can be played, then they will need at least one ship to act as an NPC in their sectors. Of course, there is no sign yet that we will be able to play in an Arvonian sector with Arvonian starbases and Arvonian NPCs. At the moment, we have to assume that we are an Arvonian crew that has entered into an alliance with the Terran Stellar Navy and are patrolling one of their sectors. 

Outside of the role-playing opportunities in playing an Arvonian crew, there is not much advantage to choosing an Arvonian Destroyer. As I noted for the TSN Destroyer, the pace of the game will be extremely slow without either Warp or Jump Drive, and the Arvonian Destroyer is even slower than the TSN Destroyer. Crews may be hard pressed to intercept incoming enemies before they reach your base stations. It may be helpful to split up your crew, with part of your group playing an Arvonian Carrier and the other half playing a Destroyer. You can then operate in two places at the same time, while your fighter pilots will have the advantage of greater speed. 

The Arvonian Destroyer has two systems on its grid that are interesting. One is the Computer, which makes sense given that it is an Arvonian ship. The other is a number of "Hyperdrive" nodes. These do nothing, but in combination with the Hyperdrive demo, it suggests some interesting possibilities. Apparently, a new type of drive is under development, which will be used by the Arvonians. Since this drive is not complete, I did not make any reference to it above. But I will be interested to see if this makes it into the game in the next few releases.