Hello Dr Pheodore T. Vincent PhD, MA, BSc (Hons), CertHum (Open) here again. This week in The Analyst i am going to discuss the Porquatians and how they changed the DDS fleet forever.
As you know the Porquatians threatened to seize the Rim Worlds and challenged the Central Powers. For a time they even held their own against the DDS/HCS/Dinos, mostly thanks to their superb warships : the Quagan frigate and Xian cruiser. The Quagan is (or should i say was as not many still exist) a small, fast and agile warship. Although it's superluminal speed is low (as Porquatian hyperspace technology was obsolete) at subluminal speeds the Quagan was very hard for the DDS to handle. It also packed a serious punch with it's twin missile launchers.
At the time DDS fleet doctrine was for large lumbering warships like the Pulsar and Quasar with smaller ships like the Starsystem really restricted to patrol and escorting. The Quagan showed the DDS that maybe the age of large sluggish warships was over. After the war the DDS looked to their new Isometric frigate class and greatly increased it's firepower. That trend has continued with the Terran Sea which has a firepower potential similar to a Pulsar ILU (the standard at the time of the Porquatian war) and of course the forthcoming Panther destroyer will pack a massive amount of firepower into a small and agile frame.
The DDS have also looked to greatly improve the agility of it's existing cruisers but it does look like the age of the cruiser is over. Although the Pulsar and Quasar will continue in service until 2140 there are no new cruiser classes planned. The DDS sees ships like the Panther as the future of space combat. Small and agile yet heavily armed. The spirit of the Quagan lives on in the Panther.
