Warship Build Special — Insurrectionist Fleet

Like last time, these fleet specials are coming in pairs! Today we’ll have the second half of the Easter special — the Insurrectionist fleet. This way we have two human and two alien fleets.

The Insurrectionists are a loose group of human militias and rebels that sprouted around the Outer Colonies — the planets further away from Earth. Treated as second-class citizens for generations, these people started to rebel against the United Earth Government. By the point of the Human-Covenant War, these rebellions had reached such a scale and became such an existential danger to the UEG that radical new concepts of warfare were created to counter them, like the Spartan program, and the UNSC, the space defense arm, became increasingly more powerful.

Interestingly enough, the rebels managed to even put together space fleets formed by old warships they managed to acquire through different means, as well as civilian vessels hastily adapted for the military role. Such fleets were mostly used to carry supplies or support allied forces on the ground. But sometimes they would also engage in space combat, with disparate results.

This fleet follows the general concepts behind the Insurrection and its doctrine. Because these vessels are old or just not meant for combat and thus cannot take much damage, the general doctrine is to take potshots from far away or force boarding actions to allow the rebel militias to capture new assets.

The Light Warship is the destroyer. The Halberd-class vessels were already old by the start of the war with the Covenant, although they would serve with the UNSC in mostly secondary roles throughout the conflict. Some, though, would find their way into the Insurrectionist arsenal, where they took a more direct role in the engagement of enemy assets. They are equipped with a railgun and several secondary weapons, although their ancient armor design was already outdated.

Larger warships were much rarer in Insurrectionist service, if available at all. But the rebels also managed to incorporate such assets in other ways. For example, the UEG would sometimes convert old warships to civilian service, stripping them of their weaponry. When the Insurrection started, these vessels were appropriated by the rebels and converted back to military status.

Mind you, they are still old and comparatively frail but added some necessary capabilities to the fleet. Old carriers, in the meanwhile re-classified as light carriers, were among such vessels, and that’s why I chose them for the Medium Warship role.

The bread and butter of these fleets, though, were the freighters. They were mostly used to transport assets in a concealed fashion. This is one of the reasons why the UNSC became increasingly more influential and violent during the war with the rebels, as they couldn’t always tell if a freighter was carrying illicit goods or not. This violent posturing of the military led the Insurrectionists to eventually arm the larger freighters with improvised weapons.

These armed freighters usually hid their weapons most of the time, springing them out whenever contact with the UNSC was unavoidable, or if they wanted to ambush the opposition anyway. Although not truly armored, the large size of the Armed Freighters gave them an uncanny ability to absorb damage or resist boarding actions. They partook in violent clashes with the UNSC, or between Insurrectionist factions. Later, they would also find themselves in combat against the Covenant.

The covert nature of the Insurrection led me to choose black as its main color, versus the red for the Banished, the purple for the Covenant, and the gray for the UNSC. The destroyer and the carrier weren’t really difficult to choose, as given the lore and their looks they somewhat fit together. The freighter was a bit more difficult and required some digging. In the end, I used the design of the Parabola-class as it was the only one with art behind it that fit the role I intended.

In general, I’m really happy with this series. I think all the fleets managed to carry on the personality they had in the games and remain unique. Let me know if you would like me to expand on the details about them and how I would build the stats for FTL.

There is a final fleet I would like to make for this series. But that one will have to be approached sometime in the future. For now, let me know your thoughts. Stay safe, everyone.