In the history of the Hierarchy there have been fewer projects stranger or more costly than the development of the Potemkin. Even before the Vatborn revolted from the Terran Alliance, researchers had been working on exceeding the T-space gravity limit and creating super-massive interstellar craft exceeding three million tons.
It was in 2297, after the first war between the Human Sphere Alliance and the Hierarchy, that the Hierarchy's high command began to consider the logistical problems in laying siege to extremely well developed and fortified worlds whose industries had already been geared to the production of military goods. Two doctrines were floated to enable the Hierarchy navy to remain competitive in such a situation, where its technological and quality advantages where overwhelmed by sheer numerical superiority. The first doctrine, called the Storm, became the official position of the Hierarchy and it has served them well in every conflict. The other option called for the use of super-massive factory ships to provide for the replacement of materiel and stem the attritional losses suffers in long-term campaigns.
Never one to place all of his resources into a single possibility, General Kerensky used his executive privilege to fund further work into such factory ships, with an eye towards developing a full-scale working prototype withing twenty years for testing and training purposes. The design work took place in secret, relying entirely on Vatborn in the science service and personnel drawn from the Hierarchy member state New Zion.
It took fifteen years of intense work, but the long-standing technical limitation on the size of faster-than-light vessels was defeated. Some design work had gone into the ship itself, in the meantime, and construction of the superstructure of the Potemkin begin at a specially constructed shipyard in the uninhabited Barony of Camden. The project was ten years behind Kerensky's timeline, and cost several times the originally projected amount, but in 2329 the HWS Potemkin was launched.
To date it has only participated in one campaign, the simmering brush war in the Scheat system. The Scheat rebels had been granted assistance by the Hierarchy in return for membership upon their independence from Mindu. Mindu in turn had called in their allies, which supplied a large number of smaller warships. The Hierarchy, tied up with another war against the Human Sphere Alliance, sent a small battlegroup built around the Potemkin.
On the surface of the lone habitable planet in Scheat, also named Scheat, there was a single plant capable of producing Aerospace fighters. With the Potemkin anchored in the debris field where Scheat's moon once was, it was capable of outproducing the planet's factory. In between combat engagements, the Potemkin supplied the rebels with a constant supply of equipment which was used in a ground support role and during naval engagements the rebels provided an ever increasing number of fighters to use against Mindu and its allies.
The campaign lasted from 2339 to 2344 and Aerospace craft manufactured by the Potemkin accounted for nearly every enemy warship and fighter destroyed over the course of the campaign. This success prompted Hierarchy military planners to revisit their doctrines and begin a new round of studies, however no further craft of the Potemkin's class, or of similar make are on the drawing board.
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