Lock and load

[Irys Arist'lar]

Irys ran her hand through the fur on the back of her neck, as she often did when stressed out. The latest project under her auspices had come to a grinding halt. They’d been considering defences to use against the Omega Protectorate’s bewildering array of Hypervelocity guns.

This was part of a wider programme, which also included attempts to deal with the Protectorate’s Shield-class vessels. That combination gave the Protectorate an insurmountable advantage in long range, protracted encounters. It was time for the ASA to up their game. Their naval doctrine focussed on long range firepower being suppressive in nature, which was why long range ion cannons were most prominent. Their ships reserved most of their firepower for close range deck cannons and turbolasers, using the ion cannons to disrupt the enemy and aid the approach.

 

[Irys Arist'lar]

The main issue was that the Shield-class cruisers soaked up most of their long range firepower. Meanwhile, the enemy could unleash most of their damage potential in small bursts whilst the shields were down. The net damage difference had been huge at Naboo. It was a disadvantage that simply couldn't be sustained. They had considered multiple defensive options. The slugs used by the Protectorate were nearly a tonne in mass.

The first option they'd looked at involved multiple layers of armour. A soft, dense outer layer could start the slug disintegrating and vapourising, whilst a harder inner shell could absorb the rest of the energy. The calculations on weight had ruled that out. No good being able to take twice the damage if your approach time doubled!

There were a few facts that had led to their most developed solution. Slugs used were often ferrous metal, they had to be susceptible to magnetic fields to be fired. The firing points were few, and well known. Generally each protectorate vessel had one cannon running down its length. That narrowed down the approach vector. So, whilst the slugs were far faster than missiles, they had much more well defined firing solutions. Putting it all together was the problem. The consortium of companies involved in the contract, which included the current providers of missile point defence systems and the company that provided the sensor packages on the smaller ASA ships had hit a wall. All of this was why she had requested the presence of [member="Marek Starchaser"] and any experts in droid logic reflex cores he happened to have.

 

[Irys Arist'lar]

She sent off another message to [member="Marek Starchaser"]

Apparently punctuality was not one of his strong points. There was much to discuss. She was now deputy to the Chief Engineer of all starship programmes. With Hypori now in full swing and Druckenwell lost there was much to discuss. In particular there were a number of vessels that she wanted Hoersch Kessel to continue manufacture of out of Hypori. She noted a short list:

• Scintel Class cruisers
• Sev'rance carriers
• Sickle class frigates
• Ventress class corvettes
• Pillar-class Cruiser
• Scythe-class Cruiser
• Contention-class Cruiser

She'd done the maths on this, and the company had put forward a business model to take on the old CIS designs, increase production and expand the market. There was also the matter of Hoersch-Kessel's continuing membership of the Techno Union to discuss, in consideration of the Count's continuing absence due to family matters.

 

[Corey's OOC]

The people who knew how to get ahold of him had the way to. And those were the people he would answer. The ones he knew he could trust and the ones he was comfortable with. The others? Well, he would send them to the proper channels. The force of minions he had (no, they were not yellow) would filter through the requests that definitely needed the big picture.

Shadow games.

Kind of like a shell game, but not nearly as fun.

Druckenwell and Hypori shipyards were doing their thing to build ships without a corporation and the newest message was from Hoersch-Kessel’s newest advisor. He typed up a quick message. “Make it work, I’ll have the Overseer transfer the blueprints and rights. There will be a bit of fees to transfer the rights and information.”

[member="Irys Arist'lar"]