I'd expect if Morden was happy to give Clark the tech to build a true Shadow warship, what would they offer the Dilgar?
Worth noting the only person to really hurt a Vorlon was Jha'dur when she made the poison that nearly killed Kosh. That might prove very useful
That is apparently how the Omega lasers work, most of it runs down the centre of the ship and is bounced up to those turrets, but with the Hyach weapon it seems to be too powerful to be easily bounced.
I thought that those heavy red beams were Particle Weapons, they're too slow to be laser weapons and since those same weapons also fire plasma pulses, them being lasers doesn't make much sense either. I mean, the Nova class can get away with its Pulse/Beam weapons because the turrets are so gigantic, a small ship in it of itself that they can rather easily fit both.
Still, the Tempest class appears to have four Nova class turrets, thirteen Pulse Cannons, what looks like a pair of GOD Particle Cannons, probably has six to eight missile tubes, and can probably carry an entire squadron of Starfuries. So a nice mixture of long range and close range firepower.
there's a few discrepancies between what the ship should be and what the animations show, for instance the Omega was supposed to launch fighters from her rotating section B5 style and use those massive chin guns as her main weapons. As a rule in the case of contradiction I'll just pick what looks cooler
The reason I'll likely stick with lasers is to make it clearly different from the next generation ships which do have specifically named particle beams. I know its a question more of energy and one is not inherently more dangerous than another but not all my readers may be as well versed in such things so its just easier to say particle beams= shiny new best guns
That makes sense now that you mention it, I guess I didn't think of that way. But I was primarily worried about the mirrors of the laser being so close to a plasma pulse weapon.
EDIT: That said, can we get a class list and armament for the various Dilgar Warships?
Valari class dreadnought x3
2km length
single prow mounted low end Molecular slicer (Blue beam, Omega-X)
smaller slicers astern and mounted on the flanks with side and forward arcs.
Batteries of pulse cannon turrets along the hull for close range saturation fire.
Torpedo tubes
point defences.
Optimised for direct combat with enemy forces, very tough, good firing arcs, heavy fireppower. Drakh tech.
Monarch class Battleship x6
2km length
triple spinal lasers
heavy pulse cannon gun batteries on the flanks
heavy missile armament.
Air wing (24)
point defences
Designed for long range battle, supports other units from the edge of combat. Has sufficient secondary guns to defend itself if necessary
Sekhmet class cruiser x60
twin heavy lasers
several pulse cannons
point defences
24 fighters
Multi role vessel, backbone of the Dilgar fleet. Powerful for its size.
Bazan'shi class frigate x250
Pulse cannons
missiles
point defences.
6 fighters
Mass produced escort vessel. Relatively fast and agile, well armed for size.
Pallavan class patrol ship x140
pulse cannons
point defences
Cheap and short ranged, not really designed for taking on warships, just Raiders.
Thorun MkIII Strike fighter
Twin pulse cannons
Missile capable
Very agile but a war era design.
They've been able to reverse engineer AG tech to where even their fighters have said tech? Damn, they might actually have parity with the Minbari or the Yolu.
They've been able to reverse engineer AG tech to where even their fighters have said tech? Damn, they might actually have parity with the Minbari or the Yolu.
My thought is they've had Drakh tech for 20 or so years which should be enough time to unlock the basics. Drakh seem roughly equal to Minbari so should compare well, numbers accepted.
Mainly they needed some sort of advantage to keep them competitive and explain why they don't get rolled by the Drazi or similar
My thought is they've had Drakh tech for 20 or so years which should be enough time to unlock the basics. Drakh seem roughly equal to Minbari so should compare well, numbers accepted.
Mainly they needed some sort of advantage to keep them competitive and explain why they don't get rolled by the Drazi or similar
It makes sense, they've both needed to innovate and survive. So they would have dumped far more resources into making the tech work than say earth did it reverse engineering the Sekhmets and other ships they took from the Dilgar during the war.
