Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: To provide a portable shield generator in the vein of the canon Rampart II
Image Source: here
Canon Link: N/A
Primary Source: N/A
Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
Model: Akk Dog Portable Shield Generator
Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi, Closed-Market
Modularity: Auxiliary Shield Modules
Production: Mass-Produced.
Material: Carbo-plas casing, Biolux series Organoform Circuitry, Deflector Shield Generator, capacitor, capacitor overcharger, auxiliary shield module
Portable: The Akk Dog fills the gap between typical personal shielding and installation-grade shielding by providing protection for several peoples or a stationary position. The Akk Dog weighs a little over ten kilograms, which makes it a portable if somewhat heavy load for an individual.
Deflector Shield Generator: The Akk Dog uses a standard, miniaturized deflector shield generator which can produce up to 16 square meters of area projection. This is typically generated in the shape a of a half-circle, though it can be reduced in order to increase density or to fit within corridors or other enclosures. It can even change shapes to make a small, enclosing hemisphere.
Auxiliary Shield Module: Building off their experience with the Myntor Personal Shield Generator, the Akk Dog includes a modular hardpoint that allows it to take a secondary shield module that allows it to incorporate other shielding technologies to make it more versatile, such as particle shielding, environmental thermal shielding, ionic shielding, rad-dampening shielding, and sonic dissipators.
Dataport: The Akk Dog features a scomp-link accessible dataport on its rear. This allows its settings to be accessed and changed through a datapad, droid, or armor suit HUD.
Toggle Switch: The Akk Dog has a toggle switch that allows its different shield types to briefly turned on or off individually. As an example, the Akk Dog could continue to project ray shielding even if its particle shield is turned off. This is most commonly done to let individuals in and out of shielding or to allow outgoing projectile weapon's fire.
Modular: Each Akk Dog has a slot designed to accept a modular auxiliary shield, which allows it to be adapted to better suit different environments or foes.
Expandable Protection: Akk Dog shielding typically provides protection in a half circle field just large enough to encompass its user, but it can be expanded up to a radius of five meters, allowing it to provide protection to people and objects besides the user in its field.
Limited Duration: The power pack that comes with the Akk Dog only provides enough power for 15 minutes of continuous use or to absorb around 400 blaster rifle shots.
Double-Edged: The nature of Akk Dog's deflector shield means that not only does it prevent projectiles coming in, but also projectiles coming out. This means that the shield has to be deactivated in order for troops using it to fire their own projectile weapons.
The Akk Dog is Lucerne Personal Defense's entry into the portable shield generator market where it faces competition from longtime favorites like the Rampart II. Like those shield generators, the Akk Dog is a device that is planted onto the ground in order to generate a small, local shield to protect small field positions like machine gun nests or to block off corridors within artificial constructs such as in starships. To that end, the Akk Dog uses conventional deflector shield technology by producing both a ray and a particle shield. This shield by default produces an energy field in the shape of a half circle, with the diameter of the circle resting on the ground. However, the projected field can be altered by simply altering he shield's output through its control panel. This can allow the shield to change shape, such as to fill a corridor to restrict access or turn into a hemisphere to provide omnidirectional protection. The control panel also allows the shielding radius to be scaled up or down, with higher concentrations providing better protection from penetration by heavier attacks. While it's most common for this all to be performed manually, it can be performed wirelessly via the HUD of certain armors or by datapad or droid. While oftentimes wireless offers faster speeds and keeps hands free to do other things, it is also susceptible to communication's jamming or slicing. The toggle switch is also located here, which allows the default ray or particle shielding to turned on or off, along with the controls for the secondary shielding module. This module can be swapped in and out by a trained person in about five minutes. While typically used to provide protection from more esoteric threats, sometimes a secondary slot is used to provide a shield overlay to augment either the default particle or energy shield.
Xythan Force Shield: This module adds a small Xythan Force Shield, which appears a series of spinning hexagons overlaying the base shielding. This shield absorbs energy fire, such as from blasters or lightsabers, and then uses it to repower the shield generator's power cell. Energy conversion isn't perfect however, and additionally it can only absorb so much fire at a time. This typically can extend a Akk Dog's use for several more minutes in pitched battlefield conditions.
Particle Shielding: This module contains another particle shield generator, providing the user additional protection from slugs, shrapnel, many melee weapons, and other threats of a physical nature. This is often used in stationary ground positions, where the users expect to be hit by lots of artillery fire or they know that their opponents otherwise have a predisposition for using explosives.
Ion Shield: This module contains an ion shield generator, providing protection from Ion/EMP munitions as well naturally occurring ion storms.
Sonic: This shield is actually a sonic dissipator, which rapidly reduces incoming sound waves to a fraction of their volume and power. This not only protects the user's ears from loud noises, but actually breaks down the ultrasonic waves of sonic pistols, blasters, and other like weaponry.
Radiation Dampening: This shield absorbs and protects against radiation from both artificial sources (like reactors or radiation grenades) and natural sources (solar winds, etc). This is most commonly used by spacers onboard starships (especially when engaging in salvaging operations) or scouts on radiation contaminated worlds.
Thermal: This shield provides an exceptional amount of insulation to the user, protecting them from extreme differences in cold or heat. This is useful to protecting its users from extreme environments and exotic weapons like flamethrowers or cyroban weaponry, but it does not provide protection against blasters, slugthrowers, and most common weapon types.
Lucerne Personal Defense has been heavily betting that the Akk Dog's ability to be adapted to different circumstances will allow it to unseat the Rampart II, a mainstay of the market for decades. Thus far, sales have been slower than expected, as many organizations are content to rely on personal battle armor or on individual personal shielding to protect their troops. Still, LPD's management believes that the Akk Dog will eventually catch on; it just needs the right opportunity to prove its worth to the galaxy.
