The Hapan Battle Dragons were the premier warships used by the Hapes Consortium.
Design and function
Designed by Olanji/Charubah, Battle Dragons became the primary capital ships of the Hapan Navy, supported by Nova-class cruisers. The Hapan fleet contained at least 63 Battle Dragons, each representing one of the Consortium's worlds.
Battle Dragons featured a unique dual saucer-shaped hull 600 meters in diameter with a central core connected by sixteen rotation support struts. The ships were armed with forty ion cannons and forty turbolaser batteries affixed to rotating circular sections on the top and bottom hull plates. To compensate for slowly recharging weaponry, the disc would rotate to bring fresh guns to an enemy while the previous used guns recharged their capacitors, which the Hapans viewed as a more efficient use of firepower.
In addition to the rotating weapon emplacements, Battle Dragons were armed with ten proton torpedo tubes, tractor beam projectors, dorsal- and ventral-mounted heavy triple ion gun batteries and sixteen pulse mass mine launchers. Each Battle Dragon carried three squadrons of Miy'til starfighters or X-wings in onboard hangars and a battalion of 500 troops. The ships required a crew of 1,200 and 190 gunners.
Flaws
Battle Dragons were discovered in battle to have two serious flaws: firstly, the drive system could be damaged, crippling the vessel. Secondly, the designers intended for the Battle Dragon to be used en masse, against a very few targets. With that end in mind, they skimped on targeting computers, putting in only 4.
The effect was to offer outstanding performance against a single target... but against a group of targets, useless. Tactics for a lone Battle Dragon against a group were little more than the Dragon choosing a vector and throwing a wall of energy in that direction, hoping that random hits would allow that Dragon to escape, so poor were the few targeting computers performance against a mass of targets.
Tactics
The Hapans used this to disable the deflector shields of another capital ship, such as an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, and then fired salvos of proton torpedoes. This was found to be extremely effective, especially when the Hapans attacked with multiple Battle Dragons.
The pulse-mass mines simulate a mass shadow in space to prevent jumps into hyperspace by enemy ships. It is impossible to shut down the mines until their power is depleted, so launching them can be as great a risk to a Battle Dragon as to the ships it is attempting to trap. The three squadrons of Miy'tils were deployed as a fighter screen to prevent heavy bombers penetrating the ion cannon defense. The ion cannon-based design is unique in capital ship design; but the design was a realistic response to the Hapes cluster's level of advancement- their isolationist stance had resulted in their ion cannon technology being on par with, and perhaps even exceeding, the galactic level of achievement, but their turbolaser technology had lagged considerably.
