The Omega Starcruiser is an offshoot design from the Alpha model Omega which dominates the current Earth Force navy. While the Alpha Model is an excellent design, many commanders still felt the vessel was too slow and lacked a real knockout punch. Earthforce order a Cruiser variant of the vessel to be built to satisfy these needs. The result was the Omega StarCruiser. The rear weaponary was removed in favour of mounting larger thrusters and that along with a larger engine allowed the ship to accelerate a full 50% faster. The fore mounted Heavy Pulse Cannons, while very effective also spread out their damage and were less effective against high armored opponents. They were replaced in the final design in favour of a Heavy Plasma Cannon on each side. These weapons, while older worked well against armor and dealt all of their damage in a single blast. On paper, the ship was great and it looked to be a winner. However, all things did not go as planned.
Several production runs of the Omega Starcruiser ensued, resulting in dozens of the vessels entering into service. The first field engagements however did not go as well as expected. While the ship was indeed faster it still remained fairly unmanueverable, this left the now weaponless aft very exploitable. The Heavy Plasma Cannons also did not work as well as anticipated, and were ultimately inferior to the Pulse Cannons. Report after report came in, and production of the StarCruiser stopped. The reports did also provide a foil to the Alpha model, and showed how effective the Pulse Cannon was. This in part lead EarthForce R+D to design the Beta model Omega.
Many StarCruisers were produced before the design was officially dropped and for the most part they remained in service. Refitting the vessels to Alpha models would be very costly, and the ship was still effective on the battlefield. Compared to the Destroyers, the number of StarCruisers is few, which makes the variant a rare type. One of the more well know StarCruisers is the Pournelle. It helped to put down the mars Rebellion. During the fighting, one of the terrorist leaders named Abel Horn was attempting to leave in a transport. The speed of the StarCruiser proved it is still valuable as it was able to catch up with the transport and destroyed it with a Plasma fire. Because of this speed, most StarCruiser are used to patrol the outer fringes of Earth Alliance space. During the Civil War, the StarCruisers' deep patrol missions kept most of them out of the fighting, and still in active service.
