View source for Ariete class APCs

{{Shipbox
|shipname     = Ariete class
|shipimage    = 
|caption      =
|hull         = 
|length       = 3 m
|width        =
|height       =
|mass         = 700 tons
|drivetype    = reactionless drives
|driverating  = 0.035c
|weapons      = primary Knietic Cannon, secondary varies
|manufacturer = Genesis R&D
|owner        = Great Justice, Marduk city
|flag         = varies
|faction      = varies
|registry     = varies
|datelaunched = varies
|purpose      = Armored Personel Carrier, Rammin anf boarding
|crew         = 10-15, marine detachment of 50
|supcrew      =
|auxvehicles  =
|status       = '''Active'''
}}Originally meant to be a weaponized version of Genesis C&D<ref>"Construction and Demolition", not "Concept & Design" or "Command & Decision".</ref> construction ships, the end design mutated to the Ariete ("Battering Ram") class of armoured personnel carriers.

The Ariete ships take advantage of Genesis' expertise in building very though ships, and breaking big rocks. Their function is simple, as shown in the class designation: They ram enemy ships, and then unload a Marine boarding party inside .

The ships design is simple. It is about 30 m, long, and the front armour narrows until it ends in a sharpened ram, designed to open once it has broken the enemy hull to allow the marines to board. It weights 700 tons, and so it is the slower ship of its size.

Most of its weight consists in thick, and super dense, armour plating: The ship is designed for one purpose: To brush off massive amounts of damage, and protect its crew until they have taken the enemy ship. While it has artificial gravity, it has to be turned off in combat; then all the gravity generators and kinetic shields are used to maintain structural integrity and keep the interior (with the crew and engines) safe from the kinetic energy caused by the crash.

It has a crew of 10, plus a detachment of 50 marines. The interior is sparse, but it has a tiny emergency surgery.

While it would outright destroy any small ship, the lack of speed and manoeuvrability compared with small craft means they seldom get the chance; it is meant to attack space vessels, stations and habitats. The ship will usually need refitting after a successful boarding.

== Weapons ==

Weapons are a problem with this design, as they will either hang outside the hull, and be destroyed when the ship rams an enemy, or need weapon ports, which will weaken the armour.

The Aries only have three weapon ports, all in the back; in the top they have the kinetic cannon, and on both flanks they have one weapon port, which can be used for several weapons.

The Marduk shipyards do not have hard tech weapon production capacity: They will only install the Kinetic cannon, a purely 'waved “weapon” Originally a Federation design, it is yet another attempt to create a tractor bean. The cannon will stop any vehicle on its tracks (with a spectacular show of light, so the theory is than it changes kinetic energy into electromagnetic radiation) for several seconds, but neither it nor its crew will be damaged; after a short time it will move again (it varies, with the quality of the ship drive. Moving objects with no drives, like small asteroids or cannonballs, will not start moving again until more force is applied; but it never has been longer than 20 seconds so far). It is not very useful in combat, but it will grant a few seconds of advantage for the ramming.

The flank weapon ports leave the shipyards empty; Great Justice will install weapons there after the ship is on their hands. The eventual standard weapon will be a point defence system once the computer tracking tech gets good enough for it; but for the moment the usual weapon is a heavy machine gun (a missile launcher can be fitted, but hold space for ammo inside the ship is too small for a long engagement).

== History ==

By 2012, Genesis main market was the Belt. With the Boskonian War raging there, a good percentage of its production capacities in Luna stood idle.

He offered [[Great Justice]] the use of Marduk shipyards as a repair facility, and began to design a combat vessel.

An initial lack of manpower soon disappeared once he opened Plinius crater to [[Belter]] refugees; he found himself with literal thousand of workers -enthusiastic, pro-war workers.

While he began the design of a few fancy (and, with his military experience, probably useless on the real world) capital ships, he decided to focus in his strengths, resistant materials and very, very tough ships.

The Aries launched in January 2013, with a crew of Belter Marines. Over the course of the war, a total of twelve Ariete ships were started, but only six were finished; all of then were crewed by Belter refugees in Luna. They were very useful in breaching Boskonian fortified positions, and all six were part of the Fall of Boskone Prime

After the end of the war, Oscar Vykos gave the finished ships to Great Justice; once the second batch were completed, three of then went to OGJ and the other three remained to Marduk and were “decommissioned” <ref>The message he sent back to GJ did have the quotes</ref>, but he also returned all the ships' hardtech weapons, so GJ did not protest). In the years since the end of the war, another six Arietes have been built and sent to Great Justice, making their total 15, plus the three that still remian in Marduk.

== The Besieger ==

This design was a huge super-carrier craft. Several hundred meters long, it holds launch bays for two dozen Arietes, thirty fighter craft, weapons depots, a small repair drydock, medical station, and living quarters for the crew and marines.

It is the only of the initial “fancy designs” than Oscar finished; but the ship was never built, becuase the war ended when it had just started construction. Still, it created one of the great conspiracy theories of fenspace, because wile the ship structure was never begun, the drydock was. It is a standard drydock, with otherwise unremarkable cranes and scaffoldings. Except for the minor detail than it is one mile across; while it was being build, the main Genesis engine factory stopped production, moved the human workers to nearby facilities, and began some undisclosed project.

When the war ended, all work in the new drydock stopped, and several huge crates left the closed factory and were taken away in a GJ transport. What kind of ship was going to be built in Dock 51 (since there are only about two dozen docks, this number choice sparked its own conspiracies), and exactly ''what'' was inside those crates, has been a matter of spirited debate ever since: Vykos will only answer with a “no comment” when asked, and Great Justice claims than “it does not comment on ship designs)

==Notes==

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{{Space Ships}}
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