The Archigos class originated from the testbed of the The Archigos Experiment. Designed by Alastair McKenzie, she was proposed as an advanced destroyer design, capable of radically altering the current battle doctrine of the time. She was designed, he claimed, to be sturdy enough to absorb large amounts of damage, while getting into point blank range and delivering unparalleled destructive power with her gravitic lance. She could, it was claimed, easily take out a dreadnaught in a straight up fight.
McKenzie's real intention was to take the ship that'd he'd survived against the Sooni with, and roll it out into production so they had a viable weapon once the invasion came. He was assuming the invasion would be immediate, so he wanted to press this class into service as quickly as possible. Since it had successfully destroyed Sooni and Grey ships, a feat very few ships had managed to do for a very long time, he felt that he'd luckily stumbled onto a weapon he could use immediately, even if it was a bit unwieldy.
Unfortunately, the Archigos class was a design for a war that never came. Her critics pointed out that the proposed Ares class could accomplish the same goals without the confusing design decisions of the Archigos. While true, the Ares class was more traditional, using standard grazers and missiles, instead of the Archigos's gravitic plasma lance. It was this plasma lance that proved effective against the Sooni, and without it the Ares wouldn't have the firepower required. However, McKenzie couldn't explain that.
Instead, McKenzie pushed forward, determined to prove the value of the ship class himself. He pulled the right strings to get the first ship of the class commissioned, and then took her on a two year shakedown cruise. During this cruise five more of the class were built and commissioned.
While the Archigos herself did well, the class as a whole did not, with most of her sister ships underperforming. The Admiralty took this as a sign that while the class could deliver some impressive wins, over all she was a difficult ship to understand, and therefore, decided to make some modifications. A mandatory refit was issues for all existing ships, and all new ships of the class would be produced with these changes.
The main change was to 'upgrade' the spinal gravitic plasma lance to a much more cost effective (and longer range) spinal grazer lance. It still packed a very impressive damage potential, but required none of the specialized control circuitry the gravitic plasma lance required. What's more, it was much more energy efficient, allowing them to cut back on the fusion reactors and increasing the number of missile tubes carried by the class significantly. While they were at it, the replaced the inefficient plasma cannons with more powerful (but fewer) grazers.
With this refit, the class was redesignated as a 'Heavy Destroyer', and all current hull codes were reassigned to use the DH prefix. Only the lead ship kept the AR designation.
Even with the refit, the class maintains a reputation as a confused ship design. Most captains are hesitant to get to point blank range, so her weapons are viewed as underpowered, while her defenses and survivability are considered one of her only good points. Most Captains dreaded getting assigned to an Archigos.
The Archigos class is designed entirely around being able to survive long enough for a single knock-out punch. From it's massively overpowered subspace engines, to it's ridiculously oversized, dual fusion reactors, it has the strongest gravitic defenses of any ship that came before it. Even it's overly armored hull and the fact that everything that can has a mechanical override. It's all designed to make it as tough as possible.
The knock-out punch comes from the gravitic plasma lance (or the less impressive grazer lance of the refit). It can switch from putting all of it's energy into blocking your shot to hitting you with the power of something five times it's size.
One of the engineers called the ship a "symphony of excess", and that's very true. If it was worth engineering on the Archigos, it was worth over-engineering.
Currently, the Archigos class is used as a heavy patrol ship, a fleet escort, or an armored courier. She can take on a corvette role, if required, and many have argued that the class should be redesignated for that purpose. Variations on the design that remove some of the weaponry and instead increase the class's speed and duration have been made, but none have gotten off the drawing board.
As the class has not aged well, the League has looked to recoup some of the cost. CNK reached out to them and offered to strip any retiring ships and create a civilian version of the ship. One of the fusion reactors was removed entirely, and turned into a cargo hold, while the other was downgraded. Most of her armament was removed, including the spinal lance, but some of the missile tubes were kept, as well as all of the point defenses and armor. What came out was one of the most popular heavy freighters ever produced. It is still considered CNK's most popular ship design by far.
The 'demilitarized' version had some very odd design decisions. What owners quickly found out was that all of the connections for the military version were left in place, including on new civilian hulls. This made arming them very easy.
Knowing that a Sooni invasion would, eventually come, CNK had chosen to get as much of the base hull out into the world as possible so that it would be possible to collect them and refit them into the original armament of the class in a matter of day or weeks per ship, not months. While it wasn't as good as getting the League to pay for the cost and upkeep of these ships, it was better than nothing.
Fun fact: This class' initial design was based off a Gerber Sport multitool I had in high school.