HK-36
The Iron Lord Protector (Neutral Good)
Image: Taken from DeviantArt, a piece called the Vindicator Gatling Gun by artist Quesocito (Link here)
Intent: To provide a very effective anti-infantry and anti-heavy infantry weapon for fire support with some anti-vehicle capabilities.
Development Thread: If necessary, I am prepared for one
Manufacturer: Abregado-Rae Guild of Hammers
Model: High Velocity Kinetic Firearm - Rotary Cannon - 1
Affiliation: Barony of Abregado-Rae, partially Omega Protectorate (See Production)
Modularity: Comes in three variants, Lighter Emplacement Variant, Heavier Vehicle Variant and No-Gravity Variant, the difference between the first two are the sizes of ammunition drums they come with, lighter variants have smaller drums for easier transport and reloading on the field, while heavier variants have bigger drums, as they can reload them aboard vehicle or automatically. The No-Gravity Variant exchanges the gravity-fed reloading mechanism for a more mechanical one, giving the gun ability to work properly in a no-gravity setting in exchange for firing rate.
Production: Minor production (Enough to supply the Iron Company and Militia of Abregado-Rae, any additional production would require a development thread with backing from another manufacturing company, i.e. Omega Corps buying off the design to manufacture the weapon for Protectorate forces)
Material: Durasteel with Bronzium coating for aesthetics
Description: HK has always loved his shatterguns. Silent-firing, powerful advanced rail-guns manufactured by the Verpine. Although the guns used small-caliber pellets, they had enough kick in them to launch a projectile at a high-enough speed to allow a pistol break armor of light-vehicles and even dent personal phrik armor with a single shot. Their only draw-back was the Force-awful firing rate, due to the nature of their firing mechanism, magnetic propulsion as opposed to gas one.
HK designed the answer with a help of Gados scientists employed by Abregado-Rae Guild of Hammers in order to reverse-engineer the firing mechanism of a shatter-gun. The droid had a few models of such guns, including his beloved shatter-pistol as well as a shattergun sniper rifle he barely ever used. He was willing to sacrifice the rifle for the scientific purposes as he stroked his gun greedily, whispering to the piece of armament that he would never part with it like that.
The fruit of their efforts was the firing mechanism of the Rotary Cannon. It functioned much like the shatterguns, utilizing magnetic properties to propel small-caliber pellets at high-velocity in order to cause incredible amount of damage. The firing mechanism was housed along each barrel, much like a rail-gun, the feeding mechanism of the rotary cannon simply begun the process, utilizing gravity to place the pellet into chamber for the magnetic mechanisms to fire it. The six barrels would turn then as the pellet was fired and the next bullet was loaded into the next barrel, continuing the process. By the time the barrels completed the rotation, they initial barrel was charged and ready to fire, enabling for the first time to achieve a high continuous rate of fire with shatterguns. The maximum fire rate the weapon was able to achieve was 6,600 rounds per minute (taken from the fire rate of real-life M61 A2 Vulcan) and the Gados scientists also discarded the multicaliber magazine and bore, making the weapon much easier, and cheaper, to manufacture, but in turn allowing only a single type of ammunition to be loaded into it- the small metal pellets manufactured by ARGH.
The increased length of the rail-barrel, when compared to shatter-pistol HK uses, has also allowed the pellets this rotary cannon fires to travel at higher velocity, dealing much more damage, and increasing their effective range. Its bullets can shatter any durasteel personal armor, of course armor made from denser metals such as beskar or phrik would be able to stand against such a weapon, but a question comes to mind for how long, as HK was able to dent a phrik personal armor with a single shot from his shatterpistol, and they can penetrate armor of most light and medium vehicles, as opposed to HK's pistol which was able to achieve penetration only on light vehicles.
However, the raw power of this weapon comes at a price, the weight of it mostly. The whole weapon system along with its ammunition barrel would be too heavy for any human to lift, that is why only mounted versions of it has been created. Of course, there is an emplacement variant, but it required two soldiers to handle it in order to set up the gun emplacement, without proper stationary emplacement the gun could potentially fall over as its motors begin to rotate. If two soldiers would decide, for some reason, to fire the emplacement variant of the rotary cannon without the emplacement, instead of one of them would hold the gun steady as the other would pull the trigger, they would soon find that the gun would quickly fall out of their control due to, once more, its motors at work and the barrels rotating.
