Metropolis Class Carrier

IMT once had a profitable sideline in transporting civilian flitters, crawlers and gigs on a roll-on/roll-off ferry using rotating cargo decks. Following some unfortunate shipping disasters[*] this business is long gone. The sturdy Metro Class Carrier remains as a legacy of that time.

The IMT design bureau took the proven layout of the transporter and added defenses and mount points for fighters. This gave an open plan ship with one huge fighter bay. Any mix of the three IMT fighter designs may be loaded, along with some assault pods.

The resulting Metro design is cheap, much like a shoddy civilian craft flying a flag of convenience.

It has three uses:

As a carrier: Any mix of IMT's three fighter designs may be loaded, along with some assault pods.
As a fighter killer: It has a reasonable number of point defenses for a low tech carrier, and a decent attack bonus. This makes it a good fighter killer (though it can't mount a sandcaster).
As a weapon platform: Its strength is the masses of small weapons backed up by a decent attack bonus. This makes it a good swarmer, especially when backed up by exotic tech.

If larger wing sizes are needed, IMT has two options. Trade for a different carrier hull, or tow a planet with a Great Pyramid. Planets can carry unlimited fighters.

In order to achieve military accelerations with such a large and relatively flimsy structure the Metro Class uses gravitational "mass damping" technology. The effect of this is that the effective mass of the ship is lowered, along with fuel consumption. It has been commented that other - more saurian - races have copied this miracle of IMT gravity engineering.

Malicious rumours claim that the original Metro roll-on, roll-off ferry design was withdrawn from service due to its tendency to fly apart when a vital bolt sheared from fatigue. This sent the carousels and their passengers spinning off like giant rotating Wheels of Death. Certain hot jock pilots are known to vie for the honour of hitting the Metro's Soft Spot in battle to glory in the resulting mayhem.

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* Veep-speak for "Nothing to worry about, the company's financial position is sound, now stop whining about corrosion and get in that death trap"