Maybe a mirror or lens made out of plasma. That takes less tech and energy that manipulating light with gravity, but still is imune to the issue of your optics gettign turned into plasma by the virtue of already being plasma. Any ablation of a plasma optic can be taken care of use gas tanks.
Alternatively, use a mirror made out of mercury. You can just replace the mirror with more mercury from a tank using a pump system.
Maybe a mirror or lens made out of plasma. That takes less tech and energy that manipulating light with gravity, but still is imune to the issue of your optics gettign turned into plasma by the virtue of already being plasma. Any ablation of a plasma optic can be taken care of use gas tanks.
Alternatively, use a mirror made out of mercury. You can just replace the mirror with more mercury from a tank using a pump system.
I must admit, I knew that you could make windows out of Plasma. But I had no idea that you could make Plasma Lenses or even make them out of Mercury. I mean, damn.
there's a few discrepancies between what the ship should be and what the animations show, for instance the Omega was supposed to launch fighters from her rotating section B5 style and use those massive chin guns as her main weapons. As a rule in the case of contradiction I'll just pick what looks cooler
They've been able to reverse engineer AG tech to where even their fighters have said tech? Damn, they might actually have parity with the Minbari or the Yolu.
My thought is they've had Drakh tech for 20 or so years which should be enough time to unlock the basics. Drakh seem roughly equal to Minbari so should compare well, numbers accepted.
Mainly they needed some sort of advantage to keep them competitive and explain why they don't get rolled by the Drazi or similar
Hahaha no. They admittedly haven’t been in space that long, they were actually one of the Centauri’s former slave races. But between what Centauri tech they retained, and what they’ve manage to buy or acquire from others and their overall level of technology has risen crazy fast.
And the area of technology they are best at is gravity tech. The Brakiri are obsessed with gravitic technology, everywhere from gravity based weapons systems, gravity propulsion, they even got ahold of gravity shield tech(even if theirs isn’t as good as the Abbai).
Minbari gravity tech might be smaller and more efficient, but they don’t exploit gravity tech nearly as much whether for military technology or even civilian(Brakiri children have hoverboards).
Hahaha no. They admittedly haven’t been in space that long, they were actually one of the Centauri’s former slave races. But between what Centauri tech they retained, and what they’ve manage to buy or acquire from others and their overall level of technology has risen crazy fast.
And the area of technology they are best at is gravity tech. The Brakiri are obsessed with gravitic technology, everywhere from gravity based weapons systems, gravity propulsion, they even got ahold of gravity shield tech(even if theirs isn’t as good as the Abbai).
Minbari gravity tech might be smaller and more efficient, but they don’t exploit gravity tech nearly as much whether for military technology or even civilian(Brakiri children have hoverboards).
I put up a list of League races and their technology back on pg 22(minus a few I couldn't find at the time like the Yolu and Iksha, or the Drazi which weren't relevant to why I made the list), here's the Brakiri section.
The Brakiri are masters of acquisition. Everything about their technology is stolen from others and very little original innovation can be directly accredited to them. This said, the Brakiri have mastered the art of ‘hiding their sources’. Everything about Brakiri technology may have come from other civilisations (namely the Centauri) but very little of it is recognisable as such. The products of the Brakiri, from their fashions to their flare pistols, are all uniquely Brakiri in appearance and implementation. They may have stolen everything they have, but they have indelibly placed their mark on the results of their thievery.
Central to the technical achievements of the Brakiri are two innovations; gravitics and superior marketing. The first is the scientific principle upon which most of their space program and military designs are founded. The latter is what keeps the Brakiri afloat in a sea of turbulent galactic politics. Very few races trust the Brakiri and most would rather have nothing to do with them, but the trade benefits of the Syndicracy are too valuable (or at least perceived as too valuable) to refuse.
