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A Fast-Attack Ship is a particular breed of starship most often employed as a [[Home Guard|home-guard]]. They sacrifice endurance and armor in favor of speed, quick deployment, and firepower. For their size, fast-attack vessels are the most heavily armed ships in space. These ships are usually deployed from surface bases or docked at space stations, and are popular for not requiring a full-time crew. With proper monitoring, most fast-attackers can be left "idol" for extended periods, ready for a scramble much like smaller fighters.

Fast-attack ships generally have very low endurance(usually measured in weeks) and will be equipped with a single, powerful main weapon. The main gun is often on par with the turret-mounted cannons on a battleship, making fast-attach ships able to knock out enemy capitol ships in a pinch.

==Design==
The Marauder-Class is the most common Fast Attack Ship fielded by the Foundation and a good example of the breed. Known by several unsavory colloquialisms, is often referred to as 'the flying artillery piece' since most of the ship is just the main weapon and support systems for it. "Engines were added as an afterthought," or so goes the joke. The Marauder employs a high-energy [[Charged particle cannon]] built by [[Industrial Face Annihilators]] as its primary weapon, augmented by a staggering twelve torpedo tubes and a [[Bedlam]]-style missile launcher(though the entire missile compliment is only 100).

For propulsion, the design uses two ultra-high-performance [[Ion vacuum drive|ion-vacuum]] engines and a [[Fairview, Ltd|Fairview]] "race-inspired" military-spec [[Python Reactor]]. Power is supplied by a solid-rod nuclear reactor, augmented by a standard [[Power Buffer]].

==Usage==
Most fast-attack ships sit in port or on base, the crew does not live aboard. Endurance is short, generally the ships are used for short patrols(lasting at most a few days) though if needed, the ship could support the crew for up to three months. Most Fast Attack Ships are never fielded for more than a few hours at a time, a day at most. Their role is to defend a specific location such as a planet or solar system, and to carry enough power to engage and destroy a capitol ship.

During the [[Kamian Succession Wars]], most notably during the [[Battleship Crisis]], Fast-Attack ships were employed along with battle groups to provide additional heavy-fire support. Sixteen-such ships, flying in formation, can deliver an attack equivalent to a full broadside from a sixteen-gun battleship. However, due to low-endurance and lack of defensive capabilities in a high-threat environment, the FAS did not replace the battleship as an anti-capitol ship weapon.

Following the Battleship Crisis, the Foundation briefly experimented with "FAS Carriers" - ships that acted as support bases for standard-model, mass-produced fast-attack ships. The idea being to solve the endurance problem by providing a mobile base. However, a typical FAS was designed to be serviced very frequently and in a complete shirt-sleeve environment. Providing a pressurized bay in the field proved to be far too much of a challenge, and the idea was scrapped. One Carrier-FAS capable of fielding just four fast-attack ships was the same size as a carrier that could launch hundreds of harpies.

==Variants==
The [[Fast-Attack Stealth Ship]] uses many of the same principles, but adds in long-endurance.

[[Category:Course Books]]

Fast-Attack Ship - Revision history

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thirteenyearsoffire.com>CourseDirector at 00:34, 27 December 2018