DD316 Destroyer

The Hephaestus Class is a a destroyer type vessel and was designed to deploy a company of marines into combat quickly. The ship is armed with a powerful plasma beam cannon powered directly from the engine core and is more powerful than any other weapon in the Earth fleet, the other weapons are a pair of heavy railguns, missile battery and a squadron of fighters. The Hephaestus class is very quick and has been deployed as a quick responce ship able to get to a distress call in time to make a difference, either in space or on the ground and their overly powerful sensors make it easier to recover captured personal from almost any location, even a shielded target. A small number of these ships have also been pressed into the role of Science ship, a few changes and the refit became the core of the small science fleet.