Prototype Versions of the Boson - Class Destroyer

Initial prototype starships of the service introduction version of the Boson - Class Destroyer of the Hyperion Federation.

The XA-1 was the first attempt to manufacture such a starship with such high energy power plants. As such, it was plagued with issues such as many components catching fire or even exploding if subject to too much energy. These weaknesses were ironed out in future prototype models, but the XA-1 also had other issues like the engine running at really high power (causing the high-G moves to kill some of the crew), its self repair system misfunctioning (for example, placing objects in places that make the ship stop working), which was a problem that sometimes led to reactor annihilation and the destruction of the ship. Its crews had to be very careful with XA-1s. Because of such careful piloting, it could never make it to the front in time as it was very slow, so in many war games they have killed only small numbers of craft, even with much less advanced technology. Many spoke out about the massive inefficiency of the XA-1 destroyer and have almost caused the project to be shelved, but the XA-2 proved to be more promising.

After reprogramming the ship controls and adding a maximum G-force limit, improving a wide variety of components and its self-repair systems would be tested before the crew could ever embark on any ship. Though engineers have fixed these issues, some still remained and others were created. The XA-2 was more complex and hard to navigate by the crew, reducing their efficiency. Sometimes, the armour panels would rattle against each other if the main reactor was on and cause severe discomfort or even broken armour panels. It also had too little firepower, with only a handful of photon cannons now from before the spinal mount was added.  

In the XA-3, the spinal photon cannon was added, and most of the issues that plagued the XA-1 and XA-2 were fixed and few problems were introduced. After further improving the components and adding a large number of safety measures to the antimatter annihilation core, the ship would finally produce its first service model and T.S. Boson was built, starting the Boson class of destroyers. By the end of the project, 11 ships were annihilated in freak antimatter annihilations accidents and 86 people died. However, the sacrifice of these 86 individuals paved the way for further progress and have likely prevented a much larger death figure had untested antimatter drives been used against the Saelian Coalition in the Suon-Saelian War. Still, many improvements were made anyway for the initial service model, though it was not planned as such at the time, but it was deemed as such after it has proven to have very few mechanical issues, which could be expected to be fixed during the planned war.

Only a handful of ships of these prototype designs still exist, though the dangerous issues were corrected with modern technology. These ships mostly act as museum ships in orbit around some important HF worlds. Though they are armed, they will very likely never see service, so the armament has been dismantled from the breech.