When Alfred Warren announced the creation of the Great Empire, he immediately realized the main weakness: due to the size of its fleet, the Empire could not quickly upgrade ships of older designs. Therefore, he decided to start creating a new military doctrine that would produce a few long-range, high-powered ships to replace the mass-produced “Centaurs”.

In 4617, the Ares design bureau of the New Babylon system began development of a new frigate. Unlike the “old” Empire, the Great Empire was not afraid of using Alien technology. The development of the first model lasted more than three years, including the creation of a new active module, a new weapon, and a long range main calibre. The resulting prototype of the “Helios” frigate impressed Warren: its effectiveness was on par with the Wardens’ best designs.

Warren was about to begin mass production of the new frigate, but the shipyard’s lead engineer proposed a daring plan to improve the production model: to integrate Alien computation circuits into the ship’s systems. It was easy to obtain them at the time, after the Invasion, and it would substantially speed up the production of the new frigate. The only difficulty would be adapting the technology.

Under the strict control of the Great Empire security service, the necessary systems were developed and put into operation. In 4623, serial assembly of the new frigate for the Great Empire Guard began.

In 4624, it was decided to start export production of frigates with simplified Alien computing circuits. The first buyers were Sparta military units and mercenaries, including the UMC. At the same time, rumours of the ship’s unreported capabilities and flaws began to circulate. In response to a journalist asking him about this, Alfred Warren pointed to Ironside’s possible involvement in spreading these rumours.