Hydra-class fighter

Design
When Raxus Personal Space Designs were contracted to design and create a fighter with more maneuverability than any other fighter in the galaxy they were surprised. Such a request was not like the normal requests for cobbled together personal fighters. To build a fighter that was small, had decent armaments and power and the maneuverability required was a daunting task. They began designing using prefabricated parts from the local source of junk and moved on from there creating more complicated machined designs. They used a standard TIE ball cockpit cutting it in half and setting four wings on a rotating central axis. On each wing they placed an engine allowing the ship to divert power from the main drive to any combination of engines situated on the rotating wings. Because of this the wings could move accordingly giving the ship lateral movement as well as normal forward movement. Such maneuverability was unprecedented, however it came at a cost. The multitude of moving parts made the fighter break down often and required many hours of maintenance. In addition to its mechanical problems the fighter had a brittle hull, and its shields were weak given that most of the power was diverted to the weapons, making the ship rather frail.

Production
When the mysterious client watched the fighters trial he was impressed. So impressed that he immediately ordered nearly a hundred fighters as long as certain design flaws were reworked. Raxus Personal Space Designs was a small company filling orders for individuates using junk from Raxus Prime for parts and didn't have the capability to mass produce the fighter. they approached Kuat Systems Engineering to subcontract the work out to the larger company. Seeing the design for the genius, if not entirely practical, design that it was Kuat bought out the company setting it up as a subsidiary. After the buyout Kuati engineers fixed several design issues and thus did production begin on the fighter for use in the Navy of the Crimson Empire. At the request of the buyer the fighter line was named after the monstrous Sith Battle Hydra.