Molentic Tuul
The Clones find it hard to develop new weapons, they excel at upgrading existing designs. The Cosmos class is far better than the Raegris original, so much so the Raegris are having their Cosmos cruisers upgraded to a similar standard as the HCS'. To date they have only developed two wholly original warship designs, the Soulaki and the new Shark. Admittedly they are doing much better at non-combat ships like the Intruder LPD.
The Soulaki is their heavy cruiser and most DDS analysts dismiss it as a dog. It is heavily armed but sluggish. At it's current standard it is the equivalent of a Pulsar ILU. The Shark is a decent enough ship but a very simple design for patrol and is inferior to the Pentekonter and Rome in terms of systems and design. The HCS' best ships are it's excellent Cosmos evolution the Cosmos S and the forthcoming Molentic Tuul M. Both are powerful, rugged and reliable.
They will be the backbone of the HCS fleet for the next 10 years but by the end of the next decade the HCS will need to be looking for a new cruiser. With their track record with the Soulaki (very expensive and delayed) it is not anticipated they will be able to come up with a competitive design. The Clones therefore need to do what they did before and find a partner to give them a good basic design that they can work their evolutionary magic on.
The problem is there arn't that many powers around that can do that anymore. Obviously the Utrek are out of the question nowadays, they provided the Clones start with space technology but a couple of wars and a trojan virus later it is unlikely the Clones will return to them again. The Raegris are now in the DDS sphere, the Tarbotians and other powers like the 7 Sa Sao either don't look to sell their technology or are elusive in the region nowadays. That leaves the Dinos.
Could the Dinos provide the HCS with the basis of their next generation of warship? Military and technological links between the 2 are strong nowadays. The Dino Army is now nearly totally re-equipped with Clone AFVs, the HCS Navy has bought some Dinomark XTs. The problem would be the difference in space ship philosophy between the Dinos and everyone else including the Clones. Dinomark RS apart the Dinos have always gone for small nimble ships that operate in numbers instead of larger ships that can operate alone. A future HCS warship based on a Dinomark PT evolution would be very different to anything the HCS had operated before. Though the trend is to smaller ships it must be said.
The ultimate question for the DDS of course would be, would the Clones get access to wormdrive technology. It is unlikely w-drive would be on the Clone shopping list no matter how much they were prepared to pay, at least until the technology had become sufficiently common to enter the commercial arena (estimated to be the 2130s). However TPM-1 technology is now available off the shelf from the DDS and the DDS themselves estimate the Clones will have access to the technology within 3 years (somewhere in a Molab, Aritan or other's storage silo a TPM-1 is likely to go "missing" sooner or later). Thus it is likely w-drive will also become available once the stringent restrictions are eased and the availability of the technology widens.
The HCS need to move reasonably quickly though, they need their future cruiser by the early 2120s and major clean-sheet warship classes take at least 10 years to come to fruition (the Panther for example is derived from design work dating back to 2095). As yet we don't know their future warship plans other than the current updates and a Shark evolution though that platform does have some development potential (the larger Basking Shark concept for example and the up-armed Hammerhead concept). However a Shark evolution won't be enough for front-line units in the 2120s, but a developed Dinomark PT derived HCS warship with transphasic weapons and the promise of w-drive in future would be.
