Harakhlon-class carrier

Harakhlon-class Carrier

The Harakhlon-class Carrier was a Sith warship used as a carrier for fighters and ground assault craft. Given the need for most frontline battleships to have strong speed and weapons capabilities, their fighter complements were reduced or eliminated altogether, and the Harakhlon Carrier was used to carry fighters into combat instead.

Characteristics and Capabilites
Far more than any other Sith vessel, the Harakhlon was largely spared from Khrado Ragnos's touches when he redesigned ancient Sith craft to serve more modern purposes. As a result, it kept a very bulky, bulbous design and noticeably insectoid features. The ship featured two sets of two "wings", each of which was built to forward-launch a half-wing of starfighters, for a total of two wings, or 144 starfighters. The bridge and shield generators were located in a smaller pod that branched off from the main body of the ship, further contributing to the appearance of an insect head and bloated body. Equipment enough for a full ground siege was stored in the "thorax" of the craft.

Despite their apparently heavy laser armament, Harakhlon Carriers were not often able to repel concentrated starfighter barrages, and even a single same-size capital ship could destroy the carrier without difficulty. As a result, the carriers were generally left far out of range of space battles, and only called forward for ground assault once system defenses had been totally destroyed. Tak Sakaros came up with the novel solution to this problem of having one of the Harakhlon's two wings be all bombers, which could surprise unwary capital ships looking for easy prey when seventy-two bombers rained destruction on them.

Trivia

 * By and large, Khrado Ragnos translated the names of his warships into Basic and referred to them as such to Basic-speaking acquaintances and enemies alike. However, Harakhlon is the Sith word for "that which hauls", and Ragnos wisely left it in its native language, feeling a translation would prompt more amusement than anything else.
 * Both Ragnos and Sakaros despised the Harakhlon Carriers for their uselessness in ship-to-ship combat. Ragnos went so far as to give several of them names like Impediment, Obstacle, and Obstruction, and it was only with Sakaros's persuasion that he decided not to name one Waste of Metal.