Also, due to the recoil of the weapon, as it is a railgun, even though a very advanced one, the Rotary Cannon in its Emplacement Variant required to be mounted against hard surfaces. These includes metal barriers and covers, hard sturdy crates and barrels, protruding walls or stable rubble, or windows. This can often limit the range of options one would have when choosing as to where set up the gun, but it is still better than just limiting the weapon to being mounted on vehicles. Also, the weapon's mounting system has a localized system of miniature inertial compensators, with the help of these devices a gunner handling the weapon is able to cancel out enough of the recoil the Rotary Cannon has to use if effectively in combat, otherwise, the gun would just flail about and aiming with it would be near impossible. However, these additional system provide more room for error as they can always be damaged with a stray bolt of an ionic grenade, forcing the gunner or technician about to initialize repairs on the weapon.
The Rotary Cannon also required about 10 seconds to start the barrels rotation, in order for the rotating barrels to achieve proper speed, its inertia and sound dampening systems to boot up, and their magnetic firing mechanisms to charge up, as such, it is not an instantly-firing weapon, although once it does fire, it can do so continuously until its ammunition barrel empties. Speaking of the firing mechanisms, as they are electromagnets, although focused ones about the barrels, they can be affected by electro-magnetic pulses as well as ionic grenades, such anomalies would be able to disrupt the weapon's mechanisms and stop it from functioning, if not jam it and force repairs to be conducted. The high-rate of fire the gun achieves also means that it quickly runs through its ammunition, although that is not as much of a problem with heavier variants that can afford carry larger drums of pellets, the lighter emplacement versions can require a reload in just a minute, if they fire continuously. That, coupled with the few seconds the gun has to take in order to charge up its barrels and gain enough speed in the rotation of its barrels, can create pauses that could be potentially extorted by the enemy. The pauses it takes between reloads are smaller, 6 seconds when compared to initial 10, as between the reloads the inertia systems do not need to take time to engage.
Another downside is also the reloading mechanism, it required presence of gravity in order to load the pellets into the chambers properly. This means that in a No-Gravity setting the Rotary Cannon would not work as the pellets would not be able to load properly, often causing jams. A solution to this came in the No-Gravity Variant, it utilized a mechanical loading system, as opposed to the faster gravity-loading system, and allowed the gun to be fired in a No-Gravity setting without jams. However, this does lower the gun's rate of fire from 6,600 rounds per minute to 4,000 rounds per minute as the pellets take longer to load. During boarding actions, often two Light Emplacement variants of the Rotary Cannon are used among with one No-Gravity variant just in case there would be artificial gravity malfunction that would cause the Light variants to jam.
The last drawback of the weapon, although not as important one, is that, as opposed to original shatterguns, it is not a silent weapon. While the pellets are still fired silently, the loading and rotary mechanisms of the gun are far from silent, creating plenty of whirring and whooshing as the gun starts to fire. Although it was never to be designed as a weapon of stealth, and the battlefields are already plenty noisy enough without the gun being used.
While the shatterpistols did had a sound-dampening technology placed into their barrels to stop the weapons from exploding or thundering with each shot as their pellet broke the sound barrier, such technology could not have been placed effectively into this Rotary Canon by Gados, even though they were able to retro-engineer and replicate it for future creations. However, the Gados scientists were able to install a central dampening system in the middle rotary barrel, the one the six barrels rotate about. While this system saves on energy, as opposed to each barrel having their own sound dampening system similar to those of shatterguns, it is not as efficient. For saving the weapon crews effort to carry a bigger power pack, adding to the already heavy weight of the weapon, or the gun delpeting its current power pack quicker than before, the Gados installed a sound dampening that only partially droned out the thunders of this Rotary Cannon. As a result, the gun is not as loud as it would be with a multitude of sonic-booms going off every second, but it is still as loud as any rotary cannon, even louder still. The noise could be compared to that of a small artillery gun or a very-heavy bolter. While it is not something that would deafen other soldiers during battle and distract them from combat too much, the weapon-crews are advised to equip themselves with sound-blocking systems in their helmets.
As a small-caliber Mass-Driver and a Repeating weapon, in Starship creation this weapon has equivalency number of x2.
Classification: Heavy Machine-Gun Slugthrower
Size: Vehicle or pod mounted
Status: Military
Length: 1.90 meters (Based on the length of Real-Life M61 Vulcan, 71.93 inches)
Weight: 150 kg (Based on the weight of Real-Life M61 Vulcan, 112 kg without the feeding system)
Ammunition Type: Small-Caliber Metal Pellets
Ammunition Capacity: Weapon emplacements- barrels of 6,600 pellets for one minute of continuous firing, Vehicle models- barrels of 19,800 pellets for three minutes of continuous firing.
Effective Range: 1000 meters (Compared it to the pistol sized shattergun HK uses, 175 meters, longer barrels in this shattergun would provide increase in effective range)
I thought I had more time before you were on so I made the post first before editing,
