The Dauntless-class frigate, nicknamed the “Porcupine,” is the smallest of the mainline Malleon capital ships, specializing in area control against carrier launches and other small craft using smart mines, missiles, and a huge complement of light turrets and point-defense cannons. The Porcupine forgoes heavy turrets and cannons completely in favor of bristling with smaller guns, which, along with its rounded, almost dome-shaped twin hulls, earned it its nickname. Between its explosive ordnance and its 360 degrees of light turret batteries, it can reduce an entire wave of assault craft from a Feron carrier into a storm of shrapnel.

Porcupines have two dome-shaped hulls, 200 yards in length, each elongated slightly from middle to the bow, giving the ships an egg-like appearance. Each hull has three decks of densely-packed side-mounted light turrets, plus an additional deck of dorsal light turrets on the upper hull and ventral light turrets on the lower hull. The bubble deck where the hulls meet is armored most of the way around except for three small openings, one on each side and at the bow, for launching mines and missiles and to allow small craft to land. Like the Bulldog, the Porcupine is small enough for the negative shimmer of its armor to provide a camouflage effect: Unlike the Bulldog, whose heavier armor at the front also created a more pronounced stealth looking at the ship head-on, the Porcupine is armored evenly all around, less stealthy than the Bulldog from the front but more so at other angles. A porcupine isn’t difficult to spot if you know it’s there, but careless Feron commanders can easily lose entire squadrons by accidentally sending them into an inconspicuous Porcupine’s kill zone. The Porcupine features a smaller engine setup relative to its size than the Bulldog’s, with two pairs of small exhaust ports on the upper hull and two more pairs on the bottom hull.

The Porcupine’s combat role is area denial to small or lightly armored enemy craft. When Porcupines have enough time to lay a trap, they deploy smart mines, which organize themselves into patterns designed to break up Feron formations and tee them up to be routed by the Porcupine’s rapid-firing light turrets. Once combat begins, Porcupines instead rely on missile barrages to sow chaos and funnel enemy craft into the Porcupine’s line of fire. The Porcupine’s armor is lighter than the other Malleon capital ships’, but it’s more than sufficient to withstand standard weapons on smaller craft, and the gun layout doesn’t leave any vulnerable points where a breaching craft could land a boarding party without the gunner crews easily picking them off. While the Porcupine lacks the weapons or armor to engage enemy capital ships, its engines are designed for maneuverability, and its 360 degrees of turrets means it can still lay down fire on small-craft formations even as it’s taking evasive maneuvers to avoid a pursuing capital ship.