This ship is very Thrassi in its design mantra. The Thrassi Republic (or, TR) has always been strapped for cash, so it decided to invest in a million little ships like this one over having a few large ones. The Thrass also have the most planets to patrol, so having a multitude of small ships was smarter for them. I imagine they built a lot of these Viminal gunships, probably numbering into the tens of thousands of them, to patrol backwater systems and provide escort for larger ships, such as the Aventine destroyer and Palatine cruiser.
These gunships were basically just lightly armored, yet extremely fast and deadly heavy sluggers, meant to carry as much fire power as possible right into the enemy's face. While the TR never designed multi-person ships to be expendable, this ship probably had the highest casualty rate in any of the skirmishes the Navy had with pirate factions or with the Trisst Empire.
As the years wore on, however, these ships were probably retired from naval service and sold off to the private sector for either scrap or to be used as patrol boats for major corporations or personal ships for private citizens. Really, the only ships that remained in use for any length of time in the TR were the Palatine cruisers, and even then, only five of the original twenty built were in active service after thirty years.
They probably kept building new Viminal gunships over time, however, to replace the older ones.
The upside to building ships for the same fleet is that you can reuse certain greebles and detail geometry in the new chassis. This is a huge time-saver, as evidenced by the fact that this ship's exterior is nearly done already, despite me just starting a couple of days ago. As the greeble library expands, and my familiarity with the hull plating technique gets better, I'm glad to see that the time to build these ships is decreasing precipitously.
Dan
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