The Vigilant-class destroyer, nicknamed the “Bulldog,” is a medium-sized but heavily-armed and fast ship designed as a weapons platform for the long guns that the predecessors to the Venture-class used before the Nephelium-powered railgun was invented. Rather than scrap the guns from these obsolete ships, the Malleon Navy sought designs for a new capital ship that could mount them for use in a supporting role. The result was the Bulldog, a light ship mocked before the war as a silly military-industrial recycling project that was just a bunch of big guns attached to an engine. When the War broke out, the Bulldog quickly proved its critics wrong and gained a reputation as the “battleship’s best friend” because it’s capable of engaging a Feron carrier and pulling it off an attack run on an overwhelmed Venture-class battleship.

The Bulldog is dual-hulled like all Malleon capital ships, but with a shorter and stockier silhouette, 250 yards in length. (Part of the reason behind the name is that they look a little like bulldogs next to the much larger Venture-class.) Unlike the bubbles in the Eminence and the Venture classes, the bubble where the upper and lower hulls meet is protected by armor almost all the way around, except for an opening at the bow. This opening is primarily for the Bulldog’s main guns, super-heavy cannons mounted one on each corner and so big compared to the Bulldog that the four cannons each protrude about 10m from the ship when in combat position. (This gives extra space for recoil, loading, and other crew operations. They slide back into the ship when not in combat.) This opening also allows small craft to land. Each hull has four decks of heavy turrets for broadsides—the Bulldog’s squatter appearance comes from ending there rather than extending and tapering the hull to accommodate additional, narrower decks with light turrets, as on the larger Malleon capital ships. The Bulldog has a last deck on each hull to operate point defense cannons mounted atop the upper hull and on the bottom of the lower hull. Each hull also sports a row of four exhaust ports near where the hulls meet: These look relatively oversized compared to those on other Malleon capital ships, like Bulldog was a bunch of big guns mounted on a rocket, fast but not highly maneuverable. The Bulldog is clad in adaptive armor, heaviest at the front quarter of the ship. Unlike on the larger ships, the Bulldog’s negative shimmer provides a tactically useful camouflage effect, especially where the armor is thickest: Since Bulldogs typically charge directly at enemy ships, the heavier armor at the front means not only that the part of the ship facing the enemy is better protected, it’s also more difficult for enemy spotters to notice before it fires a volley from its main guns.

The Bulldog serves in a support role alongside Venture-class battleships, both in large fleets and smaller combat groups. In larger fleets, where the battleships use suichodori martial arts (see the Venture-class above) to control the battlefield and force enemy capital ships into unfavorable positions, Bulldogs engage enemy ships that escape the battleships’ firing solution. The main goal is to prevent enemy capital ships from forcing the battleships to break formation and disrupt the flow of suichodori, but Bulldogs are so heavily armed that they can cripple or destroy enemy ships that don’t respect the smallish Bulldogs’ firepower.

In smaller combat groups, the Bulldog prevents enemy ambushes from swarming Malleon battleships, which are vulnerable to attacks from multiple Wasps in tandem. In this close support role, the Bulldog can engage enemy capital ships attacking from angles that avoid a battleship’s broadsides. While the Bulldog lacks much weaponry for fighting smaller craft, it can force a carrier into evasive maneuvers that prevent it from supporting its launched craft, leaving them vulnerable to gunboats and specialized capital ships like the Porcupine (see below).