The Defender was a fighter designed for the purposes of defending other ships, usually Capital Ships, by the Kushan and Taiidan Empire in Homeworld.
Overview[]
Defenders are relatively cheap and powerful anti-strike craft fighters which -- as the name suggests -- are meant to defend other ships in the fleet. Since their primary goal is to deal with enemy attackers against the ship they're guarding, they are often used to protect Capital Ships. However, they are much slower than other defensive fighters (such as Interceptors), but they make up for this by having better coverage and accuracy.
In Homeworld Remastered, defenders are limited to a unit cap of 20. They are trained faster than any other strike craft barring scouts, and are a good emergency option for carriers and motherships to build in case they are being swarmed by attack bombers.
Lore[]
Kushan[]
The original Shield design is fairly old but was never successfully tested until the Kushan encountered the Taiidan model within the Great Wastelands during a battle against Imperial forces. Analysing the technology of the Seejur, Fleet Intelligence recommended an immediate update to the original Shield design.
Equipped with an upgraded targeting system and an additional bottom gimbal turret to its set, the three-pronged Shield Mk.3b was powerful enough to take on any attacking strike craft, using its targeting system and not its speed to destroy an opponent. It should be noted that defenders had a very low velocity for a fighter class ship and did not chase enemies like standard fighters instead using their excellent firing coverage and very high maneuverability, which was important for the defender in order to evade enemy fire.
Usually, all Shield pilots would focus on taking out one target at a time, hitting the enemy with bursts of highly accurate gimbal fire. Because of this, the Shield was most commonly found guarding capital ships or resource operations when corvettes were unavailable. Shields were also tough enough to be used as a last ditch defense platform against a surprise fighter attack, often deployed in the absence of larger vessels.
Shields were piloted by a rare mixture of veterans and raw recruits, both of them usually new to the challenge and responsibilities of piloting a defender.
Taiidan[]
The Seejur was originally designed by the Taiidan to protect Capital Ships ranging from frigates to cruisers. While it has low speed and manueverability for a fighter and even many corvettes it possesses excellent coverage as its mass drivers are essentially turrets aided by AI sub-systems known commonly as "Defender Sub-Systems". In addition it has high firepower and strong armor making it, in the right numbers, the ideal capital ship defense system, better even than a capital ship's own turrets.
Seejurs are often vulnerable to massed attacks by strike craft but if they are high enough in numbers and positioned correctly they have a fair chance of wiping out enough of the offending strike craft in the initial attack to finish off any stragglers. Standard Kushan strategy against Seejurs is hence to target each defender individually and use evasive tactics.
Legacy[]
After the Homeworld War, defender use fell out of fashion, although the Taiidan Imperialist Faction continued to use them to defend their Heavy Cruisers. By the time of the Vaygr War, they had stopped being part of the fleet make up for most kiith who preferred interceptors, bombers and gunships to protect their fleet.
Trivia[]
- In the Homeworld: Cataclysm manual, the Kushan ship is codenamed Shield and the Taiidan ship is codenamed Seejur.[1]
- Originally, there was a "Light Defender", which had two cannons instead of three, but it was dropped. According to Homeworld Shipyards, it may have been an early fighter developed by the Kushan on Kharak before the Scout was developed, which outclassed it in every category.
- Defenders are exceptionally short ships, shorter than even Scouts. However, they weighed over three to four times that of a Scout, making them incredibly dense and heavily armored. In a sense, their squat profile and dense weight makes them akin to tanks in space.
Appearances[]
References[]
- ↑ Homeworld: Cataclysm manual