Kyrana Gould
Admiral
Image Source: Here. Concept art, artist unknown.
Intent: To develop a secondary and powerful reactor to allow a ship to use very powerful ship components. This reactor is specially designed to allow a ship to maintain all normal power requirements though the regular reactor, allowing this to provide the necessary energy for special projects. As a submission this item does nothing on its own, it is solely there to power large capital ships.
Development Thread: YES
Manufacturer: Originally unnamed research company, improved and marketed by Firemane Industries & Technology.
Model: CR-001
Affiliation:
Modularity: No.
Production: Mass Produced
Material: Standard reactor components. Layer of Hadrium to prevent heat radiation.
Description:
The Colossus Reactor is the answer to a question posed by the development of powerful shipborne weapons. Previously, large capital ships had relied on the same reactor as all other ship components to power specialist equipment. This caused not only efficiency issues, but also baseline load problems. A powerful weapon or shielding device would start to impact on the rest of the ship’s ability to move, attack and protect itself.
The Colossus Reactor is a secondary hypermatter reactor for a capital ship, though more than one can be installed on very large vessels. It is capable of generating its own power, but also siphoning off and storing power from the ship’s main reactor during quiet periods. This allows a substantial power reserve to be stored up for the right moment.
They key advantage the Colossus has is that it can direct this stored energy suddenly, or in small amounts to special components without affecting the ship’s ability to maintain shields, engines or life support. It is also crucially designed to be compatible with the Aegis Molecular Shielding being designed at the same time by Firemane. This would allow external attacks to ‘top up’ the reactor during battle.
One downside of this situation is that the Colossus takes time to recharge its power store, especially during battle. Thus, whilst not affecting other systems on the ship, a powerful weapon such as the Nova Cannon has a considerable cool down period between shots.
The reactor, as with all such machines, is vulnerable to direct attack by an enemy physically in front of it. As a mere power generation machine it has no defences.
The advantages are manifold though. The Colossus can keep a large ship functioning without needing to sacrifice other systems to use special equipment.
The reactor itself is very large, and only can be installed in a ship over 1000m long. Anything smaller would be rather an overkill.
Primary Source: N/A
OG Section:
Affiliation: Firemane, Open Market buyers
New Section:
Affiliation:Open Market buyers. Firemane Industries & Technology & closed market to approved buyers only.
Affiliation: Firemane, Open Market buyers
New Section:
Affiliation:
