Nova class dreadnought

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Nova class
Affiliation	Earth Alliance
General Characteristics
Fighters	24Starfuries
Armaments	Plasma cannons (Alpha variant) or Laser/Pulse Arrays (Beta Variant)

The Nova class dreadnought is a heavy warship in the science fiction series Babylon 5. The dreadnought is used by the military branch of the Earth Alliance called EarthForce.

The ship was introduced into service sometime in the 2220s after to the development of the Hyperion class heavy cruiser. The ship is capable of generating its own jump point to enter hyperspace and the initial variant was heavily armed with both plasma cannons and starfuries. Despite its heavy armament the ship was still ill-equipped to fight in the Earth-Minbari War due to the short range inherent in most plasma weapons. However, if a Nova can close enough to an enemy, extreme damage can be dealt. In the few occasions in which the Novas survived until a very short range to target the Minbari units with the manual emergency weapon controls, the plasma cannons of the Novas were able to inflict devastating damage to enemy warships. After the conclusion of the war, the class was largely superseded by the more flexible Omega class destroyer. However, Novas were seen participating in an attack on a planet close to Babylon 5, as well as in the later Earth civil war.