Seron Thoun Class Battlecruiser

(Version 1.00 - Last Modified: 08/26/2005)
Background information inspired by Seron Thoun class Border Fleet battlecruiser by Pieter Thomassen, on the Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide.
Seron Thoun Class Battle Cruiser

Fifty years after the first Sian Dereta was commissioned, the first dedicated Border Fleet battle cruisers entered service. The Seron Thoun class ships were designed to complement the Sian Dereta class, one of which was to form the nucleus of a Border Fleet battle group, typically comprising of five Seron Thoun vessels. As with the Sian Dereta, the Seron Thoun was a qualitatively excellent vessel with heavy firepower and a very powerful sensor array. The lack of a large quantity of troops and torpedo armament made the ships, as designed, unsuitable for the police and conquest tasks of the regular Zentraedi, but this was not their designed function. In addition, hundreds of these ships were assigned to Tirolian Special Forces groups rather than to the Border Fleets.

Like its larger siblings, the Seron Thoun is a design well suited for conversion into a human-sized manned capital ship. In place of the Zentraedi and Bioroid troops, a full division of Human troops could be carried, in addition to expanded naval mecha numbers. There must be thousands of stranded, undamaged Seron Thoun vessels spread in the old fringe regions of the empire, and reconstituting and converting such a vessel would be an economically viable prospect for the poorer races. No suitable Seron Thoun has been found, so far, and no race has announced any plans for active salvage operations.

The Seron Thoun class is designed to be the backbone of the Border Fleets of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire. While the large Sian Dereta class carried heavier armaments and was in general more capable, it also was an expensive design to produce, and another vessel, cheaper to produce in large numbers, was required to man the borders. The result was the Seron Thoun. On first sight, the Seron Thoun resembles a cross between half a Sian Dereta and a Nupetiet Vergnitzs flagship. The resemblance with the Sian Dereta is caused by the use of a nearly identical Reflex cannon, which accounts for nearly half the length of the ship. A main thruster dominates the slightly bulging aft section, the same segmented multi-reaction plate design also used in the Nupetiet Vergnitzs flagship and in many Invid mecha. Two outrigger bodies and a command citadel reinforce the likeness of the Sian Dereta. As with the larger ship, these are sensor mounts and Tirolian command centers respectively, and the outrigger sensors protect the center body from flanking attacks. Two large disc shaped low frequency radar transmitters are mounted on the hangar abaft the ventral cannon boom. Three more large antennas are mounted in front of the cannon boom.

A Tirolian command citadel tops the Seron Thoun, and like the Sian Dereta the Seron Thoun has a mixed crew. Underneath the command center are the barracks for the Tirolian crew. The Zentraedi forces are located in the dorsal and ventral bulges of the main cannon boom, and in one large hold in the center hull. The Zentraedi mecha and the lesser craft are placed in a hangar bay in the aft ventral of the cannon boom; the Bioroid forces launch from a hold in the center of the hull, under the Tirolian crew quarters. The engineering spaces were located forward of the engine and aft of the main hangar, flanked by the outriggers.

All Border Fleet ships carried a heavy cannon armament at the cost of torpedo tubes and troop capacity. Apart from the Reflex cannon, the Seron Thouns carried five large anti-ship particle cannons, more than the Thuverl Salan Class Heavy Cruiser. They were mounted in a chin mount on the ventral of the cannon boom, in one dorsal cannon boom mount and in an elevating mount in front of the command citadel, and two in, uniquely, the connecting structures with the outrigger bodies. Unlike the Sian Dereta, all these weapons could be brought to bear on the forward arc, where Tirolian tactics placed the heaviest emphasis. Consequently, the Seron Thoun had about the equivalent anti-ship firepower of the larger Sian Dereta class. The ships also carried a complement of particle beam turrets rather large for a ship of their size, and the standard anti-mecha and anti-missile missile turrets. As stated, the torpedo armament was minimal, though this did not really matter with the large cannon armament. The Bioroid and Zentraedi troop contingents were pared to the bone, although the Border Fleets did receive qualitatively superior personnel and mecha.

From 1730 through 1969 the Tirolian Mercantile Empire produced almost 400,000 Seron Thoun vessels and production ceased because the Border Fleets were at their authorized strengths (for the shrinking empire), not so much because of any obsolescence of the design. This does not mean that the Seron Thoun was not getting 'long in the teeth', as the saying goes, and a design effort for a successor was already under way. This new vessel would have been the complement battle group member to the new Sian Macross class, but construction of the Seron Ameg, as the project was named, never reached the prototype stage before the collapse of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire. The Seron Ameg was in effect a smaller version of the Sian Macross, and the first non-Tirolian Home Fleet vessel to be equipped with the new Reflex cannon technology, which no longer required a boom design. As with all Tirolian ships, save the core fleet of the Robotech Masters, the Seron Thouns lost power to protoculture depletion in the first decades of this century, stranding the ships in the border regions or making them easy targets for hostile forces such as the Invid and other inimical alien forces.

Ship Information:

Vehicle Complement:

M.D.C. by location:

Speed:

Statistical Data:

Weapon Systems:

  1. Heavy Reflex Cannon
  2. Retractable Particle Beam Cannons (5)
  3. Retractable Laser Turrets (48)
  4. Retractable Long Range Missile Turrets (24)
  5. Retractable Heavy Missile Turrets (12)

Special Systems:

  1. Missile Storage
  2. Weapon Production Facilities

Standard Systems:

  1. Life Support System
  2. Communication Systems
  3. Sensor Systems
  4. Targeting Computer System

Combat Summary: