| This is the article on the ship used by the Kushan and Taiidan Empire. For the similar ship from the Kadeshi, see Fuel Pod. |
The Support Frigate was a non-Combat Ship designed for the purposes of providing fleet support used by the Kushan and Taiidan Empire in Homeworld.
Background[]
The Support Frigate was designed as a more advanced version of the successful Repair Corvette. It was known that a vessel the size of a corvette could not give enough support for larger fleets or repair ships under heavy fire. After capturing an enemy Assault Frigate during the race to protect the cryo trays, designers developed the Support Frigate, a frigate hull equipped with docking bays and a larger repair device. A large part of the hull were removed to make place for 10 docking bays, 5 on each side. 4 bottom corvette docks allowed the ship to handle small groups of mixed strike craft. The modified PDA on top of the nose section of the ship allowed it to repair capital ships at half of the duration of the repair corvette, and thanks to heavy armor the frigate was a difficult target on the battlefield. The vessel was armed only with a single, bottom mounted Mass Driver or Projectile Cannon turret, and therefore this ship used to work under the cover of combat vessels or far from the battlefield.
Overview[]
Support frigates are generally just tougher, more reliable versions of the smaller repair corvette, but can dock more fighters and corvettes, allowing for quick healing on the battlefield. They also have a stronger repair beam, allowing them to quickly heal any ship: this can be much more useful on fighters and corvettes as they don't have to dock and exit the battle to be repaired.
Support frigates can be ordered to either heal just a single ship or, with bandboxing using the hotkey, multiple ships. When the repair command is given with a bandbox around multiple ships, the support frigate will cycle around every ship in the group, allowing them to quickly heal any ship that takes damage without requiring manual repair commands to be done.
As a non-Combat Ship, it has no weapons and is not meant to be used as a combat ship, despite the presence of a weapon on them. The weapon it does have will do close to no meaningful damage on any ship, but its role to heal friendlies will make it a target for enemies to limit the ability of repairing the attacking force.
Support Frigates continued to be used in relatively high numbers by the time of the Beast War, although some kiith -- such as Kiith Somtaaw -- had opted not to build individual repair-class ships but instead enhance other ships with the ability to conduct repairs. By the time of the Vaygr War, dedicated repairing ships had fallen out of favour, with the Resource Collector being charged with this duty.
Trivia[]
A derelict Support Frigate in the Karos Graveyard
- In the Homeworld: Cataclysm manual, the Kushan ship is codenamed Matriarch and the Taiidan ship is codenamed Heeshk .[1]
- It is possible to self-heal support frigates faster by selecting one and giving the repair command to itself. This can sometimes be invaluable if the ship is being targeted by enemy vessels.
- Homeworld Remastered made some changes which led to a change in use of the Support Frigate:
- In the original Homeworld, docking fighters and corvettes will refuel them. As fuel is not a feature of Homeworld Remastered, the support frigate is not capable of refuelling.
- The repair beam cannot be used to heal fighters: these ships are required to dock with a suitable vessel in order to have their armor regenerated.
- In Homeworld Remastered, the repairing beam does not function from distance and support frigates are required to latch onto vessels to heal them. This is because the engine used for the Remastered version was based on Homeworld 2, where such beams did not exist and attempts by the developers to recreate that functionality caused game crashes.
- While exploring the Karos Graveyard in Mission 13, a ship similar to the support frigate can be found. Considering that the graveyard is a location for remnants of ships belonging to the older Hiigaran Empire, this ship may very well have served in the Hiigaran fleet thousands of years ago during the dominance of the Hiigaran Empire. However, the ship cannot be interacted with, and may also simply be an older model that was scrapped.
- In the unpatched version of the original Homeworld, it was possible to use the Kushan version of this ship as a hyperspace platform for fighters and corvettes. The trick was to give the frigate the order to hyperspace immediately after giving nearby strike craft the order to dock with it. The frigate will wait until all the strike craft are docked, and then jump to the specified co-ordinates.[citation needed]
Appearances[]
References[]
- ↑ Homeworld: Cataclysm manual