Autumn-class heavy cruiser

Autumn-class heavy cruiser

"Autumn-class vessels are heavy cruisers, but also provide escort support when needed."

- Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide

The Autumn-class heavy cruiser is a United Nations Space Command cruiser starship classification designed after the war and based off the unique design of the heavily upgraded Halcyon-class UNSC Pillar of Autumn. During the Battle of Reach and the Battle of Installation 04, the Pillar of Autumn performed feats of combat unrivaled by any other vessel during the course of the war. This was largely attributed to the Pillar of Autumns many combat upgrades, and inspired the Navy to develop and adopt a new standard-issue cruiser classification in the years following the Human-Covenant war.

History
During the war, Halcyon-class cruisers performed fairly well against superior Covenant vessels, largely due to their complicated and costly design. This raw resources required to construct many of these cruisers caused NAVCOM to introduce a new standard cruiser classification fairly early in the war: the Marathon-class heavy cruiser. While the Marathon-class was heavily armed and boasted incredibly thick armor, its cheaper deck design meant that it was more easily incapacitated by plasma weaponry. Due to the scarcity of the Halcyon-class and the overall ineffectiveness of the Marathon-class, the Navy had only a handful of heavy cruisers by the final days of the war. However, a heavily modified Halcyon-class vessel (one of the oldest of its kind), the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, received a wide array of upgrades prior an operation near the end of the war. These upgrades allowed the Pillar of Autumn not only to serve with distinction during the Fall of Reach and the Battle of Installation 04, but allowed it to go head-to-head against a Covenant Supercruiser and emerge victorious, something no UNSC ship could boast until that point. Though the Autumn would eventually be destroyed on the ringworld known as Halo, its upgrades inspired NAVCOM to commission yet another cruiser design, called the Autumn-class in honor of its inspiration. The design would not be finished until after the war, at which point the cruiser position across the Navy was filled by the new, heavily-armed heavy cruiser class. The Home Fleet, decimated during the battles of Earth and Mars, had at least ten Autumn-class heavy cruisers in it by early 2558, an improvement over the eight Marathon-class heavy cruisers fielded in late 2552.