Fleet tender

For any given ship tonnage, a ship which is not burdened with jump drives and jump fuel can be better armed and armored than a ship which must carry those jump drive. The concept of Fleet tenders takes advantage of this fact. A fleet tender is a large jump-drive equipped ship which carries several big craft, each of which is well-armed, well-armored, and usually fitted with high acceleration maneuver drives.

Fleet tenders are usually produced with dispersed structure hulls in order to allow simultaneous lauch of all craft carried immediately as the ship arrives in a system. Since the tender cannot skim gas giants for refueling, the ships it carries must contain sufficient fuel tankage to refuel the tender in a reasonable time; often they must be streamlined to allow them to gather fuel from oceans if there is no gas giant in the system they move to. As the fleet is predisposed to using the wedge format for reasons of meson targeting difficulty ( it is the most diiffucult shape to target using a meson beam) and the wedge is a streamlined shape, battle riders tend to be streamlined as is, and can perform this function nicely.

Note also another class vessel is often referred to as a tender, a ship intended to maintain and repair striken ships. Essensially, a floating maintence and repair yard with all labs, workshops, tools, and a limited quantity of supplies to perform such duty, with more sourced from supply ships attending the fleet. This fact probably calls for a dimambiguation page.

- Source: Trillion Credit Squadron