Brakiri weapons are generally based around the application of gravitational force or ballistics, with very little highenergy application other than gravitics. They can appreciate the uses of laser technology, but the Brakiri believe gravity based weapons are superior to any other. This belief has some truth to it, but the Brakiri’s blind adherence to this policy has in some ways stunted their military research. It may take the advent of a superior weapon used against them in battle to get them out of their ‘gravity rut’.
This event may have already occurred, though it will be some time before the laboratories of Im-Rehsa turn out any visible benefits from their research. The experience gained by the Brakiri during the Shadow War showed them the molecular cutter was a vastly superior weapon to their own. While they were able to compare their gravitic cannons favourably with the other weapons of the League, the beams of the Shadow fleet were undeniably better than anything the Brakiri had ever seen.
Brakiri Pulser: An extension of gravitic technology considered to be a dead end by the Brakiri because of its very low damage per pulse ratio, the pulser is a gravity handgun that generates fast moving waves of gravity. While it features a high energy capacity and can project its attack farther than many gravitic weapons, the Brakiri seldom carry these themselves because of their limited stopping power.
Gravitic Pistol: The smallest reliable gravity weapon the Brakiri make, this handgun fires a pulse of gravitic energy with enough force to punch a hole through a stone wall. When carried aboard a starship, Brakiri law dictates that a selector switch be used on the gun to limit its damage to 1d6 and its critical multiplier to x2; this switch is standard on all Brakiri-made gravitic pistols and is included at the listed price.
Grav-Cannon: A very powerful version of the gravitic pistol, the gravitic cannon is a bulky but not unwieldy rifle with better range and an even stronger impact. Grav-Cannons do not have a standard limiter switch, but one can be added that will reduce the weapons damage to 1d10 and pose no threat to a ship’s hull integrity for an additional 100 credits.
Grav-Grenade: An ingenious use of gravitic technology, this device is a small gravity generator that, on impact, generates a potent field of energy.
Heavy Gravitic Gun: A high energy weapon that generates a wall-shattering pulse of gravity on a tactical level, the heavy gravitic gun is a field weapon used by the military and is rarely, if ever, seen in the hands of a civilian. Highly illegal and rarely sold outside of arms purchases between galactic powers, the HGG has been known to find its way into the arsenals of raiders and other criminals (though the Brakiri government categorically denies any knowledge of such sales).
Wakat Rocket: The deadly outcome of a research line by the Wakat half of Pri-Wakat, the Wakat Rocket (a name that always seems to amuse human purchasers for some reason) is a disposable short rifle weapon that can be wielded in one hand without penalty. Shaped much like a shotgun, the Wakat Rocket holds two primed, short range unguided missiles. Extremely illegal, the mere sight of a Wakat Rocket tends to make Brakiri more compliant with the suggestions of the wielder
Unlike the Abbai, the Brakiri surround themselves with material possessions. Instant meal generators, timepieces, small computerised devices, personal conveyances and a hundred inventions intended to save time are the norms of a given Brakiri’s existence. While some Brakiri prefer a Spartan lifestyle in an effort to avoid distractions, most would be lost if they had to go more than a few hours without their gadgets and ‘conveniences’.
Brakiri Keeper: A ubiquitous device carried by virtually every Brakiri in the galaxy over the age of 10, a Keeper is a multi-device with a small readout screen, a slot for a reduced-size data crystal with half normal capacity, a clock feature, a communicator capable of broadcasting over a planetary or shipboard network and a complicated set of scheduling and mail service features. Taking a Brakiri’s keeper and breaking it in front of him is considered a base insult and is grounds for legal assault in the Syndicracy.
Food Mate: A food preparation device that takes compressed ration tubes (sold separately for 3 credits per meal, more for higher end models) and turns them into palatable, if not entirely enjoyable, meals. Many Brakiri keep one of these handy even when they travel as they often find the food of other races bland or distasteful. More expensive food mates exist that can actually generate high quality meals, but regardless of the grade of food mate, they all take approximately five minutes from start to finish. It is a sign of Brakiri impatience and love for efficiency that many alarm clocks in the Syndicracy send an automatic signal to a slaved food mate nearby to begin operation.
