Nova-class Fregate

The Nova-class was a type of spaceships produced by Caharr Spaceyards in the Stellar Republic. When introduced it was hailed as groundbreaking design, due to it being the first class of fregates featuring fighter-bays as standard equipment. It proved vastly succesful and was sold widely, before eventually being replaced by the Super Nova class. It is still found commonly within the militaries and police forces of minor states in the Aleph-sector as well as amongst freelancers and pirates in the Divide.

History
The design for the Nova was presented in 94 ADE as a bid for a contract from the Interplanetary Forces of the Stellar Republic. Requested was a fast and agile patrol vessel, capable of independent operations behind enemy lines as well as border patrol duty.

Caharr Spaceyards developed a revolutionary docking bay design for fighters specifically for the purpose of outfitting the new class of vessels with it. Dubbed Nova, the ship presented the first practical design for a small combat vessel capable of carrying fighters into battle. While ideas for such designs had been floating as long as space combat existed, the speeds involved in space combat had made the docking process near impossible under combat conditions.

The solution presented was a gravitational guidance system, that would use strong fields of artificial gravity to pull fighters into the docking bay even at comparatively high speeds. Testing of the new system provided satisfactory and, to cut costs, Caharr Spaceyards used an older experimental fregate design as base, outfitting it with more modern weaponry and subsystems, but leaving most of the vessel unchanged save for the new fighter-bays.

Operational testing of the fregate-class dubbed Nova earned Caharr Spaceyards the contract and the Nova went into mass-production for over 30 years, eventually being replaced by an overhauled version of the design dubbed Super Nova in 127 ADE.

Following its replacement by the Interplanetary Forces of the Stellar Republic, the Nova went out of production in 130 ADE, while the Stellar Republic began to sell their Nova-class fregates to private bidders. This has made the Nova a common type of ship to be encountered in the outlying colonies of the Stellar Republic as well as within the Divide.