Special Edition Assault Frigates

The Cambion is the result of Caldari State Executor Tibus Heth's insistence that modern weapons of war be able to continually outperform previous standardized versions. While that effort is rumored to have been hit-and-miss (resulting in great scientific advances at the cost of a stunning array of misfortunes), it is absolutely undeniable that the Cambion has been one of its great successes, a feat that likely could not have been achieved in a different political milieu. The Cambion is an out-and-out brawler. Taking note from the Merlin – a versatile combat frigate in its own right – this ship is intended to rush in, overheat everything it runs, hit hard with everything it has and get out moments before death can find it.

Developed along with the first wave of Minmatar assault frigates but later abandoned due to cost, the Freki is known for its extremely well designed warp core that enables it to arrive first on the scene to snare and eliminate its target. It is rarely seen on the battlefield, as only a limited number have ever gone into production. It is usually given to pilots as a reward for their excellence in combat.

The Geri was originally the product of a development program that involved the eccentric and often clashing talents of Tapio Histvaari, Core Complexion's Chief of Missile Systems Development, and Hildara Rostavik, Core's Lead Designer of Autonomous Weapons. The program was an effort to cram as much missile firepower as possible into the Bestla heavy assault cruiser, and its Geri assault frigate counterpart, while also supporting the sophisticated control routines and bandwidth to operate stasis webification drones with massively uprated systems. Despite serious personality clashes between the Caldari missiles expert Histvaari and Minmatar drone designer Rostavik, the Geri was brilliantly redesigned from its basic Rifter-hull format into an incredibly advanced, and incredibly expensive, assault frigate. While the performance of the Geri's missiles and stasis drones was far above anything achieved in combination in such a compact format, the Republic Fleet balked at the prospect of paying for whole squadrons made up of the Geri and the similarly expensive Bestla. Although a few Geris are maintained by elite special tasks units of the Republic, a significant number of the initial production run were donated as prizes to the Independent Gaming Commission's Alliance Tournament XVIII by the Minmatar when the Republic became the principal sponsor of the event in YC124.

The Malice is an assault frigate design exclusively commissioned as a reward in the ninth Alliance Tournament. Sporting custom metal alloys in its plated carapace, it is one of the most expensive ships ever produced in its class. Far from being a mere ornament, though, the Malice features quality armament systems, strong defensive plating and a massive capacitor, and its vastly augmented facility for energy destabilization makes it a formidable adversary in any engagement.

Following reports that the Federation government had commissioned a limited run of a novel assault frigate based on the Utu from Duvolle Labs as prizes for the Independent Gaming Commission's Alliance Tournament XIX in YC125, the CreoDron board leveled a freedom of information claim which quickly returned a surprising volume of documents. While the majority have been fully redacted, what little can be gleaned dates the design of the Shapash to a YC120 contract authorized by the FIO for a series of joint operations with Crux Special Tasks Group and the Ostrakon Agency classified under "Project Trieste". The Shapash was developed by a provisional team under Duvolle's Advanced Manifold Theory Unit co-led by Rias Luisauir, prodigious R&D agent and engineer, and Progressive Plasma's Dr. Jinneth Duvolle, original co-founder of Duvolle Labs. Afforded a near-bottomless budget to design a platform suitable for locales where reinforcement would be impossible and return imperative, the two leads took full advantage of this unique opportunity to bring their most revolutionary and cost-prohibitive theories into reality as part of the designs. A reverse-ballast function devised by Luisauir, based on the micro jump drive's ultraweak force-compensated mass phase-tuning principle, negates armor plate mass gain by scaling microscale depleted vacuum volumes with the ship's mass in-flight, while a plasma cooling system designed by Dr. Jinneth boosts the operational threshold of hybrid turrets and armor repairers as well as the overload limit of propulsion modules. Combined with a substitution of the Utu's drone capabilities for potent hybrid hardpoints and the incorporation of assault frigate subsystems, the Shapash is a priceless force to be reckoned with.

The Utu is a highly advanced drone platform specially commissioned for the 8th Alliance Tournament. While based on the Ishkur's design, this ship features design elements that go above and beyond the original blueprint. In addition to revolutionary heat dispersion field projectors, the Utu is equipped with cutting-edge hardwired drone protocols and upgraded warp scrambling capability. Combined with the sturdy armor plating, these qualities make the Utu a powerful ally in any combat encounter.