G-Board: A favourite pastime of Brakiri children and considered suicidal by most adults of any race, the G-board is a two foot wide, three foot long platform of metal and textured synthetic latex with a pair of gravity generators on its underside. Operated by a hand stick or through foot pads (if one is an expert user), a G-board grants a base land speed of 60 feet per round.
Laundry Cube: An example of Brakiri conveniences, the laundry cube is a metal cube with a top loading door and a vibrating inner drum connected to a phased gravity generator. These devices do not generate very powerful fields; they are just powerful enough to shake normal soil and stains from articles of clothing, just as they were designed to do. Laundry cubes require a power connection to work. Energy cell operated Laundry cubes do exist, but they cost 800 credits and include a single, rechargeable cell, good for ten items of clothing.
Palmcomp: A palmcomp is an executive tool with a full data crystal reader, a holographic display capable of making an image up to six inches in all dimensions and a military grade communicator all built into a stylish glove. Entering text data into a palmcomp is achieved by ‘typing’ in midair with the hand wearing it; this does not require a Computer Use roll, but the user must have at least one rank to be able to use a palmcomp at all. Executives and their assistants are the primary users of palmcomps, but many professionals have one available if they need solid, portable computing power.
Sustenance Patches: The Brakiri are so concerned with time and efficiency that some of them try to avoid the need for meal breaks altogether during the workday. While this is not entirely healthy, it is possible through the use of sustenance patches; dermal patches that secrete all the nutrition of a full meal over the course of an hour. Using sustenance patches for more than a week at a time is dangerous, but the exact effects (typically exhaustion, digestive trouble, body odour) are left to the Games Masters’ discretion.
Water Belt/Harness: Water is a very important part of any Brakiri’s life, more so because of their history of treasuring the substance and the efforts they have gone through as a people to obtain it. Many Brakiri abhor the thought of wasting any water at all; thus, the water belt and harness were invented. These devices are worn directly against the skin and cover major perspiration sites of the body. Sweat is absorbed into the belt or harness, reprocessed into clean
water and stored in small hip-mounted flasks. Using a water belt or harness increases the amount of time a wearer can go without water by 150% (half again the time they normally could).
Brakiri Battle Fatigues: The standard combat jumpsuit and jacket of the Brakiri military, these outfits are generally well-tailored and resemble the dress uniforms of other races’ martial forces. A Brakiri in battle fatigues typically also has a water harness, a 4 pack of sustenance patches and a palmcomp as part of his general kit, but these are purchased separately (typically at the expense of the soldier’s corporate sponsor).
Executive Armour: Executive armour is state of the art body armour built into executive level clothing. The base price listed is for bottom of the line, store shelf garments that only the lowest-level corporate executive would wear in public. More powerful businessmen purchase commensurately more expensive apparel that provides no greater physical protection but is quite effective against the pointed stares and sharp social commentary of their employees.
Gravitic Plate: Not quite as exotic as its name sounds, gravitic plate is heavy armour created by subjecting composite materials to incredible gravity stresses in order to render them nearly impervious to physical damage. The result is incredibly dense (and heavy) armour plates attached to a flexible suit of ballistic material. While the plates are almost invulnerable to harm, the suit and the wearer inside are not. This limits the suit’s effectiveness but still provides impressive protection. Gravitic plate is very rare, generally only available to heavy infantry battalions of the Pri-Wakat military.
The Brakiri have not announced it to the rest of the galaxy and keep them mostly hidden on their own isolated worlds, but they have finally cracked the secret of gravitic technology in regards to vehicular design. They do not have many gravitic vehicles yet, but most high-powered executives have access to the few models that exist. The Brakiri are frantically trying to retrofit their existing automotive and aerospace designs, seeing gravitic propulsion as the only civilised way to run their transportation industries. How the Minbari will react to seeing what was once exclusive to their technical base in the hands of the Brakiri remains to be seen, but the Brakiri are fortunate the Warrior Caste no longer hold a majority in the Grey Council.
