The Hulk-class landing vessel is a non-FTL capable ship designed for handling the strain of being clamped to a Shatter-class through a dimensional transit before being detached near a world’s orbit. Once free, it fires up an enormous array of SRB engines to de-orbit itself onto the world in a horizontal crash landing where giant, ejectable wings are used to “glide” the landing craft down. The vessel itself carries one mega-vehicle of any chosen type along with an army numbering 150,000 men, assorted support vehicles, and dedicated combat vehicles. Depending on the type of world being assaulted, a different load can be carried as well, though otherwise this vessel is built for land assault. A full array of heat shields is clamped to the vessel as well, and upon crashing most of the bottom and forward sections can be detached to clear a way for troops to rush out of. General supplies are also carried on the vessel, giving an army an initial equipment dump to work with, though it is usually only enough for three months before the provided mega-vehicle, assuming it has fabrication capabilities, must supply the army.

The Hulk-class vessel technically has zero actual weapons. Instead, it is entirely reliant on a large supply of countermeasures and point defenses. The first, most important is a 60-tube missile silo with a single AW-01 missile loaded into each port. These are responsible for taking out any initial ICBMs or aircraft which attack the impact zone. The second is a 45-count array of WW-13 point defense turrets loaded with just enough ammo to last for three minutes at max if in active combat. These are intended to simply stave off lesser aircraft and saturation attacks that an enemy would launch. Finally, there are the soft-kill countermeasures, which include releasing a giant plume of thermally bright smoke, an enormous amount of chaffe and flares, large bursts of steam and active gases, constant ECM scrambling, electromagnetic dust clouds, detachable boxes and drones for decoys, and randomly aligned laser spotlights that help throw off closer methods of locking on. Though the supplies for these are temporary, it helps not only confuse an enemy, but make the landing area unclear while throwing off rushed responses from an enemy intending on swift destruction. For the armor itself, most of it is built to be simply one-use and relatively redundant. The first layer is a Whipple shield which continues to 10 centimeters of peltor alloy, a meter of empty space, another Whipple shield, magnidar plates, another 10cm of peltor alloy, half a meter of space, a final Whipple shield, reactive plates, and the hull itself with 20cm of peltor alloy, radiation shielding, and interior surfacing.

Once more, the art is provided by my good friend who helped refine some of the design as well. Seriously, if you didn't see it before, do check him out and toss him some money!