Arcamat-class battlecruiser

The Arcamat-class was the large class of battlecruiser introduced by the CMA Navy as a counter to the.

Development
As the UNSC-CMA Cold War escalated into a full-blown arms race during the 2470s, the CMA initiated a number of projects aimed at radically modernising their fleet, with Project JUNO being perhaps the most flawed of these. Initiated in 2478, JUNO was principly responsible for investigating the maturing field of naval coilguns and developing potential concepts for a wide range of capital ships, from destroyers to carriers and everything in-between. One of these focused on the idea of a large commerce-raiding cruiser, able to catch smaller warships and ambush high-value targets, a promordial for the Arcamat-class.

While no doubt ambitious, and in hindsight pointed the way forward for warship design, JUNO's key failing was its lack of political support and internal mismanagement. Discussions with shipwrights had produced almost fifty different designs throughout just the 2480s, all varying in shape, size, and doctrine. Many of these would be dropped or allowed to mature further in response to developments in Cold War capital ship design, much of which was encouraged by many of the directionless project heads. More importantly, JUNO struggled to receive the necessary resources and priority that would've brought their ships to life. Missiles were still considered cheaper and proven, and the arms race with the UNSC now saw a tic-for-tac escalation in cruiser construction, something that the CMA High Command could not justify putting on hold without risking the opening of a gap between the two rival navies.

All this finally changed when in 2493, the UNSC Navy unveiled the after its own long and troubled development. Although the entire class would swiftly be brought back into dock due to construction problems, its very existence exposed a glaring weakness in the CMA Navy. It was a ship that could outfight any warship it couldn't outrun, and outrun the battleships that it couldn't outfight. With the CMA's own next-generation heavy cruiser unable to be effectively upgunned to counter it, JUNO stepped in to finally earn support from the CMA admiralty. Vice Admiral Odom Falkner was dispatched to take charge of JUNO, and he swiftly narrowed the dozens of potential designs, to fifteen, and then finally the single winning design. Multiple of the losing shipbuilding corporations subsequently lodged complaints in order to reverse the decision; in the end, Falkner had to amend ties by awarding construction contracts to a number of these firms.