Brakir Nightrage
A luxury sport model ground car made by the only company sanctioned by the Syndicracy to use the name of honoured Brakir, the nomenclature always symbolises the top of the line from their factory showroom. The Brakir Nightrage is made to order and while it is incredibly expensive, it is also capable of gravitic motion and has all the amenities a Brakiri might expect in a vehicle: dashboard minder, quality food mate in the console and a superior augmented driving module that drives the user to pre-programmed locations.
Cargo Transport, Brakiri
While the typical cargo hauler of the Brakiri is neither the fastest nor the toughest in the galaxy, it does manage to make the most efficient use of space of any comparable vehicle. Designed to make the best use of its fuel and drive time, a Brakiri cargo transport can move a larger payload than any other and provides adequate protection and speed while doing so. Brakiri cargo drivers are accorded a fair amount of respect, as their job is one of the vital pipelines of their race’s economic structure.
Gravitic Transport
Only used by the Brakiri on their homeworld and corporate-controlled domain worlds, the gravitic transport is essentially just a cargo transport retrofitted with gravitic drives and reinforced to withstand the stress of its use. Gravitic transports are both fast and efficient, two things the Brakiri adore in their labour force. While the Brakiri currently hide their gravitic technologies, these vehicles are becoming more common in their cities and it is only a matter of time before they start using them throughout the entire Syndicracy.
The Brakiri do not have a very complicated array of military vehicles, only needing a few to handle all of their common engagement types. These are updated every 50 years or so with new models, but they traditionally keep the same vehicle names unless a major update has occurred. This is the case with the latest generation of vehicles; they have been renamed to signify the inclusion of gravitic drives and superior engine performance. With gravitic weaponry now standard on its military vehicles, the Brakiri field some of the most potent infantry assets short of the Minbari Federation.
Groundstrike Transport/Tank
Not wishing to put too much money into their ground vehicles, the Brakiri have for better or worse combined the concepts of battlefield weapon platforms with their main troop transports. This is not a very efficient design but with the Brakiri’s lack of intense ground-warfare experience, the flaws in its design have yet to be a concern. If the Brakiri become more involved in ground battles, they will likely scrap the Groundstrike completely and design separate vehicles for each role as other races have done.
Skyhammer Troop Carrier
A gravity capable troop transport aircraft with space capability and considerable firepower, the Skyhammer is mostly a Hurdar retrofit and has many of the same quirks and characteristics. The armour on a Skyhammer is considerable, copied as it is from captured Abbai materials. The most notable piece of equipment on the Skyhammer is its concealed comm jammer, another piece of Abbai technology that could cause a serious incident wereknowledge of its existence to reach the normally peaceful creators of that technology.
The Brakiri are rightfully proud of their space fleet, considering they have some of the most advanced ships in the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. While the Abbai have better defences, the Vree have more powerful weapons and the Gaim have better sensors and communications, the Brakiri have a remarkably well balanced fleet incorporating many of these factors into ships that regularly out-perform similar ship classes among their peers. When the Brakiri commit ships to an objective, their presence can easily turn the tide of battle in the League’s favour.
New Weapon: Graviton Beam
A slow arming but very powerful weapon, this is a gravity based energy cannon with the ability to focus and intensify its output at the cost of its recharge rate and firing time. When a ship with one or more graviton beams wishes to fire it can either do so normally or choose to ‘charge’ them. Every round the guns spend charging, they do not fire but bonus points equal to the weapon’s non-dice damage are added to the weapon’s damage total if it hits, and its range increases by 1. Charging is a full-round action that can be taken up to three times. After charging, a graviton beam weapon takes a full round to recharge before it can be fired or charged again.
