Winner of the Ship Building Contest #3

Congratulations to Blingon for his design of the new Liverpool IV! He is awarded 400 credits for winning the ship building contest. Special mention also goes to Fox, with 100 credit reward and a free Liverpool IV.

With over 40 years of service, the Liverpool frigate has been proven to be the most versatile and popular workhorse of the Sol Imperial Navy. There are now more Liverpools in service than any other frigate; and even though they are inexpensive to build, there always seemed to be a wait list on the construction of new variants of this class. Chief of the Arcturus shipyards Rear Admiral M. Forest noticed that the bottleneck lied with the supplies of Nakabayashi's PB-2 plasma beams. The companies' focus was on the more powerful variants; and the Benson Dynamics' PB-3 series were too heavy and overpowered for a frigate. Lasers were out of the question -- even though they were cheap and quite numerous, it did not fit the purpose of a Liverpool design. So Admiral Forest went to the original prototype Plasma Beam -- the PB-1. Though weaker in overall strength and range, it still had the accuracy and destructive properties of a plasma beam. It also was lighter than the PB-2, so the port and starboard lasers were replaced with them. Working a newfound arrangement with the CEO of Ming Industries' Shiro-Chan to reinstate the production of PB-1, this ship could be produced with even lower production costs than its original predecessor. With the help of hypercharging technology from the Leningrad Destroyer, these beams get a slight increase in destructive power as well, putting them on par with the PB-2.