A Ranger Patrol Corvette and two Arrow Interceptors hunt for pirates in the upper cloud layers of a gas giant An older vessel dating to just before the Free Colonies declared independence, the Ranger is one of the very few ships constructed solely in the Free Colonies. It sees most use as a civil defense vessel, and most are either part of colonial militia forces or used as a corporate defense ship, protecting planetary or orbital interests. Neither the Guardsmen Interstellar Security Service nor pirates favor the vessel, as it does not, typically, have the "legs" for a long cruise or extended combat. It has modest cargo capacity, which can make it a serviceable armored merchantman. Mercenaries make use of them as mini-destroyers and picket ships. The Rangers fall somewhere between a pinnace and a frigate as far as armor and armaments. The primary weapon is a dual pulse laser cannon mounted under the nose. It also has two medium-range missile launchers on outriggers amidships, and four anti-star fighter ion turrets located across the hull. The armor for the vessel is average, but it is easy to repair and maintain. The Ranger is almost never seen inside the Terra Protectorate, and when it is seen, it is usually owned by a corporation. This may change as the war takes its toll and various planets find military assets being withdrawn to fight on the front lines. The shipyards at Bifrost, where Rangers are constructed, have increased production in anticipation of this. Also, Free Colony sales have increased as piracy has been on the rise. New Tortuga has the largest collection of these ships, as the pirate haven is loathe to rely on the Guardsmen, who work as an interplanetary police force for most of the Free Colonies. While the ship cannot perform long cruises on its own, it is not uncommon to see Rangers as part of a long-range colonial or exploration fleet, where they can be resupplied by other ships in the fleet. Once a colony fleet has arrived and settled a new world, one or two Rangers that accompanied them will then form the core of the new colonies civil defense force. Therefore it is rare to find a colony without at least a couple of these ships on patrol in the system. Often, these ships never go much further than a few light minutes away. Class: Corvette Crew: 6 officers, 20 crew, 10 troopers (mainly for boarding operations) Height: 43.5 feet Length: 250 feet Width: 94 feet Armaments 1 X Dual Pulse Solid State Laser Cannon 2 X Medium-Range External Missile Launchers (24 Missiles Each) 4 X Anti-Starfighter Ion Defense Turrets Armor: 3-inch thick Chobham Electromagnetic Reactive Self-Sealing Armor over a nanotube carbon fiber weave Maximum Sublight Acceleration: 6 Gs Maximum Sublight Speed: 0.1C (10% speed of light) Maximum FTL Speed: Cx365 (roughly a light year per day) Avionics: The Ranger has good close-in sensors, with hull-penetrating �molecular sniffer� scanners. Its short-range scanners have a range of about 50,000 miles and are very powerful. Hull-penetrating scans can be done at a range of about 50 miles. Long-range scanning capabilities suffer, however, with mass detectors and energy signature detectors only having a range of 12 million miles. Cargo: 200 tons Range: 30 light years Models designed in DOGA-L3. Textured and rendered in Carrara.