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The Beast Mothership
Mass: 565,000 tons
Firepower: 4600
Armor: 94,000
Coverage: 80%
Maneuverability: very low
Max. Velocity: 110 m/s
Special Action: Infect

Based on parts of a Somtaaw Explorer-class mining ship, the Beast Mothership is more mutation than starship. How the Beast can warp plasteel and plasma conduits across nearly a kilometer of hull isn't truly understood, but the results are obvious. High-speed deep scan passes by Seeker-class fighters have revealed the outer hull to be some kind of organic armor, laced with depleted uranium and superconductor fiber. This duplicates the best anti-kinetic armor we have and combines it with enough energy dissipation capability to seriously downgrade the damage of ion beams and plasma-based weaponry.

Analysis of combat behavior seems to indicate that the Beast Mothership behaves like a living thing, concentrating its strength in certain areas for a limited time before "exhausting" itself. So, like an athlete pushing himself hard, the Beast Mothership seems capable of shunting power to its maneuver drives and other systems: it can build ships faster, research faster, or even fire faster, for a limited period of time. During this time the hull appears to degrade slowly, as if the Beast is weakening somehow from the strain of shunting power to these subsystems.

The Beast Mothership is a full-fledged construction-class vessel, it is capable of simultaneously building over a dozen different types of strike craft and frigates internally and super-capital-ship hulls externally. Current intelligence indicates the Beast Mothership can build its own variants of the Taiidani Qwaar-Jet Heavy Cruiser and the dreaded Saarkin-Cho Carrier. When the Beast takes over a new kind of vessel, encountering technology It has never seen before, It brings the ship in to dock and basically absorbs it, seemingly to learn the new design or technology. From that point on, It can incorporate those technologies into new designs—or even order Its ships in the field to grow the new parts themselves.

The Beast Mothership has six heavy turrets in excellent coverage positions. The heaviest fire can be directed below and to the sides of the Mothership, while strike craft will have the highest chance of surviving a pass from head-on and slightly above. Of course, should an allied ship survive the defensive turret fire, an even deadlier threat awaits any ship closing in past 10 kloms—the Beast Mothership's infection beam. The Beast seems to be able to fire this beam approximately once every 90 seconds, and can use the beam to infect a mass equivalent to two frigate hulls. Given that the charged beam can leap from ship to ship across hard vacuum, an entire flight of fighters can be taken over in one shot. This attack is so devastating that many allied pilots have equipped their strike craft with deadman switches that cause the drives to overload and detonate before the beast virus can tear the pilot apart. The Beast Heavy Cruiser and Carrier also carry Infection beams, though they seem to be lesser versions with shorter ranges and longer recharge time.

With all this power at its disposal, there is no question that the Beast Mothership is currently the most dangerous vessel in the Galaxy. It is not just a starship. It is a plague come for us all.

Required Tech	-	NONE
Upgrade Tech	-	BEAST INFECT WEAPON CRYSTAL HARVESTING ABILITY SUPPORT SYSTEMS ARMOR LEVEL 3 (upgrade/captured)