New Weapon: Gravitic Lance
A modified and improved form of the graviton beam, this weapon takes some of its technology from the molecular cutters of the Shadow fleet. It fires a sustainable beam of tightly focused gravitons, allowing it to tear apart solid matter at a massive distance and with terrible efficiency. The gravitic lance has two modes; beam and lance. In the former mode, it acts exactly as a graviton beam with the added benefit of hitting twice instead of once with each shot. As a beam, the lance can only charge for one round if at all.
As a lance, this weapon has a tremendous range and ignores physical armour. DR is useless against the gravitic lance, but it is easily disrupted by gravity and electromagnetic effects. Ships with gravitic and EM shields take only half damage from a gravitic lance after reducing it as they normally would. These ships still do not benefit from their physical armour, however, as what remains of the beam is still potent enough to rip straight through it.
Primarily researched, designed and utilised by the Brakiri Syndicracy, gravitic weaponry is simple in theory – but extremely complex in practice. The idea behind a gravitic weapon is to accelerate a segment of intense gravity toward an enemy through an escalating singularity. Basically creating miniscule black holes as small as one atomic strand wide and firing them at the enemy, the weapon collapses a portion of the target’s mass under the extreme gravity before its existence winks out.
The hardest part to manufacture of any form of gravitic weapon is the directional mechanism. What the Brakiri have discovered is that it is possible to move the weapon’s payload along in the same manner as a gravitic drive moves a ship– but on a much smaller scale. By increasing the gravitic pull directly in front of the weapon’s emitter, the shot should carry forward into the void at massive speeds, allowing inertia to do the rest. The only diffi culty is making sure the weapon’s payload can last long enough to reach the target.
Gravitic weapons are diffi cult to manufacture and require several monitoring and stabilization conduits to connect to a ship’s gravitic drive which all of these weapon systems must be attached to.
Graviton Pulsar
The first of the long-ranged gravitic weapons that the Brakiri manufactured, the graviton pulsar is a row of several gravitic bolt emitters positioned and internally timed to fire in rapid succession. Not only do these shots stagger in order to create a wider field of fire, but they are mathematically pinpointed to travel in each others’ gravitic wake, carrying the shots farther while using far less of their own energy to do so. This means a longer range and a better impact ratio of the shots themselves.
Grav Cannon
Taking advice from their belligerent neighbours, the Drazi, the Syndicracy eventually began to make larger and more energy-consuming gravitic weapons to fit to their hulls. The grav cannon is the first of these weapons, using a much bigger series of conduits to shoot a greater singularity toward the enemy. The larger anomaly can absorb a sizable portion of hull and material before its hunger is sated and blinks out of existence. Unlike a laser, that moves from side to side, the grav cannon sends its payload deeper in the vessel to hopefully rip apart sensitive internal systems before collapsing.
Grav cannons may only fire once per turn due to their slow recharging times.
Graviton Beam
The Brakiri’s first and only attempt at a sustained gravitic weapon, the graviton beam is an effective counterpart to many medium laser batteries in the galaxy. Sending dozens of grav cannon-sized anomalies at a single enemy in rapid succession can have the same slicing effect that a common laser does, but requires vast energy stores to map and project the attack. It takes several minutes – a lifetime in any heated battle – to recharge and re-plot the next shot, even with the help of the gravitic engine’s monitoring computer systems.
Graviton beams may only fi re once per turn due to their slow recharging times.
Gravitic Lance
After seeing the effectiveness of the scything beams of the Shadows time and time again during that war, the Brakiri wanted to create a weapon that could keep their warships well out of the range of such terrible weaponry as their smaller vessels moved in to engage. Trying a dozen different ways to extend range, the best way they found was to chain a series of larger graviton singularities together in a sustained firing pattern. Effectively, the first few gravitons ‘tow’ those behind them farther and farther, leaving the rest to smash into the target for remarkable damage.
