Steam Workshop::KCV Admiral Hipper

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Alright here she is, in all her incredibly iterative glory, the Kaisers’ Admiral Hipper.

I’ve been working on this ship for about a year now. She’s seen two complete rebuilds (from scratch) and over thirty overhauls (and I have the blueprints to prove it). This is one of several poster ships for my Kaiser faction, a group I’ll expound on more as more of their ships and small craft hit the workshop.

The Hipper herself is a ‘moderately’ armed cruiser with a large amount of internal space for small craft. Although I wouldn’t recommend fully loading the ship due to subgrid jitter and potential lag, she can carry 12(+2) compatible small grids at a time. 2 can be docked on the flight deck, 2 more on the aft connectors, and 8 on the newly updated carousel (version 4.0). In addition, the maintenance connector is as good as any other connector for docking. Add in the ventral connector for linking up with other, larger ships, and you have fourteen docking options before mag plates even have to be considered.

As for the ship’s regular weapons, the Hipper has a balanced spread of energy weapons and ordnance. She has a wave motion gun, 4 triple barrel 330mm positron batteries, 4 torpedo launchers, 16 SAM launchers, and a large mix of obvious and hidden pulse lasers for point defense.

Since she uses a wave motion generator (type 1400), her shields are extremely reliable against normal weapons. For example, Hipper can just barely break through her own shields with the wave motion gun, dealing virtually no damage in a doppelganger firing test. In theory, shield shunting could completely absorb the attack, including any preceding turret salvos.

Almost the entirety of the external hull is heavy armor to help a little against shield piercing weapons. Overall, the Hipper is best suited to skirmishes against a small number of large grids. Fast small grids can be a little dangerous at point blank range if shield passage is on, but at longer ranges aren’t a threat; they’re best left to the Hipper’s own fighters or escorts.

The first and most well known of her class, Admiral Hipper was constructed as part of a plan to reduce the risks posed to the Kaiser fleet’s battleships and fleet carriers, allowing them to operate closer to the heart of Kaiser space. The Hipper and her sisterships just barely fall into the Kaisers’ own specifications for heavy cruisers; nearly every other faction has labeled them as either battlecruisers or (upon seeing nearly a dozen messers leap out of the hull) light carriers. This tends to lead to a disproportionate response whenever these cruisers are sighted.

All Kaiser capital ships are primarily controlled through integrated artificial intelligence systems, massively reducing the ship’s required crew compliment from hundreds to only a few dozen. The Hipper in particular benefited from this system, allowing her to perform extreme duration operations.

The Admiral Hipper was also the first Kaiser vessel to receive a carousel style hangar system adopted from Kusanagi Industries models. It is this carousel which allows the Hipper to safely house numerous compatible craft internally. While the system itself is delicate, carousels allow The Hipper to both carry and manage far more support craft than her external dimensions would suggest.

The Admiral Hipper launched with Commander Paul Wilk in the captain’s chair and lead numerous supportive missions for the Kaisers. Most of these missions included long range patrols, convoy escort, anti-shipping raids, and independent investigations.

The Hipper’s most famous action prior to the outbreak of hostilities with the Repatriate Navy was making initial contact with an unknown vessel, and the subsequent operation. The Hipper was initially attacked and forced to regroup with heavy cruiser Hessen, light cruiser Magdeburg, six Type 34 destroyers, and a prototype Type 36 destroyer. The fleet’s counterattack failed to damage the unknown vessel, and the Hessen’s artificial intelligence succumbed to a cyber attack that led to the loss of two of the Type 34s, the prototype destroyer, and severe damage to the Magdeburg. The unknown vessel escaped via jump drive and Commander Wilk was forced to destroy the Hessen with all hands in order to save the Magdeburg and the remaining destroyers.

Type: Heavy Cruiser
Crew: 80
Armament: 1x Wave Motion Gun, 4x 330mm Positron Turrets, 4x Torpedo Launchers, 16x SAMs, 6x Dual Pulse Laser turrets, 4x Quad Pulse Laser turrets, 9x Concealed Dual Pulse Lasers
Power Plant: 1x Wave Motion Generator (15 GW Max Output), 44x Warfare Batteries (132 MWh)
Propulsion: 1x Wave Motion Engines, 2x Subengines, x23 Gravity Drives
Docks: 14x (8x Hangar, 2x flightdeck, 2x aft, 1x Ventral, 1x Maintenance Bay)
Width: 55 Meters
Length: 300 Meters
Height: 70 Meters
Grid Mass: ~27,600 Metric Tons
PCU: 77354 (From Blueprint)

Notes

Check the Bridge Auxiliary seat’s custom data for the remote control (Hipper AI)’s hotbars setup.

The Hipper’s been tested at low altitude on Pertam (1.2G) and can float just fine, but she hasn’t been tested with a fully load of cargo and fighters, so bear that in mind.

Mods & Blueprints

• Ribera’s SBY series: Weapons, Reactors, and Thrusters
• Defense Shields by AutoMcDonough, Darkstar, nukeguard, Neimoh, and Whiplash
• WeaponCore by Darkstar, nukeguard, Whiplash, and Ash Like Snow
• Kelevra’s Arcade Machines: Tetris, Doom, and Snake

Scripts

• Cheerkin’s scripts: Autopillock 2.0, and TMC
• Whip’s scripts: Turret Based Radar, Artificial Horizon, and SIMPL
• Automatic LCDs 2 by MMaster
• Fancy Displays V2 by Ekuah
• Easy Automation by Coren
• Easy Throttle Control by DoktorKrove
• Telemetry Plus by TechCoder
• ALight by Aeyos
• Sigmund Froid’s scripts: WeaponCore Autofire and Addon for Whip’s TBR Script

• Ribera for his SBY mods in particular (nothing beats the motivation those give)
• AQD – No Armor Edges by Enenra (For making my builds much better to look at)
• Rendering Improved by ??? (2nd verse same as the first)
• The Paint Gun and BuildInfo by Digi (It’s just not as smooth sailing without these)
• Star Blazers for the inspiration
• You! Yes you, for reading all of this