The Bastion is the Terran's great lie.
In the aftermath of the Charlemagne Disaster, with most of the Kali-class Super Dreads having already been decommissioned or destroyed, and the last two being stuck at the heart of an eternal subspace detonation, and refit into a roving school respectively, the Republic had no Super Dreads, or even regular Dreadnaughts, left in its fleet. Some brilliant bastard of an Admiral noticed that, and instead of having their ship designers start making a new class of Super Dreads, they instead told them to make a ship that was under the dreadnaught size parameters that the League insisted on using to determine ship classification.
This meant that for the last 50 years or so, every Terran Ambassador has had an incredible trump card in their pocket. Any time that the League brings up a dispute of armament levels, a Terran Ambassador can just say: "But you have Super Dreadnaughts. We do not even have Dreadnaughts in our fleet. How can you bring up armament levels when you are clearly the aggressor in that realm?" and the League rep who was foolish enough to bring up the subject just has to sit there and grind their teeth.
The ones who first tried to use the Bastion as a counter to this claim were met with meticulous measurements (down to the micron in one hilarious exchange) that prove that, by the League's own scale, the Bastion class is not a Dreadnaught. This is an unbeatable argument, despite the obvious evidence that a single Bastion class can fairly easily handle most classes of League ships on its own, or, if given the proper conditions, most regular League fleets with just two or three of them acting in concert, and until the League is willing to come up with another way to determine ship class (which the Terrans will almost certainly reject outright as it will ruin their fun), the fact remains: the Terrans have no Dreadnaughts in their fleet.
(Please ignore the Zodiac-class currently being constructed in a secret dry dock.)
Frequently summed up by the phrase "Fuck you, that's why."
TBD.
From Matt:
Oh the Bastion.
If you ever want a visual description of Terran ship design philosophy, go look at the Valorous or the Zodiac.
If you want the almost inevitable conclusion of Terran design under the influence of Zealot rage, you're in the right spot.
This asshole of a ship is the living embodiment of "more dakka" and it was explicitly designed to be a ship that one League ship should never (Freya (side note: the Freya class was almost certainly designed in response to this monster), Dante, or Rev classes excepted) be able to handle alone. Because we needed to outline the desperation and near-miracle that it was when the Archie did just that.
Hell, in the Moskva story, a Bastion makes a Kali-class Super Dread run away, at least in the short term. There are extenuating circumstances there, and the way the Moskva kills their Bastion is almost literally insane, but still! This entire line of ships should be melted down for the safety of the entire galaxy.