Graviton Shifter
The Brakiri once realised that their advanced gravitic drives could lend a hand to nearby ships that had lost access to their own – which immediately spawned the idea of using them against the enemy. Originally thought to be used for capture and towing, a brilliant fleet commander named Tor Okat ordered all of his towing gravitics to have their polarities push enemy ships into disarray. The abrupt movement would ruin firing lanes, alter trajectories and throw crewmen to the floor all over the ship. It was ingenious, earning the commander a place in Brakiri wartime history and opening a whole new avenue of possibilities for the Syndicracy’s armada.
Gravitic Mine Launcher
After seeing the spectacular results of what happens when accidentally fired graviton singularities strike one another, the Brakiri saw a great opportunity. Designing twin streamlined graviton emitters to throw a pair of unstable anomalies at converging angles to bisect at a specific place, the gravitic mine was born. When the two hungry anomalies meet each one tries to devour the negativity of the other a thousand times in a millisecond, and instead they collapse in a powerful release of alternating gravitic energy that will lash out at any target caught in the surprisingly large fi eld of destruction.
But yeah, the Brakiri are generally well beyond the Earth Alliance. Personally, I've found that you can sort space faring races in B5 into 6 tiers,
Tier 6: This tier is for the First One races, civilizations millions or even billions of years old and with godlike technology under their control. Dyson spheres, swarm fleets of several billion ships, warping the fabric of spacetime to do all sorts of crazy shit and turning yourself into an "energy being" are all things First Ones can do. Tier 5: The "middleborn" like the Drakh, these races have been in space for tens of thousands of years and have access to technology far beyond that of the Younger Races. Widespread augmentation, colony fleets ala Macross, tank guns that can hit ships in low orbit and more. Tier 4: This is where the "oldest of the youngest" are located, the Minbari, Yolu and technically the Vree(the Vree aren't really old enough to be here on their own but got very lucky early on in their space faring and found a fleet of derelict Minbari ships from the Valen War, a thousand years out of date by modern Minbari standards but still far in advanced of everyone else and catapulted the Vree by centuries). Advanced gravity manipulation, antimatter production and weapons systems based on exotic energies is the hallmark of this tier. Tier 3: This is basically the "average" tier for B5 younger races, it's where the Centauri, Abbai, Brakiri, Drazi, Hyach and Pak'ma'ra are located. The races generally possess artificial gravity, "refined" versions of the technological and weapon systems used by Tier 2 races and in the case of the League races, often have specialties that rival or even exceed the abilities of Tier 4 races inside said specialties(the Brakiri might not be able to shrink gravity generators down as small as the Minbari do, but they certainly do a lot more tricks with gravity technology). Tier 2: This is where the Earth Alliance and the Narn Regime are located as are several of the smaller League races like the Llort, Grome and Balosians. They generally have access to ftl technology, laser, particle, plasma pulse and beam technology, magnetic accelerator weapons(or matter weaponry as B5 puts it) advanced materials and large scale construction, advanced robotics and computers and holographic projection. At this stage, the only reason Earth and Narn are considered "bigger" powers to many of the more advanced League races despite their generally inferior technology is because of the size of their nations and the corresponding size of the fleets they can command. Tier 1: Pre-ftl races basically, like Earth before First Contact with the Centauri. They've got spaceflight and "crude" versions of the technologies and weapons used by Tier 2 races, but they'd generally struggle with your average raider group, never mind and actual invasion by any of the higher powers. The Hurr are also here because for some god only knows reason they prefer to use oversized ballistic weaponry in space instead of anything more advanced.
The Brakiri are around average for a B5 Younger Race at Tier 3 alongside the Centauri, Abbai, Drazi, Hyach and most of the League of Non-aligned Worlds.
Rewatching DS9 now. I say it's a shame there was not comparably dedicated mirrorverse in B5. After that episode when future Delenn told Sheridan only other option was to join Shadows, one would have expected mirror episode from different timeline.
Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. - Quark, DS9
Ah to see (and watch) B5 material again, oh it warms my heart.
Good to see this sort of material coming out again, even getting me to start thinking of starting my own fics... though I want to have the various EU materials (specifically the species books from B5Wars and associates) on hand before I do...
