Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a set of personal shielding focused on protecting personnel and droids from physical threats, especially those preferred by the Bryn'adul
- Image Source: N/A
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: Trudo-class Defense Turret (in-character inspiration)
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi, Closed-Market
- Model: Ferrazid Particle Distortion Shield
- Modularity:No
- Production: Mass-Produced.
- Material: Carbo-plas casing, Biolux series Organoform Circuitry, capacitor, capacitor overcharger
- Classification: Energy Shield
- Weight: Light
- Resistances:
- Energy: Average
- Kinetic: Very High
- Lightsabers:None
- Elemental: High
- Sonic: None
- Explosive: Very High
- Pressor Field: Ferrazid uses a pressor generator to produce a spherical pressor field that surrounds the user. This field pushes back against physical objects coming towards the user, whether it is a bullet, fist, metal blade, shrapnel, or other debris. While this not usually entirely stop these motions, it slows down their velocity, and consequently their kinetic energy and damage.
- Layered Particle Shield: Rather than use a single strong particle shield, Ferrazid produces a series of very light particle shields spaced out in sequential layers. As an object hits the shield, it is usually briefly arrested (its velocity changes) and possibly deformed before it continues to impact the next one, and so forth. This may actually produce less overall direct protection against kinetic threats than a normal particle shield, but combined with the pressor fields leads to indirectly more protection: the constant deforming of the projectiles, changing the objects speed, and direction means that the shots that do penetrate through the shields have little energy, and often are now traveling at different angles than originally aimed, which may cause these shots to completely miss the wearer. In addition, this method of protection often damages projectile payloads, prematurely setting off fuses or rupturing projectiles containing liquids or gases to disperse before they hit the target. In effect, it can apply the spaced armor concept from vehicles and apply it to people.
- Mining Shield: The Ferrazid also uses a miniaturized and updated copy of the Telos Mining Shield to provide general protection against environmental, energy, and explosive threats.
- Dataport: Ferrazid features a scomp-link accessible dataport on its underside. This allows its status and settings to be accessed and changed through a datapad, droid, or armor suit HUD. This is usually used to automatically configure the shield to 'flicker' through an armor's HUD system when they are using their own projectile weapons.
- Modular Power Supply: The Ferrazid uses many existing parts from Lucerne Personal Defense's mainstream Myntor Personal shield, including its capacitor to store charged energy. However, this capacity can be connected to other power sources such as powercells or generators to resupply the Ferrazid's power.
- High Kinetic Resistance: Due to the use of spaced particle shields and tensor fields as described above, the Ferrazid is unusually effective against kinetic attacks, especially those which rely on many small and slow moving rounds, such as a submachine gun.
- High Elemental Resistance: The use of a Mining Shield provides good general resistance against temperature extremes. The use of a pressor field also pushes molecules away from the user, such as with ice or flames.
- High Explosive Resistance: The Mining shield provides good resistance against the temperature issues caused by explosions, while debris and hot gases often collide with the particle shields before being pushed back by the pressor fields.
- No Lightsaber Resistance: Nothing in the Ferrazid's shielding technologies is designed to interfere with lightsabers.
- No Sonic Resistance: Nothing in the Ferrazid's shielding technologies affects sonic weapons
- Double-Blind (kinetic): The same effects that apply to incoming physical objects also apply to objects leaving the user, such as bullets. In order for these to be used as effectively as they normally, the particle shields and the pressor field must be turned or flickered off, much like a starship using physical weapons. While this can be set to automatically flicker on and off through an Armor HUD or a droid's computer, during this time, the shield is also inactive which gives a small window for an enemy projectile or object to through the shield without any resistance.
- One Always gets through (kinetic): The "spaced" nature of this method of defense often means that some rounds eventually will make it through to hit the user, though at noticeably reduced velocity and usually misdirected.
As Lucerne Personal Defense ramped up their facilities to support groups going to war with the Bryn'adul, they found that their typical energy shield, the Myntor, to be a good general purpose shield against conventional opponents, but not one optimized to face the use of high velocity, superheated slugs, explosives, and melee weapons favored by the conquering conglomerate of aliens. To this end, they consulted with multiple scientists and engineers within the Directorate and its associated companies before finally settling in on recreating some concepts found in armored vehicle design and using technology normally employed in starship design, notably Lucerne Lab's Trudo-class Defense Turret. This led to the use of a series of "spaced" particle shields backed by a spherical pressor field to arrest the speed of incoming objects and at least partially redirect them. While intended primarily to thwart projectiles such as bullets from Spikers or small grenades from grenade launchers favored by the Bryn'adul, it also applies to melee attacks with body appendages and physical weapons. While this technology provided the protection against perhaps the most obvious threats from the alien warriors, it was clear that there would be circumstances on the battlefield where more general, environmental protection would be needed. Because of the power drain of the pressor field and particle shields, it was decided that a lower-powered, civilian technology would be most appropriate, with the company eventually settling on an old but serviceable mining shield to act as the Ferrazid's other component. Slightly modernized and miniaturized with the eons of time, it provides general environmental protection to the user as well as most of the unit's protection against energy weapons if needed. All of this technlogy was then retrofitted into the casing of the existing Myntor shield and reused many of its internal components to speed up production and ease field logistics.
While satisfied with the results of his team, Ek'ala expects that the focus on this technology is likely going to be the shield's eventual undoing, as it is not optimized to perform against the more common threat in the galaxy of blaster weapons. Still, as long as the Bryn'adul remain a threat for the foreseeable future, the Ferrazid is likely to remain in production. Current shipments of the Ferrazid are prioritized to personnel and units along the Silver Jedi's South Eastern border, where conflict with the group seems to only be a matter of time. A number of units have also been made available to people outside of the Silver Jedi who are actively fighting against the alien invaders.
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