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Pepe's Wars - 7. Lensing Ships

Pepe's Wars:

Pepe's Wars is a series of ship collections intended to tell a story, showing an evolution of ship design as a series of wars progressed across the galaxy. Each collection or 'line' of ships was created with a core idea in mind, and the ships within that line are an evolution of one to another, guided by the demands of the wars. Additionally, each different line shows a rough timeline, and you should see how one line becomes obsolete or surpassed by the next 'technological advancement'. For example, the 'beamships' line got out-ranged by the subsequent 'railgun kiters' line, which in turn were beaten out by the 'lensing ships'. Download all collections in the Pepe's Wars series to get the full story in the ships' descriptions.

All ships in the Pepe's Wars collection have been designed for function above form, so please read the descriptions or the ship info in-game to understand my core concepts behind each design. They are not the prettiest ships, but hopefully you will agree they are effective at their roles.

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Lensing Ships:
The lensing ships were the result of a new innovation - the lensing platform - able to extend the beam range well beyond its natural range. This new step was the perfect answer to the beam's unpopularity during the third and fourth wars, being out-ranged and kited by missiles and rails. The lensing ships, paired with lensing platforms, made beams competitive again from the fifth war onwards.

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The Ships:

Prism
This Prism lensing platform is not a combat vessel, but instead plays a supporting role to allow lensing ships to compete on the battlefield. It accepts the beam into its aft crystal, transports and amplifies it along the platform's length, and then emits it out of the forward crystal, thus extending the beam's length significantly. As time progressed lensing ship pilots chained together more and more platforms to extend their weapon's reach seemingly indefinitely. The platforms were cheap, and were an accepted loss when the enemy attacked them instead of the main lensing ship.

Apocalypse
The original lensing battleship, some pilots think that its designers were trying to achieve too much with its omni-directional beams. Able to redirect its fire to all angles around the ship, they were intend to protect the ship from being swarmed. A sister variant, The Abaddon, was made to tailor to these tastes. The Apocalypse saw use all throughout the fifth and sixth wars, declining in the seventh with the advent of minebombers and breachships.

Abaddon
The Abaddon was a sidestep from The Apocalypse sister variant, choosing to emphasise survivability over range, coming into effect at the end of the fifth war, later than its sister. While still deploying lensing platforms, the Abaddon engineers acknowledged that The Apocalypse's answer to getting swarmed - multi-directional beams - were awkward to use effectively in the heat of battle. Thus, armor and shields replaced the port, star and aft lenses, focusing The Abaddon's attention very much forwards. Pilot opinion is split between the two hulls to this day, despite the century that has passed.

Revelation
The Revelation appeared during the sixth war in response to the rising use of larger and larger hulls, and engineers fought fire with fire with this monstrosity. Wielding a 64-emitter beam laser, capable of firing both fore and aft, The Revelation was easily able to melt even the best 'scaled armor' of the time. By this point pilots were well-experienced with lensing ships, and so the sheer number of lensing platforms confidently deployed seemed to extend The Revelation's beam to near-infinite ranges. It was brought low at the start of the seventh war by the rise of minebombers and breach ships.