Alasdair Voland
Character
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Recharge No More: The powerful synthetic kyber enhanced energy weapons fire is so concentrated compared to traditional energy weapons that it overwhelms the recharging ability of molecular shielding, in effect reducing them to regular deflector shields.
- Modular: These arrays can be constructed in differing sizes down to around heavy infantry carried weapons like fixed emplacement repeating blasters and particle launchers, though not regular blasters due to stability problems with the synthetic kyber crystals.
- No More Recharging of Molecular Shields: This makes it much easier for energy weapons to be viable again en masse, making logistics and ship design far more simple, while still letting the molecular shields already installed act as regular ray shields.
- Unstable Kyber Crystals: Due to the fact that natural kyber crystals are a comparative rarity, synthetic kyber crystals have to be used, and they are known for being erratic and prone to explosion if not carefully handled. The array can be hit in battle which will result in an explosion the total loss of the weapon system (and accompanying crew) rather than it simply being damaged and possibly repaired during the fight.
IC: As the Empire of the Lost has expanded across the galaxy, it has run into all kinds of new technology, and constantly runs into new threat profiles. One of the most concerning for the Empire has been the widespread development of molecular shields, once restricted to comparatively rare applications, now being used on capital ships, vehicles, and even starfighters. This proves a major problem from a logistics and design standpoint, as energy weapons have, for many good reasons, have proven to be the reliable standard across the galaxy for tens of thousands of generations, and a switch to kinetic weapons would cause major issues.
Rather than retrofitting the entire military to deal with the proliferation of these special shields, the Empire commissioned scientists across the galaxy to find an alternative solution, and eventually an imperfect one was found by Imperial Military Protective Services. Kyber Crystals, long known for their ability to amplify the power of energy weapons, when arranged properly in focusing arrays, could concentrate the turbolaser bolts for far longer than normal, meaning that instead of hitting shields only after losing a substantial amount of their energy due to dissipation, they could hit with more of their full power. Although this did not completely solve the problem of dissipation over range, it did allow them to be strong and concentrated enough to overwhelm the recharging ability of molecular shields, effectively turning them into basic ray shields that could be handled by normal means.
Of course, no solution is perfect, and the major downside the Empire has found to this technology has been the comparative scarcity of true Kyber crystals across the galaxy. Although available in sufficient amounts for experiments and provide the Empire's Force wielders with power sources for their weaponry, there are not nearly enough natural ones to outfit vast military forces with them. Thus this technology uses synthetic kyber crystals, which, while easy to produce, come with the serious drawbacks of being both unstable and explosive. This has tended to result in weapons systems being permanently destroyed rather than damaged if they are significantly hit, most often along with their crew, which is a major downside as damage control teams cannot repair them and return them to use during battle.
Another major downside is that it cannot be "safely" scaled down past a certain level, that is, regular energy weapons employed by infantry cannot be fitted with these focusing arrays, leaving them restricted to vehicles and heavy weapons such as crew-mounted repeating blasters and heavy beam cannons carried by commandos. Overall, though, despite these drawbacks most naval and ground commanders have considered it worth it to simplify the logistics and engineering design elements.
OOC Notes: This is part of a longer-term project to simplify fleet roleplaying and make it more accessible to new players, and, in many aspects, return the "Star Wars" feeling to it by making energy weapons a bit more viable again. Thus it is Open Market and a relatively easy to include "plug and play" piece of technology.
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