Prototype Dante Model
The Dante Project started as an attempt to reverse engineer an interface between a Grey "organic core" and traditional League technology. The project was both a reference to Dante's Inferno and because the subject chosen to be the first integrated was a young woman named Dante.
She was a gifted tactician and at the age of 19 had multiple PhDs and was a consultant for the League military as well as many private companies. She had also been born with an autoimune disease that left her physically isolated from the rest of the world. Despite beating the odds time and time again, it became clear that she wasn't going to live to see her 20th birthday. [Alastair McKenzie][] met with her and offered her a chance to live, but only inside of a Grey "core". He only had a vague idea of what it would do to her, but the belief was it would augment her failing organs and serve as her immune system.
She accepted and traded the limited mobility she had for being permanently encapsulated in what looked (to her) like a coffin. At the time it wasn't even understood how to communicate with her once she was integrated; that was part of the experiment. It took 6 weeks before they established communication, and several months before she was able to communicate in an audio-only manner. It quickly became apparent that the technology was poorly suited to human use and her existence was constantly pain on the verge of driving her mad.
Instead of asking to be put out of her misery, she instead started designing secondary systems to offload the worst of the processing. After the first year she was able to control a limited number of systems and communicate via audio and video with a fully synthetic appearance. Along the way she pioneered multiple breakthroughs in organic / electronic interfaces.
After her slow and painful success, the spaceframe for what would become the LXS Dante was built as a static testbed and she was given remote control over it. Quickly, it became a platform for various system designs and as a way to understand how her level of control could be used to augment traditional crew controlled systems.
It was around this time the LXS Rekonin was created, and Rekonin herself was designed as an organic being purpose built to integrate with a "core". Her abilities quickly outstripped those of Dante. The LXS Rekonin was completed with Rekonin at it's heart, and she was being prepared to actually be crewed and launched on a shakedown cruise. The LXS Dante was planned to be scrapped, while the LXS Faust was in the planning stages. However, due to the events of Tel'Erani, Dante put forth a plan for her conversion into an actual functional warship.
Due to her more limited nature, Dante designed a bunch of augmentations to herself that helped with her more limited abilities, and played to her personal strengths. These systems were not intended for use with anyone other than her. After an abreviated shakedown cruise, the LXS Dante was pressed into service.
The Dante class is a rather oganic design, more about being a testbed and proof of concept for integrating Grey and Sooni technology with our own, rather than building a ship to fill a specific role. While technically an Battlecruiser, it's loadout and firepower is equal or greater than a NorAellian Super Dreadnaught.
Overall, the Dante class is mainly a technological showcase and borrows a lot of concepts as inspiration from the Revelation class, though unlike the Revelation, the Dante class was never designed to be mass produced. The entire class was more to learn lessons and run tests, not build a flagship class of battlecruisers.
Given the failure of the Revelation class, it's a bit ironic (and disapointing) that the Dante class proves itself to be so much more successful. If a full production run of Dante class ships were possible, the class would be easily hailed as a massive success. (Rumors of a Revelation Mk II or a new refit to the Revelation class using the technology of the Dante class are rampant, but the official word is still that the Revelation is a dead design.)
The Dante class is exceptionally nimble for a ship of it's size, and it is armed to the teeth. It runs a much smaller crew than is typical on a battlecruiser thanks to the advanced systems and organic / mechanical hybrid technology.
Given these strengths, Dante class ships are often either used as the spearhead of a taskforce, or as a lone ship, operating without support or drydock access for long periods of time.
While the majority of the Dante class is traditional materials, it contains organic components that augment it's abilities. The most impressive of which is its organic repair systems. These microscopic AI controlled organisms are capable of building/rebuilding/repairing systems on a microscopic scale, allowing for more thorough maintenence and repair. It isn't particularly fast, however, so often times more traditional repairs would be completed while in battle, with the ships's repair systems turning those fixes seemlessly into more wholistic repairs later on.
One of the unique features of the Dante class is it's ability to manufacture munitions and its own spare parts. It can even reconfigure and rebuild internal sections of itself as needed for it's various roles. This means, theoretically, a Dante class could have a near-infinite operational lifetime, as every piece could be rebuilt/replaced by the internal construction and repair systems.
The subspace systems on the Dante are the most advanced of any League ship to date, and allow for the Dante to operate faster and deeper in subspace than any other currently deployed ship by either the League or the Terrans.
The Dante class was originally the 'Rekonin' class, which was orginally the 'Archigos II' class. It's always been the class of ship for the main hero ship in the novel. I wanted it to be a badass hero ship not unlike Andromeda or the Enterprise.
Originally, it's design inspiration came from the SeaQuest.