Victoria-class cruiser

The Victoria-class was the first modern cruiser line of the CMA Navy.

Specifications
The Victoria-class cruisers, like the ships that prompted their construction, were considered a transition point within the story of human starship design. They heralded the evolution away from small, lightly-protected law enforcement craft like the Diligence-class towards very large warships equipped for fighting peer opponents. While they exhibited the early hints at a monolithic hull shape that became so characteristic for later capital ships, they still carried primitive features such as extendable radiators, raised platforms for point defence guns, and external cradles capable of carrying both space fighters and cutters.

As CMA vessels, the Victorias carried all the hallmarks of their preferred ship design. Indeed, they more resemble unusually heavily-armed patrol ships than fleet warships, as so much of their mission focuses on extended, solitary deployments without much in the way of support. Their machinery and electronics often feature triple-redundancies, trading raw capability for sheer rugged strength. Even most of their newfound size In fact, their newfound size was largely used to pay for storage space for fuel, food, and maintenance equipment, allowing them to sustain voyages for over a year if needed.

The greatest advancement the Victorias brought to the table was their incorporation of new titanium-A1 battleplate into their protection scheme, something which no other warship had yet received. Spaced laminated plates of titanium totaling up to a maximum of 1.3 metres directly replaced traditional applications of grapheel whipple-shielding within its double-hull protective system. Additional plates wrapped around the reactor, magazines, and other critical systems. Unfortunately, the Victorias had far less overall coverage than that given to later ships, and the internal bulkheads were still arranged around the idea of isolating and quarantining impact zones rather than resisting damage outright. Even given this flaw, the Victorias could stop all contemporary medium-weight missiles where this protection was present. Only heavy cruise missiles could reliably penetrate and survive the journey, of which very few ships carried significant numbers of them - something necessary for allowing them to survive the inevitable hail of point-defence fire.

The armament of the Victoria-class was formidable for its day, but otherwise not unknown. It was still designed as a missile cruiser, with seven Class-6 silos for heavy missiles. Originally, they carried venerable cruiser missiles, which were ultra-long ranged weapons not unlike those used in the Inner Colony Wars. However, their lightweight construction with a large warhead meant that even a moderate plate of titanium-A1 could reliably stop them, which saw them being steadily reequipped with Ballista- and Scorpio-class fusion missiles. The Victoria-class also carried 60 M35 Ares missile cells for more general anti-shipping missions. These were the last CMA cruisers to be designed with non-autoloading Ares silos, which could not be replenished in combat and therefore meant that they had to carefully ration their missile stores. Finally, 16 pods of M31 Lokis made up its light missile complement. Equipped with three cells each, the Lokis were surgical takedown missiles, using either a lightweight explosive or an EMP warhead to disable the engines or reactor of a target ship. For point defence, twelve twin M655 Vanguard guns were carried. Five were concentrated on each side of the cruiser, with one covering the dorsal and keel sides each.

One of the biggest problems the Victoria-class suffered from was a decidedly outdated slipspace drive system. Although very rugged and resilient to damage, their usage of a CODEN-II slipspace drive meant they took weeks what would take newer ships days to travel. Even after receiving a modernisation refit in 2480 that incorporated a new CODEN-III drive, the Victorias still remained noticeably slower when travelling between star systems.

History
Although the CMA had been conducting large cruiser studies for several years before-hand, they had only been ordered in response to the appearance of the, a very large and very fast warship which outclassed all comeptitors in the Colonial Navy. Ordered as a massed class, they were an exceptionally versatile class for the short period they were considered cutting-edge. CMA Victoria herself was seen as a nemesis to Relentless-class vessels, tailing her throughout the Mid-Rim colonies and visiting colonies the CMA had a vested interest in, while her sisters routinely served as escorts to their valuable carriers. However, even this early on many were deployed into the reaches of the Outer Colonies. Whenever a proxy-war broke out - with one or both sides being backed by the CMA or UNSC - the Victorias were often swiftly deployed in civil protection patrols, where their titanium-A armor allowed them to defeat any commerce raider without risk. Key actions around the Scab, Siberia Prime, and Norton's Crossing quickly established a fearsome reputation for the ships, that of lethal enforcers committed only when the CMA felt threatened by regional developments. The success of the Victorias, however, casted a long line on all future cruiser construction, and ultimately by the turn of the decade they were considered outclassed by much newer vessels clad with the same armor they pioneered.