The Fleet 2300 Project’s goal was to distill a century of reverse engineering alien technologies into new designs built to incorporate those technologies from the hull nuts up. The Los Angeles-class cruiser instead spat those hull nuts out in every direction as the prototype nearly tore herself apart during testing. It was roundly considered a Pre-War lemon, a waste of good resources that should be scrapped before it got good people killed. But an influx of new talent ripped the troubling systems out and redesigned the entire prototype just before The War came upon us all. The class was renamed in memory of Los Angeles and every subsequent ship memorialized another city destroyed by Shang bombardments. And though it became the most common cruiser built during The War, we never ran out of cities to memorialize. But thanks in part to the Los Angeles-class cruisers, we did run out of Shang ships to kill.

Los Angeles on Deviantart

Los Angeles miniature on Shapeways