Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a large corrosive warhead in Lucerne Labs's product line up
- Image Source: here modified by yours truly
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Lucerne Personal Defense Customers
- Market Status: Closed-Market
- Model: Deliquescer-class Corrosive Torpedo
- Modularity: none
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: ferrocarbon nose cone, carbo-plas fuselage, quickflash burning gel payload, solid fuel rocket motor, Energy envelope projector, various electronics
- Classification: corrosive torpedo
- Size: Large
- Weight: Heavy
- Explosive Type: quickflash burning gel
- Delivery Method: self-propelled
- Effective Range: Average
- Area Of Effect: Average
- Damage Output: Very High
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Armored Assault: Deliquescer is designed to withstand at least several hits to the front from point-defense weapons. Its nosecone is solid ferrocarbon, which can usually absorb a several laser cannon hits and brush aside many flechette-based defenses. A high-powered energy envelope projector shrouds the Deliquescer in flight with a dark blue sheathe of energy that can take absorb several more hits.
- Composite Gravity/EPR tracking: Deliquescer uses combined gravity and infrared photoreceptors signatures, like GAM missiles, to track targets. These sensor signatures are typically harder to spoof and/or jam, especially as joint criteria for targeting, which makes Deliquescer not as easily fooled by conventional sensor jamming.
- Chemical Drive: Deliquescer uses a solid fuel slug, much like the Vulture Drone, to propel the warhead. Using a chemical reaction for propulsion means that it cannot be shut off by electronic countermeasures.
- Backwards Compatible: Deliquescers are the same general size and shape as many heavier concussion missiles, meaning that it can easily be fitted into existing warhead launchers, including most heavier concussion missile launchers or Lucerne Lab's own Harpoon-class General Purpose Warhead Launcher.
- Heavy Hitter: The Deliquescer's design is optimized to carry a large amount of quickflash burning gel, which even in small amounts is quite potent against most materials.
- Bulky: The Deliquescer is bulky weapon that doesn't fit into smaller or even average warhead launchers. Typically a larger general purpose or specialized launcher is needed to fire these weapons.
DESCRIPTION
Some principles never change - among them is the constant struggle between evolving weapons technologies and the rise of new defensive technologies to counter them. Noting a wide variety of advanced armor technologies coming onto the market, as well as the previously unseen amounts of beskar and phrik finding themselves on starships due to evolving materials technology, Lucerne Labs embarked on finding the next step in the evolutionary process to counter these new defensive developments. In the end, the company ended up simply repurposing exist technology, taking the basic fuselage design and avionic systems of the Thorn-class Kinetic Interceptor and altering its payload. Instead of trying maximize mass, the design was altered to increase internal volume for a large payload of quickflash burning gel. Consequently, when the warhead hits, all of its excess energy is pumped into the gel itself, causing it to start quickly corroding through the material it makes contact with. True to its name, the Deliquescer tends to liquify its targets, which often are designed more to protect against kinetic and explosive threats rather than a chemical-based one. While the resulting attack isn't as flashy or often as wide-ranging as an explosive attack, the damage actually wrought by Deliquescers is often more insidious than it initially appears - while most people immediately notice obviously dissolved armor plates and mishappen turrets and other subsystems, the acid often drips or slides into tiny areas, dissolving hard to reach wires and creating miniscule holes in bulkheads that can drain a ship of its internal atmosphere of it left unrepaired for a time. While fairly potent against heavier targets, especially those with unusually good defenses, the Deliquescer doesn't quite have the versatility of some the company's other new warhead designs such as its parent design, the Vortex, or the Disruptor, which has meant that it has largely slipped under the radar for most observers. Whether that will change as the weapon demonstrates its prowess against more technologically advanced enemies remains to be seen.
