Viscount-class Star Defender

The Viscount-class Star Defender was a very large warship developed by the Mon Calamari for use by the New Republic Defense Fleet.

Dimensions
The Viscount-class Star Defender was envisioned as the New Republic equivalent of an Executer-class Star Dreadnought. As such, it measured almost twice as much as the Mediator-class battle cruiser.

Although slightly shorter in length than the Executor-class, the superior construction skills of the Mon Calamari enabled the vessel to carry more starfighters, as well as having a substantially smaller crew. Its shape was also more compact than the Executor-class and it had heavier and more extensive armor. Dozens of docking clamps allowed the vessel to directly dock with many other capital ships at the same time.

Offensive and Defensive Systems
The Viscount-class was equipped with over five thousand weapons systems, including heavy turbolaser batteries and concussion missile launchers. The Viscount's shields had backups, like previous Calamari designs, and were thus highly regenerative. The computers, electronic equipment and sensor systems were above and beyond those of an Imperial Star Dreadnought and it carried a HoloNet transciever.

Complement
Ships of the class could carry hundreds of starfighters, as well as dozens of small support vessels, including frigate-sized ships. The class was also fitted with enough life pods to carry the crews of the ship itself, and also those of whatever smaller support vessels were carried at the time. This totaled a passenger-capacity of 500,000 individuals. The ship was also equipped with enough repair droids to cover the entire vessel during emergency repairs.

Other Systems
To support wounded in combat, the Viscount-class had hundreds of self-replenishing bacts tanks in its medical wings. It also had fighter repair bays, in these bays they would repair fighters and also maintain them.

Development
Despite having beaten the Executor in combat at the Battle of Endor, Admiral Gial Ackbar saw the various Super Star Destroyers still in the Imperial hands, as the main threat to the burgeoning New Republic Navy. With this in mind, he proposed the creation of Super Star Destroyer-scale warships to counter the Imperial vessels.

It would take many years of development, and the threat of the rogue Executor-class Star Dreadnought Intimidator during the Black Fleet Crisis to hasten the development program and actually produce the larger dreadnoughts.

Despite having used Mon Calamari battleships and Bulwark-class battle cruisers in previous decades, the New Republic had never constructed anything on this scale before. Regardless, the Mon Calamari began development on the Viscount-class.

Construction on the class dragged on, as the threat posed by the Imperial Remnant diminished and the New Republic captured several Star Dreadnoughts during the war.

Active Service
The first ship of the class, the Viscount, was eventually completed in time to engage rogue Imperial warlords, pirates and hideouts. It was noted as being commissioned in 25 ABY, shortly before the Yuuzhan Vong War began.

The extent of the Viscount's Civil War-related battles and their duration is not known, but they constituted the only events in which the Viscount-class was used for its original purpose, battling Imperial targets, including at least one Executor-class Star Dreadnought.

The Viscount-class, along with the Corellian Strident-class, marked the first of the Star Destroyer ship type. When the New Republic government transitioned into the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, the Viscount-class continued to play a prominent role in the fleet,with the ships being regarded as the backbone of the Galactic Alliance Defense Force.

The power of a Viscount-class Star Defender was evident during the Battle of Mon Calamari. The Viscount herself was part of a trio of heavy warships, including the Executor-class Guardian and the Mon Calamari battle cruiser Harbinger, that was deployed by the Galactic Alliance Defense Force so they could use their heavy, long-range weapons to assault the center of the Yuuzhan Vong armada. The heavy guns of the Viscount were instrumental in destroying numerous warships.

By the Sith-Imperial War, the Viscount-class and other heavy warship-designs had been phased out of service, as fleet doctrine moved towards smaller, compact weapons-platforms, like the MC140 Scythe-class main battle cruiser.

When the rifts brought the Fel Empire to the galaxy, they brought along with them many mothballed Star Defenders and it's blueprints. Seeing the potential they could have if they were upgraded, the Republic began building new Viscount-class ships, as well as repairing the old ships that had been sitting in drydocks for decades.